A couple of weeks ago, we posted An Android music adventure, volume I, in which we ditched iTunes in favour of MediaMonkey, and went in search of a brave new world in which devices synchronize with little interference beyond the initial setup.

In this week’s episode, we search for the most likely default …

In search of the Big Cloud

Having decided already that our answer almost certainly lies in that recent buzzword, cloud computing, our first task is to identify the appropriate default cloud configuration for us. While there are certainly hundreds of enterprises out there of various sizes, all trying to ride the cloud computing wave, we decided to start by looking at three options: Amazon, Apple and Google.

Why these three?

The decision to limit our initial investigation in this way was a rather simple one — these are three companies that are big. None of them will just disappear tomorrow, and all seem likely to offer some sort of solution. The solution found here might not be our ultimate solution, but it will hopefully provide an interim solution and a fallback point if things go wrong elsewhere.

Amazon is a huge online retailer, with hugely successful MP3 and Android App stores. On top of this, they’re a big player in the cloud space, providing hosting services for a large number of extremely popular websites. My Kindle experience has been positive, with a pretty slick book-delivery system.

And Amazon launched their “Cloud Player” some months ago to much fanfare.

In short, Amazon looks like a solid bet to have a solution.

Apple announced their iCloud service recently. And while we fear that it might require iTunes (a non-starter) or an i-Device (rather than an Android), Apple also has a couple of things going for it. As the proprietors of the world’s biggest online music store, they are in as good a position as anybody to work something out with music publishers.

And for all their faults, Apple has a history of redefining markets they enter. They did not make the first, or (arguably) the best, PC, MP3 player, smart phone or tablet. But they completely changed the landscape for each of these. Apple could well have done something that (once again) has left their competitors scrambling to catch up.

Google has had betas other than Google+ running in recent months. One of these is Google Music. Google are the craftspeople behind my phone, and I am quite impressed with their operating system, and the easy cloud synchronization of my contacts and photos.

Step one: Google

My first stop, I decided, would be Google.

That stop looked like this:

Which is a shame, because the service itself sounded alright — sure, it’s a streaming service (rather than an outright synchronization), but at least it streams your own music collection (rather than random songs Google has decided you might like). And it caches playlists to your phone, reputedly, allowing for them to be played when your connection fails.

Are those playlists “smart”? How is metadata synchronized?

Well, these are questions we cannot answer, because we could not test the service. Alas.

Step two: Amazon

With Google unavailable, our sights are turned to Apple and Amazon.

Our well-documented dislike of the former combines with a strong desire to never download iTunes again to make us jump towards Amazon as our next-best-bet. Amazon is a service on which we can pin high hopes. Their service is not in Beta, and they have an associated MP3 store.

If Google ticks some boxes and isn’t even available, surely Amazon will be better!

Alas, no.

Amazon does not do smart playlists — their create and manage playlists instructions clearly do not mention managing playlists in any way other than manually. And all mention of actually downloading music to a device (rather than streaming) is by song, meaning that even if smart playlists could be maintained, they could not be synchronized.

And here at the Big Bad Blog, we tend to organize our music via smart playlists.

But more importantly, Amazon (like Google) is available only to customers in the United States, leaving us here in Britain out in the cold again. They also only support a couple of music formats, although with the two formats being MP3 and M4A, they do reflect the majority of my current music collection.

Finally, music cannot be uploaded from a phone — that Amazon-bought MP3s are automatically on their cloud drive does provide a bit of a workaround there, but it’s still pretty poor. I want music delivery to be independent of the purchasing mechanism.

In the end, Amazon doesn’t seem to be able to tick any of my boxes. As they say, it’s a cloud player, rather than a cloud service. Amazon streams and sells, they don’t sync.

Oh, and they won’t even stream to me.

Step three: Apple

With the two best options of “fallback option” off the table, we turned to the evil empire.

Check #1: Will iCloud work on an Android phone? No.
Check #2: Will iCloud work with music for customers outside the United States? No.

We did not bother to look at the remaining features of the service. By this point we had a headache.

