Category: Articles

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App Review: Trivia Buff for Windows 8 and Android phones.

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Whether you are going to the DMV to register your new car or waiting patiently for your flight, you have a multitude of options to occupy your time on your cell phone while waiting. You could read some news, grind away at a game, or you could expand your knowledge of a subject through fun trivia bits. The Trivia Buff app from Dapper Panda may just be the cure for you!

The Trivia Buff app let’s you search for favorite topics. Just out of curiosity I searched for BMX as I used to race BMX bikes here on the east coast and I found out that Slash from GNR used to race BMX back in the day! How cool is that! With the Trivia Buff app you can start training your brain to collect all the info necessary to crush the next trivia night at your local pub.

The app pulls info from a variety of sources (though you will see a lot of wikis), so it’s only really limited by your own curiosity.

The Trivia Buff app is a no frills, straight forward app for your Windows 8 phone. There are no dark or light theme options. You can opt to buy the ad free version for a mere $0.99 to help support the fine folks over at Dapper Panda.  The options of the Trivia Buff app are few but very useful. You can change the font size, you can choose to show or not show the logo on the live tile and speaking of the live tile, you have 3 sizes, small, medium and large, and the last option is that you have a choice of browsers to use.

You really cannot go wrong with this app especially if you love to learn!
Trivia Buff is available for both Windows 8 phones and Android:

Trivia Buff Windows 8 phone

Trivia Buff for Android Continue reading “App Review: Trivia Buff for Windows 8 and Android phones.”

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UPDATED: Twitter sets IPO stock price at $26

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The speculation can end.

In true social media fashion, Twitter announced their stock price in a tweet. Of course there was a lot more info to announce than could be contained 140 characters or less, so they cheated by posting a picture… full of text…

At $26 a share, Twitter could drop more than $1.8 Billion into its coffers, and you too could own your very own piece of “TWTR” when it goes on sale this Thursday.

All that’s left is to see how the market responds…

***UPDATE***

In morning trading the stock opened at $45.10, and has held to around $46 so far. It’s estimated that Twitter will receive over $2 Billion, and there’s been far less drama today than during Facebook’s shaky public offering.

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Activision announces $1Billion opening day sales for ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’, while we wait for Next-Gen sales numbers…

IMG_20131105_224423Great news for Activision, but potentially troubling news for Sony and Microsoft.

Activision today released sales figures topping $1 Billion for it’s opening day release of Call of Duty: Ghosts, a new series to its popular shooter franchise. This obviously points to the $800 Million opening day performance of Rockstar Game’s GTA: V, even though these two opening day “sales” figures aren’t directly comparable.

Rockstar announced sales to consumers for it’s opening day, while Activision is talking about sales to retail channels. Regardless, it’s still juggernaut sales performance considering Activision somehow manages to pop out a new installment every year.

What the entire industry now awaits are CoD sales numbers for the PS4 and XBox One. Nearing the release of these next gen consoles, Activision opted to release versions of the game compatible with Sony and Microsoft’s next systems. Those sales figures could be valuable data for gauging what early console adoption might look like, and how engaged the consumer base might be.

It must be a difficult decision for the hardcore gamers out there. Play CoD immediately or wait for next gen consoles to arrive. Activision can only hope that some of their consumer base might actually motivated to buy the game twice…

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Why now is the PERFECT time to diversify your Technology Portfolio, or why you should stop Fanboying and try a competitor’s product…

WP_20130728_004When I started writing about tech I made a promise to myself that I would try my hardest not to just bag on products. That I would take a second to use something, figure out who it might be for, and whether it could live up to the claims of the company who manufactured it. I can’t say I’ve always perfectly executed this regiment, but I’ve found that it has significantly changed my outlook on consumer electronics. I’m no longer satisfied with “thumbs up / thumbs down” reviews. I want to know about experience.

This opens up a whole world of discussion in that almost no product completely fails in its mission. Often, now the exploration of a gadget is better described by how wide or narrow a particular audience might be. In fact, most tech I get my hands on is actually quite good, once I figure out who it might be designed for.

