Dropbox for Teams Offers a Terabyte of Space, Centralized Billing

If you have a crowd of people collaborating with large files synchronized by Dropbox, you might be interested in this new offering from the online file synchronization service, called Dropbox for Teams.

It works the same way as the regular Dropbox service, where if you put files into a Dropbox folder on one computer, they immediately begin to synch up on all the other computers where you have the Dropbox application installed. It’s great for backing up files, collaborating, version control — and you can do some cool tricks with it, too.

The difference is, this $795-per-year Dropbox for Teams service gives five users shared use of a terabyte of storage. If you have more than five users, get the boss to chip in an additional $125 per year for each, and each one of those users gets 200 more gigabytes of space.

Even though it seems quite expensive at $795 a year, there’s an important distinction here. A conventional Dropbox account is free if you’re not going to use more than 2 GB, but if you’re sharing large files as much we do here at Mashable (such as HD video production clips), you’ll be needing a whole lot more than that.

The problem is, each person needs a Dropbox account that’s big enough to accommodate all the files you’ll be synchronizing among your team. So if I have, say, a “Pro 50″ Dropbox account that can accommodate 50 GB (that costs $99/year or $9.99 per month), that’s not going to do me much good to collaborate with my pals if all of them can only accommodate 2 GB.

Beyond that, Dropbox for Teams solves that problem of who pays for all of this by using centralized billing, making it easy to pass the bill over to the boss. And the IT suits can manage everything from one centralized dashboard, controlling who shares what with whom. They like it like that. Another nice kicker is the free unlimited version history, a feature that lets you bring files back from the dead — that one’s saved our bacon quite a few times.

What’s the downside? Well, if you’re worried about putting your business’s sensitive files in the cloud, Dropbox is probably not for you. And, last summer a Dropbox bug briefly exposed user accounts, making it so bad guys could have possibly broken into your private data without needing a password. Even though it affected less than 1% of users and only lasted 5 minutes, such breaches are disconcerting.

Keeping that in mind, if you collaborate with large files, this veritable cornfield of extra space might be a good investment.

Nokia CEO Sees “Broader Opportunity” With Windows 8, Hints At Tablets

 

 

In a brief interview with This Is My Next, Nokia CEO (and mole for Microsoft, clearly) Stephen Elop hinted strongly at the potential for a Nokia-built Windows 8 tablet. While his statement was, strictly speaking, more of a dodge, it’s clear that this is something they’re at least thinking about.

When asked about its role as a consumer electronics brand, Elop explained:

"The user experience of Windows 8 is essentially a supercharged version of the Nokia Lumia experience that you saw on stage today. And you see the parallels and opportunity for commonality from a user perspective. You say wow, this is more than just smartphones, there’s a broader opportunity here. And clearly we see that broader opportunity as well, without specifically commenting on what that may mean in the future. "

The topic of the conversation was largely the idea of a strongly-branded, unified user experience, which Elop feels Android doesn’t offer and Windows Phone 7 does (the iPhone didn’t come up, though it would probably fall under the unified category). So when he says Windows 8 is a supercharged Lumia experience, what he is suggesting is that the Windows 8 tablet experience is one catering to its exact use scenario, being less generalist and indeed less customizable than, say, Android.

He also mentioned the importance of HTML5, and noted that the Lumia series was just part of a larger portfolio of devices and launches they’ll be doing through early 2012. I’m looking forward to it — they seem to be onto something with their new designs and with luck they’ll be able to turn that into market share. As for Windows 8, there’s still plenty of time for that situation to evolve, so let’s not speculate too broadly.

How to Get a Siri-Like Personal Assistant on Your Android Phone for Free

If you watched iPhone 4S announcement with your Android phone and went a little green with envy when Siri, iOS's new voice-recognizing personal assistant, was announced and demoed on stage, buck up. You've got a lot of great voice recognition apps to choose from on Android that can help you keep up with friends, look up the weather, find local businesses, and more. Here are a look at your options.

If you haven't looked into voice recognition apps on Android before, you may be surprised at how many applications get the job done. None of the apps currently available for Android are quite as well integrated with the OS as Siri is be with iOS (sorry), but some of them come closer than others, and you can bet that all of them will be updated and improved now that Siri is available for iOS. Best of all, they're all free.

The One You Already Have: Google Voice Actions

If you have an Android phone, you already have Google Voice Actions for Android installed. When everyone got their first look at Siri on the iPhone 4S, most people jumped to the assumption that Siri was just Voice Actions for iOS. That's not true—Siri does more than Voie Actions, but Voice Actions is the closest thing Android users to a voice-operated personal assistant.

