Let's Talk Tech
Toast is one of my favorite case and cover manufacturers, using real wood for their skins, manufacturing here in the United States, and power their plant with renewable energy. I got a chance to check out their upcoming covers for the LG G3, iPhone 6, and Surface Pro 3!
Review: Toast Cover for the Pebble Smartwatch
Review: Toast Cover for the Samsung Galaxy S5
The two Lenovo’s I was most excited to see in the flesh after their announcement at IFA, Lenovo brought them for me to play with at CTIA! Let’s take a quick look at the new Helix and the Y50 Touch gaming laptop!
I had an AMAZING weekend thanks to the Lumia and Mix Radio crews flying a bunch of fun folks out to Delaware to hit the Firefly 2014 music festival!
Four days of live music and fun. I had a blast hanging out with amazing people and making some new friends. Here’s my recap of the weekend!
Posted to their Facebook page today, Microsoft will be giving away eight Windows Phones at each of their stores this May 3rd and 4th.
Details are a bit slim, but if you’re looking to score a free phone, it looks like you’ll be playing a game. We know it’s called the “Opportunity Rings, Answer It” game, but we don’t know how it’ll be played. We also don’t know what phones will be given away, and what carriers will be supported.
Still a free phone is a free phone, and if you live near a Microsoft store it might be worth the trek. A little additional info can be found on their Facebook event page. Good luck!
It’s a big day for Microsoft. Kicking off their BUILD Developer Conference, Joe Belfiore took us through an on stage demo of Windows Phone 8.1 and the new Cortana digital assistant.
New Phones
Microsoft announced new partnerships with MicroMax and Prestigio to develop hardware. These companies should help expand Windows Phone’s presence in European, African, and Asian markets.
Of course the premier line of Windows Phone handsets is the Nokia Lumia line. Stephen Elop took the stage to show off the Lumia 930, which looks like an international version of the Lumia Icon we’ve been reviewing over the past several weeks, only now we’ll have more colors than stingy Verizon was willing to offer up.
Nokia also has two mid range phones on the way, the Lumia 630 with 3G and dual sim variants, and the Lumia 635 with 4G LTE. The dual sim 630 will show off different colored Live Tiles for each of the sim accounts.
The Lumia 630 will be priced at $159 for single sim, $169 for dual sim, and $189 for LTE, and it’ll be the first phone to land with Windows Phone 8.1. It wasn’t announced what the screen resolution of the 630 will be, but it is arriving with the newer 3 rows of Live Tile arrangement found on the 1520 and Icon. Cortana will also be arriving for these entry level handsets.
ALL Nokia Windows Phone 8 Lumias will be upgraded to WP8.1 this summer, which is exciting even down to customers who opted for a sub-$100 Lumia 520, especially when compared to the Android market at that price point.
Windows Phone 8.1 Updates
A ton of new features and polish are coming to the Windows Phone platform. Demonstrated on stage, here’s a short list of some of the highlights!
WordFlow keyboard is getting gesture “Swype” style typing. You can now slide your thumb around the keyboard to create words. This new keyboard now holds the Guinness Book world record for fastest text entry. Continue reading “Microsoft BUILD 2014 Developer Conference Kicks Off with Windows Phone 8.1, New Phones”
It’s been years in the making. We’ve seen teases and rumors, and now it’s officially arriving on iPads DATE.
Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella took the wraps off the app we all knew was coming today during his first public address. Stressing the five to ten year outlook for Microsoft, Nadella shared his ideas on changing computing form factors not resembling the machines we use today. User interactions, apps, services, and cloud computing defining the future of our interactions.
General Manager for Office Development Julia White discussed the solutions Microsoft are developing to serve the crossover between corporate applications and consumer applications. Showing us a highly touch optimized version of the Office Suite for iPad. Continue reading “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Unveils Office for iPad”
As I take in the sights and sounds of Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) 2014, and the occasional suspicious smell, which I overhear someone claim is that of hot dogs, a deep feeling of suspense starts stirring within me. A merciless coup is forming poised to strike with undaunted ferocity. The harbinger, a very specific new trend with the capability of completely disrupting everything we think we know about gaming. No, more than that. Reality itself.
Virtual and augmented reality is about to mount a full-scale invasion on your sense of “the real.” It is about to change the way you consume interactive and passive content. An assault, amassing so much power and such allies, before it even lands upon the shores of our consumer collective consciousness, it is doing everything in its power to win the war before a single shot is fired.
At every recent tech convention, the absolutely longest line, by far, to experience the latest and greatest in entertainment and gaming is not at any long-established heavyweight veteran’s booth. It is, instead, snaking along the perimeter of a brand new, fresh-faced, hyper-ambitious startup’s booth. The banner reads, “Oculus.” And this phenomenon is repeated at every other booth showcasing their wares via a “generation one Oculus developer’s kit.”
Having taken the Oculus experience for a spin at CES a few months ago, I will not be waiting in the hour-plus line to demo a couple minutes of the developer’s latest generation Rift, sporting 1080p displays, much wider field of vision, and low-latency buttery goodness. I will say, at CES, it lived up to every shred of hype I had heard prior, even exceeding my unfairly high expectations. But here at GDC, what I was more taken in by was the very fact that I was staring at a booth filled with dozens of people jacked into Rift headsets, lost in a world separate from this one, truly immersed and interacting inside in a virtual sphere.
Then… the trumpets sounded, the heralds cried, and Sony announced Project Morpheus. Their own version of a totally immersive, HD, virtual reality headset, complete with infrared head-tracking, stylish blue LED-glowing trim, and tailor-made to be a bold companion peripheral to their own Playstation. Continue reading “Your New Reality Is Ready – A look at the newest VR and Augmented Reality from GDC”
Samsung is about to show off all the juicy details for their next flagship phone, and while the look of the phone has already leaked, there’s plenty more to discuss. Let’s look at some phones and new Gear smartwatches!