Microsoft plans to take on Android(Google) by investing in Cyanogen.

Image: Digit.in

Microsoft is getting ready for a newer and unexpected battle with Google. This time, Microsoft plans to take on Android by investing in Cyanogen.

Cyanogen is a startup which makes and maintains its own version of Android. Cyanogen is currently being used in the OnePlus One, the flagship killer, a smartphone which has garnered rave reviews last year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is investing $70 million in Cyanogen which is best known for its customized version of Android. Cyanogen has reportedly raised $100 million to date. This should be noted that Cyanogen recently refused an offer from Google and hopes to live its dream of being an open version of Android alive.

WSJ writes:

“Microsoft would be a minority investor in a roughly $70 million round of equity financing that values Cyanogen in the high hundreds of millions.”

What could be Microsoft’s intentions?

Image: WSJ

This is important and unusual because Microsoft is owner of its very own Windows Phone operating system and is gearing up for the upcoming launch of Windows 10 for mobile devices. This move of Microsoft can be attributed to its commitment to embrace open source and maybe some mischief.

Cyanogen claims to have a team of 9,000 volunteer software developers. Cyanogen’s Chief Executive Kirt McMaster told WSJ last week:

“We’re going to take Android away from Google.”

Image: Gizmag

Apart from different versions of Android for the smartphone makers, Google also releases the Android core under an open-source license. This version is free for everybody and anyone can use and modify or fork this core without linking the Google services. The best examples are Amazon’s products which run on forked Android. These independent versions are already very popular in China where Google has struggled to leave its mark.

These types of Android versions, which are not under Google’s control, are a problem for Google because not every forked version promotes and uses Google’s services and hence, Google makes no money. Due to this Microsoft’s investment in Cyanogen, it will be harder for Google to bring all version of Android under its control.

Microsoft and Cyanogen, both have declined to comment. By investing in Cyanogen, Microsoft can get more users and claim a bigger share of the mobile market. Under the new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has shown such commitments to open source in the past.

Amazon announced today Its own Email Service,Challenges Google and Microsoft.

Yes, Amazon is best known as an e-commerce company. But with its pioneering collection of cloud computing services, it’s also an IT company, a company that serves up tech to the world’s businesses. And its IT ambitions just keep getting bigger.

Today, the company announced an online email and digital calendar service dubbed WorkMail. According to the Wall Street Journal, WorkMail is meant to compete with email services from the likes of Microsoft. Amazon will charge $4 per month for each inbox, and workers can use it via Microsoft Outlook or other familiar email clients.

For added security, the WSJ reports, Amazon will provide technology needed to encrypt messages on WorkMail, while companies that use the service will control the keys needed to unscramble the encryption. Within certain industries and in countries where privacy is paramount—Germany and other European countries, for instance—Amazon will also provide a tool meant to ensure that emails are only stored in designated geographic regions.

With the new service, Amazon is joining a host of others in the quest to upend Microsoft as the king of email and other office productivity tools. Competitors include Google, with its Apps for Business, as well as myriad startups, including Dropbox, Evernote, Box.com, and Quip.

Streamus changes YouTube into a amazing music service

YouuTube launched its music platform late last year to little fanfare, offering all you can eat music for $7.99/month on the site, with no ads.

While many of us use YouTube to listen to the occasional song, it’s no match for a real music service like Spotify or Google Music since it doesn’t offer background listening or the ability to search for songs without using the site.

A new third-party Chrome extension called Streamus is changing that, however, turning the site into a legitimate music service that lives in a popup in your browser.

Streamus feels like something that Google itself should have built, but it’s actually built by someone who quit their job to work on the extension full-time. On Reddit, the creator says they’ve been working on it for over three years.

The extension is built with Google’s Material design language and allows you to search any song on YouTube right inside a popup, add it to a playlist and listen instantly without needing to have a YouTube tab open.

The extension does far more than you might expect. For example, once you’ve created a playlist, you can share it with friends via a URL, like you might expect on a normal music service.

Streamus even offers a radio service, like Spotify or Pandora that automatically picks similar songs and plays them for you. For a Chrome extension, this is awesome.

