I was thinking of taking Moanalua Highway towards Tripler, but Google said that route would take 15 minutes longer. So while a longer route, Google was correct and now I’m early.

So I’ve been fixing all my two-factor authentication accounts but this time, I’m trying LastPass’ Authenticator app instead of Google Authenticator. I think this is the third time that Google Authenticator wiped out everything. I kinda understand the ramification related to security, but boy, what a hassle to resolve.

I’m hoping LastPass Authenticator remembers a bit better although I have to read up on its feature set.

This is for the security conscious techie person in your life. You may have heard about the many recent online incidents dealing with stolen passwords, credit card information, and personal photos. The key take away is that the traditional password just isn’t enough to protect your online identity. This holiday season you need to better protect yourself with a second factor security key.

Yubico has released an USB security key that’s needed in addition to your password in order to access accounts such as the ubiquitous Gmail. So if your password is leaked, hacked, or guessed, the bad guy would still need your security key as the second form of authentication to access your account. In conjunction, these two walls of security will help protect yourself considerably.

And at only $18, this is a very affordable gift! Buy a FIDO U2F Security Key from Amazon.

More suggestions from the Pulpconnection Holiday Gift Guide, 2014 edition.

Follow Gee Why’s board Holiday Gift Guide 2014 on Pinterest.

Additionally, the small Starbucks inside of Windward Mall is also Google connected. Oddly, the third and seemingly busiest Starbucks location in Kaneohe, the one with the first 24-hour drive thru in Hawaii, is still not Google-fied. Here’s a SpeedTest comparison of Google Wifi versus attwifi.

The top two lines are from the Kaneohe drive thru location while the bottom line is from the Windward Mall location. Two out of three ain’t bad I guess.

Starbucks explorer Wayne’s World also reports that the Kapolei location has been Googlified but not the one at Kauai Kukui Grove.

Yup, you are connected to a legit Wifi network.

Speedy, speedy!!

Thanks to Wayne’s World for the screen shots while walking around different Starbucks downtown locations.

Partnering with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), Google launched its third party Street View Trekker program. If your organization has amazing visual stories to tell, you can now apply to borrow a Trekker to capture your geographic stories. For the Hawaiian islands, the Big Island will be first to get mapped by Hawaii Forest & Trail whose focus is on popular Hawaii trails.

So what’s the Google Street View Trekker like? Well, it’s like this.

The backpack version is about 40 pounds heavy (with the batteries) holding a ruggedized rig of 15 cameras. Taking pictures every 2.5 seconds to compose a 360-degree view of the surroundings, you’d think this high tech gear is fragile. Not in the least. Constructed to take a fall, this rig is tough and is designed to be exposed to the elements. It raises your profile about 18 inches and along with its weight, your body’s center of mass is significantly altered. You have to be a little bit crazy to take this on a hike! I felt like I’d topple over with every turn, and you can’t lean over otherwise you’d surely topple over. A strong back and strong legs are definitely recommended.

How much does this backpack Trekker cost? A million dollars? Probably not. Buku bucks? For sure, and Google is letting you borrow it. Supposedly it has no comms although I find that highly unlikely since Google has the ability to remotely update and troubleshoot the packs. Images are stored on media cards which are then sent back to Google for processing. The cleaning and stitching of all the images could takes months before they’re live on Street View.

Street View collections recorded with this Trekker should be available in September and who knows, soon enough you may see this Trekker pack roaming the scenery of Oahu.

More pictures from today’s announcement.

Thanks to Nathan Kam for this invitation.

This doodle was created by Sabrina Brady, a high school senior. Here’s part of her story.

But I do miss the wide capture of my RSS feeds over the year so since RSS is buzzing again, I want to see what I’m missing. NewsBlur adopts the freemium model where you pay annually for advanced features. The free version is good but limited to 64 feeds/sites. I’ve been using the web site so far and it’s very usable. I’m going to test the iOS app next. So far, I’m impressed but I still have a lot to learn. Maybe NewsBlur will be getting another paid customer…

What’s this NewsBlur blog each user gets?

Here’s what Google Now presented to me.

