Review of Crazy, Stupid, Love

Review of Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Head to the Android Market Place Now

Good News for us Android owners. Google is celebrating its 10 billionth application download by offering us a few premium apps for 10 cents. Head to the market place now!

Sound Hound – Identify music on the go

Swift Key – One of the best 3rd party keyboards in the market

Sketch Book- Professional Grade paint and drawing application

Paper Camera- A fun lenses application for your camera

Asphalt 6- Race the world in this multi-player game

Endomondo Sports Tracker – Makes fitness more fun

Field Runners HD – A great tower defense game

Minecraft Pocket Edition- Create your own world with blocks

Great Little War Game – A great little multi-player war game

Color and Draw for Kids – The best color and draw application in the market place for kids.

Film Review of Atonement

Film Review of Atonement.

$65 Android Tablet worth It?

I was out shopping on Black Friday a long with roughly 70% of the country when I came across the Panimage Novel at a store called Ollie’s. I was not particularly looking for an Android tablet but while I was in the checkout line a clerk changed the price from $100 to $65 dollars and of course curiosity got the better of me. I figured maybe our children would like one of these since they love to play on our phones. As a huge fan of Android I probably should have known that the $65 price point was far too good to be true. See the features below.

- 2GB of internal memory with a SD/SDHC memory card slot.
- Supports eBooks, Video, Photo, Audio
- Stylus is included for note taking
- Wi-Fi and Wireless Lan connectivity
- (Plastic) 7 Inch Resistive touch screen

Within an hour of playing with this device I knew it would be going back to the store. Mind you if all you want to do is read books, watch video and go online then for $65 it is a pretty good deal. But if you have had the benefit of owning an Ipad or any other mid to high end Android tablet then this will feel like a bad joke. First off the screen is plastic and is resistive touch versus capacitive touch (Not mentioned anywhere on the packaging) meaning that this device won’t react to a light swipe of your fingers on the screen. Most if not all Smartphone’s and tablets today use capacitive touch screens. I found myself constantly needing to apply pressure to the screen in order to make things happen. The boot time for this device was also well over a minute long. Don’t expect to be able to view any videos on the internet either unless they are coded in HTML 5 because this device does not use Adobe Flash. No access to the Android market place instead you get an application that allows you to download a couple of apps. I believe that the total number of apps available to download were less then 3,000 and frankly none of them were anything that I would get much use of. Also 2 out of the 5 apps that I did download failed to open on the device “MAJOR FAIL”. I thought maybe I should take the time and root it and put another operating system on the device but frankly the plastic screen and no Adobe Flash was too much of a deal breaker.

Again if you are going to use this device to access the web and read books then this may be a steal. If you think this is going to be a good Android Tablet then you will be really disappointed. This device is currently selling at Amazon for $80 and maybe for some people this device may have enough features to make it worth it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Any tablet that does not allow you to download Angry Birds would be a no go for most people!

Never miss a concert again

So about a week ago I was listening to a song by Andre Belle and I thought I would not mind seeing him perform live in concert. So I googled to find out when or if he would be coming to Maryland anytime soon. Well I found out that I had just missed him because he was here in October. So I called a buddy of mine that goes to concerts frequently and asked him what is the best way to keep up with Artist that you may want to see when they are in town and he stated he follows them via Facebook fan pages. Well I came across an application that will ensure that you know when your artist is in town and it is called Gigbeat.

Gigbeat is a fantastic app and sorry folks but it is currently only available for Android phones. There is no setup involved because it scans your phones music files and logs the artists from your music stored in your phone. It tells you right away who are on tour and who are not next to their profile pictures as well as the details of which cities and venues they will be visiting as well as the specific dates. You also have the option to buy tickets via the Songkick service. You can also bring in your Last.fm favorite artists to track them as well and of course you can search for artists that may not be in your music library on your phone. I used Florence and the Machine as an example see the screen shots below.

Smartphone plan for cheap

Wow $19 a month for talk, text, and data without a contract?   Yes that is right a company called Republic Wireless announced this plan last week.  There are a few caveats and a big one is if you use too much data you will be booted.  They are able to provide this plan due to using Wi-Fi technology in a very intelligent way. The service automatically route calls and data usage via Wi-Fi whenever possible.  Once your phone is setup with your Wi-Fi credentials the phone decides if your Wi-Fi signal is strong enough to download a web page or make a phone call.  The end user does not have to do anything, no additional apps it just works.

