Category: Android

Great albums I’ve found on Apple Music

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I’ve subscribed to Apple Music pretty much since the beginning and our family uses it on both iOS and Android.  It is not perfect, suffering from a number of little flaws on my old iPhone, but its recommendations have led me to discover some great music.  This tends to be in areas that I would not generally venture into such as jazz.

The radio stations are also getting better now that I am telling them what to play more (or less) of.  I never really expected to use the radio stations but I’m listening this way more and more.

It’s still very hard to link to songs / albums in Apple Music, so this is a simple list.  Try these out – you might like them…

Beth Hart – Better Than Home

Cécile McLorin Salvant – For One To Love / WomanChild

Diego Figueiredo – Broken Bossa

Joanne Shaw Taylor – The Dirty Truth

Kamasi Washington – The Epic

Mack Avenue SuperBand – Live from the Detroit Jazz Festival 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015

Matthew Halsall & The Gondwana Orchestra – Into Forever / When the World Was One

Max Richter – From Sleep / Recomposed By Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons

Nils Frahm – Wintermusik

The Souljazz Orchestra – Resistance / Inner Fire

 

 

Google Chromecast: First Impressions

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These are my first impressions of the Google Chromecast.  A bit of context before I start – I’m primarily an iPhone user running iOS 7 and that is what I’m using to control the Chromecast.

I’m in the UK and I’ve been looking for a reliable way to watch the BBC iPlayer on my old-ish TV.  In the past I have linked up a laptop which was not a very good experience and have even tried using the Blu-ray player which said it would work but was an abject failure.  Both required a long network cable to go from the router to the TV via the length of the living room floor – not good.

£30 for a good wireless solution to this problem did not seem unreasonable given the length of time I’ve actually wanted this to work (can’t miss the results show of Strictly Come Dancing).  I knew that the Chromecast wasn’t advertised to work with many services, but the BBC and YouTube was good enough for me.

My TV had a spare HDMI port but no USB ports which means that the Chromecast has to be powered using the plug adapter supplied (the unit can be powered via a USB port if you have one).

The first problem I had was that I needed to find it’s MAC address so that I could add it to my router so that it could get access to the wireless network.  This was not marked on the box that the Chromecast came in, was not on the unit itself and was not shown in the PC application you download that configures it.  I downloaded the iPhone app and found it in there.

Once the Chromecast had permission to get on to the wireless network I ran through the various steps of the PC application.  There were a couple of things I found dubious about the setup:

– It asks you for the password to join the wireless network but has a button beside the password field and when you click this it actually fills in the password for you – is the unit interrogating the router for the information?.  If so this makes me a bit uneasy.

– There is a point where it says that your computer (ie the PC that you are setting things up on, which in my case was using a wireless internet connection) will lose it’s internet connection for a short period.  I happened to notice on my iPhone that a second wireless network appeared for that time.  Does the Chromecast have the ability to broadcast as a wireless hotspot when it wants to?

It’s a little unsettling that the Chromecast, now a full commercial product, appears to be cutting some corners in the setup procedure just to improve ease of use.

So, how well does it work?

It still has some rough edges and it is difficult to say if this just happens to me but when I switch the TV to the HDMI channel that it is plugged into I often have to wait a minute or so whilst the TV alternates between a black screen and a fuzzy screen.  I think this is happening because the Chromecast is in a sleep state and this is caused by it waking up.  It is not that the unit is not plugged in properly as once the Chromecast interface appears on the screen there is no more of this.

It takes the sheen off a product that I’m otherwise very happy with.

Both the BBC iPlayer and YouTube apps work without problems and so far the image quality on screen is good and there have been no interruptions in playback, although I’ve been playing with the device when the BBC iPlayer service is not busy.

One pleasant surprise is that I discovered that my favourite podcasting app on the iPhone – Downcast – supports the Chromecast.  The Cast icon just appeared in the app when it recognised the device was on.  It worked perfectly.  I could even stream high quality video via Downcast as well as audio that had been downloaded.  I was very pleased.

Playing some more, I installed Plex media server on my PC laptop and installed the app on my phone.  It worked well enough but I discovered that the Chromecast would not play music files encoded as Apple Lossless format.  The Plex app itself would play them but the ‘Cast refused.  This may be a really specific case, but it affects me.

Once you start getting used to using the Chromecast and having that functionality you start to want it in more apps.  This is specific to iOS devices as Android is a lot more open as to what can be done.  This is not the device’s fault but I hope that the Chromecast catches on enough that more app developers include the ability to send content to the device.  I now have an app that lets me show my phone’s pictures and videos on the TV which would be another main use.

