Verizon Reveals 4G LTE Launch Details - 5 Things You Need to Consider

Verizon announced their launch details (finally) for their 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) data service today.  While there weren't any surprises, it did finally deliver what most people wanted to know, the date and pricing.   This news is certainly exciting, but should you go out and buy a new 4G LTE device this weekend?  Click the link below to find out.

We shouldn't blame Apple, we should blame ourselves

At 10 am EST you could hear the moans of disappointment across the internet.  People were outraged because Apple's major iTunes announcement was that The Beatles entire song catalog was now available on iTunes.  There was no announcement of iTunes Live Streaming, no cloud storage solution, no canceling of Ping, and no redesign on the hated iTunes 10 logo.  But I am here to tell you that the only people we can blame for this disappointment is ourselves.  Read on to find out why.

Facebook's Idea of Email

Image from MaximumPC

To no one's surprise, Facebook announced their new email/messaging service today.  If you have no idea what I am talking about then stop right now and read this post first.  If you do know what I am talking about then continue on past the break to see if the rumors were true and if anything unexpected was announced.

No One is Going to Poke Facebook Email

On Friday the internet exploded with news that Facebook is going to reveal their new email service, that some have called a gmail killer, tomorrow.  Not much is known about this new service and what exactly Facebook has planned, but some seem to think that Gmail is doomed.  We won't know for sure until after the event on tomorrow, but I am here to tell you that Gmail and other mail services have nothing to worry about.  Click the read link below to find out why.

What Twitter Can Do For Your Blog

I admit I was a little slow to get on the Twitter bandwagon.  As a technology lover I usually jump all over new things, but I just didn't feel an urge to join Twitter.  Maybe it was because Twitter was so popular and was everywhere in the media, or maybe it was because I just didn't get the point.  But now that I started blogging, I am starting to understand the power of Twitter.  I am also starting to understand that Twitter has a bit of a learning curve.  Click the read link to find out what Twitter can do for your blog.

Why Can't we Print From Our Smart Phones?

Image credit: Databazaar blog

Now I know there are apps you can buy on the iOS App Store and in the Android Marketplace that will let you print from your phone, but why isn't it built into the operating system itself?  If smart phones are the next phase in evolution for computers, it should be a standard function.

Now honestly I admit, the need for me to print something from my phone doesn't popup very often, but when it does it becomes an issue.  Not enough of an issue to buy an app, but enough to make me wonder why this hasn't been solved by now.  I do have some theories why I think this is a feature that hasn't become a standard yet.  Hit the read link to see what they are.

7 Reasons Why Microsoft's Kinect Will Fail

Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect?  I give it less then a year.  Once the initial launch craze dies down we won't see another positive news story about it until Xbox owners rejoice when Microsoft announces it will stop supporting Kinect.  At least we will have a couple of months of hilarious Kinect injury videos until that happens.

Welcome to the second post in my series of why Kinect will succeed or fail.  In this post I will discuss seven reasons why I think Xbox 360 Kinect will fail.  If you want to read the seven reason why I think it will succeed then click here.  To read the seven reasons why it will fail, click the read link below.

7 Reasons Why Microsoft's Kinect Will Succeed

Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect will be a smashing success.  In one years time we will forget about the PlayStation Move and Nintendo's Wii will be stumbling to figure out how to make the next Wii to reclaim the success they once had.  Why do I say this?  Because Kinect is advanced motion technology that doesn't require silly glowing orbs to work.

Ok that might be a strong statement, but in my first of two posts I will discuss 7 reasons why I think Microsoft's Kinect will be a success.  I will shortly follow this with 7 reasons why I think it will fail, but for now click the link to see my 7 success reasons.

Update:  Click here to read TBone's 7 reasons why Kinect will fail

Save Money Everyday with Amazon Deals of the Day

Image from Amazon.com

Amazon has a great site feature which is well publicized but honestly took me years to discover.  Ever since I have discovered it I have been able to score some of the items I have wanted for great prices.  It has honestly changed they I shop for items on the web.  Now I don't use it to buy things everyday, but I do check it everyday to see if something I want is featured and on sale for a good price.  The feature is called Amazon Gold Box Deals.