Conclusions

Our initial investigations have left us without a synchronization mechanism.

Indeed, it seems that jurisdictional legal issues – to whit, the music industry being firmly set in the 1990s, and insisting on geography-dependent distribution over geography-independent distribution systems. In the end, all I want is music on my computer synchronized with music on my phone.

This seems perfectly reasonable, and is doubtlessly legal. However, the recording industry’s zeal in pushing for unintuitive copy protection laws and tendency to sue their customers (or those offering services to their customers) for daring to find alternative distribution technologies clearly has even those corporations with a similarly large stable of lawyers acting cautiously.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we suspect that any solution we find will be expensive — due either to having to pay the record companies (but probably not the musicians) big bucks to avoid lawsuits, or having to pay lawyers to fight those lawsuits.

What a pity.

What’s next?

Next week, we attempt to circumvent the local nature of global services with a DIY solution …

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we were lucky enough to snag one of those early invitations to Google’s new social network. While we don’t think the invitation was given with our blogging in mind, we would be remiss if we did not give our first impressions of it.

We like it.

We like it better than Twitter. We like it better than Facebook. And — if others take to it, we will likely end up abandoning these services for the world of Google.

Plus versus Twitter

Google Plus is like Twitter.

The core functionality of each service is to allow for short status messages, readable by others on the service who follow the user. Following another person on the service is not symmetric – that is to say, there is no need to follow somebody back. Any public postings by a person are visible to anybody who follows them.

Why Plus is better

Google Plus has several advantages over Twitter:

• Built-in photo service. Twitter users use yfrog, twitpic, and other services to include photos in their tweets. This has two effects – first, users have to actually leave Twitter to see what’s being posted; second, the content becomes distributed across multiple platforms. The availability, security, and terms of service involved in a Twitter account involve several extraneous accounts that the Twitter user might pay little attention to.
• Nested conversations. Interaction on Twitter is messy. The option to follow a conversation is very hit-and-miss, and conversations involving one or more party that you do not follow might be invisible or semi-visible, depending on who is making the comment, and who is being tagged first. Nested commments? Yes, please.
• Privacy. While we are not fans of people who lock down their Twitter stream, it is nice to be able to easily flip between public and locked-down posting.
• Save your stream. Google+ has easy downloads of everything you’ve put there. Back it up. Save it because you’re leaving. It’s a strong indicator of both confidence and an intention to leave you in control of your own content.

Of course, Twitter does have some aspects that Google Plus lacks:

• Trends
• Hashtags
• A general feeling of being public – Google Plus seems confined to Plus users

These are three things that don’t apply to us at the Big Bad Blog. We have clicked on a trend twice. Both times, we shook our head and closed the window. We didn’t stay long.

We don’t use hashtags, except as jokes. Hashtags are an ugly little piece of SEO; people begging to have people read their Tweets. They seem desperate. We are happy to use a service that doesn’t litter our stream with them.

And the “feeling of being public” is really a lie. How many non-Twitter users search through Tweets? How many people search for Tweets at all?

In the end, Google Plus performs the core Twitter functionality — it allows asynchronous following and easy public posting, without Twitter’s limitation of being a text-only medium and the forced solutions that requires. The only thing we would miss about Twitter is the forced brevity and creativity that a 140-character limit provides. Google+ probably has a limit, but so far we have been in no danger of hitting it.

Plus versus Facebook

Google Plus is like Facebook.

Both of them allow you to form connections with family, friends, nearly-forgotten acquaintances, and even strangers. You can then share with those people the minutiae of your life, photos of your dog, and all 225 out-of-focus photos that you took at the bar last night and then posted to the Internet without even checking whether or not any of them were good first.

Why Plus is better

Just like with Twitter, Google Plus outperforms Facebook at its own game.

