Let's Talk Tech
It’s time folks! Time to round up the best of the best! The phones that will go down in the record books this year! Of course, I pride myself on not being your average tech reviewer, so this year we’re going to have a little fun with our best list… Let’s jump in!
I’ve gotten a lot of questions on why I do my speaker tests the way I do, like this query from Youtube viewer Faddli who on my Lumia 830 speaker test asked:
Great video. My suggestion is to compare it with other smartphones (3-4 other smartphones), then the viewer can at least guess whether it has awesome/good/decent/bad/$h!t speaker.
Hey Faddli, thanks for the suggestion. Couple things about how I do these speaker reviews.
First, if the speaker sounds good in the video, then it probably sounds good in real life. It’s why I don’t talk over or give a conclusion at the end of these videos. What makes a piece of audio gear “good” can be highly subjective. I want the speakers to speak for themselves. Continue reading “Viewer Question: Why not compare multiple phones in our speaker tests?”
It’s been a frustrating omission in the Google Play Store app for some time now.
You’ve always been able to see every app you’ve ever had on any phone you’ve used, but for some reason Google removed the ability to track your purchases. An update coming soon to the Play Store will bring back the ability to track purchase history.
Once you get the update head over to “My Apps” then into “My Account”. From there you can see your payment methods, if you have any store credit, and below that HUZZAH! Order History!
Kind of a fun game to scroll back through everything to see my first app purchases. Apparently I started using Android during some kind of freak holiday app sale…
The updated store should be rolling out to phones over the next couple weeks!
Ok. I’m a fan of Microsoft’s recent moves, but this is hilarious.
Engineers at Google started to suspect that Bing was copying their search results, so they set up a sting, tying nonsensical strings of letters to dummy web pages. Quickly after indexing each page and fake word search, Google Engineers found they could search for the same nonsense and get the dummy page on Bing.
Microsoft has yet to comment on the matter, but it would appear that not just consumers, but even Bing prefers Google…
The problem companies face when communities lack competition for services like Internet? The community might try to roll their own.
There are laws on the books in twenty states preventing communities from building out their own public high speed and fiber broadband, but communities in Kansas and Colorado are looking to move forward on their own local offerings.
Seven cities and counties in Colorado voted during the last election to exercise an escape clause in their anti-competition legislation. All that was required was allowing a community to take a vote on the matter, and every community that put it up for a vote had it pass by a large margin. Boulder Colorado passed their measure with 84% of the voter turnout supporting it.
The GAO released their report on Fixed Internet Usage and Usage-Based Pricing. The 41 page report details their testing and offers up their recommendations.
Their conclusion?
That the FCC should work with providers on educating consumers and developing a code of conduct for pricing and service. The FCC has already stated that they will be monitoring complaints to see if a more direct approach is necessary, but there hasn’t been much consumer uproar over capped home internet plans, especially as many groups are trying to influence the FCC’s “Fast Lane” proposal. With more of the focus on Net Neutrality and the upcoming Time Warner + Comcast merger, there’s probably far less noise being made about data caps.
This could become another battle soon however, as caps are another way ISP’s can enforce their policy and services to the detriment of their competitors, and it could have a chilling effect on consumer behavior. We’ve already covered Comcast’s horrifically bad “Flexible” plans, but it’s no surprise that more communities are following Chattanooga’s example and looking to build their own public data networks.
It’s a happy week for High Speed Internet junkies in Austin!
Google Fiber is getting the ball rolling in the south and southeast areas of the city for homes, apartments, and small businesses. Full Gigabit broadband will start at $70 a month, $130 a month will land you over 150 TV channels, and the fantastic free option remains for customers who pay a one time $300 construction fee, with speeds topping out at 5Mbps.
If you’re in the area and want to sign up, make sure you check out Google’s deadlines as they focus on building out the fiber in small pieces of each city. Congrats Austin! Hopefully someday, in my lifetime, the rest of us can join you in having truly fast internet access… Sigh… Someday…
I’ve really been enjoying my time with the Samsung NX30 which I picked up during their #DITCHtheDSLR event in Hollywood. It’s been a killer little mirrorless APS-C camera, and we’ve been using it recently to shoot our video reviews at 60FPS!
Well, you can’t really test an interchangeable lens camera without a couple extra lenses to interchange, so the fine folks at Samsung sent over a few for us to review, including their 45mm F1.8 3D lens!
I’m finding it’s actually terrifically difficult to share 3D files using traditional social networks, so I’ve set up a OneDrive folder where you can download the MPO files and view them directly via whatever method you prefer to use for 3D content. I’ve personally been running the files through an NVIDIA 3D Vision setup, and the shots are coming out much better than I would’ve expected for a consumer 3D solution.
Click on the folder or link below to see some of the 3D samples before we wrap up our review!