• It’s inexpensive. I bought the 8GB model for $299 + two-day shipping + tax.
• It’s unlocked and not part of a contract, allowing me to use a range of company’s prepaid services via swapping out the micro-SIM card. Even with the cost of going through several lesser smartphones in the past few years, I’ve calculated being on prepaid has still been much cheaper than what being on a contract during that time would’ve ran.
• The only other prepaid option at the $300 range would’ve been the Samsung Galaxy S II. While it’s a nice enough phone, I didn’t think paying that much for 2011-era smartphone tech was a good idea.

Registration and set-up

The phone arrived pretty quickly, as did the micro-SIM card I ordered from T-Mobile, the prepaid carrier I’ve decided to use. Registering on T-Mobile’s website lets one choose a $30/month prepaid plan that offers “unlimited” 3G/4G data (data capped at 5GB) and 100 minutes per month. If one needs more than 100 minutes, extra time costs 10 cents/minute, which would be $6 for an hour. While the Nexus 4 doesn’t have “true” 4G (no LTE), it’s still much faster than my former Virgin Mobile/Sprint network, so I’m fine with it. I also don’t get many phone calls, so 100 minutes (and any extra time as needed) should work fine.

Setting up the Nexus 4 is just like setting up any other Android phone, including its hardware “cousin” the Nexus 7 tablet. After entering your Google email address and password, you’re prompted whether to restore previously saved apps/some options, which I chose to do. The Nexus 4 went ahead and downloaded most of the same apps I used on my previous phone and Nexus 7 tablet; for some reason, the Nexus 4 also imported the tablet’s wallpaper, which I soon changed.

Porting the phone number from Virgin Mobile ran into some problems. Porting required my Virgin Mobile account number, which forced me to call Virgin to acquire; the number wasn’t available via their online account management system. I finally got the number, after dealing with attempts by their customer service associate to hard sell sticking with Virgin. I then called T-Mobile and let them know I didn’t enter the account number when I registered online, which they soon entered for me. After this, the registration and number porting went through, and I set up the phone’s voice mail. Another reason for calling: when I initially went through T-Mobile’s online registration, the final step threw up an error message stating I hadn’t chosen some (unchoosable) payment option, an error I presume was related to my first account number-less attempt at porting the number from Virgin.

For more setup tips, GottaBeMobile’s Nexus 4 guide has some decent ones.

Android software

One of the Nexus 4′s signature traits is its use of a pure Android installation, without any manufacturer “skins.” Thus, things work quite smoothly, with the Nexus 4 running the newest version of Android. If you’ve used the Nexus 7 tablet, you’ll find the Nexus 4 works similarly. I am, however, still getting used to the size of the phone. With a 4.7-inch screen, it’s definitely the biggest smartphone I’ve ever used.

Protecting the phone

I purchased a case and plastic screen shield for the phone, as I usually do for smartphones. It’s also to address my one hesitation I had about buying the Nexus 4: comments online about the glass back cracking. However, none of the tech sites I usually read, nor Amazon.com’s user reviews, seemed to find it as prominent a problem as the comments made it out to sound. Phones made of glass don’t seem to have slowed down sales of the iPhone 4 or 4S, though Apple did wise up and dropped the use of glass from the iPhone 5. Hopefully, LG/Google will do the same for the next version of the Nexus phone.

Camera and photos

Taking photos works nicely, but some of the pictures have the wrong datestamp, defaulting to December 8, 2002 for some reason. While it’s easily fixed in iPhoto or Flickr, it’s still a concern.

The automatic backup of photos to either Google+ or Dropbox is nice. I’m still trying to figure out which one to stick with, though Google+ doesn’t expire access to most of its free storage space after a few years like Dropbox does. I wish Flickr would improve its Android app; automatic backing up of photos to Flickr doesn’t seem to be an option.

Here’s a few of the photos I’ve taken with the Nexus 4:

Conclusion

Overall, I’m enjoying the Nexus 4, and so far, I’m glad I bought the phone. I’m hoping the phone’s strong, mid-to-high-range specs (glass back/lack of LTE aside) make it last longer and have fewer problems than the previous two prepaid smartphones.