• Better photo service. Picassa combines with Google Plus quite nicely. It’s easier to upload photos, and easier to navigate through photos (yours and those of others).
• Better geolocation. Facebook started their geolocation in a horrible way, essentially invading the privacy of their users. It doesn’t seem to have ever caught on the way FourSquare has. Google is the maker of Google Maps and the Android mobile Operating System. Their check-ins work well.
• No selling your location to advertisers. Google is the advertiser. They may use your location in presenting ads, but they are certainly not sharing your information with anybody else. It’s way too valuable. Your information stops at the Google doors.
• Save your stream. Google+ has easy downloads of everything you’ve put there. Back it up. Save it because you’re leaving. It’s a strong indicator of both confidence and an intention to leave you in control of your own content.
• Privacy. Last, but absolutely not least. Facebook has a privacy issue seemingly every other week. Google has been on the receiving end of your embarrassing search terms and private emails for years, with nary a peep. Facebook requires you to scratch your head, and search through every nook and cranny to turn off all the privacy violations to which you have been opted in. Google makes it easy to navigate to your privacy settings, and easy to understand. If you see no other differences, you should jump from Facebook to Google for the privacy implications alone.

Of course, Facebook has several things that Google doesn’t have … yet(?).

• Farmville. Or Mafia Wars. Or whatever-annoying-game you’re playing on Facebook. Third party apps aren’t there.
• Events. Facebook’s big leg up is their Events mechanism, which isn’t on Google. However, it can only be a matter of time before Google Calendar is integrated into Plus.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we won’t miss the third-party applications. And, in fact, we hope that they stay off Google — though we might not be so lucky. We would miss the Events on moving to Google Plus, but don’t think that’s the end of the world. Plus, we feel that Google Calendar will be integrated before long, and that events will not just be available, but will sync to our phone.

Why Google Plus is better

Beyond the feature set, Google Plus has three main advantages that have us excited.

First, they encompass the functionality of both Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is an open system — users broadcast to the world at large, and hope somebody is listening. Facebook is a closed system — users broadcast to a bunch of people they know.

Google Plus allows both kinds of interaction. It follows Twitter’s non-synchronous pattern of Followers and Following, allowing users to broadcast publicly to anybody who is following them, or to limit their broadcast to those people they are following (or a subset of those people). The controls to do this are intuitive, easy, and quick to use. The result is that the core functionality of both Twitter and Facebook are achieved through a single service, making each of them more appealing, and the choice of where to post less of a headache.

Second, Google Plus is mobile. Yes, Twitter was based on the mobile phone SMS. Yes, Twitter has been integrated into Apple products. Yes, Facebook has mobile applications for every platform. Yes, there are phones with Facebook integration.

These things are not like what Google has. Google has built both the social network and the mobile Operating System. They own both; they can be aligned. Apple and Twitter will not always agree on how things should be done — just like Apple and Facebook have disagreed in the past. Facebook is not getting into the mobile OS game, or designing phones.

Apple and HTC having integration with these services are gimmicks and marketing ploys. Only Google will offer a truly integrated experience.

Third, Google Plus is built on Google’s existing services. Yes, there is a lot of integration left to go, but let’s not pretend that Google Plus won’t have events tied in with Google Calendar, and won’t manage to tie in Google Apps to the service. Google is more than a search company, they are a cloud computing company. They have been since Google Mail began.

Facebook? Facebook was built in 2004, as a Web 2.0 type of project — Web 2.0 being a term first coined in 1999. It is a website. It predates the iPhone by three years, and was built before anybody other than Steve Jobs was imagining a miniature computer in every pocket.

Twitter? Twitter was built in 2006, not so much as a web site, but as a web service that could function through the mobile phone SMS. That’s why you’ve got 140 characters — it’s what they could fit in a text message. When you followed somebody, you would receive a text message from Twitter when the person you were following texted Twitter. Genius.

But today, we have smart phones. And upload photos. And geotag our location. And all these things are being built on top of Twitter’s SMS-based architecture. Mobile functionality is being forced onto Facebook’s website, first conceived when the web wasn’t mobile.

Google Plus? Built in 2011, by a world leader in cloud computer and mobile Operating Systems. It’s less than a week old, but it’s already clear that it’s going to leave these services in the dust.