The biggest caveat though is that if Republic Wireless deems you a data hog they reserve the right to cut you off.  That’s right you better watch your data usage because you will not get a refund for the price of the phone which is $199 if you get kicked off of their service.  For the time being the only phone that you can currently use with this plan is the LG Optimus which is a low end Android phone.  This phone does run the gingerbread operating system but it is highly unlikely that it will receive any operating system updates (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the future.

Republic Wireless does offer you some pretty good limits with this plan such as sending 150 texts, 550 minutes of talk as well as downloading 300mb of data in a month.  Republic Wireless indexes how much data you use and compares it to everyone else.  If you use too much you do receive a warning but if you continue using too much 3g data you will get the boot.  This plan is definitely not for everyone but if you find that you are not a heavy data user and like having extra money in your pocket then this plan maybe for you. 

 

For a limited time you can get the phone for $99 using “welcome19”. Offer valid until the 27^th of November.

Nook Color 2 or the Kindle Fire

Barnes & Noble held a press event today to announce the Nook Color 2.  It features a 7-inch screen with a 1024 X 600 pixel resolution of 169ppi, 1 GB of RAM and a dual core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4 processor. It will also come with 16GB of onboard storage. The cost will be $249 which is $50 higher than its main competitor the Kindle Fire. The Nook Color offers up to 8 hours of battery life but only 4 hours video playback. Unlike the Kindle Fire the Nook plays back video in HD quality.

 The Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display with a 1024 X 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi with 16 million colors. It comes with a dual core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4 processor with 8GB internal storage of which 6GB are actually available for user content. That equates to room for 80 apps or 8 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 eBooks. With wireless off the battery life is claimed at 8 hours of continuous reading or 7 and ½ hours of video playback.

One of the benefits is that Amazon is offering free cloud storage which helps if you do run out of storage on the device. On the other hand the Nook Tablet does offer support for up to 32GB of expandable storage which the Kindle fire does not. Both of these devices do not have cameras. If you have a Barnes and Noble nook product and you go into a Barnes and Noble you have access to all of the books within the store while you are in the store. The Kindle Fire brings a new service called the Kindle Lending Library which is included in the Prime membership and it lets you borrow a book for free once per month for a time period of 7 days. That feature is nice but at this time the content is very limited, think Netflix streaming.

If you don’t want to put out the big bucks ($499) for an Ipad or spend $300 for an android tablets then which of these 2 devices should you choose? They both come with 7 inch displays and are able to stream music, movies and books. The issue that I have with the Amazon Kindle is that in order to stream music and movies you have to be an Amazon Prime member. The cost of the membership is $79 a year and after that you may find yourself still having to pay for movies and television shows. The Nook Tablet will allow you to stream from Hulu Plus, Pandora and of course Netflix without any additional memberships. You also have more access to magazines, comics and music services like Rhapsody, Pandora, Grooveshark & MOG. When it comes to the books you will be tied in to either the Barnes and Noble online selection or Amazon’s. If you are an Amazon shopper and already have the Amazon Prime membership then the Kindle Fire is a no brainer and over the long run you will end up saving money due to content on Amazon being priced below the content on Barnes and Nobles. The unlimited cloud storage is also a huge plus. Personally I would just get the Nook Tablet because it comes with 16GB of onboard storage and with a $30 micro sd card I can expand that to 48GB.

Will CPR work for RIM?

Research in Motion has finally declined below book value.    RIMM is now valued at less the net value of its property, patents and other assets.  Is this a big step forward in the RIM Death Watch?  The company fell 2.9% percent yesterday in the markets to slightly above $19 yesterday.  Analysts are stating that they are losing business and customer loyalty is non-existent.  The good news is that they have announced the launch of the BBM music service.  This new service allows you to choose 50 songs to download and each month you can change-up to 25 songs.   In order to grow your music library past the original 50 songs you must have your friends be your friends in order to share their 50 songs.    Hopefully this will be one of the key components to stave of the competition right? 

RIMM continues to juggle far too many projects at once.  The Playbook version 2.0,  the transition to QNX while still servicing Blackberry OS 6 and OS 7. Rims market cap is now $9.85 billion which is barely more than what Skype was worth before Microsoft came in and purchased it.  Rims mounting problems really do seem to be unconquerable and if you are a RIM shareholder this is a warning to sell sell sell.   

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/rim-launches-blackberry-messenger-music-service/15991