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Sprint and Rogers connect for iMessage-like RCS texting
Nearly every major tech company has come up with their own messaging services with enhanced features and SMS is starting to look long in the tooth. But there's hope for text messaging. A newish standard (it was released in 2012) RCS (Rich Communication Services (RCS) with its improved media sending and improved group chat support is making its way onto Android phones and being support by carriers and according to Google's VP of communications products, Nick Fox. It looks like Sprint and Rogers are letting customers send RCS messages between their services.
Google's Android texting app has a new name
Despite how common texting is, its integration on Android has always lagged slightly behind, as Google appeared to focus on other things. Sometimes it wrapped the feature into other services/apps like Google Voice and Hangouts, but lately, the main Android texting app has been getting some tweaks too. The latest one brings a new name, as it goes from Google Messenger (probably frequently confused with the bot-laden Facebook Messenger) to Android Messages.
Google Voice gets a long-overdue visual refresh
Google Voice is undoubtably useful, but it has also been neglected for a long time. Fortunately, the rumors were true: Google just released a pretty major visual overhaul of Voice, and there are a handful of new features on board as well. Most obvious is that service now fits in with Google's Material Design language, something that rolled out to just about all of Google's apps a long, long time ago.
Global carriers adopt Google's SMS standard
Google is trying to move Android from the ancient SMS messaging system over to Rich Communication Services (RCS), and last year bought a company called Jibe Mobile to speed up the process. That appears to have paid off, as numerous global operators, including Sprint, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone have agreed to adopt the standard. RCS has often been compared to iMessage,offering features like group chat, high-res photo sharing and read receipts. Carrier adoption means that users will get "a consistent and interoperable messaging experience between all Android devices and across all operators worldwide," according to the group.
Vodafone's Call+ lets you share photos and maps while you chat
Regular phone calls are simple affairs: just one voice on either end of the line. If you want to share anything other than a quick natter, like a meet-up address, some other communication tool is required. Not with Call+, though, Vodafone's new service that brings multimedia sharing to the humble phone call. Launching less than a month after Vodafone switched on seamless WiFi calling, the Call+ service lets users send images, maps and contacts in real-time, as well as start a video call on the fly. All of this is also accessible from the call log after you hang up, much like an instant messaging thread.
The DEA's using powerful spyware for surveillance too
The war on drugs has a surprising soldier amongst its ranks: Italian spying software. As Motherboard's sources tell it, the Drug Enforcement Administration's dropped $2.4 million on surveillance tools that are capable of intercepting phone calls, texts, social media messages, and can even take hold of someone's webcam and microphone. Oh, Remote Control System (as its officially called) can grab passwords, too. Almost sounds like a video game, right? The Hacking Team-developed software (the outfit behind Ethiopian cyberattacks on US journalists), can be installed on the sly and grants access to data that may very well be encrypted or otherwise inaccessible by other means. It comes hot on the heels of news that the DEA's been collecting phonecall metadata for an awfully lot longer than the NSA, too. Naturally, no one on either side of the story has been eager to open up to Motherboard, and presumably journalists in general.
MetroPCS widens Rich Communications Services to all North American carriers
There's been a degree of irony to MetroPCS' support for Rich Communication Services when it's been limited to the one carrier's network in the US -- where's that universal chat and sharing we were promised? The carrier plans to live up to those lofty expectations with word that its Jibe Mobile-developed Joyn service will talk to devices on any North American carrier that supports the spec. That currently doesn't equate to ubiquitous access when RCS isn't widespread, but it's a start. We'll just have to wait for the expanded service to deploy later this year, and for more hardware to hit the streets.
MetroPCS intros first Rich Communication Services on LTE, touts universal contacts and chat (video)
Smartphone users are well immersed in a world of contact syncing, media sharing, VoIP and video calls. They're just not used to finding everything in one place, let alone guaranteeing that any carrier-level features will work with other phones and providers. MetroPCS is hoping to put itself ahead on that front by offering a potentially universal fix. It's the first carrier anywhere to launch the Rich Communication Services standard on LTE, which provides a perpetually synced contact list that serves as the launching pad for everything else. Early adopters of the Joyn-branded service can chat through text, share media (including during calls) and start up WiFi voice or video calls without needing yet another specialized service and the extra sign-in that goes with it. Right now, the very young state of RCS on LTE leaves it behaving more like the isolated services it's trying to replace -- on MetroPCS, only those with the Galaxy Attain 4G and an after-the-fact Joyn app download can get the experience as intended. As long as more devices and carriers come onboard, though, the technology might be the long-term key to pulling us away from fenced-off conversations in Google Talk or Skype.
Mi Casa Verde Vera review: Home automation, simplified
Home automation and jetpacks are surprisingly similar in that both of these space-age technologies have, for decades, been over promised and under delivered. Who here wouldn't love to tap a single button when exiting the house to activate the alarm, shut off the lights in the kids' rooms, lower the thermostat, and lock all the doors? That's the convenience, the promise left unfilled as we say goodbye to 2010. We live on a planet that still requires humans to manually close the blinds at the end of the day and flip on a light switch some 90 years since the commercial introduction of the incandescent light bulb. How primitive. And it's downright criminal in ecological and financial terms that we still can't easily monitor and control the power usage in our homes let alone the trickle of wattage vampired off the individual electrical sockets feeding our greedy horde of household electronics. How is this possible given all the advances we've seen? Wireless and sensor technology has advanced far beyond what's required to automate a home. Just look at smartphones, for example, that now ship standard with 3G (and even 4G) data, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS radios in addition to sensors for motion, temperature, moisture, proximity, and even direction. We don't have the answer to home automation's dilemma -- to dig into that topic we'd require a few thousand more words, at least. All we know for sure is that the biggie consumer electronics companies are reluctant to sort it out. As such, dozens of small companies are left to deal with a mess created by an industry incapable of coalescing around a set of interoperable home automation standards. One such company is Mi Casa Verde. A tiny startup that launched its linux-based Vera home automation server back in 2008 with a renewed promise to make home automation setup and control as easy for novices as it is robust for techies and enthusiasts. We've been using a recently launched second generation Vera 2 for a few weeks now. Sure, we haven't quite reached one-button nirvana, but as home automation newbies we're proud to say that we've automated a few helpful in-home lighting situations while skirting the clutches of the Dark Angel sequestered within our fuse box. Better yet, we can control it all from an iPhone -- including the Christmas tree. Click through to see how we did it. %Gallery-111569%