So why are we still on those old services?

Google Plus is lacking one thing: people.

Right now, we’re updating twice on Google+ for every update on Facebook or Twitter (links to the blog and Flickr aside). Eventually, so the theory goes, Google+ will hit a critical mass, and we will leave Facebook and Twitter and do all our social networking on Google+.

We encourage you to switch now. We breathlessly await your arrival.

Image is XKCD by Randall Munroe.

One of the things that the Internet has been all abuzzed about (at least in the corners I visit) for most of this past week is the odd PR-smear-campaign by Facebook against Google. The odd parts, of course, being the caught-in-the-act and kettle-calling-the-pot-black aspects of the whole thing.

The article that best captures the true ramifications of this is by Steven Levy, published in Wired. I post his conclusion here:

I conclude that Facebook was running a smear campaign against itself

And who is to argue with that, really?

Assuming Google did not hack Facebook, or perform some other malicious activity (and if so, evidence please), the only reasonable argument that Facebook can make is that Google is using information that Facebook made public. It is fair to argue whether or not Google should (or should not) use this information, but the blame clearly ought to go Facebook’s way.

Photo found at Things Organized Neatly. Credit unknown.
Webcomic is Octometry, by Jamie Canepa.

Our third, final, and perhaps most important article of Android week takes a look at the Android marketplace.

For all that our smartphones do out of the box — phone, GPS, email, music, internet — it is really their ability to do seemingly anything (and everything) else which is their greatest feature. The degree to which this is possible depends almost entirely on our ability to load additional programs onto the device.

Apple began this trend with their excellent App Store. Google has countered this with the Android Marketplace. After years using the former and a week-and-a-half with the latter, we take a look at the differences.

The Numbers

If you browse the Internet looking at comparisons of, say, the iPhone 4 and the Google Nexus S, you will find seemingly no end of reviews that give the edge to Apple on the virtue of numbers alone. Apple has over twice the number of applications, they say, so their store is better.

The logical fallacy here should be clear — more and better are two very different things. For instance, amongst those 350,000+ applications available to iPhone users are many an application that simulates fart noises. It is hard to be convinced that this makes for a better store.

Obviously numbers do matter. An application store with ten applications, for instance, would quite clearly not have the variety needed. But there is probably little difference in having one thousand, ten thousand, or one million options for your Twitter application — the average user is likely to narrow their choices quickly to a half dozen or so, and pick what appears to be the best out of that list.

With over 150,000 applications in the Android Marketplace, we at the Big Bad Blog feel that Android easily clears this hurdle — after all, two years ago Apple’s App Store had a mere 35,000 applications available, and we never had a problem finding what we were looking for.

The Wild West

The second trope that seems to be pulled out quite often is mention that the Google Marketplace is like “the Wild West”. For instance, to quote CNet:

The Android Market is like the Wild West, containing a mix of the best, worst, smartest and dumbest apps, jumbled up in a way that can be hard to sort through.

We are never sure what people mean by “Wild West” when they say it in reviews. We suspect they don’t either — it has simply become a trope. Certainly we do not think of “a mix of the best, worst, smartest and dumbest” as the “Wild West”. We think of bad Will Smith movies, Clint Eastwood, shoot-outs and the Oregon trail. We have our doubts that you are likely to die of dysentery through the Android Marketplace.

Still, CNet’s points are worth talking about.

The Best. The best applications available for Android are, quite simply, better than the best applications available for the iPhone. The folks at Google don’t care if you’re replacing a core functionality of the phone with your App. They do not stop your application from running in the background, or playing with certain parts of the phone. They do not prevent significant changes to your phones look, feel and functionality.

All of this means that applications on the phone can simply do more.

The Worst. The worst applications available for Android are, quite simply, worse than the worst applications available for the iPhone. Google places no controls on what can be sold in the Marketplace, which means that things that are simply too tasteless (or too poorly coded) to make it through Apple’s review process are available.