The easiest way to check out the current deals is to look on my own page.  For your convenience I have included the Amazon Daily Deals widget on the right side of my page.  To be honest this is a quick and consolidated way to get access to all the daily Gold Box deals on Amazon.  finance

XBOX 360 Kinect Review Round-Up

Review Round-Ups are a collection of reviews for a product from sites that I read before I decide on going ahead with the purchase or not.

XBOX 360 KINECT REVIEWS

• Kotaku
• Joystiq
• Engadget
• Gizmodo
• Wired 

TBONE'S TAKEAWAYS

• Reviews seem generally mixed.
• You will need a lot of space to use Kinect.  Most sites noted you need at least 6 ft for single player games, and 9 ft for multiplayer local games.
• Gotta move those coffee tables so they are not in front of the TV, otherwise Kinect won't be able to see your feet
• Most sites said the voice commands seemed to work really well, but current implementation is limited
• Navigating the XBOX Dashboard with Kinect (read: using hand motions) is limited and needs work
• Almost everyone was pretty excited about the future potential of the product.  Microsoft just needs to work out some bugs and expand functionality.
• Launch lineup of Kinect games is pretty weak with the pack-in Kinect Adventures and the sold separately Dance Central being the stand outs. 

 

Facebook's Mobile Event was a Snooze Fest

Image from Engadget

Most people were thinking that today's Facebook Mobile event would finally reveal the speculated Facebook phone.   Well, it did not.  In fact Mark Zuckerberg flat out said they would not be making a phone.  Instead he said that Facebook was a software company and that they would be concentrating on a software mobile platform.  As you can imagine, this lead to a pretty boring press event.  But there was one thing that caught my interest, hit the read more button below to see what that was.

Why Aren't We Able to Vote Online Yet?

For those of you not aware, today was voting day for midterm elections.  I am sure most of you voted today, but I am gonna be honest, I did not.  Why?  It's not because I am one of those people that doesn't believe in voting.  I am proud that I have the right to vote, and believe if you don't vote then you lose your right to complain.  But the actual process of voting needs to move into the 21st century.

With the iPad and New MacBook Air, is Apple Confused? Cause I Am.

Honestly I am surprised no one has really talked about this yet.  When Apple first announced the iPad, they made the argument that the user needs three product categories, a phone, a laptop, and something in the middle.  That something they said was the iPad.  Bigger screen and more horsepower than the iPhone, made especially to consume content.

The MacBook is meant to be used to create content since they have desktop like processors, dedicated graphics cards, and full size keyboards with multi-touch track pads.  But the new MacBook Airs have all  of those things too, or at least some version of them.  They also have many of the same features of an iPad like a long battery life/standby time, instant on from suspend state, and portability.  So where do the new MacBook Airs fit?

I don't think Apple is trying to create a new fourth category of device, but it doesn't really fit in the iPad or MacBook category.   Most people would just say that it fits in the netbook category, and I kind of agree with them, but Apple has said many times they don't see the point of netbooks.  So who is Apple trying to target?  Is this just what they think a laptop should really be? I think the answer to that question is yes.

The MacBook Air is just a temporary placeholder for what all MacBooks will be once the chipsets and batteries get small enough.  For the time being I think they are just targeting the netbook crowd; Steve Jobs just never wants to go back on previous statements that he has made.  So the real question is, do you see a need for the MacBook today?  Or will you just rather have a full featured laptop and an iPad?

The PlayStation Phone -- Engadget

The PlayStation Phone -- Engadget

I know I am a little late on this, but Engadget broke a major story about details of the Sony Playstation phone earlier in the week. Seems like a mix of a PSP Go and a Sony Xperia phone. Also of note is the touch sensitive strip which is supposed to mimic dual analog sticks. I will be writing a post later on to discuss my thoughts on the subject.

Sony Google TV Blu-ray Player Hands On

I stopped by my local Sony Style store yesterday to checkout the Google TV products.  I am pretty excited for Google TV so I was expecting their store display units to be packed with people, they were not.  I was happy about that though since I wanted to spend some serious time with Sony's Blu-ray Google TV player.

For those unaware of what Google TV is, click on this link for some information and videos from Google.

