Will Google Hang Up on Voice?

Millions of Android users began salivating late Monday when a Google Voice update surfaced. What could it be? The long-sought MMS feature that power users have craved since Mountain View purchased Grand Central in 2007? An update to the pre-historic user interface? International texting? Maybe it would be a way to integrate Google Voice into the main Android messaging client, a feature currently only offered on Sprint’s devices. None of the above.

Like many updates before, the changelog was a downer, described simply as “Improved the reliability of SMS delivery.”

At least Google is paying some attention to its long-neglected internet phone service. It needs to; Google Voice is being overtaken almost daily by Android and iOS chat applications that offer nearly all the features Google Voice lacks. But whether Google Voice will continue, or remain a standalone app as we know it, is uncertain. Google pulled the plug on its popular Reader RSS reading service last month, so anything is possible.

For its 3.5 million daily users Google Voice is a Big Deal. Many have literally become associated with their 10-digit Google Voice numbers and addicted to the service’s once cutting-edge features.

Those cutting-edge features aren’t so novel now. The ability to talk and text from the same phone number on multiple devices seems so yesterday. Even Verizon offers computer and tablet texting, in both the SMS and MMS flavors.

That leaves Google Voice users in a love-hate relationship, always wondering when they should jump ship and call off the love affair — all of which is clearly evident on Google Groups messaging boards: “MMS…. MMMS….MMS….Come on already!” posted one frustrated Google Voice fan.

Or, consider this Tuesday posting:

"I wish Google would stop teasing us with Voice and just shut it down (instead of Reader which actually works). Google Voice has been problematic ever since their stupid push to shove Plus and Hangouts down our throats. I can’t get Voice to interact with Google Talk so I can use my PC and headphones to make and receive calls. They just haven’t worked in years, and it requires a LOT of effort to get any kind of functionality. And now that I’ve got a new Windows 8 computer, I can’t get the extension to call me whatsoever. I’m really starting to despise everything Google does. Do us a favor Google, and just END Chat, Talk, and Voice, and then go try to stand on your own with the stupid Plus and Hangouts which are obviously your beloved love child. Reader was awesome, PLUS SUCKS!"

What we do know about Google Voice is that, in 2011, Mountain View integrated the entire operations into its real-time communications team. Headed by Vic Gundotra, that’s where the company houses its social-networking site Google+, Hangouts, Chat, and Talk.

These services all contain often-competing and disjointed messaging platforms that are likely to merge soon under a new product with a nickname of Babel. If and how Google Voice gets baked into that cake mix is unclear. Google refuses to even acknowledge Babel despite code of its existence popping up in a myriad Google products.

“As a company, we’re very invested in real-time communications,” spokeswoman Iska Hain said in a recent interview. “Google Voice is obviously a prominent part of our communications team. We don’t have anything to announce now. We’re always looking for ways to innovate and provide the best experience.”

Regarding Google Voice, Hain added: “We’re not going to leave those users high and dry. We have to think about how to make it better.”

It’s been more than five years since Google acquired Grand Central to create Google Voice, and yet the service hasn’t really gotten much better.

The last time the Google Voice blog was updated was days before Christmas, when the service offered free calling from Santa Claus — a magnetic pole away from what the service’s users were really craving. The most recent substantial announcement on the blog was in March 2012, when voicemail integration was declared for the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android.

Users aren’t giving up hope. Consider an Android Police teardown of the updated Google Voice application. It reveals what the Android fanboy blog describes as “an eyebrow-raising tidbit.” Android Police’s Ron Amadeo discovered that the Google Voice app’s new innards allow for the importation of Google Voice settings into other apps, meaning the service is ripe to be incorporated into another service such as Babel.

Many expect “Babel” — or whatever it’s going to be called — to be announced at Google’s I/O conference next month.

When pressed, Google’s Hain kept mum:
“We don’t have anything specific to share right now for future products in this space.”

Ten websites that teach coding and a bunch of other things!