I listen to a lot of audio rather than watch TV or video and I cannot yet find a decent iOS media player app that supports Casting.  I have a workaround which involves opening audio files in Downcast and Casting from there.  More about that another time.

Overall, I am pleased with the Chromecast.  It is definitely worth the money and has worked well so far.

 

Getting Google Authenticator to work on more than one device at a time

I recently got a Motorola Moto G phone to check out Android properly for the first time, although primarily I am an iPhone user.  I was more impressed than I thought I would be and could definitely imagine using it as my only phone.  Having said that, using Android has not been without its challenges – I had trouble redeeming a Google Play store gift card for the first time, something that I thought would be straight-forward.

My biggest problem was that initially I could not set up Google Authenticator for use with my Google email.  This was one thing that would stop me using the Moto G full time.  Authenticator is an application that generates new security codes every minute – these are used as additional security when you access your email.  This additional security is called 2-factor authentication.  You enter your password and then you are asked for a numeric code generated by the Authenticator app; only if both are correct can you get into your email.  This may sound like overkill but it is now used as standard by my employer, so I need this functionality.

Normally Authenticator runs on my iPhone and Google only allows one phone to run it at a time.  However, there is a way to get Authenticator to run on more than one device.

When you set up Authenticator you are shown a QR code.  You scan this and it configures the application without you having to do anything else.  Here are the steps that worked for me. I already had Authenticator set up for Google email on one device (iPhone) and wanted it on more than one device (iPhone and Android):

– delete the entry for your email account in Authenticator on iPhone

– go into your Google 2-factor security settings and switch back to getting codes sent to you via text.  Then choose Authenticator again as your chosen method for receiving codes.

The idea behind this is to get Google to show you a QR code again for the easy setup of Authenticator.

– scan the barcode on the iPhone and on the Android phone

– whilst the QR code is up on the screen, take a screenshot of it in case you have to do this on other phones in future (or if you don’t have one of the devices with you at the time.)

You now have Authenticator configured on both devices.  If you compare the codes generated by the application on both phones they are the same.  They are not completely in sync – they are about one second apart – but I have been using Authenticator on the Moto G to login to my email and had no problems.

Getting a Google Play gift card to work – you need a Google Wallet account

Shortly after getting the Motorola Moto G, I wanted to install apps.  Free apps were no problem.  Go to the Play store, log in with my Google account, hit install and a few minutes later they appear on my phone.  I like it.  It works.

I didn’t want to put my card details into Google Play so I bought a gift card.  The code errored  when I tried to redeem it so I went back to the shop, got a new card and watched them authenticate the card.  I still had the same problem with the second card.  Something was definitely up.

It is possible to report a problem to Google – you have to take a picture of the back of the card and the proof of purchase.  There was a quick response saying that I had to have a Google Wallet account.  I didn’t have one.  When I thought about an iTunes account for my iPhone it makes sense that you need an account to be able to top it up.

But wait.  There are a couple of issues here:

– there is no mention anywhere (in the Play store either in a browser, on the phone or on the gift card itself) that said a Google Wallet account is necessary.  I’d barely heard of Google Wallet before

– it turned out to be a lot more work than should be necessary to get this sorted (in my particular case).

Here’s the story…

I log into the Play store with my normal Google account.  I log into my phone with the same account.  It would seem that with that one account I have full control over the phone.  In theory it should be “One account.  All of Google.”  But no.   You are told to go to the Play store to redeem the gift card. No mention of Google Wallet, nowhere to sign up for an account.

I was given the URL to sign up for Google Wallet by Google support.  Then a bigger snag as I do not have a @gmail.com email address.  I use Google Apps for my domain. I did not have Google Wallet turned on for my account – it gave me the following:

“We are sorry, but you do not have access to this service. Please contact your domain administrator for access.”

As an administrator, I tried to find the option to turn on Wallet, but seemingly I only had access to a couple of extra services, neither of which was Wallet.  In the end I had to click on one of my users in my admin Control Panel, click a down arrow to show more services, navigate down a long list of other Google products until I find Wallet and then I had to turn it on for all users (not just one) and wait up to 24 hours before it was activated on the account.

Then it was possible to sign up for Google Wallet.

I didn’t have to put in any card details, the gift card was accepted, the credit added to the account and my first paid-for app installed. Next time none of these extra steps will be necessary, and I guess that if you have a regular @gmail.com address then you won’t have any of these issues.  It’s all part of the Android and Google learning curve I suppose – the reason I wanted to get an Android phone in the first place.

Still, it was a pain-in-the-backside process.  I hope I don’t come across this type of process again for a while.