Pretty mundane. Nothing out of the ordinary. Let’s compare the weather. Google Now reports 75-degree weather with some clouds and rain.

Car reported outside temperature was 76 degrees, and it was an overcast morning, so that’s a +1 for Google Now. How about the commute? 26 minutes seems about right with light traffic, but even Google doesn’t know and can’t integrate everything (yet). You see, there was a traffic accident reported on the H3 that morning. I had heard about the mishap on the radio at the start of my drive and was hoping the accident would be cleared by the time I got to the H3. Not quite.

There were lines of cars before the H3 Harano tunnels with one lane closed off. Fortunately traffic was flowing, albeit slowly compared to most mornings. Was this “light traffic” according to Google? From my daily commutes, I would consider this heavy traffic for the H3. So my commute did take longer than normal, quite possibly the 26 minutes estimated by Google Now from the starting point of traffic slowdown.

My overall first experience with Google Now wasn’t totally amazing but modestly intriguing. I can see how this intersection of relevant data is very cool and convenient, and I have to tinker with Google Now settings to see what else it can do.

Being on television is almost second nature already! Have you already forgotten about my appearance during the closing of Don Quijote in Kailua?

Today, Google, along with the City and County of Honolulu, held an event announcing Google’s commitment of making the world more accessible with a focus on Hawaii. With Google Maps cars and Street View trikes, much of Oahu, the Big Island, Kauai, Lanai, Maui, and Molokai have been mapped so viewers can go on virtual tours of the Islands. The event highlighted the addition of many of Hawaii’s top attractions to Street View. Now (or soon enough), you’ll be able to go from your part of the world to Hawaii and check out attractions such as the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the Honolulu Zoo, Kualoa Ranch, Sea Life Park, and Waikiki Aquarium. Beyond these popular sites, you can tour resorts, universities, and many, many of our state parks. How’s that for making the world a smaller place?

Mayor Peter Carlisle talked about his vision for a high tech Hawaii and how working with Google is a great partnership. The Mayor was followed by Evan Rapoport, Product Manager for Google Maps Street View who expressed his sentimental joys of returning to Hawaii for this latest Street View initiative.

In Hawaii, residents definitely know what it’s like to live in a “small world,” and it goes something like this… I haven’t been to Hanauma Bay in decades, decades! Not since the 1990’s while in high school. Evan Rapoport is a former Hawaii resident and still owns a home on the Windward side. Before leaving Hawaii to join Google, Evan befriended Phil who happens to be my high school classmate. I hadn’t seen Phil in decades, and guess who’s there at the event? Yep, Phil! So I have Google to thank for this unexpected reunion in this world that’s definitely getting smaller.

Here are more pictures of the Google Street View event at Hanauma Bay.

Be sure to check out other coverage of today’s event.

• Hawaii Gets Big Google Street View Update
• #HIview with Google
• Google Street View expands with more Hawaii locations. Watch for a surprise visitor at the 0:50 mark.
• More Google Street View Maps
• Google Street View Announcement
• Hawaiiâ€s new Google street view update

Update (6/21): Here’s a short video of Evan talking about the expanded features of Google Street View.

Hawaii Kai on Dwellable

Now that Google Music is rocking, I figured I’d give its accompanying Android Market a run and buy a song. From the radio, I soundtracked Young Blood by The Naked and Famous on their album, Passive Me Aggressive You. As a quick test comparing Google, Amazon, and iTunes, I searched for “young blood passive me aggressive you” on the respective services.

Here’s what I got on Google Music. No match found.

Here’s what I got on Amazon’s MP3 Store. Entire album found with the single costing $0.99.

Here’s what I got on iTunes. Entire album found with the single costing $1.29.

What would you surmise seeing these results? I’d say Google Music fail, right? It’s the only music service that doesn’t offer this song. But… I changed my search terms on Google Music and looked for “naked famous”. And guess what shows up?

The single is actually there, hiding in plain sight. This is really strange, since Google being Google is synonymous with search. Why wasn’t this song found when searching for its title and the album name? Maybe the songs are still being indexed or something, I don’t know.

