Norton introduces Android app to track kids smartphone activity

With the rising popularity of mobile apps, Norton puts forth its security mobile apps to keep a tab on smartphone activities of kids. Norton has introduced the Norton Safety Minder: Mobile Edition, which is a free app for Android platform running version 2.2 or 2.3 that enables parents to keep a tab on their children’s mobile activities. It is a part of the Norton Online family for PCs and Macs. The app dishes out various features to teach kids safe and appropriate digital habits.The application also offers web monitoring and blocking features for free. It lets parents view the sites their kids are visiting and block inappropriate content. The same set of web filtering settings can be used for the child’s PC and apply them on the Android phone.  The service tracks up to seven days of content for free.

“Parents know they need to be involved in their kids’ digital lives, and most actually set and discuss house rules for computer use and Internet browsing” said Effendy Ibrahim, Internet Safety Advocate and Director, Asia Consumer Business, Symantec.  “But to make those rules work, you need to extend them to your child’s mobile phone where so much web browsing takes place.  With Norton Safety Minder: Mobile Edition, parents can help their kids stick to those rules, regardless of which device they are on.”

Parents need to simply download the app on the child’s Android phone, log into Norton Online Family account or create one, and centrally manage ‘House Rules’ on the device through onlinefamily.norton.com. More than 12 phones can be added to the same account without any additional charge.

Norton Safety Minder: Mobile Edition is available for free in the Android Market and supports English, Japanese, German and Polish languages. A free, basic Norton Online Family account will activate the mobile web-filtering and monitoring within Norton Safety Minder: Mobile Edition. A paid subscription to Norton Online Family Premier is now available only in the U.S, which unlocks further advanced features too.

Google Home Entertainment System Will Challenge Apple, Microsoft

Google's home entertainment device will be a WiFi system for streaming music and likely controlling Google TV and other home products. Apple will also play here.

The Wall Street Journal report that Google is building a home entertainment system to let users stream music throughout the home without wires has roiled the tech sector the last couple of days.
The news comes several months after Google unveiled a streaming music server that let users tap a CD against a  device to scan the music into Google's Music storage locker.
The experimental product, dubbed Project Tungsten at Google I/O last May, falls under the company's Android @Home banner for powering home consumer electronics and eventually home appliances such as lights, thermostats, refrigerators and microwaves with the company's Android operating system.
Google has asked the Federal Communications Commission permission to have 252 Google employees test the prototype device in Google's hometown of Mountain View, Calif., Los Angeles, Cambridge, Mass., and New York City.
According to the patent application, which GigaOm discovered, users will connect their device to home WiFi networks and use Bluetooth to connect to other home electronics equipment. The device is designed to test the throughput and stability of the home WiFi networks that will support the device.
The system will certainly leverage Google's Music streaming service and work with Google TV, the company's Web-based television surface. These products could be controlled via Android smartphones and tablets. However, while Google simply licenses the Android-based Google TV software to TV OEMs such as Sony and Vizio, Google will allegedly market and brand the home entertainment device under its own name. This is unusual for a company given to releasing Android under open source and letting OEMs build products.
Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey told eWEEK Google's biggest challenge will be in explaining to people that whatever it wants to sell is a platform rather than a product. Such a device could get lost in the muddle of other home TV devices from Sonos, Roku and Logitech.
Yet if Google can sell Android as a single controlling platform for all home electronics rather than just a single consumer electronics device "they have a shot at defining a new category."
Pundits opine that Google will fumble this project away because it has no experience building and marketing hardware products, let alone consumer electronics devices. Others argue Google will tap Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI), which makes set-top boxes, for its hardware and marketing expertise.
Both points are valid and yet Google has other challenges. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is a home entertainment gaming and streaming system.
Apple, already dominant in consumer electronics, is purportedly preparing to launch its own Web-based super TV system this year. Such a device would sync across Apple's Macs, iPhones and iPads, all tethered by the company's iCloud storage service. McQuivey noted:

Apple's forthcoming TV won't just be a TV, it has to be a home information and experience management platform. It may not even be designed to replace your living room TV (replacement cycles are too long there to get the kind of sales spike Apple will want), but it will definitely be designed to manage your whole life -- all your media, your personal information, and eventually the full body of data that you generate each day including how well you slept last night, how much you weigh today, and whether you're fighting more with your spouse than before.

"That's where all of this ends. Google knows it, Apple wants it, Microsoft might accidentally get there first, and Facebook is most likely to be the glue that connects people to it all. It's the technology platform holy grail, of course, but you can't sell it that way today. You have to sell it as a TV streaming device that happens to have an app platform."
Google might have an advantage in addressing a larger market, something Android lends itself to naturally by remaining open source. Apple, however, will target existing Apple users who have their Macs, iPhones and iPads -- and certainly the existing Apple TV users.
"Google has to strike now in order to signal to people that there will be a more open alternative, one in which you can buy from Samsung, Verizon, and even Amazon and have it all accrue to the same platform," McQuivey said.
"Will they do it well? I'm not confident they will, but if they wait and try to follow quickly like they did with tablets, they might spend 5 years catching up."

