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Review: RAVPower Wireless Card and Flash Drive Reader – Use WiFi to share files between phones and tablets!

ravpower wireless card reader movie streamingI’m stoked to see more gadgets like this.

Getting files on and off our tablets and phones can be painful. As much as these devices claim autonomy, often we still need to resort to plugging them into proper computers. Wireless drives afford us more flexibility in handling our mobile data, allowing us to build portable clouds, and providing us easier solutions for sharing media with other people.

Let’s take a look at RAVPower’s entry into this gadget class with the RP-WD01.

More info on RAVPower devices.
The RAVPower Wireless Card reader on Amazon.

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FreedomPop adds Bring Your Own Phone option to free Smartphone plan

freedompop free smartphone plan screenshot somegadgetguyFreedomPop is a plucky MVNO which uses Sprint’s network to offer up a potentially market disrupting service. Namely plans starting at FREE per month. Yup. They’re bare minimum plans: 200 minutes, 500 texts, 500MB of data. Still, did I mention that you get all that for free?

Stepping up to plans with more minutes are reasonably priced. Their top plan includes 500MB of monthly 4G data and unlimited calling/texting for around $11 a month.

Until now, the only phone you could use on the plan was an old HTC EVO 4G (also reasonably priced for $100 for a limited time), but now FreedomPop is expanding to older Sprint phones. You can bring your own device to the table and sign up for free. Currently the supported pickings are slim: HTC EVO 4G, HTC EVO 3D, Samsung Epic 4G, Samsung Epic 4G Touch, Samsung Galaxy S III and LG Optimus S. We should see more phones added soon however.

If you have one of these older handsets kicking around, it might be worth it to sign up just to have a spare number use.

Check to see if your phone is compatible at: http://www.freedompop.com/byod

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Oxford Dictionary names “Selfie” its Word of the Year

800px-Dictionary_through_lensYou know what?

I’m actually fine with this. No really. Oxford writes up a fascinating look at the history of the word. They tracked down some of the earliest mentions of “selfie”. They explain the significance of the term. I’m a sucker for etymology, and selfie is one of those terms that does a really good job of summing up exactly what it is.

Compared to Webster Macmillan changing the definition of “literally” to mean “figuratively”, Oxford’s addition of selfie almost seems noble.

Other notable new additions to the Oxford dictionary this year include binge-watch, bitcoin, schmeat, and twerk.

(via Oxford Dictionary Blog)

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AT&T adds Unite Pro to Hotspot Lineup – Connect 15 devices to LTE over WiFi

ATTUNITE3[1]Business solutions often involve work groups. Try to connect a couple road warriors to data while on the go, and you can quickly max out most portable hotspots. Add in the fact that each person on the team will usually have more than one device, and keeping everyone “fed” gets even more difficult.

AT&T is adding the Netgear Unite Pro to their hotspot lineup, and while it comes with a number of handle features like dual band WiFi, a touchscreen, and 16 hours of battery life, the feature most will probably consider first is that it’s capable of connecting up to 15 individual devices over WiFi to share a 4G LTE data connection.

It might bog down a bit if all 15 try streaming HD video at the same time, but you should be served PLENTY of bandwidth to get your work done.

Unite Pro will cost $50 when it goes on sale November 22nd. Full PR and a video after the jump.

Continue reading “AT&T adds Unite Pro to Hotspot Lineup – Connect 15 devices to LTE over WiFi”

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The argument for buying the most expensive phone you can, even if you aren’t “tech-y”…

WP_20130728_004A quick thought here. We recently published our holiday tablet buying guide, and I’ll be releasing our phone guide later this week, but going through the list of candidates something struck me.

We keep saddling non-tech-y folks with under-powered hardware.

There’s this idea that because someone might not be super tech savvy, that all the bells and whistles of a premier smartphone will be wasted on them.

“Why would I want to spend money on stuff I might not use if I just want to check my email and make phone calls?”

Continue reading “The argument for buying the most expensive phone you can, even if you aren’t “tech-y”…”

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PSA: Qualcomm’s Toq Smartwatch available Dec. 2nd for $349.99

qualcomm toq smartwatch faceThe smartwatch market is growing ridiculously quickly. From early novelty with niche players to seeing big boys like Samsung enter the field. We can’t go a week without another Apple or Google smartwatch rumor. Qualcomm’s entry into this field is particularly exciting as it marks their first direct-to-consumer endeavor.

If you know about Qualcomm, it’s likely because you know what kind of processor is in your phone. They aim to change that relationship with Toq, their first smartwatch, which we covered following the announcement back in September. While the watch looked cool, and we were happy to hear about broad phone compatibility, we didn’t have a release date or pricing information. Now we have both.

Toq will be available JUST in time for the holiday gift buying season, and starting December 2nd you’ll be able to pick one up for $349.99. As the Galaxy Gear will only work with select Samsung phones, Toq could be an interesting alternative for those wanting a bleeding-edge smart experience strapped to their wrist. We’ll find out more early next month!

You can find out more info on Toq at: http://toq.qualcomm.com/

Related:
Qualcomm Toq Competes For Your Smartwatch Affection
New Qualcomm Radio Power Management Means More Run Time, Less Heat

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NVIDIA partners with IBM for GPU accelerated Super Computing, Unveils Tesla K40 GPU

NVIDIA_Tesla_K40_GPU_Accelerator_TopSo most folks understand that they have a special chip or card in their gadgets which runs the graphics on their computers, phones, game consoles, etc. A Graphics Processing Unit is really good at crunching numbers to provide us things like detailed environments, high resolution textures, dynamic lighting, and fluid particle effects. A GPU is purpose built to chew through information our CPU’s aren’t great at dealing with.

Over the last couple years, that number crunching ability is now being harnessed for other computing tasks. As an example, my video editing software uses my GPU to render video, so my aged workstation is still pretty quick at pushing high quality HD video out the door. The fact that I have an old CPU, doesn’t hamstring me that much.

2_Piz_Daint_destra_con_persona_LRWell, moving up the computing ladder, many number crunching super computers are incorporating GPUs. Piz Daint in Switzerland, activated earlier this year, utilizes NVIDIA K20X GPU’s. It was built for life science, physics, and meteorological simulations. The system is not only the fastest supercomputer in Europe, but it’s also up to 7 times more energy efficient than traditional computing solutions.  Continue reading “NVIDIA partners with IBM for GPU accelerated Super Computing, Unveils Tesla K40 GPU”

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Wearable Tech Review: The Martian Passport Bluetooth Smartwatch (with speakerphone test)

martian passport smartwatch review somegadgetguyIt’s a question of ergonomics.

How do we interact with pieces of data in a more organic way. Smartwatches look to aid in that interaction by taking some of the burden off of our phones.

While full face displays are currently all the rage, Martian has taken a more traditional clock-face approach to serving up notifications to our wrist.

Let’s take a look!

Shop for Martian Smartwatches on Amazon.

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