facility:google play store

Progressive Web Apps: Apple App Store, Google Play Store, It Was Nice Knowing You
▻https://hackernoon.com/progressive-web-apps-apple-app-store-google-play-store-it-was-nice-knowi

Is the end coming for the Apple App Store and Google Play Store? The title is obviously an exaggeration, but in all seriousness, the time has come for a new wave of #mobile technology to come to the fore. In 2018, Twitter announced that it has started offering its mobile PWA as its main site. PWA? What’s that?Progressive Web Apps (PWA) is the future of mobile apps and the web, pushed by heavyweights in the industry especially Google. With features such as adding to home screen, offline support, push notifications and more, a PWA offers a user experience approaching that of a native mobile app.Here’s how a PWA works. Imagine you have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) app that is also PWA compliant. You just need to visit the app using a normal URL in your mobile browser. If you have (...)

#mobile-app-development #progressive-web-app #web-development #open-source

Google pulls controversial anti-gay religious app from the Play Store
▻https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/28/google-conversion-therapy-app-controversy

The same day the Human Rights Campaign downranked the company in its index of the best LGBTQ-friendly employers, Google decided to yank a controversial app accused of promoting conversion therapy from the Play Store. On that list, known as the Corporate Equality Index, the HRC, a prominent LGBTQ rights organization, included a footnote that it was aware of the conversion therapy-style app by Living Hope Ministries in the Google Play Store. The app’s removal was first reported by Axios. (...)

#Google #discrimination #LGBT

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/486234008.jpg

KDE Connect is Back on the Google Play Store, SMS Features Intact
▻https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/03/hurrah-kde-connect-is-back-on-the-google-play-store

https://aozoeky4dglp5sh0-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/kde-connect-350x200.jpg

Drama over: Google has whitelisted the KDE Connect Android app, allowing it to continue to provide SMS and call log integration to Linux users. This post, KDE Connect is Back on the Google Play Store, SMS Features Intact, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

A subtle art of developing useless software
▻https://hackernoon.com/a-subtle-art-of-developing-useless-software-c0348645b49a?source=rss----3

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/622/0*zHGj-mtOCxTeh9lt.jpg

Have you ever wondered about all those #apps on AppStore and Google Play store, all the time people gave into making each one of them and still most of us don’t use more than 5 to 10 most important apps (okay, I’m not counting all those Voodoo studio games)?In March 2018 Google has had more than 3,6 million apps on their store alone. But why people keep creating all those apps when we usually use just top apps?First and foremost every app stands on four pillars of creation.The very first one is a pillar of birth known as an idea. It is the first point of every new product. “Hey, I have a very nice new idea”, “Hey I know how to solve that problem”.The second one is a pillar of knowledge. It is directly linked to the human behind the code. His or her knowledge and ability to efficiently overcome (...)

#software-development #good-app-design #mobile-app-development #software-product

Google, siding with Saudi Arabia, refuses to remove widely-criticized government app which lets men track women and control their travel
▻https://www.businessinsider.com/absher-google-refuses-to-remove-saudi-govt-app-that-tracks-women-20

Google has declined to remove from its app store a Saudi government app which lets men track women and control where they travel, on the grounds that it meets all their terms and conditions. Google reviewed the app — called Absher — and concluded that it does not violate any agreements, and can therefore remain on the Google Play store. The decision was communicated by Google to the office of Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who, with other members of Congress, wrote last week to (...)

#Google #GooglePlayStore #smartphone #Absher #femmes #surveillance

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c7aa34cbde70f7b941b4c52-1136-568.jpg

Google et Apple valident une appli qui piste les femmes en Arabie saoudite
▻https://usbeketrica.com/article/google-apple-application-piste-femmes-arabie-saoudite

L’application saoudienne Absher permet aux hommes de surveiller que leur femme ne quitte pas le pays. Elle est disponible sur l’App Store et le Google Play Store. Plusieurs ONG ont appelé Apple et Google à la retirer. Baptisée Absher, l’application est éditée par le gouvernement saoudien. Ses fonctionnalités administratives sont multiples. Les utilisateurs peuvent y déclarer la naissance d’un enfant, payer leur place de parking ou renouveler leur permis de conduire. Mais ils peuvent aussi y (...)

