How “good” Good for Enterprise is for you may largely depend upon how your company’s IT department implements it. Good, after all, isn’t designed for you rather it is designed to meet the company’s needs first and foremost. Good is a self-contained universe to give employees secure remote access to corporate email, calendar and sometimes more. How useful Good is for you will largely depend upon how restrictive your IT department is in the deployment.

In the world of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Good is an oasis for your IT department. Activation is simple for the end user (you). To activate Good you only need to download the free application from the App Store or Android Market and then type in your company email address and activation key. Once activated your device, whatever it might be, will start downloading your data as allowed by your IT department.

Alas I have jumped ahead, before you decide you Good is a good fit for you there are some things you need to consider. For example there may be extra charges from your wireless carrier. Verizon Wireless users need to upgrade their data plans to a corporate data package (currently $15 extra per month). In my experience AT&T will tell advise you need to upgrade to the corporate data package however, I have been able to get more than a dozen different people setup on AT&T without upgrading. Sprint and T-Mobile do not have any additional requirements. The data plan upgrade only applies to mobile phone data plans, not tablet or iPad data plans. Not all companies reimburse for this extra data charges. In my company they will give you a Blackberry, billed on the corporate account, or you can have Good on your personal device but you cannot expense any of your wireless charges. Many of our executives and management have opted for Good despite this simply for the convenience of carrying one device instead of two. I choose to use Good on my New iPad. Good licensing requires a license for every device that is connected so your IT department may not allow multiple devices: a prudent cost saving measure in my opinion, but it is possible to have Good on multiple devices. I once heard of a user having it activated on three devices.

Assuming you choose to precede Good is a self-contained universe, so there are limitations to what Good allows you to do and these are all by design. For example you won’t be able to save attachments from your company mailbox to your device nor will you be able to email attachments on your device using your company mailbox. It is important to understand there is a clear division here and that dividing line is Good. Good keeps all your company data separate and completely encrypted from your personal data. Your IT department in a flash can zap everything inside Good. IT has the ability, by design, to remove all of the company’s data from your device. This is vital in a world were devices are lost and stolen all the time. The alternative is that your IT department could control and wipe your device instead.

As I mentioned before how much you like Good will largely depend upon how your IT department allows you to use it. For example how often you are required to enter a password to access your email from your device can vary from every instance you launch Good to every few minutes between use. In my case IT gives everyone a the option to select 1, 2, 5, 10 or 15 minutes in addition to “Require on Launch”. My IT department also sets limits on passwords. Our passwords must be at least 6 characters and include at least one letter and one number: less stringent than our network passwords.

One thing I find particularly annoying with how Good is configured for the company is that calendar reminders are very generic for me. My IT department chose not to allow any information about the calendar events to display. Good alerts me when I have a calendar entry; I have to open Good to see any information about the appointment. This is not a defect upon Good’s functionality rather the restrictiveness of IT Security. Your IT department may allow the subject of the calendar entry to appear, as this is an administrative option.

Remember I said that Good is a barrier between your company information and your personal information? As with everything there are exceptions. One such exception, again if allowed by IT, is contact syncing. Good does allow for synchronizing of contacts in your personal corporate email address book to your personal device address book. There is a catch! The catch is you will have to turn off syncing with your personal address book in iCloud, Google, etc. Leaving syncing on with multiple sources with multiple applications is very dangerous. If you are brave enough to go down this road, please, pray to whatever deity you believe and then make a back-up: you will need it.

Very soon my company will be rolling out the built-in web browser for Good users. Our office is a heavy SharePoint office so I’m sure it won’t be an outstanding experience on my iPad nevertheless I do look forward to being able to access the Intranet from my iPad. I’ve become very accustom to the ease of accessing my email, calendar, and corporate directory on my iPad, having similar, even if limited access to the Intranet will be very helpful.

Bringing your own device to use on your company network is still very new so it is not without flaws. All in all, Good for Enterprise is a well designed application that does what it is designed to do well. Most of the limitations or issues I have had with Good aren’t with Good rather with IT policies that have been implemented. As a friend likes to say, “Good is good!”

Images via [Good Technology, Inc]

Today Twitter released a big update for their Android app and the iOS app (not so much the iPad though). The updates provide a new UI for both apps that are very similar in nature. They have changed Mentions to being called Connect now, combining an Interactions tab along with your Mentions.

Also included now is a Discover tab/hub, that allows you to to search hashtags or keywords, see what is trending, and also view your suggested friends. It is really nice that both Twitter and Facebook are trying to get on the same page with their apps on both platforms. Go ahead and update your apps or download them to try out the new updates, and tell us what you think?

Hit the jump to check out the video!

Are we ready for full on Facebook competition from Google? Ready or not, Google has announced today that they have signed deals with “select partners” for games to be added into Google+. There will be several available like Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz, Sudoku, Diamond Dash, and more games that you are used to seeing others play on Facebook.