Seemingly every day there’s a new article or blog post imploring you to learn how to code. “Those who code have the power to transform their dreams into reality.” “Coding will help you keep [your job], or help you make a case for a raise.” “You should learn to program because it’s easy, it’s fun, it will increase your skill set, and… it will fundamentally change your perspective on the world.” What’s more, “If you want to start a technology company, you should learn to code.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Year’s resolution was to learn how to code. Douglas Rushkoff, who calls coding “the new literacy of the digital age,” wrote an entire book about it. And didn’t Marc Andreessen say that “software is eating the world?” As a result, companies from Codecademy to edx and many others have popped up to meet this rising demand.

As a person who’s grown up in the digital age, I have often heard the cry, “digital literacy or die.” Conventional wisdom – at least today – is that in the way you know how to read and write English, “you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web… It is fundamental to the way the world is organized and the way people think about things these days.” If you buy that then you’ll want to start now.

But where should you go? I’ve been dabbling in the black arts, although I am by no means a ninja coder, and am ready to report back. The courses below offer everything from HTML to Python and beyond. HTML and CSS are good, because they’re the basic building blocks of Web design, and in my opinion, Python is useful, because it’s the most universal in many respects. Others say Java is better to learn, because its so prominent on the Web. I would rebut that you can learn Java from Python. Potayto. Potahto.

In any case, each program below emphasizes different pedagogical techniques and philosophies, and they are all mass market in the sense that anyone is welcome. No previous experience is necessary.

MIT Courseware Online
MIT has long been a pioneer of online courseware. One course is their Intro to Computer Science & Programming class, thought by many to be the best, most encompassing intro computing course offered. Taught by tenured MIT faculty, the online course is structured via taped lectures, written assignments, and self-assessment quizzes.

The course itself is quite rigorous as it was an intro course for MIT students. This isn’t a sort of online class you can do some parts and not the other. It requires a certain amount of pre-existing math knowhow to be truly successful. The course description says it only requires high school algebra as a prerequisite but I don’t buy this. I remember being pretty stumped by the second assignment, and I passed AP Calc with flying colors. This doesn’t mean the math is terribly high-level, but that it probably requires a certain amount of mathematical aptitude beyond algebra unless you want to spend the entire course scouring forums for help. As with any MIT course, there is an expectation that you not only know how to do a function, but why that function is performed and from where it stemmed. After attempting to follow this courseware for two sessions, I was officially stumped and dropped it.

edX
MIT and Harvard partnered up to create edX. It is a conglomeration of all of their available open courseware, along with a new department for the two institutions to perform research about the future of online courses and new pedagogical technologies. For MIT courseware, you can watch the lectures anytime, read the assignments, and self-assess. EdX has you follow the course in real time and complete the assignments and exams to receive a physical certificate from the program. It currently offers numerous classes in more subjects than just coding and far beyond the purview of Computers Science.

Codecademy
Codecademy.com is something slightly different than the last two. It uses a curriculum of exercises to teach the basics of coding in a variety of languages (PHP, JScript, Java, Python, Ruby, etc.). It has a text box to write different codes, and a number of tasks written alongside as a way to teach different skill sets. It’s a useful program for people who want to dive in to coding and learn the basics from a more pragmatic level. Wired.com, in fact, listed it as one of the more successful venues for learning code. However, some of the pitfalls lie in its simplicity: it’s a series of exercises, and doesn’t teach you much beyond rote tasks. It attempts to provide some context, but it just scratches the surface (at least for the beginner courses). You are able to learn the commands, their meanings, etc., and sometimes that’s just it. Codecademy teaches you these basics; and what logically follows is the statement: “I learned code.” Beyond that, it doesn’t teach a deeper type of literacy, other than learning helpful coding tricks, for better or for worse.

Google University Consortium
Much in the same vein as Harvard and MIT, Google used to offer various online courses for its progam Google Code University. GCU has since retired, but Google has archived its Python and C++ classes, along with providing ways to search for other online university curricula. It is now displaying a wide range of other courses not from Google, and calling it the Google University Consortium in Google’s developers page. The offerings for coding and computing are scant. All I could find was a course on “Programming with Go”, and when I went to begin that course it was a YouTube video.