#Apple #Google #AppleStore #GooglePlayStore #smartphone #famille #surveillance #Amnesty (...)

##HumanRightsWatch

https://static.usbeketrica.com/images/thumb_840xh/5c6463702fb93.png

Microsoft rät indirekt vom Office-2019-Kauf ab | heise online
▻https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Microsoft-raet-indirekt-vom-Office-2019-Kauf-ab-4300654.html

https://heise.cloudimg.io/width/1050/q75.png-lossy-75.webp-lossy-75.foil1/_www-heise-de_/imgs/18/2/5/9/5/9/6/0/ms-714c2e659e4c7856.jpeg

Microsoft essaye de vous décourager d’acheter Office 2019 - afin de vous vendre Office 365 . La raison est évidente : Pour Office 2019 vous ne payez qu’une seule fois alors que pour Office 365 vous payez tous les ans. Les arguments ressemblent ceux des vendeurs d’automobiles et n’ont d’intérêt que pour les utilisateurs les plus dépendants et les moins flexibles.

On se demande pourquoi quelqu’un voudrit encores utiliser un MS-Office payant en dehors des grandes entreprises qui obligent leurs employés à apprendre l’utilisation du monstre. Après tout il y a

Free Microsoft Office Online, Word, Excel, PowerPoint
▻https://products.office.com/en/office-online/documents-spreadsheets-presentations-office-online

Which browsers work with Office Online - Office Support
▻https://support.office.com/en-us/article/which-browsers-work-with-office-online-ad1303e0-a318-47aa-b409-d3a5e

Desktop and laptop computers

Use the most recent versions of the following browsers for the best experience with Office Online.

Windows 10 : Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome

Windows 8, 8.1, or 7 (SP1): Internet Explorer 11, Firefox or Chrome

Windows Vista (SP2) : Firefox or Chrome, but some features may not be available. We recommend updating to at least Windows 7 (SP1).

Mac OS X (10.10 and later) : Apple Safari 10+ or Chrome

Linux : Office Online works in both Firefox or Chrome on Linux, but some features may not be available.

If your organization is dependent upon Internet Explorer 8 or Internet Explorer 9 to access older web apps and services, you may want to consider upgrading to Internet Explorer 11 and evaluating Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer 11. This update helps provide better backward compatibility for legacy web apps.

iOS Devices

iPad : If you’re using at least iOS 10.0 we recommend using the Office for iPad apps instead. You’ll find them in the Apple app store.

If you’re using an older version of iOS then Safari is the best browser for Office Online on iPads, but some features may not be available.

iPhone : If you’re using at least iOS 10.0 we recommend using the Office for iPhone apps instead of the browser. You’ll find them in the Apple app store.

If you’re using an older version of iOS then Safari is the best browser for Office Online on iPhones but some features may not be available.

Note: Not sure which version of iOS you have? See Find the software version on your iPhone, iPad or iPod (Apple Support)

Android

There are currently no browsers on Android that are officially supported with Office Online. We recommend using the Office for Android apps instead. You’ll find them in the Google Play store.

Other devices

Most Office Online features will work in the Microsoft Edge browser on Hololens or XBox One.

#software #Microsoft #lock-in #marketing #publicité

Exclusive: Google Caught Hosting Hezbollah’s Violent Android Games
▻https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/01/24/exclusive-google-caught-hosting-hezbollahs-violent-android-games

Holy Defence looks like your typical shoot ’em up. The Android game sees the protagonist running around a carbon copy of the Sayyeda Zeinab mosque in Damascus, defending it from invaders with automatic weapons. More than 10,000 people have downloaded the game from the Google Play store, and it’s received plenty of praise from reviewers.

Little is disclosed about the game on Google’s site. But Forbes can reveal the developer behind Holy Defence and one other Google-hosted title, in which child characters deflect bombs onto Israeli soldiers, has a hidden motive: to disseminate Hezbollah propaganda.

Deemed by the U.S. government a terrorist organization, Hezbollah has, ironically, in recent years used American online platforms to spread its message. Holy Defence for Android represents its first foray into the mobile space and the first known case in which a game developed by any listed terror group has been spotted on Google’s marketplace for apps.