Once I found Young Blood, I easily completed the purchase and shared a listen on Google+. I downloaded the single via the web and imported into iTunes. Then I uploaded the song to my Amazon Cloud Drive.  Sadly though, this Google Music-purchased single won’t be available in iCloud without subscribing to iTunes Match.

Overall, a bit of a rough start with Google Music.  I’m pleased I eventually found the single but am confused why searches didn’t find it initially given Google’s searching strength.  Maybe the service is just being passive aggressive during launch?

Upload your music to the cloud and access them anywhere you’re connected. Play back your music on your computer, mobile phone, or tablet. And it’s all free (up to 20,000 songs)! You can also purchase songs from Google’s Android Market, and the store offers a bunch of freebies as well.

So there’s yet another player in the musical cloud market: Google Music, Apple’s iTunes and iCloud, Amazon’s MP3 Cloud Drive and Player, and even Spotify. What the heck, have accounts with all of these services and scatter your music in the clouds. Think of this as a backup to the backup to the backup.

Google+ opened up its social service to include businesses, organizations, and brands earlier this week. And what better way to learn about Google+ Pages other than having your own Page? With that simple logic, let me introduce Pulpconnection on Google+ Pages.

Here’s the direct (and ugly looking) link:

https://plus.google.com/108377264798538201770

What can you expect here? My initial thoughts are to use this channel as a behind-the-scenes stream of consciousness for content and posts. Yes, it’s not a new concept but hey, at least I have an idea, right?

So anyways, stop by and visit and even circle Pulpconnection. As a thank you for adding Pulpconnection to your G+ circles, I have a gift (and I’m breaking the piggy bank on this one). For the first 10 Pulp-sters (individuals, not brands) who add Pulpconnection to their Google+ circles, I’ll gift to you either:

• Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back mobile app. Just released this week and includes the infamous (and classic) video.
• One song from the Twilight Breaking Dawn (Part 1) Soundtrack. Yes, there are only 3 songs available for individual purchase, but they are good ones.

The Rules

1. This offer could end at any time due to the Google+ Pages policy on promotions.
2. Winners need an account on iTunes to redeem the gifts.
3. No substitutions of the gifts (you gotta love Sir Mix-a-Lot and Twilight!)
4. You need to adhere to the age restrictions of the mobile app or songs.
5. I’ll need a valid email account to gift your winnings.
6. Gift goes to the first 10 real people who circle the Pulpconnection Google+ Page.
7. Only one gift per person.
8. All of this may change on my discretion.

Thanks, enjoy, and +1!

I’ve seen many a vehicle emblazoned with an all too familiar Apple silhouette. But never have I seen this, a car sticker of Google’s Android dude.

But good to know that the Google Goggles app accurately identified this green guy.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve seen a recent disruption in the social media circles that coincides with the launch of Google+. I never thought any service could supplant Facebook and Twitter, and I’m not yet saying Google+ has, but it has definitely made an impact.

Being a Google service, people took notice with a flurry of signups and activity, but how does it differ from Facebook and Twitter? On Twitter, I’m following over 1000 users and my Timeline is constantly updating. I learned a long time ago that Twitter is NOT email and don’t try to read unread tweets – ain’t gonna work. But with this flood of tweets, finding the “good stuff” isn’t easy. I get personal stuff, business stuff, tips, sales, articles, you name it.

For me, Facebook is somewhat similar to Twitter though I follow much less users. I still “like” pages for businesses and organizations so I do get duplicate content from Twitter. There’s more person-to-person interactions on Facebook, mainly since I know the people I friended on Facebook.

Now here comes Google+. This is a fresh start, a clean slate, a blank piece of paper. Of course, you see the same early adopters you met on other social networks. But with Google+ circles, you have a better way of managing people, personas, and content. And like Facebook, the use of real names dictates more civil behavior online (in general). With these new mechanics in play, users can more easily see and acknowledge the shortcomings of Facebook and Twitter.

So really, what has Google+ done? It’s caused a rift, a pause, and it’s made you think. Google has finally broken the hold of Facebook and Twitter and created a fissure that gives opportunities to Google+ or the next big thing.