A week has past and we have seen every site of the technology blogosphere having its article about the best smartphone of the moment. The two contenders: the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4.

First let’s start by the common,  those two phone have 1080 screens and the exact same CPU (a quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600). I know the S4 also exist in an octo-core version but I will only talk here about the US variant of the phones, the ones I could actually try and play with.

The two phones are huge, 4.7 inches of the one against a 5″ for the S4 and if you want to compare the PPI (pixel per inch) density I let you make the calculation as it does not mean anything to me! What matters is the clarity of the image and for that both screen are sharp and perfectly readable. I tend to prefer the HTC though as the color are more accurate.

Now let’s go to what make those phones so different and will endlessly continue to separate the crowd: the philosophy behind each of the company and the designs.

First HTC, that was known as “Quietly brilliant” always design there phones with a lot of attention to details, to design and to the user experience. Sense (you like it or not) always put the user in the center and all versions of it always tried to simplify the UI to make the phone more enjoyable to use.

Samsung on the other side, since they join the Android ecosystem, always tried to bring the best of technology into their Galaxy line-up. The Nature UI evolved but never tried to be elegant, more trying to present and integrate in all. Some like it and some, like myself find it confusing and not well-though enough to be useful.

Saying that the HTC One is a beautiful phone is an understatement, it is honestly the most gorgeous phone I had in my hands so far, but saying it is perfect is not true either, and the price for design is high for me: no expendable storage, no removable battery and one of the worst iFixit score to this day!!

Saying that the Samsung Galaxy S4 if and evolution not a revolution is fairly correct too. the design is nice but clearly not make of your phone a device you want to show and that is alright for me because on the other hand the expendable storage or the battery are easily accessible and swappable.

The interface of  HTC SenseHTC Sense is a graphical user interface developed by HTC Corporation for mobile devices running Android, Brew and Windows Mobile. HTC has referred to HTC Sense as both a user interface in itself and also as a user experience layer. - Wikipedia - put as usual the user in the center. An elegant, fast, intuitive and light set of function will make your phone a pleasure to use if you are accustomed to smartphones.

On the other hand, if you already know the Nature IU of the galaxy S2 or S3 won’t surprise you and you’ll feel just at home. Of course new functions appeared but there is no disruption and you’ll be able to use the phone just fine but there lies the issue, the interface is the same and feels old and done for kids. The new Holo guidelines for design from Google have been completely ignored and removed from Samsung’s version of android.

Now let’s talk about the useless and let me clarify here, there will ALWAYS be 1% of the population for whom those functions are the most important on earth, but I am trying to talk here for the 99% left.

HTC BoomSound, nice feature but who cares??? Really, it is nice to have a set of nice speakerphone but when do you really use them? 95% when your phone rings, 4% for the exceptional phone calls you put on speakers and 1% for the people that watch movies or listen to music in the subway without an headset. What maes me sad about that is that most site name this function as the most amazing one of the HTC One instead of making it what it is, a nice to have but clearly not a deal maker.

The S4 has also its set of useless features: Barometer, hygrometer and thermometer sensors… No comment of those sensor, all is said in the drawing above… 1% of the population, please please, prove me wrong.

There is a lot more that can be said about those phone and believe me the article would be 10 pages long and would not be able to cover all aspect and all functions of those smartphones, there are plenty of reviews on the web and I invite you to read them.

To conclude, it all come to what you need once again and here is my personal opinion so far: I will buy NONE of those phones!! Weird? Not so and let me explain you why: while I am attracted by the overall design of the One and the beautiful Sense interface I want to be able to expend the life of my device and a non removable battery or not expandable storage are a deal breaker!! I will as much as I can refuse planned obsolescence.
For the S4 things are better and iFixit gave a 8 out of 10 to it, still in the USA, the bootloader is locked, for 95% of the population is is not a big deal but for me it is. I means i won’t be able to update my phone as Google intended to and will be dependent on my carrier and Samsung to release any new version of Android. When I buy a phone the phone is my property, like a laptop and I owe the right to change the software on it to my leisure, if company deny me this right I will not purchase their products so until the boot-loader is unlockable I will not recommend any of those. and to sum-up in one sentence:

“People seems to prefer the beautiful woman with no brain to the less attractive one with more “capacity”… When look is all that matters people buy Apple products, HTC understood that….” but if like me you prefer functionality and durability, the S4 seems ahead of the game just need now to be open to alternative ROM to be recommended.