Not only do the smartphone games represent a new weapon in Hezbollah’s information wars against its myriad enemies, they also bring into focus a case where one of the world’s biggest private companies has to decide: Is Hezbollah a terror group or a political body as it claims?

“Just as they’ve become in business, in war, games are serious," says Pete Singer, senior fellow at think tank New America and author of LikeWar: The Weaponization Of Social Media. And, he says, Google now finds itself as the arbiter of what is and what isn’t acceptable.

How to install Google Play Store manually on #aosp
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-to-install-google-play-store-manually-on-aosp-285a18c406db?source=rs

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/794/1*WsiEaWh_lpoR1PyffErU2A.jpeg

Google Play Store on AOSPImage via androidauthority.comNote : The AOSP versions which I’ve tested this solution is 4.2.2 and 4.4.2.Add below snippet code after about lines 5634 iningrantSignaturePermissionmethod on PackageManagerService.java:if (pkg.packageName.equals("com.android.vending") && compareSignatures(pkg.mSignatures, new Signature[]new Signature("308204433082032ba003020102020900c2e08746644a308d300d06092a864886f70d01010405003074310b3009060355040613025553311330110603550408130a43616c69666f726e6961311630140603550407130d4d6f756e7461696e205669657731143012060355040a130b476f6f676c6520496e632e3110300e060355040b1307416e64726f69643110300e06035504031307416e64726f6964301e170d3038303832313233313333345a170d3336303130373233313333345a3074310b30090603550406130255533113301106035

#google-play-services #google-play-store #google-play #install-google-play

The App Store Optimization Checklist for Your Business Apps
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-app-store-optimization-checklist-for-your-business-apps-64e4f813227e

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*Obvt1c_kYpyxPeOG.jpg

For any business, an intuitive and user-engaging mobile app is their trump card. These applications broaden market reach and work their magic on every user.SayOne has been in the application development league for 7 years as of today. We have developed over 300 #seo-friendly applications for both the web and mobile including Google Play Store and App Store.But every time a customer approaches us with a mobile app need, their first question is ‘how can our business app stand apart from the rest of the 2 million app crowd present in App Store or Play Store?’.And our answer is ‘App Store Optimization or ASO’.App Store Optimization (ASO) for Business AppsA few months ago, Google conducted a survey to understand the mobile users’ journey starting from discovering new apps till using or abandoning it. (...)

#aso #mobile-app-development #app-store-optimization #business-apps

10 Mistakes In Mobile App Development That Make You Look Dumb
▻https://hackernoon.com/10-mistakes-in-mobile-app-development-that-make-you-look-dumb-8cfd33eb85

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*qC-Z_y1Ndv1l-bqkYnVRBA.jpeg

Developing a mobile app is not easy. A single mistake is enough to make sure the tonnes of coding generated after months of hard work becomes useless in no time. With the mobile app development market growing tenfold globally, more and more businesses have opted for a mobile app to boost their marketing tactics. Almost 3.8 million apps on Google Play Store, 2 million in the Apple App Store, 430k in the Amazon App Store, and 669k in the Windows Store are numbers good enough to prove the last statement. According to a report by Forrester, mobile-influenced offline spending had breached the $1 trillion mark by 2017 itself, which is why companies do not mind spending a hefty sum on getting a mobile app developed.With so much relying on the miniature looking mobile apps, a mistake from a (...)

#play-store #app-store #mobile-app-development #android #ios-app-development

PSA: if you use the option MACE by PrivateInternetAccess on Android, you might want to use their apk instead of going through the Google Play Store:

The Google Play Store version of our app no longer includes MACE due to Google Play Store policies.

Their apk: ▻https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/installer/download_installer_android

MACE:

Private Internet Access MACE returns IP addresses of unwanted domain names as an address that’s not routable on the public internet.

▻https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/helpdesk/kb/articles/what-is-mace

That Game on Your Phone May Be Tracking What You’re Watching on TV - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/business/media/alphonso-app-tracking.html?_r=0

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/29/business/29ALPHONSO/29ALPHONSO-facebookJumbo.jpg

At first glance, the gaming apps — with names like “Pool 3D,” “Beer Pong: Trickshot” and “Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin” — seem innocuous. One called “Honey Quest” features Jumbo, an animated bear.