You’re also able to queue up songs from around the web by just right clicking on them, which makes it easy to listen all day.

Having used Streamus for a few days now, I’d be pretty surprised if Google didn’t end up offering to acquire the extension; it’s simply that good.

Streamus doesn’t require a YouTube Music Key subscription to work; it works with plain old YouTube.

It’s a little disappointing that Google itself couldn’t deliver something this awesome when it launched YouTube Music Key, but this extension brings it to its full potential.

➤ Streamus [Chrome Web Store]

Google Maps get updated and got Pegman back, Street View tweaks, 3D Earth Tours, preview directions, and Waze traffic reports

Google today announced another big update to the new version of Google Maps, improving the service via features like Earth Tours, step-by-step previews, and traffic incident reports from Waze. If you’ve opted into the new Google Maps preview, the additions will start rolling out today. Google says that more users will begin to see the new Maps experience “in the coming weeks.”

As you might expect, Google has a YouTube video that gives you a sneak peek of what’s new:

Let’s break down what exactly is new in this release.

First up, while Street View has existed in Google Maps for years, the company has now made it easier to find where the feature is available (it currently supports over 50 countries). Pegman, Street View’s mascot that was dropped from the service, has made a return and is now located in the lower right corner of the screen on the desktop.

Click on him, and areas with Street View imagery will light up in blue. For a street-level preview, hover over any highlighted road, then click to dive into that location:

If you zoom in, you’ll also see blue circles that indicate where you can find user-uploaded photos, including Android’s Photo Spheres, and yellow circles that let you see inside restaurants, museums, and so on.

Again, that’s blue for outside and yellow for inside:

Next up, Google’s Earth Tours let you see 3D imagery of buildings and terrain for thousands of locations from above. This feature requires WebGL, which the latest version of every major browser now supports.

If you’re not using IE11, Firefox 25, or Chrome 30, you’ll want to upgrade just for this:

Google has also added a new step-by-step preview option for when you’re using Maps for directions. Just click “Preview steps” from the directions card to see a street-level snapshot of each decision point that will help you figure out exactly where you’re going

Last but not least, Google has integrated traffic incident reports on both desktop and mobile, in addition to congestion indicators when you search for driving directions. This is thanks to data reported by Waze, which Google acquired in June.

As you can see, this is a big update to Google Maps that follows many additions the company has been making over the last few months. Yet Google is far from done: not all these features are on mobile, yet.

Google: Stop asking the Internet how to do things, ask a human instead

“How to” searches that end with a click on a video tutorial must be booming in Google’s books. At a press event Monday, the company announced a new branch of video Hangouts, entitled “Helpouts,” which amount to live video tutorials with approved experts who can provide assistance on whatever problem you’re trying to solve with the Internet. The only catch: Helpouts will cost you.

YouTube tutorials are not the flashy success that vloggers or televised nip slips are. But in this reporter’s experience, there’s hardly a question you can ask the eight ball of Google’s search field that doesn’t result in a YouTube answer—if not a tight and well-produced two-minute clip, at least a meandering 10 minutes of a random person talking at the camera with a few glimmering seconds of actual helpful data sprinkled in.

By contrast, Google Helpouts will connect you with an approved expert who specifically addresses your problem via video chat. Each helper has a fixed or per-minute rate that you pay via Google Wallet, of which Google gets a 20 percent cut, and users will be able to rate and review helpers.

Prices vary widely, but some that are already posted include a 30-minute Rosetta Stone Spanish tutorial for $30, one-on-one stylist tips for 50¢ per minute, and WordPress help for $2 per minute. Each helper will have a set availability, and users can either get in line for a Helpout during open hours or schedule one later.

Google says the service is HIPAA-compliant, so health care professionals including therapists or psychiatrists can provide their services over Helpouts. While the product sounds like it could be open to some of the same on-demand service you might also get in an hourly rate motel room, Google mandates that no adult content will be traded on Helpouts.

The Helpouts rollout begins today. Google has already posted some Helpouts to the service's home page, where users can also sign up to provide their own Helpouts.