Pros: Voice Actions can control a large swath of Android functions. You can place phone calls, listen to music by track name, artist, or album, send SMS or email messages, get driving and turn-by-turn navigation directions, search the web, and more. If you're clever, you can get information like weather, word definitions, maps and information about local businesses, and more just by using voice actions intelligently. For example, tap the Voice Actions icon and speak "weather in Washington, DC," Voice Search will do a Google search for it, and Google's mobile page will give you an interactive display of the weather forecast.

Cons: The trouble with Voice Actions is that it's only well integrated with core Android functions. You won't be able to schedule calendar appointments, schedule appointments with other people, update Twitter or Facebook, or issue complex commands that require passing information to any application other than Google Search. Additionally, you need to actually tap the Voice Search icon (or long-press the search key) every time you want to issue a request, which makes it less than ideal for hands-free situations, like when you're driving. Finally, Voice Search is a simple command-response application, as in, you speak a command and it replies with whatever it has. If it's wrong, you reissue the command by starting over. There's no back-and-forth with Voice Actions.

The Most Hands-Free: Vlingo

Vlingo has been around for a long time, much longer than voice control has been in-style on smartphones. Vlingo has text-to-speech and speech-to-speech clients for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Windows Mobile, ans while none of them have particularly deep integration with their respective operating system, the app does reach beyond core applications and comes closest to the kind of black-and-forth with advanced commands that Siri offers.

Pros: Vlingo allows you to do all of the basics: you can send SMS messages and emails, place phone calls, and search the web. You can also search for local businesses and restaurants using natural language, so saying "find pizza" will search for local pizza delivery restaurants. Saying "taxi" will search for the nearest cab company. You can also launch applications through Vlingo by speaking their name, or update Facebook and Twitter through the app. It's speech-to-text engine is good, and unlike Voice Actions, it rarely misinterpreted my contact names or spoken words.

The developers behind Vlingo have even tossed in some tie-ins to other applications: if you say "find hotels in New York City," the app will ask you if you want to install Kayak or if you just want to search the web. Say "Buy movie tickets for Real Steel in Washington DC," the app will open your default browser, go to Fandango, bring up the page for Real Steel, and offer me showtimes at nearby theaters.

Finally, Vlingo's strongest suit is that you can tell it to start listening as soon as you open the app, and when you enter Vlingo's "in-car" mode, you can say "Hey Vlingo," out loud and the app will accept commands. It's Vlingo's depth of features and its ability to have a back-and-forth conversation with you that make it the closest thing Android users have to Siri. Check out this video to see Vlingo in action.

Cons: The only real problem with Vlingo is that too many of its commands shunt you to other applications that have no voice-activated features. When you're using "in-car" mode, Vlingo will ask you if you want to leave Vlingo to open your browser or another app to complete the action, but it doesn't let you say yes or no from that screen, and you have to touch the screen to either go forward or cancel the operation. The same is true for a number of Vlingo's other features as well. Saying "Check in to China Garden" simply opens Foursquare and does a search for China Garden, which saves time, but falls just a little short.

Also, if you stray too far from any of Vlingo's known search and command terms, you'll confuse it and it'll shunt you to a web search. That's fine in some cases, but the fact that you can't just ask what the weather is without doing a Google search is a little disappointing. Vlingo is great, but the most frustrating thing about the app is that it seems to go so far, only to stop short of perfection.

The Most Conversational: Edwin

Edwin is a utility and while it's lacking the bells and whistles of its competition, it adds voice response and speech-to-speech to Google's native voice actions. It also allows you to make your voice commands a bit more conversational. Most of its commands are passed through to Google Voice Actions, where they're executed or the results are spoken back to you.

Pros: Edwin's strength is in how conversational the app is. If it has a direct response, it'll speak it out loud. Ask "What's the weather in Washington DC," and the app will respond aloud with current conditions. Ask about another city, and the app will look it up and respond there as well. You can even ask the app "Where am I," and it'll respond, right down to your block number. The app has a large button you press once to make the app start listening. Best of all, if it understands, it'll respond. If the app needs to do a web search or open an application, it'll prompt you to select an app, or it'll go to the browser and perform a search.