Yet these apps, once downloaded onto a smartphone, have the ability to keep tabs on the viewing habits of their users — some of whom may be children — even when the games aren’t being played.

It is yet another example of how companies, using devices that many people feel they can’t do without, are documenting how audiences in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape are viewing television and commercials.

More than 250 games that use Alphonso software are available in the Google Play store; some are also available in Apple’s app store.

“A lot of the folks will go and turn off their phone, but a small portion of people don’t and put it in their pocket,” Mr. Chordia said. “In those cases, we are able to pick up in a small sample who is watching the show or the movie.” Mr. Chordia said that Alphonso has a deal with the music-listening app Shazam, which has microphone access on many phones. Alphonso is able to provide the snippets it picks up to Shazam, he said, which can use its own content-recognition technology to identify users and then sell that information to Alphonso.

Shazam, which Apple recently agreed to buy, declined to comment about Alphonso.

#Vie_privée #Jeux #Publicité #Microphone

Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23/google-now-knows-when-you-are-at-a-cash-register-and-how-much-you-ar

Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores, the company said Tuesday. The advance allows Google to determine how many sales have been generated by digital ad campaigns, a goal that industry insiders have long described as “the holy grail” of online advertising. But the announcement also renewed long-standing privacy complaints about how the (...)

#Google #carte #publicité #marketing

##publicité

Can AI and big data improve how you get news? Cheetah Mobile is making a $57M bet that it can - TechRepublic
▻http://www.techrepublic.com/article/can-ai-and-big-data-improve-how-you-get-news-cheetah-mobile-is-making-

On Friday, one of China’s leading tech companies, Cheetah Mobile, announced the $57 million acquisition of New Republic—a move that signals its “journey of a transformation,” according to CTO Charles Fan, highlighting its investment in AI and transition into a mobile content company.

Founded in 2010, Cheetah Mobile began as a mobile tools provider. Over the last six years, it has become a major player in China’s tech scene—and made a big impact, globally. It’s the second largest internet and mobile security company in China, and the third global non-gaming developer on the Google Play Store, providing the popular apps Piano Tiles 2, Clean Master, CM Security, and Battery Doctor. Fan told TechRepublic that the company has over 650,000,000 monthly active users, internationally, in Q1.

Fan said he sees the company as a “bridge between China and the world.” What makes Cheetah Mobile different, he said, is that 80% of their mobile users are outside of China. “Even though we are headquartered in Beijing, our target audience is mostly overseas,” he said. While most companies are based solely in China, Cheetah Mobile recently set up a second headquarters in Silicon Valley, expanding its global footprint and assisting in the development of its machine learning algorithms.
[…]
“Our goal is to grow News Republic into being the smartest news app,” Fan said, “so that users can get the content they want to consume, plus help content producers, game developers, and influencers.”

And, for the huge amount of data Cheetah Mobile is collecting on the phones? It’s helping the algorithms become even smarter.

LibreSignal
▻https://fdroid.eutopia.cz

Why have Signal, TextSecure and RedPhone been renamed?

Moxie Marlinspike apparently doesn’t like the idea of independent builds of TextSecure and RedPhone so much, that he started with legal threats on Twitter. Independent builds of TextSecure have been therefore renamed to TextLibre and RedPhone to PhoneLibre.

Latest TextSecure for Android has been merged with RedPhone and is now Signal. Independent builds of Signal have been renamed to LibreSignal.

Application IDs are still the same, so you will not lose data after upgrade.
Motivation

My primary motivation for creating this repository has been the absence of TextSecure private messenger from the official F-Droid repository. TextSecure has already been included in F-Droid for a brief time in the past, but Moxie Marlinspike (author of TextSecure) didn’t like this and demanded it to be removed. TextSecure is Free Software (licensed under GPL), so F-Droid maintainers didn’t have to remove it, but nevertheless they did.