HARDWARE


The unit was a lot bigger then I was expecting.  While not as tall as a PS3, the footprint looked bigger to me.  It is a nice looking piece of hardware.  The sides are wrapped in glossy white plastic, and the top is covered with blue reflective plastic.  I know in pictures it looks like the top is black, but in person it has a pretty deep blue tint to it.

 The front of the box has a USB port, a power/eject button, and a connect button which is used to reconnect the remote as far as I can tell.  The back has your standard ports that you would expect.  Two HDMIs (one in, one out), optical out for audio, ethernet, IR blaster, and three USB ports.  The large fan that other sites have talked about is there.  You  have to remember though this is closer to a home theater PC than it is a blu-ray player.  It also has WiFi built in.

The much talked about remote was actually a lot more comfortable then I would have thought.  In a bit of irony it actually feels like an xbox 360 controller, just much lighter.  While the remote is comfortable to hold, it's an absolute mess to use.  While the QWERTY keyboard isn't so bad, its still hard to type something without looking down at the pad.  There are way to many buttons on it, and its hard to understand what they all do.  You spend most of your time in the dark grey area using the two directional pads.  The left pad is your standard four way directional pad with an ok button to select things in the middle.  The right pad is actually an optical touch pad.  Around the touch pad are your standard android buttons with the exception of search; this has been replaced with the Dual View toggle, more on that later.

The touch pas was responsive, but something i was surprised by is you use this to navigate almost everything.  The left directional pad doesn't really do much.  When using the touch pad, the screen doesn't not scroll automatically when you reach a screen edge.  You actually have to hold down the scroll button on the top of the controller to enable scroll.  I think this was a smart design decision given the frustration users might have when trying to select something near an edge.  The only other thing I found odd was the placement of the search button.  For a product that is based on a Google platform and has search as one of its main features you would think the search button would be front and center.  Instead, it is at the bottom of the controller next to the space bar.

SOFTWARE

I didn't capture any pics of the software because I think you can can a good idea of the look and feel of the interface on Google's site.  Instead I will just give you my impressions of the software.  I thought the performance of the box was pretty good.  I wouldn't call it snappy, but I would say it is on par with the PS3 XMB.  The only real difference between the TV with Google TV and the blu-ray player is the extra app added to watch blu-ray movies.  All the built in apps work just like you would expect.  Chrome is just like chrome on the any PC or mac.  Netflix looks and works like it does on all the other platforms it is on.  The apps really do have an android feel to them, which is expected given that Google TV is built on android.

The search feature is very helpful.  I tried generic search terms and got back what I was expecting.  For example I searched football and got back all the current college games that were on DirectTV along with the NFL channel.  The only problem I had was that I couldn't get any HD channels to return back.  Though this is most likely do to how the store had DirectTV setup and not the box's fault.   I should note  though that I did have trouble getting back to live TV.  It is easy to launch into the Google TV menu, but it was pretty hard to return back to live TV.  I couldn't get the back button to do it and for some reason the live TV button didn't work all of the time for me.

The only other issue I had was getting the Dual View to work.  Dual view is supposed to allow the user to view the Google TV software and live TV in picture-in-picture, but I kept getting an error on the blu-ray box.  It seemed to work fine on the TV sets, but every time I tried pressing the Dual View button on the remote I got an error.  I tried this on two different boxes and got the same error on both.

WRAP-UP


I walked into to store pretty excited about GoogleTV.  I left the store more excited about the future of the platform then its current state.  I think once they open the platform up to app developers and once Google works out issues with network TV and Hulu then it could really take off.  But at $399.00 its a bit hard to suggest given that it is basically a standard blu-ray player with some added software enhancements.  Sony will either have to lower the price, or Google will have to update the platform more to make it worth it.

New 11.6" MacBook Air Shutdown Time

I was also able to capture a video of the shutdown time.  This was actually a lot faster then I was expecting.    

New 11.6" MacBook Air Boot Up

Just got back from the Apple store and was able to play around with the new 11.6" MacBook Air.  I captured a video of the boot up sequence and also show putting it into sleep state and then waking it up.  As you can see the boot up is fast, but I was expecting faster.  It is a very nice looking machine though, small and light.