Those looking to buy a new unlocked or prepaid smartphone would probably be well served by the Nexus 4, keeping in mind the above mentioned caveats about the glass back/LTE. If buying a phone on contract, however, I’d also look at the HTC One, iPhone 5, and Galaxy S 4.

One long-standing flaw of the Nook tablet is that until now, B&N didn’t allow the Nook access to Google Play, instead curating their own app store. Their own app store was limited in selection, older versions, and often charged for apps that were free from Google Play, such as Angry Birds. Since the Nook was easily rootable, however, the more geeky of us online didn’t mind much, and got around B&N’s limitations. Of course, this was early in the color tablet era (a.k.a. a few years ago); now, with a wide selection of tablets to choose from, such as the excellent and inexpensive Nexus 7, such limited access to apps is unacceptable. While Amazon’s app store for its Kindle is much better curated than Nook’s app store, Amazon’s Kindle still doesn’t allow access to the Google Play store. This might help differentiate the Nook from its Kindle competitor.

Since the Nook’s market share is lower compared to the iPad, Kindle, Nexus 7, etc., hopefully this change will allow the Nook (which is nice hardware otherwise) to gain ground. While sideloading apps still isn’t officially allowed, as The Digital Reader blog criticizes, I don’t think the average user the Nook’s aimed at will care one bit. I recall sideloading homebrewed apps on my old Palm Pre, but only because the official apps I wanted—which was most of what’s out there—didn’t have WebOS versions.

13.04 isn’t a long-term release like 12.04, and thus its support period will only last until October 2014. The support length for non-LTS Ubuntu versions/variants has been shortened from three years to 18 months.

There’s no major, groundshaking changes with Ringtail. The biggest changes are:

• Xubuntu image sizes have been increased, and as such will no longer fit on a standard CD.
• Gnumeric (the spreadsheet program) and GIMP (the graphics editing program) have been reintroduced as part of a default installation, as a result of the increased image size.
• Some software and theme updates.
• Duplicate partitions will no longer be displayed on the desktop or in Thunar (the file manager for Xfce).

Xubuntu 13.04, plus the 12.04 LTS version, can be downloaded from here.

While it applies mainly to the 12.04 LTS release, my post-installation guide is still applicable toward 13.04.

The GoComics app, on Android.

As reported by Engadget, Universal Uclick’s released a comics viewing app for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone based devices. Universal Uclick is a national syndicate formed by a merger a few years ago of online site Uclick and traditional newspaper comic strip syndicate Universal Press Syndicate. While Universal’s comics have been available for years for viewing through their website (www.gocomics.com), one can now view them through this app, as well. Strips I enjoy reading via Uclick include “FoxTrot,” “Doonesbury,” “Luann,” “Baldo,” “La Cucaracha,” and “Pearls Before Swine.” Other classic strips carried as reruns include “Peanuts,” “For Better or For Worse,” and “Calvin and Hobbes.”

My brief look at the app (on my Nexus 7 tablet) shows it seems nice enough, with the same functionality as the website: the ability to forward to others links to favorite strips, as well as bookmark favorites. Unfortunately (as of this writing), the app wouldn’t let me log in to my Uclick account. However, the Google Play store description has a response stating they plan to fix this in an update very soon.

Since I usually read newspaper comics on my desktop each morning, I probably won’t make heavy use of this app. However, it might be useful for trips away from home, when I’ll be more reliant on my tablet, and don’t feel like firing up my laptop. Of course, I’d still have to read the non-Uclick strips I enjoy (“Mutts,” “Edge City,” etc.) via other means.

Several years ago, I gave my Mom my old Dell desktop, with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS installed. While it’s worked well, desktop support for 10.04 is ending as of this month. Thus, I needed to give Mom an upgrade to a newer version. Given the age of the machine (a 2007 Dell tower with 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, and an AMD Athlon X2 processor), as well as the changes since 10.04′s day (Unity, etc.), I thought putting Xubuntu might work out better.

Setup

Setup involved a clean install of Xubuntu 12.04 from a CD-R I burned before the trip to Mom’s. I used the 32-bit version, though those with a more modern computer will want the 64-bit version. Of course, I went for a long-term service release, as Mom doesn’t need a cutting-edge version (plus to keep problems to a minimum).