There’s a particular divisiveness surrounding things like phones and tablets. As geek has become somewhat chic, people identify with certain brands, and those brands start to become a visible indication or description of that individual’s personality. Just like clothes, cars, sunglasses, etc, now our gadgets “send a message” to others about who we are. I’ve certainly been guilty of trying to size someone up by looking at what phone they use and how well they take care of it. Continue reading “Why now is the PERFECT time to diversify your Technology Portfolio, or why you should stop Fanboying and try a competitor’s product…”

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AT&T adds Unite mobile hotspot to GoPhone prepaid line up

netgear-unite-white-450x350Adding a little more data flexibility to prepaid services, AT&T is offering up a handy mobile hotspot to the GoPhone line up.

The Netgear Unite is an LTE enabled rectangle about the size of a deck of cards which shares a 4G data signal with up to ten devices. It’s controlled via a bright 2.3″ color touchscreen, and the battery life should be good for around 10 hours of sharing.

Throwing a product like this to prepay is an interesting move. For families or small workgroups who might not need this kind of functionality mainline all the time, but they can fire it up and pay for the usage when they need it.

The Unite will launch with two basic plans 250MB for $15 a week, or 5GB for $50 a month. It’ll be available starting November 12th for $99.99, and you should be able to find it online and at Walmart.

More details after the jump.

Continue reading “AT&T adds Unite mobile hotspot to GoPhone prepaid line up”

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On the Red Carpet for the Hollywood Premiere of Thor: The Dark World! #SkypeMarvel

I love movies. I used to host a movie review show. My pals at Skype got in touch with me to see if I would like to attend the Hollywood premiere of Thor: The Dark World, and I of course said “Hells Yes”. I had on the blast on the red carpet hanging out with Amy Dallen from Geek and Sundry, and I got some great candid photos of the film’s stars being interviewed for the event.

The film was a lot of fun (I liked it better than the first one), and I’d like to thank Skype for hooking up a great moment! Catch my shots in the slideshow below. Fair warning, Google embedding is broken, so it’ll take you to my G+ page in a new tab, but the slideshow will continue here on the blog.

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AT&T scores exclusive on Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom

GALAXY-S4-zoom_backNo sooner do I finish up a monster camera smartphone comparison video, than this photo beast gets announced for the United States. Typical.

The S4 Zoom is an interesting beast. One part mid-range phone one part zoom point and shoot. While companies like Nokia went with huge megapixels and cropping to simulate zoom, Samsung just bolted a mechanical zoom lens onto the back of a smartphone. Learning from their experiences in building the Galaxy Camera, now you can have a similar experience which is a touch more pocket-able.

The phone side is decent enough, a qHD 4.3″ AMOLED screen is a bit low res these days, but should help performance stay snappy when paired with the dual core processor on board. There’s 8GB of storage built in and you can add more via MicroSD. All in all somewhat ho-hum for an Android phone these days.

Where Zoom gets interesting is in the camera hardware. A 16MP BSI CMOS point & shoot style sensor is paired up with a 10X hardware zoom, which is controlled via a manual ring. There’s even a proper Xenon flash on board for low light and indoor shots. Sammy makes some decent camera gear, so this pairing looks like it could be formidable. Slamming Android into a proper camera experience is a fun way to shoot, edit, and share photos while you’re out and about. Adding support for LTE on AT&T’s network is just icing.

This adds to AT&T’s increasingly interesting device portfolio, and Big Blue now stands as having one of the widest selection of Android and Windows Phones around.

The Galaxy S4 Zoom is available starting November 8 for $199 on a two year contract. The Zoom will also be eligible for AT&T’s current promo where you can snag yourself a free Galaxy Tab when signing up for a new plan. More info at: www.att.com/galaxys4zoom

Full PR and a video hands on after the jump.

Continue reading “AT&T scores exclusive on Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom”

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Google escalates war with Microsoft, Shutting down 3rd Party Google Voice apps on Windows Phone

nokia lumia 1020 google voice metrotalkThe cold war between these two tech giants is heating up fast.

Google is taking an extremely aggressive stance towards Windows Phone. None of Google’s services are currently officially available for Microsoft’s mobile operating system, and Google has been very vocal about not developing for the platform. Recently Google forced Microsoft to remove a nice and functional Youtube app from their Phone Store and replace it with a lame browser based version. Now Google has set their sights on 3rd party Google Voice apps.

As their Hangouts app looks like it’ll become the single backbone service for all of Google’s text, audio, and video communication they’ve issued a notice that all GV apps must be shut down by May 1st of 2014. Google Plus Product Manager Nikhyl Singhal had this to say: Continue reading “Google escalates war with Microsoft, Shutting down 3rd Party Google Voice apps on Windows Phone”

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