Let's Talk Tech
Hello fellow techies.
Been taking a few days off from the tech news rat race to celebrate my favorite holiday of the year with family and friends. I’ve produced some videos which will be auto-publishing to the SomeGadgetGuy YouTube channel, so make sure you’re subscribed there for updates if you’d like to keep up with our newest reviews.
I’ll be back here soon. Until then, I hope you’re safe, warm, well fed, and doing something that you love as we begin the holiday season.
I had the pleasure of working with Randy Mack and the Consumer Product Investigation team at KNBC. While those of us in the tech industry have a pretty nuanced understanding of what app permissions are and what risks we might be taking with our personal information, I really appreciate the approach taken here in introducing the concept of spyware without resorting to a “Sky is Falling”, panic inducing tone.
I’m happy to share this piece we produced, and if you have any tips or tricks for how you discuss privacy and data security with your family, drop a comment below!
Comcast has been flirting with data caps, and for customers in those markets, Comcast will be introducing new rates to save money on home plans, with new fees for going over your cap. These new rates however are raising some eyebrows.
The pricing on data has always been somewhat suspect. Each month you pay for a quantity of data, but if you don’t use it all, your remainder disappears at the end of the month. If you bought food this way, you’d be outraged by all the waste when your leftovers are thrown away. To date, no company has introduced any kind of rollover data for capped plans.
While XFINITY will be offering more data each month, moving Economy Plus customers from 250GB to 300GB, their cost savings scheme seems horrifically unfair.
If you live in Jackson Mississippi for example, 300GB of data, at up to 50Mbps speed, will cost you around $60 a month after promotional pricing. If you want to save some money on that monthly bill, Comcast is happy to lower your data cap and reduce your bill. If you reduce your monthly data rate from 300GB a month to 5GB a month you can save $5 off your plan.
You read that right. That was not a typo. To save $5 a month your plan will be cut from 300GB to 5GB. You will lose 295GB. That’s a 98% reduction in your data for a 12% price break. Continue reading “Comcast XFINITY: Cut Your Internet Data Cap by 295GB, Save $5”
It’s that time of year, where our kitchens get a work out. U-verse is partnering with The Food Network, to provide some recipe tools to the largest screen in your home.
To test the app, AT&T folks invited some fun folks over to a “Friendsgiving” house party, where the entire menu would be prepared off of recipes provided through the app.
The app is fairly easy to navigate, inspired by minimal tablet apps, with side-scrolling menu options. Tied into popular Food Network programs, you can search by recipe, ingredient, or scan through recipes recommended by various show hosts. I spent most of my time looking through Alton Brown’s recommendations. Because he is awesome. Truth.
I spent a couple weeks running the Lenovo A740 All-in-One PC through its paces. With a Quad HD touchscreen, and some decently powerful guts, does it have the horsepower to combat Apple’s iMac? Let’s take a look!
After teasing fans for a couple days, the mystery has been unveiled. The Nokia name will return to hardware much sooner than many of us might have expected, however maybe not in the way we might have wanted.
The N1 is a 7.9″ tablet running Android, and featuring Nokia’s Z Launcher skin. The 4:3 aspect ratio display will have a resolution of 2048 x 1536 for the IPS LCD, which will be protected by Gorilla Glass. The slate is powered by a 64-bit Intel Atom Quad-Core, 2GB of RAM, and will have 32GB of storage. The rear camera is an 8MP shooter, and the FFC will have 5 million pixels to play with for selfies. The one piece Aluminum frame will feature bottom firing stereo speakers, and maybe one of the more interesting specs is the reversible USB 2 Type C connector.
If the design of this tablet, and some of those specs like the 4:3 screen and the reversible cable port sound familiar, they should. Continue reading “Nokia Licenses Brand Name to FoxConn for N1 Android Tablet”
It’s officially run its course. The NBC owned channel, originally aimed at tech and gaming fans, will pull the plug the end of this month.
I was a huge fan of TechTV, and followed the transition to G4 with shows like The Screen Savers which became Attack of the Show, and X-Play.
The channel ran into issues while trying to re-brand itself away from the “Geek” badging. Running syndicated content like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Lost, and courting buy outs from Esquire and professional wrestling organizations. In many ways the channel had already died due to the lack of original content.
For us fans of tech and gaming commentary, TV was just never as hospitable as the internet. Now Youtube and Twitch have replaced traditional broadcasting. Still there’s that little itch of nostalgia over what might have been, especially now with geek and tech gear going mainstream. A sentiment near perfectly summed up in the series finale gag in the last episode of AotS (about 2:54 into the embedded clip below).
So long G4. It’s been real.
“LA? That’s actually worse than hotdog mouth…”
I can’t tell you how excited I am to see a full fledged video editor on Windows Phone. Now with some of the best cameras ever bolted onto our smartphones, we now have the ability to cut up high resolution video directly from the phones that shot it. Best of all this app is cross platform for any Windows device with a touch screen.
Here’s our full review, feature walk through, and tutorial of Movie Creator on Windows Phone 8.1! Enjoy!