PHP Academy
PHP Academy is similar to Codecademy in that it’s a private, community-based site working to educate the world on web development. Its methods are a series of courses, that is, videos and forums for all who want to participate. The appearance is more scaled down than Codecademy and seems to target those who have some familiarity with coding. In that regard, PHP generally approaches coding as something you already know, or are at least familiar with, so its approach to literacy is that some foundation of it is already there.

Coursera
Coursera has been getting some real press these days. Started by a few Stanford Professors last year as a way to offer online courses from myriad universities for free, it has courses for credit and wide-ranging course offerings. In terms of computing, it has an Intro to Programing course from the University of Toronto, which is similar to what edX offers. However, Coursera offers other, more specialized code courses. I signed up to take a Social Networking Analysis course last year taught by a leading professor in that field. Others include “Programming Languages” “Web Intelligence, and Big Data”.

Coursera is similar to edX in that courses are on a real schedule, with a curriculum, requiring a lot of your personal time. With both Coursera and edX you are taking a college-level course, that level of intellect is therefore required. In that regard it is leading the brigade in the thought that not only digital literacy is important, but that general education can be maintained through digital means. The onus is not necessarily that everyone needs to know coding, but that digital spaces can be used for positive, educational means.

P2PU
Mozilla has entered into the online courseware game with P2PU. In the tradition of Mozilla, P2PU is completely open, and provided a non-institutionalized, community-based education experience. It has a “School of Webcraft,” which includes “Webmaking 101” – a series of seven challenges aimed at teaching you how to start and code a blog.

The aim is less technical than, say, PHP Academy, and more community-oriented. Take, for instance, the first two challenges in “Webmaking 101.” In the first challenge you start a blog, introduce yourself to your peers, write a “magnificent blog post,” and link comments to your peers’ blogs. The second is to write simple HTML script by hand. There is a different emphasis than the rote skill-work taught in the other courses. Mozilla, in this regard, is working toward fostering a culture shift with digital literacy at the forefront.

Khan Academy
Khan Academy is, in some ways, an amalgam of Coursera and Codecademy. It claims to be workingto change education “for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere,” listing numerous subjects from computing to the humanities. The “Programming Basics” course has a similar format to Codecademy: read instructions and complete coding activities on a text screen to learn the necessary skills. Like Codecademy it progresses in a linear fashion toward mastering a basic repertoire. Khan has gotten scads of the press coverage, and I wouldn't be surprised if it developed a more well-rounded curriculum around its original pedagogical style.

Codingbat
For a different approach there’s codingbat, which is simply a series of live coding problems. This site is tailored toward those with some previous knowledge of the subject, and has a bare bones interface pleasing to any hacker-in-training. The problems give immediate feedback to help improve skills, and were developed by Stanford CS lecturer, Nick Parlante. The two languages offered are Java and Python, and it now seems to be offering a theory course to teach skills in “small” coding so as to have the foundation to do longer pieces of code. The approach is educational at its core, but is difficult to delve in for the completely uninitiated.

GitHub, et. al.
Frequently coders refer me to GitHub, Pastebin, or SourceForge. These sites, like Codingbat, are not meant for the complete coding luddite and require an aptitude for “learning by doing”, and knowledge of how to navigate the confusing sitemap and specific terminology. There is no curriculum or series of online lectures. It is are a repository for coders to paste their personal code. Instead of a bottom-up pedagogy, these sites gives you successful codes from the best developers around. They are meant to foster community and keep collaborative efforts vibrant in the community. Friends of mine who code have told me that the best way to learn is to go on GitHub, study a cool code, and go from there. It is completely different than anything Coursera offers, and the end result, I think, is on the other end of the computing spectrum as well.

Twitter

Explore Twitter evolution to present

I wrote this note on Facebook one year ago!

Most people, myself included, roll their eyes when talking about Twitter. Sure, it can be good for viral marketing when it comes to business but besides that it's all 'lol, I'm at the grocery store' or 'Snuggles is playing with a yarn ball' -- right? We're all about to be proven wrong...