Foursquare Rolls Out New Version Of “Explore” On Mobile With Filters & Improved Search

his morning, Foursquare launched an updated version of its “Explore” feature for both its iPhone and Android applications. The new version brings over several of the features already available through Foursquare on the web, including filters, photos in search results and the ability to change your location.
After updating your mobile app, you’ll see the improvements in the “Explore,” section, Foursquare’s local guide which is augmented by your friends’ recommendations and visits as well as other Foursquare users’ tips and comments. Like a mini local search engine, you can search for venues by category (“coffee,” “nightlife”), name, or even something very specific, like what  food you’re in the mood for (“tuna,” “burgers”). You can also tap “Specials” to see just those venues offering check-in or mayor discounts.
Starting today, you’ll now be able to use the new filter button (at the top right on iOS or bottom right on Android) to narrow your search results by options like “New to me,” places you’ve already been, “Both,” or, alternatively, you can choose to see those places your friends have tried.
You can also use Explore to find recommended places in areas outside your current location, as determined by your phone’s GPS. You can either type in a location or drag the map around, then pinch or tap to zoom into new neighborhoods.
Although still sometimes overlooked by those who just use Foursquare as a checkin service/social network, Explore represents a key new direction for the location-based startup. The idea, as Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley explained last month when Explore arrived on the web, is to try to “make local search much smarter…it’s based off what you and your friends actually do, where you go and when you go.”
And, for obvious reasons, local search is much smarter when you can actually use it while on the go. The new Foursquare apps are out now, check the appropriate app store for the update.

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx’s Comes With Battery Life

Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx is a smartphone breakthrough for one single reason -- battery life.
In about a week and a half of testing the Razr Maxx -- making calls, surfing the Web, checking email and using apps throughout the day -- I found myself only needing to charge the phone about once every two days.

What makes this so amazing is the Razr Maxx, like its predecessor, is a 4G smartphone with a 4.3-inch touchscreen. In fact, aside from the battery, the Razr Maxx is essentially the same phone as the original Droid Razr -- they each have the same 960 x 540 screen resolution, 1.2-gigahertz dual-core processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, 8-megapixel/1080p rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Both phones run on Google's Android Gingerbread operating system, though an upgrade to Android Ice Cream Sandwich is on the way.
No 4G phone I've ever used, and many 3G phones I've used as well, haven't been able to go two days before a charge. Motorola pulled this off by outfitting the Razr Maxx with a 3,300 mAh (milliampere-hour) battery that is just under twice the size of the original Razr's 1,780 mAh battery.
Along with a bigger battery, of course, comes a bigger phone. The Razr Maxx is 0.35 inches thick and weighs in at 5.22 ounces. The original Razr is 0.28 inches thick and weighs 4.48 ounces. Thankfully, the slick styling of the original Razr is carried over to the Razr Maxx, with a stylish and grippy kevlar-coated back and metallic grey chassis. Up front, both Razr models are covered in Corning's scratch resistant Gorilla Glass.
If you can deal with not having to have the thinnest 4G phone on the block, then there is no question -- the Razr Maxx is a better smartphone than the Razr. For this reason, I could see some early adopters of the Razr, who do value battery life, feeling pretty burned by Motorola's release of the Razr Maxx just a few months later.
While the Razr Maxx is thicker than the Razr, it's still only about as thick as an Apple iPhone 4S -- which is still a very thin phone. I found the Razr Maxx's added weight and thickness resulted in a phone that felt solid but never heavy.
Motorola claims that the Razr Maxx can hit about 21 hours of continuous talk time and 8.5 days of standby battery life -- two figures I wasn't able to reach myself in testing because I was using the phone daily and not talking nonstop for nearly a day. But the performance that I found in the Razr Maxx makes me think this would be an ideal smartphone for someone who travels or is often out of the office and doesn't have an outlet nearby at all times.
Check out my review of the original Razr for my take on the other details of these two phones -- as they really offer the same user experience.
The Droid Razr is a Verizon exclusive and sells for $299.99 on a two-year contract, with 32 gigabytes of storage (16 gigabytes built in and 16 gigabytes on an included microSD card). The original Razr, which launched at the same price and storage size, has fallen to $199.99 on a two-year contact and is now down to 16 gigabytes of storage

Chrome for Android:Flash not coming

Google launched Chrome Beta for Android 4.0. While this swanky browser works well for a Beta, we did notice one gaping hole in the feature list and that was the lack of Flash support. While this does help in keeping annoying ads from loading on webpages, other functional components also fail to load, which leave you with big rectangular gray blocks around the web page.

 Adobe released a statement saying that they won’t release a plug-in for Flash for Chrome mobile after all. To quote them, “Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content. Flash Player continues to be supported within the current Android browser."

Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil) and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.
Download Chrome Beta for Android

Features

• Browse fast with accelerated page loading, scrolling, and zooming
• Search and navigate directly from the omnibox
• Open and switch between unlimited tabs in an easy-to-view stack
• Sign in to Chrome to sync your bookmarks and view tabs you have open on your computer
• Send pages from desktop Chrome to your smartphone or tablet with one click and read them on the go, even if you’re offline
• Browse privately in Incognito mode

Speed

With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.

Simplicity

Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. Google reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you’re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web. One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.
And as with Chrome on desktop, Google built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, ‘Settings,’ and then ‘Privacy’).
Sign in
You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. Sign in to Chrome to bring your open tabs, bookmarks and omnibox data from your computer to your phone or tablet. That way, you have your Chrome, on all of your devices.
If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:

• View open tabs: Need to step away from your computer? Access the tabs you have open on your computer right on your phone or tablet and pick up where you left off.
• Sync bookmarks: Find your bookmarks on all of your devices. Quickly go to your favorite sites, no matter where you are.
• Get smarter suggestions: Take your omnibox everywhere. Visit a site often on your computer and you’ll get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your phone, so you can spend less time typing.
• Send to mobile: Send pages from your computer to your phone or tablet with a single click. You can read them on the go, even when you’re offline.
• Auto sign-in: Automatically sign in to Google sites, like Gmail, for fast and seamless browsing. [source]