The Smartest. We do not know what “the smartest” means. Obviously smart applications are better because they can do more (see “the best”, above), except when they’re really trojans stealing your identity. This might actually mean that the iPhone’s good applications are “smarter”, though, as they have to deal with more restrictions, and require more creativity to perform some of the same tasks.

The Dumbest. Again, we do not know what this means. Certainly Apple’s store has plenty of fart noises in it. We think that both stores manage to reach the lowest common denominator pretty well.

Jumbled up. This is one of the two very valid critiques of the Google Marketplace — Apple has done a much better job at helping their users to find things.

The Real Differences

Organisation

The Apple App Store is far, far, far better organised than the Google Marketplace. While we spent many an hour with our iPhone browsing through the App Store to see what might come up, not only do we not do the same with our Android device — we have no desire to do so. A short-lived (and quickly aborted) attempt to interact with it as we did with the App Store was more than enough for us.

Instead, we decide what Apps we want on our new phone, and go directly to them.

Functionality

Android is a platform. Phone manufacturers (and users) are allowed to load it onto any phone they want, and make any modifications they want along the way.

The iPhone is a product. Only Apple is allowed to make phones that run their mobile Operating System, and access to the phone from a personal computer is forced to take place through custom-made Apple software.

This is reflected in the functionality permitted in the applications for their devices. Android is seemingly infinitely customizable. If there is something your phone cannot do, it is because the application has not been written yet, not because the application is not available. On the iPhone, everything needs to fit within a managed Apple experience.

The end result is that Android applications can simply do more. Synchronize over WiFi, for example.

Danger

The flip-side of the increased flexibility and functionality that is available through the Android Marketplace is that the applications are not always benign. With no oversight of the applications, and the potential to interact with any other part of your phone, there is an increased wariness when evaluating an App from Google’s Marketplace.

This is, of course, healthy. Apple’s devices have had their own issues with applications that collect (and sell) user data, and perhaps a bit more due diligence ought to also be taken with purchases there. But the increased functionality and decreased oversight puts the onus on the end user to ensure that his or her downloads do not compromise the system.

Options

The final difference, of course, is that Android users do not have to use the Google Marketplace. They are free to use the Amazon App Store, or the Opera App Store, or from any other place they can find that wants to sell them (or give them away for free).

With the shortcomings being largely specific to the Marketplace, and not to to the platform itself, one can find an App Store for their Android device that pre-screens applications and/or is organised in a pleasing manner for browsing.

The Impact

So how do these differences impact our behaviour? In a very surprising way.

Every Apple Application we ever bought was done so via the iPhone interface. We would browse to find something, or search for a term, read the descriptions and reviews, and make a choice. It was simple, self-contained and easy.

With the Google Marketplace, we approach things very differently. We begin by identifying something we want — “a Twitter client”, “an RSS Reader”, “a music player”.

We then search on Google — via our PC — for information. Recommendations, reviews. We check the application-maker’s website. Do they have a forum? How do they respond to feedback? Do they seem trustworthy?

We then find the application in the Android Marketplace, and review the permissions it needs from our phone. Are all the permissions necessary, or does it include permissions that are not needed for the functionality described in the application?

Finally, we download the App from the Marketplace.

Our conclusions

In the end, we expect that the Apple App Store and Android marketplace both appeal to different people.

The Apple version will appeal to those who are happy and satisfied with the Apple experience. Those who want whimsical things on their phone, enjoy browsing for them, and — while they may care that their phone has functionality — are unconcerned with limitations to that functionality. Those that prefer reasonable security with little thought.

Others — such as ourselves — get annoyed by the accumulation of silly, rarely-used applications that begin to pile up after multiple browsing sessions. If restrictions irk you, and a bit of research invigorates you, the Android Marketplace feels better. It discourages browsing — you need to know what you want, and go straight to it.

On the other hand, you can get anything you want.

We are of the second kind, and find the Android Marketplace a preferable place. For the former kind, there are other Android stores out there — but ultimately, if you want to be living within a managed mobile experience (rather than building your own), you are likely to find more success with Apple. It is, after all, their specialty.