I partitioned the hard drive with separate partitions for the root (15GB of space allocated), swap (2GB of space), and home (remainder of the hard drive space) directories. I also created an account for my mother.

Post-installation

After installation, I followed the steps in my guide for installing codecs, etc. (For codecs, instead of w64codecs, I used w32codecs instead, being a 32-bit installation). I also created and set up a separate account for my niece, with more restrictions than my mother’s account.

Given my mother and niece’s needs, software I installed included:

• gEdit: I replaced the default Leafpad install with gEdit. Not that I expect Mom or my niece to heavily use a text editor, but I like gEdit better.
• LibreOffice: The popular open source office software suite seemed like an obvious choice. I uninstalled the default Gnumeric and AbiWord. Despite their lighter weight, AbiWord has always crashed for me, and I didn’t want to risk Mom/niece annoyed by the possibly happening.
• gufw: The popular firewall management program.
• ClamTK: The popular open-source antivirus scanner.
• Shotwell: A photo management program. It seemed more robust/a bit easier to use than the default gThumb.
• Banshee: The music software program, which I used to replace Xubuntu’s default program. Seems easy enough to use, plus there’s the off chance Mom might want to use the Amazon MP3 Store.
• VLC: The popular video and audio player. Doubt Mom or my niece will use this much, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to have installed.
• Frozen Bubble: My niece likes this game, so it’s a given.
• Firefox plugins I installed include:
  • Adblock: Not trying to encourage my family to skirt advertising, but do want to discourage them clicking on something they shouldn’t by mistake (more my niece than my mother).
  • WOT (Web of Trust): A plugin to display when a site might be risky to visit, as well as offer some parental filtering options (the usual stuff parents don’t want kids to encounter online).
  • Comment Snob: This plugin’s main goal is to block any and all comments on YouTube. It blocks other site’s comments as well, but YouTube was my main concern, as my niece loves to watch YouTube arts and crafts videos.

On top of the above, I also reinstalled the small amount of files my family had, including some MP3s and wallpaper. For my niece’s ease of use, I set up her account to let her log into without entering her password (the settings for such are available under Applications > System > Users and Groups).

I used the Alacarte menu editor to hide a few menu items I doubt Mom/my niece will ever use (the Terminal, etc.). I also deleted the Dock-like launcher Xubuntu offers, in favor of a Firefox launch icon in the top menubar. I didn’t have time to make it more Windows-like than this, as I did with Ubuntu 10.04.

And that’s about it. I let my family try out their upgraded PC, and they seemed to be fine with the new OS. My mother did ask where the programs menu went to; I told her the menu was under the circular Xfce mouse icon in the top menubar. Other than this, everything’s going along smoothly. If there’s any issues, my family will surely let me know. Or they could ask my brother, who also runs Ubuntu on his computer (the standard version, Unity and all).

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Sean MacEntee.

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the iPad’s initial debut on electronics store shelves everywhere. Since its 2010 debut, the iPad, like the iPhone before it, became a massive success as the first tablet the general public actually wanted. Over the last three years, the iPad’s spurred a rise in digital reading material that’s in color (digital comic books, magazines, etc.), as well as encouraging a boom in cheaper tablets of various sizes, including the 7-inch size. The tablet craze the iPad started has also largely killed off the netbook (which was still strong in 2010), and has inspired Microsoft to make their new desktop operating system, Windows 8, into an awkward tablet-like touchscreen format. Finally, the iPad, like the iPhone, has affordably (well, compared to the price of a Mac) put Apple’s user-friendly OS (well, iOS) into the hands of the general public.

Back in 2010, I wasn’t impressed with the initial iPad. My main concerns were whether tablets would be useful at all outside of education (given smartphones and notebooks already exist) and the iPad’s hefty price tag. Since that time, more uses for tablets have emerged—besides Internet access, there’s also more widespread use of color ebooks, magazines, and comics. University textbooks, unfortunately, still seem slow to adapt to tablets (or are too laden with DRM-related drawbacks), despite that I think it’d be a good thing for post-secondary education. It’d certainly beat lugging around a backpack full of heavy textbooks like when I was in college in the 90s. As for price, the new smaller sizes from rivals have also made tablets more affordable. $500 is still rather expensive in my opinion for a tablet, given that a cheap notebook isn’t much more. However, 7-inch tablets like the Nexus 7 start at an affordable $200. Even Apple’s gotten into the booming smaller-size tablet market (with the iPad Mini), as has their rival Amazon with a color tablet version of their successful Kindle ebook reader. I, of course, also eventually jumped into the tablet scene, first with the Nook Color, then with the much-improved Nexus 7.