When ingenuity, good causes, and impact all come together it restores my faith in humanity. Which is exactly what TwitCause (www.experienceproject.com/twitcause) did after reading about it in WebProNews.com. Basically, TwitCause is a Twitter based site that helps raise awareness through retweets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT). The site was created by Experience Project, and featured a charity close to me - The V Foundation (http://www.jimmyv.org/).

After browsing around the site you can't help but be moved, inspired, and perhaps a bit overwhelmed. The site reminds me a bit of the movie Pay It Forward. If you've seen the film you have a general idea of how a good deed is done and then the person has to pass that deed onto another. I foresee this project becoming a Pay It Forward for the 21st century.

The site is barely 2 years old and already there are over 2,500,000 members. With such a positive start the sky could possibly be the limit. Or at most we can hope for Ashton Kutcher like numbers (8,426,314 current followers).

Want Your Company to Grow? Fire Your Managers!

By: Ilya Pozin (Founder of Ciplex.)

Too many employees work for their boss rather than their company or their clients. Businesses these days are filled with multiple layers of management, and employees often find themselves playing politics and focusing on tasks to make their boss happy.

At the end of the day, the company quickly forgets what their goals are and what they are in business to do -- and everyone is focusing on the task at hand with little sense of how it fits into the bigger picture.

If you notice this in your workplace, your top-down hierarchy is the culprit.

By eliminating this model at my digital marketing agency, Ciplex, we created a company people love working at, and saved money in the process. Our customer satisfaction went up, and the quality of work improved. We have happier employees, satisfied clients, lowered costs, and a better company overall.

Here’s how I did it:

Create a Team Culture
I created small three to five person teams and removed any ‘bosses’ those teams or team members had. I also dismantled any “senior” or “VP” titles within the team. Though leaders will naturally emerge within a team, there’s no need to have a strict reporting structure. Your senior employees may initially be taken aback by this idea, but it’s important to remind them that the changes in culture and work habits will lead to increased productivity and motivation. Let your team choose their own titles, without implementing hierarchy, and have teams measure their own performance so they can learn and grow.

Set Goals
Employees need to work collectively--not just as task-doers. After creating teams, I gave each team a goal, one that could easily be measured in short intervals--like one or two weeks. This helps employees to see exactly what outcome they’re working for--they now focus on the whyand no longer on the how. Given a goal and consistent short time-frames, teams are able to measure their performance and learn from previous mistakes, allowing them to improve during the next time interval. Establish the philosophy of team goals, and employees will no longer feel as if they’re just “doing tasks for the boss.” Employees will appreciate the effort to allow their team (or even individual team members) ownership and responsibility of the goal. If they need help, they have a support layer, but no hierarchy is involved.

Provide Support, Not Escalation
In a hierarchal workplace, escalation occurs when a problem arises. Instead of team support, you get individual workers passing problems off to other people. And when a problem is passed, so is its ownership. In my model, managers and bosses are repositioned as team support, working for the teams, helping them in whatever they need. Former high-level executives provide help and support, rather than telling employees what to do or how to do it. Getting rid of company hierarchy means client or customer satisfaction becomes priority and ownership stays with the team. Since no one is able to “pass the buck” when a problem comes up--everyone will tackle problems collectively. No more navigating departments and roles (politics) that once divided them.

Take Money Off the Table
By default, salaries are hierarchal. When you flatten your company hierarchy, you don’t have to flatten salaries to make them equal for everyone--but you do have to talk to your employees. Ask what they need to feel comfortable on a monthly basis. We didn’t lower any salaries, but we did give out some raises. Create pay levels that are tied to performance, not job titles and seniority. As soon as your employees aren’t constantly worrying about money, your culture can thrive. Remember, you want your employees to work towards a team goal, not towards their paycheck.