There has been big discussion about it (issue #127), but simply told, Moxie is not open to arguments and wants TextSecure to be distributed only via Google Play. He already locked this discussion. This is unacceptable for me, because applications installed from Google Play can be silently updated without user knowing about it, e.g. to version with hidden backdoor.

TextSecure still needs Google Play Services (because it uses Google Cloud Messaging), but you don’t need Google Account and Google Play cannot silently update app that has been installed outside of Google Play store. Hopefully in the future, it will be possible to use official TextSecure client without Google Play Services (see issue #1000 - Websocket support, unfortunately Moxie also locked this discussion).

For now there is unofficial TextSecure fork by JavaJens, which already uses WebSocket instead of GCM and therefore doesn’t need Google Play Services. You can install it from my experimental F-Droid repository.

Signal (aka TextSecure), développé par Open Whisper System, est une application centralisée de messagerie instantanée très similaire à Whatsapp dans son fonctionnement. Mais l’application et le serveur sont libres et open-source. De plus, les clients intègrent by design un chiffrement de bout en bout. Ce qui en fait l’application de messagerie instantanée la plus aboutie, facile d’utilisation par n’importe qui et avec à priori un bon niveau de confidentialité.

Cependant l’application officielle de Signal pour Android dépend du service de notification Google Cloud Messaging. Ce service nécessite l’installation de la bibliothèque Google Play Service sur son mobile, qui elle n’est pas open-source.

LibreSignal est un fork de Signal débarrassé de la dépendance à Google Cloud Messaging. Il repose sur les websockets (implémentés par le serveur officiel). Il permet ainsi de communiquer avec l’ensemble des utilisateur de Signal, même ceux ayant (pas) choisi l’installation du mouchard Google ou ceux utilisant iOS.

Pour l’utilisation de SMS chiffrés de bout en bout en rappellera l’existence pour Android de SMSSecure :
▻https://smssecure.org
▻https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.smssecure.smssecure
▻https://github.com/SMSSecure/SMSSecure

#Android #Cryptographie #F-Droid #Fork_(développement_logiciel) #Google_Cloud_Messaging #Messagerie_instantanée #Off-the-Record_Messaging #Principe_de_bout-à-bout #Signal #TextSecure

Young Nigerian brothers 13 and 15yrs old build mobile Web Browser | RisingAfrica.org
▻http://www.risingafrica.org/success-stories/science_technology/young-nigerian-brothers-13-and-15yrs-old-build-mobile-web-browser

Anesi and Osine Ikhianosime, 13 and 15 years old respectively, are students of Greensprings school, Anthony Campus, Lagos, and they developed an Android based web browser called Crocodile Browser Lite sometime last year.

As a matter of fact, these teenagers’ creation is actually on the Google Play Store. Speaking to TechCabal.com, Osine, 13, said he writes the code together with his brother, for their creations and his brother also designs the UI.

Infographic: The Apps That Know Everything About You
▻http://www.vocativ.com/tech/internet/mobile-apps-privacy-settings/?page=all

http://media.vocativ.com/photos/2014/12/syping-apps-newimage-0001re3102447665.jpg

As you’ll see from our chart, running down the left side, we’ve listed 25 of some of the most popular apps in the Google Play store, including Skype, Facebook and WhatsApp. There are actually about 60 permissions that these apps can ask for—everything from making your phone vibrate to accessing your camera. (You can find a full list of all the potential permissions here.) For practical reasons, we asked Hong to highlight four permissions that he thought were potentially the most alarming. Across the top, we list those four: contacts, text messages, call log and microphone. All of these are pretty straightforward, but the microphone permission is especially eerie. Imagine all the audio around you being recorded by some app, without your knowledge.

To be clear, these apps don’t actually activate your microphone until you tell them to (e.g. you make a phone call on the Skype app), but in the future, that may change. Facebook freaked out users in May when it announced a new (optional) feature that would let the microphone listen in on your conversations. 

Our chart ranks the apps (top to bottom) that ask for the most permissions. As you can see, AntiVirus Security, Viber and Facebook top the charts in terms of the number of permissions they request. But it’s not at all uncommon for apps to request the four pieces of personal data that we’re hightlighting. In fact, more than half of the 25 apps have access to your contacts, and about a third tap into your text messages, call log and microphone.