Category: Articles

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I Ask You: Does Carrier Branding On Your Phone Bother You?

htc one max evleaks carrier branded ATTQuick show of hands, who here knows what carrier their smartphone is on? Pretty much as I figured. If you’re savvy enough to use a web browser to find my site, chances are pretty good you know what carrier you send money to each month for your phone. Good.

Welp, new press images have surfaced courtesy of @EVLeaks, showing the HTC One Max not only for Verizon, but also for AT&T. It looks like there might not be CDMA exclusivity for HTC’s up coming phablet. Neat. Of course, this wouldn’t be internet news without something to complain about, and many HTC faithful checking the renders out are somewhat upset by the fact that on both the Verizon and AT&T shots, HTC’s branding between the home and back buttons has been shoved out of the way for AT&T’s globe and Verizon’s awkward off center check mark thing. I’m serious, for a mutli-billion dollar company, that logo never looks like it’s on straight, but I digress…

This got me wondering, why does this bother people? Is it aesthetics? Brand loyalty? Are you ashamed to be doing business with your carrier? I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts on the matter. Living in an age where everything is branded, clothes, cars, technology, what is it about the carrier logo which might upset folks?

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Quick Review: 2nd Generation Kindle Paperwhite – Amazon Improves on the Best eReader

kindle paperwhite second generation ereader review somegadgetguy (3)This is the second generation of Kindle Paperwhite. The first gen was largely heralded as being the best digital ink eReader you could buy. Not much needed to be changed or altered for the 2nd gen Paperwhite, but Amazon still found some areas to tweak and improve.

Paperwhite stands as an excellent execution of an eReader. If you’re looking at a gadget to primarily read books on, a digital ink display is critical. For years now they’ve near perfectly replicated the printed page. Digital ink is static, and doesn’t refresh 60 times a second like LCD displays do. Once the page refreshes it stays in place until you turn to the next page. This also radically reduces battery drain, as electricity is only used when turning pages.

kindle paperwhite second generation ereader review somegadgetguy (5)In terms of design, Paperwhite is simplicity at it’s finest. There are no distractions. It’s built for one purpose: reading. We’ve even given up on the illusion that eReaders also have to be MP3 players. Nope. Reading is more than enough to justify the gadget’s existence. There’s a power button and MicroUSB port on the bottom. That’s it. You should only care about the screen and what’s on that screen. No buttons or switches or rockers. End of story.

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The Perils of Monetizing Free Sites – Reddit Convinces Users to Go Gold

reddit goldWhen a service starts out free, then tries to monetize, you can pretty much count on a negative reaction from the user base. It’s an incredibly delicate tightrope to walk. A company needs to make money, but it can’t push to fast lest it turn off its fans. Companies like Facebook and Twitter have been dealing with their evolving markets for years now, but neither has entirely locked their solutions for making money. Traditionally, the first steps towards monetization usually involve serving ads off to the side, and then incorporating ads into the content people interact with. Recently Instagram announced it too would start serving ads into users photo timelines. Responses for the most part were less than positive.

This makes Reddit’s latest turn really interesting. Sure Reddit serves ads in a sidebar, and the top position post is usually a sponsored post, but according to a recent Q&A session, Reddit still found itself often in the red. This galvanized the Reddit faithful, and the site saw an explosion in its premium service subscriptions.

Dubbed ‘Reddit Gold’, it’s a monthly or yearly subscription which unlocks premium content filtering, and provides discounts and extras at a number of partner sites including iFixIt, UPS, and car service Uber. To encourage community participation, users can also gift Gold to other members to reward interactions on the site. It’s an interesting way to push more money through a service without resorting to more aggressive advertising or trafficking in user data.

Well Reddit noticed the increased Gold sales, and now they’re communicating more with their users. Now on their sidebar is a daily Gold goal. Reddit is already somewhat addictive, as there’s a gamification element to submitting news stories. People vote on good stories and users get points to show how effective their participation has been. Now, users can see daily if there are enough Gold sales to help keep Reddit in the black. As the program is fairly new, and a direct response to the Reddit community’s activity, users have been extremely active in buying and gifting gold, easily besting the daily goal.

And that’s all cash in Reddit’s coffers.

(via Reddit Blog)

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PSA: Only Two Years left to Update from Windows 8 to 8.1 to Continue Receiving Support

Screenshot (1)Better get to it folks! The clock is ticking!

Looks like Microsoft is getting a touch more aggressive in making sure consumers stay up to date on OS updates. The Windows 8 support life cycle is scheduled to end in 2023, but to continue receiving support, it looks like Microsoft is going to require people stay on top of updates.

Announced on Microsoft’s site:

Windows 8 customers will have two years to move to Windows 8.1 after the General Availability of the Windows 8.1 update to continue to remain supported under the Windows 8 lifecycle.

Well, “General Availability” started last Thursday, so at the time of this blog post, you have less than 727 days to jump on the Windows 8.1 update to continue receiving support.

It would appear Microsoft is trying to be a bit more proactive in communicating with consumers when products hit End Of Life. There’s still a substantial base of users still on Windows XP, which could create a nightmare scenario for many when support officially ends April of 2014. The fear being that those who create malware for Windows could be waiting for support to end before unleashing new attacks on the XP platform.