In closing, this is where I’m supposed to predict (read: guess) what the next few years will bring before the iPad’s fifth anniversary in 2015. I assume there’ll be more entrenchment of tablets in society (and the 7-inch size staying popular), but beyond that, I can’t really say.

Blogger/Blogspot

Google doesn’t seem to have done a huge amount with Blogspot over the years. While it’s still one of the most popular blog hosting services online, I wonder how well it really fits with Google’s current business models, or if they’ll decide it’s not worth trying to compete with WordPress.com, Tumblr, etc.

Google Keep

We already have Evernote and a myriad of other note-taking apps for Android and iOS—I don’t see the point in Google trying to introduce Keep, especially given it doesn’t really tie into the above-mentioned businesses. I suppose they could try to make it a part of Android or Google+ somehow, but it still seems like another future “spring cleaning” “yard sale” candidate.

Chrome OS/Chromebooks

Yes, there’s currently plenty of TV advertising for Google’s Chromebook netbooks (running the Chrome web browser-based ChromeOS). Still, with the shift away from netbooks in favor of tablets and smartphones running Google’s own Android (and Android being a huge success/the most successful Linux variant among the general public), offering a new netbook line running a non-standard OS seems like a long shot. (The general public didn’t care for Linux on their netbooks, wanting instead XP…) There’s reports, however, of schools being interested, plus Chromebooks might be useful for where just a web browser is needed (public libraries, etc.). Chromebooks’ reliance on the “cloud” (Google’s services) might also keep up Google’s interest, or at least keep them from giving up on quite as quickly.

Orkut

Orkut was a previous attempt at a social network by Google, but it never took off in the US. Orkut gained popularity in India and Brazil, however. While I wonder why Google didn’t just try to work at reviving/revamping Orkut for the US market instead of creating Google+ from scratch, I can see Google someday shutting down (or selling off) Orkut and migrating users to Google+.

Google Groups

Originally a Web-based Usenet archive service called “Deja News,” Google bought Deja, then tried to turn it into some mix of Usenet and customized discussion forums, before…ignoring it in recent years. With Google+ around and Usenet unpopular nowadays, I could see Google selling off or shutting down Google Groups.

Google Voice

A voice mail/phone number re-routing service? Sounds like another “cleaning” candidate to me…

Although RSS lacks “social media,” it’s still a useful function. While Twitter and Facebook have their uses, I can’t hover over my Twitter feed all day, lest I miss some interesting news item that flashes by, buried admist a bunch of other random posts. I also don’t want to manually check every site I go to to see if something’s updated. RSS takes care of both of these needs—new items are automatically listed in an RSS feed, are waiting for me to read at my own leisure, and kept in an organized manner that won’t see news items buried among posts about cat videos/baby pictures/etc. However, since RSS isn’t as advertising lucrative for companies (and it has a slightly geeky tone versus Facebook/Twitter), I can see why it’s being killed by Google. Cue the obligatory “RSS Is Dead” headlines by some tech/mainstream news outlets…

At this point, of course, comes the “what does Anthony suggest to replace Google Reader?” portion of the post. In my case, I need something that works on both my Mac Mini (in OS X) and on my Android smartphone and tablet, so my previous suggestion of Liferea (for Linux) and other stand-alone newsreaders won’t suffice. From a brief online perusal, possible alternatives include:

• NewsBlur: open source-based RSS service, with apps available for Android and iOS devices. A free level of service is offered, while an unlimited service level costs US$1/month.
• Netvibes: I’ve suggested Netvibes in the past as a replacement for the also-shuttered iGoogle portal page. However, it’s a bit more complicated than the others, although it offers Android/iOS functionality.
• Feedly: Feedly is a fairly popular service that offers iOS and Android apps. It displays feeds in a slightly fancier format than the above two services, but seems more toned-down than Flipboard/Currents.