Feel free to leave your comments below!

Of course, there are a lot of different solutions: SugarSync, DropBox, Google Drive, Microsoft Skydrive to name only the most famous. I believe I tried them all but let’s be honest, I never store private information on any of those solutions, no picture of my family, no personal document that could compromise my personal life…

Still those tools were convenient, simple client and configuration on a PC or Mac, mobile client too to access your files on the go, capability to share a folder or a file and finally the files are store “encrypted”! Encrypted with a key, any of those vendors have access to and that the US government, just to name this one, can request and access without your knowledge.

So I have been looking for solutions, I have a NAS (Network-Attached Storage) and I could already access it from anywhere in the world using a web interface, but moving a large number of files on it was painful and cumbersome. I needed a solution that offered a light client that would automatically synchronise few folders from the different machines I own and also allowing me to access those using a browser or a mobile device.

OwnCloud is an open source solution that provides you with all the functions above, the only thing you need is a webserver (Apache or IIS), PHP and for the database you have the choice MySQL or SQLite. Once installed you became officially a cloud services provider!!

You have client for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android, iOS, though the mobile versions are not free ($0.99) it is just the price to pay to support the development of this amazing product.

In short, I was really surprised by the maturity and set of functionality of this open source project. It gives everyone the capacity to own its personal cloud and avoid paying premium for disk space and allowing users to remain in total control and ownership of their precious digital life.

Here is a short list of what ownCloud allows you to do:

• Encrypt your files (so if someone hack the server the files are unreadable)
• Access you data thru a web interface
• Share you data publicly or privately
• Document versioning
• Calendar and contact sharing
• LDAP/Active Directory users’ management
• …

I really invite you to try it, this project has a great potential and a real benefit for any user owning a NAS or a server.

As you probably already know, every network card in the world has a unique ID, the Media Access Control address (MAC address) and so nearly every smartphone in the world owns two of those MAC addresses, one for the Bluetooth and one for the WiFi.

The problem appears when you do not turn off the WiFi of your device, on regular interval, this one will ping the available networks sharing with them at least two crucial pieces of information, the MAC address of your smartphone and the signal strength.

The last one is use to triangulate your position. The better the store coverage in WiFi hotspot is, the more accurate your position will be determined. Now that the store has your MAC address and your position, the last bit of information they need is your name and it is actually easier to obtain than you think. You are a customer browsing a Macy and you connect to the WiFi to access your mail, of course like 99% of users your do not read the disclaimer stating that the store will “spy” on the data going through its network and that is it, they now have it all. Another easy way would be to send an email promising 20% but to benefit the coupon, customers would have to click a very specific link, once in the store using the WiFi.

Thanks to all this information, they know when you entered the store and when you left it, where you stayed in it and with whom, what part of the store you went into and how long you stayed in each of them… Scary, no? But now if you also use your credit card or have a reward card they can also track your purchases. If you extrapolate and imagine that your whole family shops in this shopping mall, they have the perfect behavioral study of your household.

The really scary part is that Euclid Analytics says to be already able to track 40% to 70% of customers but promise to erase any personal information if requested by the visitor but how to know if the store is equipped with the system? Will we have to ask every single time we visit the store? What information is really collected?

All lot of questions without any answer so far so one advice if you love your privacy:

If you do not use your WiFi, turn it OFF!
You will save your precious information and occasionally your battery life

The DMCA or Digital Millennium Copyright Act “is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization. It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet“.

In layman’s terms, you do not have the right to exchange any information or system done to allow piracy or access to a copyrighted content or system. Most of you will have noticed, of course, the contradiction with the first amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibits the making of any law abridging the freedom of speech…

Anyway… from a country that wants to give lessons to the world comes a new criminal act, this activity can put you in jail for 10 years and cost you up to 1 million dollars in penalties: UNLOCKING YOUR PHONE! And I am not talking here about jailbreaking your device but just only about unlocking from the carrier to which it was initially planned to be used on.

Since last Saturday (January 26^th 2013) it is forbidden to unlock your phone, smartphone, tablet or any “locked” device or this could send you straight to prison… The first offense will cost you only $500,000 and/or 5 years in jail while do ing it again will inevitably cost you the million and/or 10 years in jail.

This can undoubtedly be call the stupidest law of the year and to understand how this happened we need to understand the DMCA initially voted in 1998 and its exceptions (phones were one to allow customers to move from a carrier to another).

