Author: Juan Carlos Bagnell

Juan has been obsessed with consumer electronics since before computers had GUI’s. Out of college he worked on a JIT computing contract which supported DOE facilities in New Mexico. He’s been featured on numerous podcasts and radio shows lending his tech insights. You can also find him in LA directing voice over actors and producing spoken word recording.
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Post-Play Netflix Streaming Comes to Android – Chromecast to Follow

netflix post play android updateOh happy day for folks who like to binge watch their shows on Netflix.

Announced on the Netflix blog, Android devices will receive an update allowing phones and tablets to Post-Play, which is a fancy way of saying that when you finish one episode, the next episode of your show will automatically start playing.

Best of all, we also have word that this functionality will be coming to Chromecast “in a couple months”. Now that most Android phones now have the ability to act like a universal remote, I might never need to leave my couch ever again.

Read the full PR below.

Continue reading “Post-Play Netflix Streaming Comes to Android – Chromecast to Follow”

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Viewer Pro Tip: Transfer Apps from Your Phone to an SD Card in Windows Phone 8.1

Got a great viewer tip from the comments on one of my other videos! This is how you can move an app from your phone’s storage to a memory card in Windows Phone’s Storage Sense!

This is why I love the comments you folks post!

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Native Wikipedia BETA App for Android Hits Play Store

wikipedia app android beta somegadgetguyWikipedia is going native for Android users!

Previous versions of the app have essentially been web browsers wrapped in a candy coated app-like shell. With a proper app, Wikimedia boasts a new UI, more responsive design, and better tools for editing articles.

The design of the app is super clean and simple, befitting the look and feel of the desktop version of the service. Plus, as you can see in the picture for this article, searching Wikipedia for the term “Wikipedia” will not actually break the internet.

Wikipedia BETA (on Google Play)

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Android Youtube App Updated – Allows User to Control Streaming Quality

youtube android app streaming quality screenshot somegadgetguyQuick update for Youtube from Google!

It always bothers me when I can’t control streaming video quality (Netflix I’m looking in your general direction). On desktop browsers we can set the quality for Youtube. The user can make a choice between the speed and stability of a stream and a higher resolution.

Well now we can do the same on our mobile devices, which should have been a no-brainer feature when you think about how many of us are on some kind of metered plan, and fast 3G and 4G networks can be kind of spotty at times.

When playing a video in the app, tap the three-dot menu button, and you see an option of a gear icon. Tap on that, and you’ll get a menu where you can select what quality you would like to stream the video at. Interestingly enough, Android apparently only supports streaming up to 720p. Good to know.

This updated Youtube app (build 5.7.36) should all ready be rolling out now, so hit the Google Play Store to see if you’ve gotten it!

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AT&T HTC One M7 Updated with Sense 6 – New Blinkfeed and Camera App

HTC One M7 Update Blinkfeed Sense update ATTPlaying with this year’s flagship devices, it’s been great going back to see how good our phones were last year. In an era of premier phones all sporting 5+ inch screens, the HTC M7 stands as one of the last high end phones with a SLIGHTLY smaller screen. It’s a joy to use one handed, so that makes updates like these even more enjoyable.

HTC has really stepped up on the support front, and are following Google’s example in separating apps and services from full OS updates. The M7 is now getting updated to the newest version of Sense (the skin HTC developed to customize their phone experience). Now services like Blinkfeed and HTC’s TV remote app can be updated through Google Play. This brings much faster support to the ecosystem, as individual services can get updates and bug fixes without having to push OTA updates through carriers.

HTC One M7 updated camera app screenshot somegadgetguy

The M7 gets a great new Blinkfeed, it adopts the nicer camera app from the M8, and a few other goodies alongside the normal slate of patches and bug fixes. It breaths a little more life into on of the best Android’s from last year, and should prove to keep the phone running current software longer into the future.

You can check to see if you have the update by jumping into your settings, and AT&T’s changelog is below.

Continue reading “AT&T HTC One M7 Updated with Sense 6 – New Blinkfeed and Camera App”

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Google Separates Hangouts from Google Plus

hangouts update google plus somegadgetguyGoogle is doing something interesting with their services of late. Instead of continuing to try and tie everything together, apps are being sliced back out to stand as their own services. Recently we saw Google splice out Docs and Drive again. Photos stands as it’s own app, and now we see an interesting tweak to the most recent update to Hangouts.

When you used to tap on a profile pic in Hangouts, it would take you to a Google+ profile. Now, if you have that person in your contacts, it shows you a contact card. If you don’t have that person in your contacts, you wont see anything.

Following Google’s recent turn of not forcing people into combining Youtube and Google+ profiles, it would seem they are changing direction on what they expect of G+. What that will finally be remains to be seen, and we’re still waiting to see if Hangouts will eventually adopt Google Voice to become Google’s primary communication app.

Have you used the new Hangouts update? Has this contact change affected your use?

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Google Releases 64-Bit Chrome Browser BETA

download-hero-winFor those who like to live on the bleeding edge of the internet, Google is releasing Canary and Dev versions of their popular Chrome browser which properly support 64-bit computers.

Boasting faster and more stable performance, Google has pushed into 64-bit versions as most Windows 7 users now use 64-bit systems. The Canary version is the up to the minute version with new builds pushed out daily. It also might have more instability than the Dev version which is a more stable BETA.

You can grab either version, and Google’s full PR is below.

Continue reading “Google Releases 64-Bit Chrome Browser BETA”

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When Web “Myths” Become “Real” – Two Girls Stab Classmate Over Slenderman

slender-man-600This is sad, tragic, and horrific. My heart goes out to all of the families involved. I hope my comments regarding this situation don’t read as insensitive, but it’s also a fascinating example of our relationship with media.

By now you’ve likely seen the headlines that two twelve year old girls plotted to kill a classmate, stabbing the victim nineteen times. What wasn’t immediately clear was the motive for this heinous act. Today we’ve heard word that the two girls who committed this crime did so as a tribute to Slenderman.

sl-65For those unfamiliar, Slenderman is an internet scary story initially created as part of a photo editing contest on the Something Awful forums in 2009. Readers of the forum were impressed by this impossibly tall and thin figure wearing a suit, and plaguing children. Others quickly added to the fictional mythos. The popularity of the figure exploded, and early in the viral phase of sharing, many sites purported to have the “True Story” of this mysterious figure, adding to the reality of the creation. Some sites even went as far as creating historical backstories, linking Slenderman to ancient wood carvings and Dark Age superstitions.  Continue reading “When Web “Myths” Become “Real” – Two Girls Stab Classmate Over Slenderman”

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