Cons: The big problem with Edwin is that it doesn't have a rich command list of its own, and when it doesn't understand something, it suffers the same problem Voice Actions does: it just fails. The app also has a difficult time processing some commands, like navigation and SMS messages—it'll understand that you want to navigate, and it'll understand that you want to send an SMS message, but it won't pick up where you want to go or who you want to send the message to. The app definitely needs some improvements, and when testing it, I ran into a number of bugs and errors. In some cases, Edwin forgot my location and couldn't retrieve weather information, and in others it stopped being able to obtain weather information entirely. Your mileage with Edwin may vary, but at the very least it'll talk back to you.

The Most Flexible: SpeakToIt Assistant

SpeakToIt Assistant is a relatively new speech-to-speech and speech-to-text assistant in the Android market. The app prides itself on being customizable, and on giving you a cartoon avatar that you can customize and configure to be your personal assistant. (If you don't like the default sexy librarian, you've got an absurd amount of options for customizing your assistant with a range of other fantasy cartoon options.) The app does have some back-and-forth conversational abilities, and it definitely recognizes a wide array of phrases and commands. The developers behind SpeakToIt claim that it's always learning, and they're working to give the app more commands that it can directly respond to with each update.

Pros: SpeakToIt definitely understands everything that Voice Actions understands and then some. You can ask it to find stock information for you, what the weather is in a far-off place, to send an email or SMS, update your social networks, check-in to a location on Foursquare, and more. The app can also post items to your Evernote account, and it greets you—sometimes with your name after you've said it aloud—when you open the application.

Unlike some of the other applications, you can make your assistant male or female, customize their appearance, and change their voice, albeit slightly. It wins for being the most customizable, and the app with the largest library of in-app commands and pass-through terms. It's clear that the developers of SpeakToIt want you to be able to get as much information as possible inside the app before being shunted to another application or to a Google search. It can even update Facebook and Twitter on your behalf. Check out this video to see SpeakToIt Assistant in action.

Cons: Unfortunately, SpeakToIt Assistant tries very hard to be a personal assistant on the surface that some of the finer touches are lost. SpeakToIt's chosen voice is the default Android voice synthesizer, making it sound more stilted and unnatural than the others, especially when it's trying to hold a conversation with you. Grammar errors in the on-screen text make it difficult to work with at times, and the fact that you have to tap a small microphone button on-screen every time you want to speak to the application difficult to use when driving or if you want a hands-free experience.

Still, SpeakToIt Assistant is in beta, and most of its shortcomings can be easily overcome with additional development. Given that development, the app could grow to be more useful. As it is, it's a touch gimmicky.

So Which Is the Best?

If we could only suggest one, Vlingo is definitely the most mature application with its hooks into the most services. It's also the one under the most active development, and the one with the best hands-free and speech-to-speech functionality. However, its competition is hot on its heels.

Google's own Voice Actions is built-in to every Android phone, and its unlikely that Google has any intention of holding still now that Siri will be deeply integrated with iOS. Similarly, SpeakToIt Assistant may be new and still rough around the edges, but it has a lot of potential and it gives you a very personable and customizable caricature to interact with.

The good news for Android users watching Siri's development is that there are plenty of alternatives and options that bring the promise of text-to-speech and speech-to-speech to Android devices. None of them are perfect, and they're not deeply integrated with all of the common features and functions that you would expect from a real voice-activated assistant. Still, there are plenty solid options to give Siri a run for its money, and expect them all to improve very shortly.

Flex it, baby! Nokia's new interface is seriously twisted

At the Nokia World show here, the Finnish mobile phone maker showed off its "Nokia kinetic device" with a flexible display. Gripped with two hands, it would scroll through music collections or photo albums when twisted. Bowing it inward or outward zoomed photos in and out or paused and played music, while tapping the corners panned through photos.

While it was a real computing device with a real OLED display, it's most definitely not a real product anyone could buy today. More firmly in the prototype category was a related flexible device that looked like a slim remote control; it could be controlled with a single hand.

Tapani Jokinen, who began working on the technology about two years ago as part of a Nokia group tasked with creating designs out of earlier-stage research, wouldn't say either when he thinks it'll come to market or how it worked.

But Chris Bower, stationed nearby at Nokia's "Future Lounge," had some ideas. He was showing an experimental apparatus with a bundle of carbon nanotubes in a flexible elastomer medium. The electrical resistance of the nanotubes changes as they're stretched, and measurements of the change let a computer control how a map zoomed in and out. The same approach could be used to control the flexible interface.

Jokinen was reluctant to predict whether it might become as widespread as multitouch user interfaces are today.

Here is a video of UI in Action.