But, for a few days now, this exception is no more and to comply with this change, the Congress voted all the laws to legislate this new situation. The worst is that these laws do not include any information relative to the length of the contract you may have with your carrier: to be clear, it is not because your contract with AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon is over that they’ll have to unlock your device…

Your last chance, buy an unlocked device (Google Nexus or iPhone 5 on Verizon) if not, you will be dependent on your carrier will to unlock (legally) your device.

Let’s start by talking about the hardware. The concept envisioned by Microsoft is quite simple and very appealing: one device that can be your tablet and your laptop, all in one. I have to admit, I love the idea even if this concept could/should have been pushed one step forward to also become a desktop once docked (hopefully Dell, HP, Asus or another manufacturer will come with such device that would be perfect in a professional environment).

The version I am using is the 32GB and let’s be clear, on this aspect, it is a complete rip-off and half of the space is already used by the operating system… you won’t store all your mailbox, your files and your music library… One the good note, your have a microSD slot if you want to add some capacity to it (you will need it!).

The concept of the tablet becoming a laptop is made possible by the cover Microsoft created for its Surface; here, two options: the Touch cover ($119) or the Type cover ($129). The two covers will clip and hold to your Surface using magnets, the idea is old but brilliant, no need to use Bluetooth and charge your keyboard like its iPad competitors, you’ll save in battery and in cables to carry around. Here my personal preference goes for the Type cover, it is thicker than the Touch one but it usage will give you a similar experience that what you can have one a real laptop keyboard. Both of these keyboards include a touchpad what adds to the feeling that you are indeed using a laptop once the cover is connected.

The comparison with a laptop does not stop there, you will have a full USB port where you’ll be able to connect mouse, dongle and all other accessories you may need and that is a real advantages over most of the tablets on the market. Also if you want to display the content of your “tabtop” (tablet/laptop) on a screen or a TV, you can use the micro-HDMI, it works flawlessly.

The stand also gives Surface a real advantage over all the tablets I ever used so far, no need to carry an accessory or to install a cover to instantly have your tablet holding and start browsing the web or watching a movie.

The screen resolution and ratio also gives this tabtop a nice ration to display video but is not perfect to browse the web or display documents, you will spend more time scrolling than the usual, but no big deal here and more and more “real” laptops have similar aspect ratio.

Now the processing power and here… how to say it politely… there is room for improvement. The CPU is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 1300 MHz and if this processor would be a monster for a mobile device/OS, here it is trying to run Windows 8 and its first attempt to run on the non-x86 architecture but we’ll talk about the software later…

On the hardware side, it is not all perfect, I would have loved to see at least an additional USB port, a GSM modem for when I am on the move or a button to lock the screen orientation. And most of all I would have love to see a microUSB port to charge it instead of this (smart) magnet plug.

Now let’s talk about the software by starting talking about what makes it all possible: Windows 8. When I first heard about Windows 8 and this new approach Microsoft wanted to merge the OS of a mobile device and the one of a PC, I was all excited, it made SENSE! Indeed, look at Asus and its PadFone: a phone that could become a tablet and a laptop!! You could finally carry with you your desktop and use your documents the way you want depending on the configuration you were using. Unfortunately Android is a mobile OS and does not have any productivity suite like MS Office. So Microsoft was working of the idea and proposed a different approach, two interfaces, one “classic” to use application as we know them on a PC and another one, the “Modern UI” proposing a more tactile way to interact with its computer.

This new Windows will confuse most of Windows XP/7 users. The lack of start menu, the reorganization of some items (power menu), the mixture of the “old” interface with the Modern UI have made me crazy for a good half hour until I opened YouTube and watched a crash course on Windows 8: that changed my life and re-tough me how to interact with the operating system (I admit I also re-installed the start menu).

A lot of it make sense, really, I love for example the way you can have two applications open next to each other, the way to close an application or to switch between them. Once you are used to it, it is easy and very friendly but for God’s sake put back the start menu in the desktop interface! Why should we constantly have to switch between interface to launch a software? We just end up pining all common apps to the taskbar, far from optimal.

Anyway, once you get use to switching between interface, that you learn the new shortcuts (windows key + X is my favorite), the OS is pleasant but… on Surface RT…it lags! and this is frustrating. You do not need to do a lot to see your Surface lost in endless thinking. The multitasking that made Windows the most commonly used OS in the world seems to be poorly implemented on the RT version and make the user experience from good to unpleasant!

