Category: Articles

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Google Fiber Begins Signing Up Residents in Austin

austin_fiber_vanIt’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…

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SomeGadgetGuy in THREE-DEE!!!

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!

SomeGadgetGuy 3D pics and vids!

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Google Publishes List of Top Android Apps for 2014

Google best apps of 2014Score a new Android over Black Friday? Looking to pick up a tablet this holiday season? Wondering what apps you should install first?

Google published their top Android app list for 2014, and it’s jammed pack with some winners. I’m happy to say that I’ve already snagged about half of these. Probably because I have excellent taste.

Did your favorite apps make the cut? Check out the list by hitting the link below!

Best (Android) Apps of 2014

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Happy Thanksgiving from SomeGadgetGuy!

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.

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Comcast XFINITY: Cut Your Internet Data Cap by 295GB, Save $5

comcast xfinity logoComcast 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”

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Review: The Food Network App on U-verse

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.

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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.

Continue reading “Review: The Food Network App on U-verse”

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Nokia Licenses Brand Name to FoxConn for N1 Android Tablet

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.

nokia n1 tablet front z launcherThe 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”

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TV Channel G4 Shutting Down November 30th

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…”

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