Remove Rules, Give Autonomy
No one likes to feel they’re living under authoritarian rule. Autonomy is one of the biggest motivators, so let your employees act like the adults they are. By removing unnecessary rules and offering flexibility, they can determine how much they need to be in the office on a given day, or whether or not they’ll be able to take a vacation next week. Structures like strict work hours, location requirements, limited vacation time, fancy titles, and even employee reviews scream one message: employees are working to satisfy rules--not to meet goals.

Lead, Don’t Manage
Dismantling your company hierarchy means your teams will measure their own success, giving you the freedom to lead instead of manage. Don’t correct employees or solve their problems--guide and support them with leadership instead. If there’s a problem, ask key questions to guide them to the solution instead of jumping in to take the reins and own the problem.

Reap the Benefits
By flattening our hierarchy and getting rid of the bosses, Ciplex’s culture has thrived. Our employees are happier because they actually want to come to work every day--they don’t feel forced to work because of money, nor do they feel shut out of big decisions. In addition, we watched the quality of work and customer satisfaction increase, while costs were lowered. Grow your company by getting rid of the hierarchy, and you will create a company people love working at.

7 Signs You've Got Malware!

Does your computer have a malware problem? Here are seven warning signs that your PC's security has been compromised.

Does your computer have a malware problem?

Computers are complicated enough that they don't always do precisely what we expect. Sometimes an unexpected behavior is just a fluke; other times, it's an outward and visible sign of an inward and terrible malware infestation. If you notice any of these security warning signs, your system may well be compromised.

1. Popup ads appear even when no browser is open. While not as common as they used to be, adware programs bombard their victims with advertisements. Sometimes they're ads for legitimate products, other times they contain links to malicious websites, sites that will attempt to drop more malware on your PC.

2. Browser navigation gets redirected. Not every site redirect is malicious, but if you find that trying to reach Google takes you to an unfamiliar search site, you've almost certainly got a problem. Sometimes the redirection is more subtle. For example, a banking Trojan might divert your browser to a fraudulent site that looks just like your bank's real site. In that case your only clue is the unfamiliar URL in the Address bar.

3. A security program you never installed pops up scary warnings. Creating and distributing fake antivirus programs is a lucrative business. The perpetrators use drive-by downloads or other sneaky techniques to get the fake antivirus onto your system, then display scary warnings about made-up threats. Naturally you have to register a payment before the fraudulent tool will "fix" the problem. And of course scanning for malware with the fake AV is super-fast, since it's not actually doing anything.

4. Posts you didn't write appear on your social media pages. Malware focused on Facebook and other social media sites propagates by generating fake posts. Typically these posts include an inflammatory statement of some kind, like "OMG were you really that drunk? Look at this picture!" Anyone who falls for the fake and clicks the link will become the next victim.

5. A program holds your PC for ransom. Some malware programs literally hold your PC or data for ransom. Overt ransomware threats may encrypt all your pictures and documents and demand that you pay to get them back. Others try to obscure what they're doing. For example, they may display a warning supposedly from the FBI stating that your computer was used to send spam and demanding that you pay a fine before you're allowed to use it again. Of course, even if you do pay, you may not get your system back.

6. Suddenly you can't use common system tools. A smart user, suspecting the presence of malware, might launch Task Manager to investigate, or check settings using Registry Editor. If you suddenly find that trying to use these or other system tools triggers a message saying your Administrator has disabled them, it may well be an attempt at self-defense by malware on your system.

7. Everything seems perfectly normal. That's right. Some types of malware do their best to hide all activity, leaving no visible traces. Even when you don't notice anything unusual, it's possible that a 'bot on your system may be quietly awaiting instruction from its command and control system, or a Remote Access Trojan may be harvesting your personal information.

If you think that malware has taken up residence in your PC, install a powerful antivirusutility or security suite immediately. Already got one? Then apparently the malware got past its protection. Make sure your antivirus is fully up to date, and run a full scan. Also get a second opinion from a free cleanup-only antivirus like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.70 or Comodo Cleaning Essentials 6. You definitely want to get that nasty, malicious program out of your system as soon as possible, before it invites "friends" to make your security problem even worse.