Most importantly, this RT version is developed to run on an ARM processor and this means that you will not be able to install all your usual software: forget Firefox, PhotoShop or VLC… The issue here is that for a lot of application you use on an every day basis you will have to look for an alternative, and most of the time, there is NONE!

I still can’t find a way to see my MKVs over my network, same for streaming my music, no SqueezeBox alternative and you’ll see this happening for nearly every application you were used to.

Of course, you have Office 2013 RT and you won’t see the difference with its full-fledged brother but some functions like the macros are not included. Having Office on a tabtop is a undeniable plus especially if you use it in a corporate environment; you can run to a meeting with all your files, open attachments without worrying about knowing if the layout will be kept intact or not but that is simply not enough.

Microsoft you really have to step up! If indeed the Surface is a good product and you OS is well thought, it is not enough. Consumers needs to consume and you offer nothing to eat… The Store is hopelessly empty compare to the Apple Store or Google Play.

You should have offered a way to emulate the PC until applications where developed and ported to this platform so the frustration would have been “controlled”

A very nice product that mainly suffers the lack of application and a price to highly tagged to make a dent in Apple or Google market

I read a lot, and a there are plenty of websites out there to show you the different alternatives so I will propose you here the three one that, in my opinion really stand out and do not need a learning curve before starting using them.

1. Classic Shell: Even though this is not my favorite one, Classic Shell has a lot to offer and a lot of potential. First of all, it is open-source and heavily updated. You have many ways to customize it and plenty of options to play with (maybe too many)
   • Pro:
     • Open-source/free
     • Heavily maintained and updated
     • Plethora of options
     • Look and feel can be changed and tweaked
   • Cons:
     • As weird as it sounds, its integration with W8 did not feel right
     • Too many updates
     • Too many options?

       

2. StartW8: The one I am currently using. It perfectly copies the behavior of the start menu in Windows 7 so users do not have to re-learn how to use it. The options proposed are here very basic and the design could once again be more polished
   • Pro:
     • Free
     • it allows automatic updates
     • sources to be added
   • Cons:
     • Not open-source
     • some options or not working (bottom left corner still active on multi-monitors setup)
     • Some additional options would be appreciated (button logo, look and feel…)
     • Only reads the “ProgramData” start menu, not the user specific one
     • Only displays what is inside “Start Menu\Programs” and not “Start Menu\”
     • The menu only update on start on the user session so if a software is install it is not immediately visible

       

3. Start8: My personal favorite but it will cost you $4,99. If you are ready for that I can only advise you go for it! it is easy to use, options are clear and well organize, the integration to W8 is simply perfect. The look and feel are exactly what Microsoft should have done, one little issue though for me, the search and the way results are displayed should be revised.
   • Pro:
     • Perfect integration with Windows 8
     • Enough options to feel in controls without getting lost
     • No learning curve, it “feels” right
   • Cons:
     • Not open-souce
     • $4,99 but really, is this a problem?
     • Reads the user profile’s start menu but gets lost when managing some shortcuts…

       

I hope this will hep you to make your choice, as you can see none is a perfect option but they all have the job done, I invite you to try them and share your opinions.

The reason I prefer to pay for a service like Nexflix or Hulu to watch TV instead of paying TimeWarner or Optimum or any oter TV company is simply that is I pay for a service, I do want to have straight access to the content and not waste my time waiting for a TV show while advertisements are trying to sell me what I do not need.

In addition, even if ads are use to pay developers and websites, they are mainly used to track you in so many ways… what games you play for how long, what sites you visit, where are you located… the list is long unfortunately…

Anyways, different tools are available to get rid of the distraction on Android and we will try here to present you just a few of them:

1. AdAway: My personal favorite, you need to be rooted to have this one running but this open-source application software will make ads a bad souvenir.
   • Pro:
     • it removes ads from apps and websites
     • it is open-source!
     • it allows automatic updates
     • it has an ad-ware scanner
     • sources to be added
   • Cons:
     • your phone MUST have root"root" is the default username/account created by linux/unix OS. The "root" is the administrator of the machine, it can run all commands and can access any files.

       

2. AdFree Android: I used this application for quite some time before using AdAway, it does the jobs and removes all ads by (like AdAway) editing the host file of your phone.
   • Pro:
     • it removes ads from apps and websites
     • it allows automatic updates
     • sources to be added
   • Cons:
     • Poor interface
     • Some options are quite obscure
     • your phone MUST have root"root" is the default username/account created by linux/unix OS. The "root" is the administrator of the machine, it can run all commands and can access any files.