The above services offer web browser access (Feedly requires a Chrome/Firefox plugin), but aren’t open to third-party RSS newsreaders like Google Reader’s service. Which would mean my copy of Reeder for OS X (among the myriad of third-party software tied into Reader) might go unused, though Reeder stated they plan on making their reader fully independent of Google Reader.

I’ll let you know what happens with my RSS situation in the future…

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Rob Davies.

After giving advice online to someone else earlier today about WordPress security, I thought it might be helpful to write a post offering basic tips for how to secure a self-hosted WordPress install. While more advanced/”geeky” users will probably already know this (or want to find more thorough instructions elsewhere online), I hope the below covers the basics.

Secure password

Yes, a secure password is highly important. Something at least 12 characters long, with a mix of letters, upper- and lower-case, numbers, and punctuation. And, of course, don’t use the same password from elsewhere online.

Keep everything updated

Promptly install all WordPress updates when indicated, including for any plugins, themes, etc. Make sure themes and plugins are only installed through WordPress’s archives for such (Plugins > Add New or Appearance > Themes > Install Themes tab). Do not install plugins/themes found from third-party websites, via Google searches, etc.

It might also help to uninstall any unused plugins or themes.

Remove “admin” user name

By default, WordPress installations use the “admin” as the administrative account user name. This, however, makes it an easy target for brute-force attempts by hackers to break into one’s WordPress site, as they can merely guess multiple password combinations with the user name part already assumed. Thus, create a new administrative account user name (preferably not just your first name), then delete the “admin” name. To make sure the new user name isn’t displayed on your site, go to Users > Your Profile, scroll down to “Display name publicly as,” and select another option (your first name, full name, etc.).

Some might also opt to create a second user account without full account permissions (at the “editor” level) and just use that for writing posts, switching back to the administrator account as needed for maintenance issues.

Security plugins

There’s also various plugins that, along with the above tips, will help keep things secured or make up for WordPress’ default shortcomings. Some plugins offer a full host of security options, doing a wide range of functions. If such is considered overkill (or at the risk of conflicting with other plugins), there’s also various other plugins that do one particular function.

Here’s some WordPress plugins I’d recommend. All are available through WordPress’ plugin installer:

• Akismet or Antispam Bee: Akismet comes with WordPress installs by default, and does an excellent job of managing/preventing spam in blog comments (as well as trackbacks/pingbacks spam). An alternative to Akismet is Antispam Bee, a plugin that performs similar functions, but is completely free (Akismet is only free for personal sites; commercial ones require a fee).
• Better WP Security: An all-purpose security plugin, Better WP Security covers a wide range of security issues, including replicating some of the functions of plugins I list below.
• WebsiteDefender WordPress Security: This plugin covers some of the secondary aspects of securing a WordPress site, including: hiding the WordPress version name; hiding “wp-content” directory listing; and prompting users to change the default name of the WordPress database (for similar reasons as changing the default “admin” name). Not needed if Better WP Security is already installed.
• BackWPup: A plugin that automatically creates backups of one’s WordPress site, since of course, backing up is important. BackWPup will even email backups (if below a certain file size).
• Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin (GASP): GASP helps to reduce/prevent automated comment spam by installing a checkbox below comment forms. The checkbox will be required to be checked by a (human) commenter before posting their comment.
• Limit Login Attempts: This plugin makes up for a deficiency in WordPress: namely, WordPress does nothing to prevent an unlimited number of login attempts. Limit Login Attempts sets a (user-changeable) fixed number of login attempts allowed, after which the individual is blocked for a set period of time. This plugin helps prevent brute-force login attempts.

For more security tips, here’s WordPress’ own article on the subject: http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

Coupled with the recent heavy cutback in support for non-Twitter-approved software tying into Twitter, it all feels rather provincial for such a hugely popular online service. As for the future of web-based TweetDeck, one of its few remaining competitors will probably be HootSuite.

On my Android devices, I switched some time ago to using Twitter’s main app, as it supports in-line photo and conversation thread displaying much better than TweetDeck did. On my Mac Mini, I use the TweetDeck app. As for my Linux Mint laptop, I use Twitter’s website, bookmarked as a pinned tab in Firefox and Chromium.