Let's Talk Tech
From time to time, it’s worth revisiting what we’re trying to accomplish. Talking about smartphones, it’s important to share what my goals are, so let’s have a chat about what we all want from tech YouTube videos. What do you care about? Here’s what’s important to me.
Continue reading “My Smartphone Bias: Fanboy? Hater? – SomeGadgetGuy Vlog”
Yesterday Google unveiled their new Nexus line up, new Chromecasts, and showed off a slew of services. One curious tease towards the end of their keynote revealed their strategy for offering up a new tier of productivity device.
The Pixel C.
Previous “Pixel” products utilized Google’s Chrome OS, but this next entry to the line will run stock Android, the operating system reserved for phones and tablets. Clearly Google is looking to compete with the recently announced iPad Pro, and the focus on productivity is clear. The Pixel’s signature accessory is a magnetic keyboard cover which includes and adjustable hinge.
There’s been a bit of a scramble lately in the tablet market. Sales are generally down. After being the hot item, destined to replace those boring old laptops, even Apple is struggling to grow sales year over year.
Continue reading “Are Tablets Ready for Productivity? The Promise of What’s to Come…”
It wasn’t something that I planned to do. In fact the problem was I didn’t plan as much as I should have before a shoot, and I left my house in a scattered flurry. Arriving at the studio after an hour on the 405, I checked my phone to see an assault of tweets, G+ messages, Youtube comments, emails, and a new survey for the Google Opinion Rewards app.
Why hadn’t my amazing wearable data device alerted me to all of this digital activity? Because I had carelessly left it on its charging dock at home.
It was an opportunity to see if smartwatches really did provide a benefit beyond just being cool techy gadgety things. For the last couple months, between a Pebble, a Toq, a Martian, and a Gear 2, there really haven’t been any days where I haven’t been wearing something on my wrist. Like my favorite traditional timepieces, I often wondered if they were more of a fashion statement than actual productivity devices. Continue reading “One Terrible Day Without a Smartwatch…”
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”
We all like to speculate about what’s coming down the pipe, what “THE FUTURE” will look like. One thing is becoming abundantly clear however, a good chunk of what’s coming is going to be delivered via networked, over the air, services. AKA The Cloud.
I know, shocking revelation. I’m sure none of you saw that coming, which is why it’s a good thing you read this blog, as I’m pretty terrific at delivering the obvious. All joking aside, we’re seeing some pretty exciting trends, and a few concerning ones.
Storage & File Delivery
This was essentially a proof of concept that basic data intensive services could work online. Putting larger files onto a server for easier delivery than email or “sneaker-net” style solutions. From YouSendIt to DropBox and everything else in between, we’ve flirted with the cloud primarily to sync and share information. It’s only been recently that data networks have gotten robust enough to offer…
Media Services
We’ve had Youtube for about nine years now. It’s made such a profound impact that it’s difficult to remember the internet without it. Of course, the push for HD video, and then competing services like Netflix and Hulu, really took hold over the last couple years. Online streaming radio is hot right now, and improved sharing and creation tools have lead to…
Collaborative Services
It’s not enough that we can upload a document. Multiple people can now work on it at the same time instead of emailing revisions back and forth. It’s not enough that I can vlog in front of a webcam, I can now broadcast to a live audience with multiple participants and have that automatically added to my Youtube channel.
So What Comes Next? Continue reading “It’s a Cloud Services World. We just pretend it’s about the hardware…”
HP has a bold new move to spark customer’s interest in PC’s again. They’re going BACKWARDS! That always works! People love a good nostalgia play!
Announced recently on their site and through an email blitz, HP proudly proclaimed they’re “listening to the consumer” and offering up systems running Microsoft’s last popular OS. It’s a desperate move from a company which has been struggling recently to adapt to a post-PC market. The parallels with Blackberry here are astounding. As BB was caught unprepared for consumers buying pretty smartphones, HP hasn’t been able to figure out their offerings in a world where iPads exist.
Pandering to a media narrative which is all too ready to baselessly criticize Windows 8, HP seems to be banking on the technology “hater” market to pull them out of their slump. You know, that group of people who rail against change and spend TONS of money on things like old laptops. That last sentence was sarcasm by the way. Regardless, I’m sure this will prove a winning strategy for the beleaguered tech firm (also sarcasm).
Here’s the fault in their logic. With all the haterade being dumped on Windows 8, You’d think every manufacturer would be in trouble. As a whole the entire industry is down 15-20% depending on who you ask to track the sales. Unfortunately for those taking glee in Microsoft’s stumble, companies like Asus and Lenovo exist, and both are actually improving their sales during this transition which is unprecedented. Built on the backs of innovative and creative design, Lenovo profits over the 2012/13 fiscal year were up almost 18% over the 2011/12 fiscal year. Embracing Windows 8, and providing consumers innovative products at competitive prices, seems to have worked for Lenovo.
The other major problem with HP’s reasoning is Apple. Continue reading “Editorial: HP’s Catastrophic Mistake – Bringing Windows 7 ‘back by popular demand’…”
A 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?”
Dammit Sammy. You should know better than this.
I know you’re the top dog right now, and the idea of slipping even a little can be terrifying considering how fast our current tech darlings become yesterday’s old news. I get it. Combined with the fact that the smartphone market is cooling off a little, I can totally see why you might want to shake things up a bit.
But not like this Samsung.
See I write about tech online. I have relationships with PR and with vendors and agencies. I have a small but loyal following of similarly-minded tech enthusiasts, and over years of producing in this space I’ve built up a little credibility. What you’ve done here Samsung is undermine all of that.
The internet is a skeptical place. I can’t praise or criticize anything without being accused of being a “fanboi” or being on a company’s payroll. The fact that you paid and organized writers to post negative commentary on your competitor’s products hurts our entire industry. The fact that you got caught is as unsurprising as it is tragic.
This story just takes a somewhat insidious turn knowing that you’re picking on a MUCH smaller company. HTC is fighting to stay out of the red. Remember a time not long ago when Apple was the Big Bad, and you were fighting to get Galaxies into consumer hands. You were the underdog. It was charming when you were plucky. You aren’t anymore. You’re the new Big Bad. This just makes you look like a jerk, a bully.
I don’t even know if the FTC’s fine of $340,000 even registers on your bank sheet. That’s a blip in a market where you proudly announce 40 MILLION Galaxy S4 sales. All I know is that this makes me skeptical of anything nice written about your products. It makes me skeptical of negative reviews against your competitors.
If it makes me skeptical, I can only imagine how my readers must feel…
TAIWAN BODY FINES SAMSUNG FOR BLASTING LOCAL RIVAL (Associated Press)