       

3. AdBlock Plus: This one is for me a reference on Firefox, I just can’t live without it and it finally made its way to Android. The great thing about it is that you do not need to be rooted to use it but unfortunately the price to pay for that is to have the process running in the background. This one is still young and efficiency is not as good as the two previous tools but the fact that you do not need to have root"root" is the default username/account created by linux/unix OS. The "root" is the administrator of the machine, it can run all commands and can access any files. to use it was enough to make it in this list.
   • Pro:
     • it is base on subscription to lists that are constantly updated
     • You can add as many subscriptions as you need
     • No root"root" is the default username/account created by linux/unix OS. The "root" is the administrator of the machine, it can run all commands and can access any files. needed
   • Cons:
     • If not rooted the efficiency seems to be relative, it does not block all the ads
     • If not rooted, you always have a notification icon

       

Unfortunately my answer is always the same, it depends!! Let’s be clear, I personally prefer Android for reasons that I will try to explain but my personal preferences do not have to fit all and it does not.

Would you ask anybody around you what shoes you should buy? or what coat? I don’t. For mobile devices it is the same and nearly the same questions you have to ask yourself:

1. How much am I willing to pay for the phone
   • All phones are not equals in terms of functions, screen quality, processor and all this point will reflect on your experience with the device. Do you need NFC? Bluetooth 4.0?…
2. Why do you use your phone for?
   • Gaming? You’ll need something fast depending on the kind of game
   • Listening music and sending SMS? Any phone will do
   • Taking pictures? You need a high-end phone
   • Checking your mail and social-networking?
     Where do you host your mails and which device will provide you the most seamless experience?
     • GMail account and Google Docs? Android is for you
     • Exchange or Hotmail, Skydrive and Office 365? Go for Windows Phone
     • iCloud and iTunes? IOS is the choice for you

     Social Networking? The weak point of IOS in my humble opinion. Even if every app is available, it does not integrate with the OS and you’ll need to switch between apps to share content…

3. Do you have any other devices?
   • Indeed, if you are already linked to a platform it will be hard to move to another, you probably have already bought apps and you don’t want to pay again or loose those apps.
   • The case of Windows Phone is a bit special as it also depends on the operating system you’ll be using on your personal computer, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 are supposedly share an certain level of integration, I still need to know more about this but I am very curious to see content sharing or screen sharing working (if it is possible) without hassle.
4. What else?
   • The interface, the three OS use very different approaches, WP8 and its tiles, Android and its infinite way to have your desktop set up and IOs and its 5 years old flat interface…
   • How much internal memory? 16, 32 or 64… It all comes to how much media will you consume on your device.
   • Do you need a microSD slot? Once again do you need to be able to expend the internal storage and why?
   • Do you love physical keyboard? I do! and for this reason only, I do really have the choice and Android is the only OS still available with phones having a physical keyboard
   • Are you addicted to the notification LED? a really nice feature when you have it but is it a must-have for you?

As you can see, there are no definitive answer and it all comes down to your personal needs and preferences. Try them, go in a store and play with each of them, check the different app stores and see for yourself if you find all the applications you need.

Finally, some of you may wonder why I did not include BlackBerry in my list, the answer is simple, it is for me a dying product, they did not succeed to provide user with an innovative product in time and like Palm in its time they were just simply too long to retain their user base from switching to the competition…

But thanks to the European NGOs Missing Children Europe and Child Focus, the project NotFound wants to use those pages to publish a missing child picture.

This project is open for every site that wants to help, the only thing you have to do is include an iFrame in your 404 page.

The choice of the announce published is then done randomly each time the page 404 should be displayed and the message “Page not found, neither is [Child Name]”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

HTC, Motorola, Samsung are just the biggest having to fight a competitor that obviously does not like competition. The problem here is that Samsung had several products banned to “copy” the design of Apple’s product. Yes, it seems judges believe that Apple invented the black rectangle with rounded corners…

Ironic, that what we could say looking at early prototypes of the iPhone:

Apple engineers did not only copy the Sony design, they pushed the copy as far as just simply rename it the “Jony”. Ah, Steve, did you not once said “Good artists copy great artists steal”…

Obviously you’re one of a kind (of thief). It is time to revise drastically this patent system that is obviously not making any sense…