So now, Microsoft is not only communicating what the total support time is, they’re stipulating more consumer participation in keeping the Windows ecosystem a bit more up to date. As for those of us on Windows 7 and Windows 8, we’ve got PLENTY of support time left, so long as we keep up with our updates…

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Google Stock Price Breaks Records and $1000 a Share

google stock price 1000 dollars somegadgetguy investingWell I suppose we all know who the “Big Bad” is now…

Google announced a pretty strong quarter during their earnings call yesterday. Even with somewhat weak performance from Motorola, Goog generated $14.9 Billion in revenue which represented a 12% increase over Q3 2012. This amounts to $2.97 Billion net income for the quarter (also an increase over last year), and Google announced they’re currently sitting on about $56 Billion in cash.

Investors seemed to appreciate this news, and in after hours trading, Google’s stock broke 1000 points for the first time in the company’s history. At the time of this writing, they’re currently up 120 points from before the earnings call, trading around 1010. Remarkable stock performance, leaping 13% over a period of less than a day.

Their current strategy, moving ads to mobile devices, incorporating more ads on mobile services, would appear to be paying off. It would also appear that some of Google other services like Google Apps (designed to compete against Microsoft’s business offerings) might be showing signs of life.

Now Google stands as one of the few companies which will cost you over $1000 to buy a single share of their stock. I totally should’ve bought in earlier… Sigh…

(via Google Investor Relations)

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Our Reluctance to Embrace Change In a World of Constant Change…

We could be looking at the beginnings of an internet-wide burnout and backlash…

Ok, maybe that first sentence is a touch dramatic, but something’s in the air. Consumers tend to be fairly conservative with technology in general. They don’t like taking risks, especially on priority services like communication. Lately however, thanks to internet-echo-chambering, nearly every new update, product, announcement, or release has been met with a viscerally negative reaction.

yahoo emailWe can look at the response to Microsoft changing the UI of Windows 8. iOS users seem to be a little cranky with iOS7 when I talk to them face to face. Most recently, petitions and forums are buzzing about Yahoo changing the interface for YMail. At some core, fundamental level consumers don’t like actual “New” things.

To a degree this makes sense. We count on products like email or our operating system to get things done. However, we’re also witnessing the immediacy of internet communications coloring the perception of a change before anyone has a chance to try out that new thing. That cycle happens far faster than any developer or manufacturer’s PR can handle the discussion. People who have never handled a Windows 8 product for example, still love to tell me how much it sucks and why I’m wrong for liking it, because “so-n-so at such-n-such blog eight months ago said it was confusing to blah blah blah…”

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Windows 8.1 Update Starts Rolling out Today

LB_8705Here it comes folks!

Microsoft’s refresh to the operating everyone hated (until they started using it). Be on the lookout for the update to trickle out to your Windows Store app. Windows 8.1 fixes some bugs and improves the ModernUI, allowing for smaller live tiles and easier gestures to slide up to your app drawer. There also improvements under the hood to things like multi-monitor support. Nice little clean up job on  top of Windows 8’s better file management and resource management and quick boot up time.

Those of you looking to upgrade a Windows 7 machine can buy a license directly to 8.1, but while boxes are on the shelves, it’s cheaper to buy a Windows 8 upgrade instead of a Windows 8.1 full license.

Those of you already on Win8, go hit the update and enjoy all of the new live-tile-y goodness!

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Lenovo Announces Most Affordable Windows 8.1 Tablet – 8″ Miix 2 starting at $299

Lenovo-Miix-2-Windows-8.1-8-inch-tabletIt’s official. Windows Netbook-y machines are dead. Long live Tablets and Hybrids!

It looks like people are starting to get Windows 8, and no company has showcased the benefits of Microsoft’s newest operating system than Lenovo. Even during the worst of the PC sales slump, Lenovo was floating almost zero loss in sales. Any change as drastic as this you would expect consumers to react negatively (just ask Apple about their painful transition to OSX), but Lenovo floated steady. Buoyed by a line up of flex-y and twisty computers which wonderfully showed off Windows 8’s strengths.

Now with Windows 8.1 on the horizon, Microsoft’s strategy is incredibly clear. They aren’t trying to walk into the traditional Tablet market. They aren’t trying to “save” the PC market. They’re trying to redefine both and combine those markets. Why have a slate for fun little apps and a laptop for work when you could have both?

Lenovo’s playing into this round with one of the most affordable tablets to hit Microsoft’s ecosystem. The Miix 2 is an 8″ slate powered by an Intel “Baytrail” quad-core Atom processor and 2GB of RAM. Miix2 will feature front and rear cameras, and like previous 8″ Windows tablets it includes the Home & Student edition of Office. Prices start at $299 for a 32GB model, and there are also some great accessories announced alongside. Users can pick up an optional keyboard cover and stylus to further improve their productivity.

So there you have it folks. High-end netbook guts in an almost pocket-able mini slate which runs a proper version of Windows and arrives at a price point which competes against consumer Android mini tablets. It even undercuts the iPad Mini by $50 while offering up twice as much storage. It’s a pretty solid play by Lenovo, and it should be available later this month.

Full specs and PR after the jump.

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