They have an interesting approach though, Google will allow you to opt in and play all of your games and see the game post in their own separate stream, keeping the regular stream the same. This is great because, if you are a big time gamer and love these games or hate them with a passion, it should not affect your experience in the social network.

Along with the games, Google has heard from developers that they would like to create web apps for the platform and will allow the API access to them to create their apps. However, they do not have any kind of time frame on when that will happen. Google will be focusing on the partners games first to get those up and running smoothly. They will be rolling the games out slowly to all the Google+ users starting today.

So really what this comes down to is they are going for direct competition with Facebook but apparently trying to do things differently so they can appease everyone. Maybe this will be the icing on the cake that will bring most people that stay on Facebook over to Google+. What do you think, you think this is smart on Google’s part? Or do you think they should keep the games and applications out?

(via Google Blog)

Ander Web, the developer for ADWLauncher and ADW EX, was nice enough to take some time out for this Guru Interview. ADWLauncher is one of the most popular home launchers for Android with install number in the millions. ADWLauncher is also the default home app in the popular Cyanogenmod ROMS. Make sure you check out ADW on the Android Market and head over to ADW Things to stay up to date with all the happenings.

Can you give is a little background on how you got into Android development?

I got here when I got my htc magic (mytouch 3g in the us) and also got unemployed. It started as the typical “lets see if I can change the colors of the stuff” kind of hobby…

What apps do you currently work on?

Besides my current ones (ADWLauncher *) I work on a lot of apps, not for myself but as main android software engineer at my current job.

What’s your favorite aspect of developing for Android?

Learning! And creating visual stuff and UI related things.

Whats your least favorite?

Having to deal with android bugs and limitations (and there are a lot of them).

What challenges have you run into developing for Android. Fragmentation issues?

I think there are much more issues with the fact that android is been evolving a bit weird and kind of closed, and with some “google android gurus” acting as “$DEITY” (no mames, sorry) than with the fragmentation itself.

The only fragmentation specific issues I’ve faced were due to some device manufacturers playing really dirty with the android OS and adding more bugs to it (like if it didn’t have enough!)

How did ADW become the default launcher in Cyanogenmod?

Because it is opensource (and at the time Steve decided to merge it, was the only launcher with an opensource tree and continuous evolution).

What are some key differences in developing a home launcher vs a “regular” application?

Users (lol).
A launcher is like any regular app, but users think of it as “something special” that needs to contain everything inside.
The only real different thing on a launcher against any other app is that users expect it to handle android AppWidgets (desktop widgets), but even a “rss app” could allow users to put widgets over its feeds

What do you do to set ADW apart from all the other launchers out there?

I don’t think its apart from anything. As any other kind of app, there are lots of similar ones out there and users have the power to choose (or even use more than one). That is what makes android what it is today.

What is your ultimate goal for ADW? Do you think it will ever be “finished”?

The goal is to reach the day I don’t get a single feature request more, lol. That would mean it’s finished.

What can we look forward to in the future from you? Any new apps planned?

Yes, there are a few things around my head, but nothing really solid right now.

What devices do you currently use? Any favorites?

Currently the LG Optimus 2x and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
My favorite remains being the one and only incredibly awesome Nexus One, the phone that changed my life

Smartphone applications are doing more and more everyday. They can scan barcodes and find the cheapest price, they can stream music based on your tastes, and they can also spy on you. According to an article over at Computer World, many apps actually listen to what is going on around you, analyze that data, and send it to advertisers.

By listening in on your phone, capturing “patterns,” then sending that data back to servers, marketers can determine the following:

• Your gender, and the gender of people you talk to.
• Your approximate age, and the ages of the people you talk to.
• What time you go to bed, and what time you wake up.
• What you watch on TV and listen to on the radio.
• How much of your time you spend alone, and how much with others.
• Whether you live in a big city or a small town.
• What form of transportation you use to get to work.

Some of the apps that can do this are Color, Shopkick, IntoNow, Shazam, SoundHound, and HappyWakeUp. All of these apps can activate the microphone on your device and than send what it hears back to a server. Some of these apps do this as part of the core functionality, some do this in order to attain marketing information on users. It’s pretty scary stuff Computer World wrote up a pretty article about it, check it out.

via [Computer World]

This week the Gurus talk VZW cutting 1 yr contracts, FCC and roaming, Xoom sales, apps getting banned and much much more.

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The Springpad Android app lets you save anything you want to remember, but by using the Android-only sharing feature, you can add new things to Springpad without even launching the app.

how it works:

• As you surf the web or use other apps on your Android device, tap on your device’s menu, choose Share, then select Springpad
• Springpad will automatically detect the type of item you are trying to save, and populate relevant & useful information
• You can edit the title, add tags, and file to a notebook
• Once you add the new item to Springpad, you’ll be returned to your previous screen, so you can continue on your way…

Both Mike and Nic use this app and love it. Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments below.

via Springpad