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j5 create’s Wormhole Station

Posted by Andrew at 8:33 AM on January 31, 2012

j5create logoj5 create‘s background in USB display adaptors means they know a thing or two about using both hardware and software to create unique solutions. j5 Create’s Wormhole cable is one such solution as it joins two computers into one…and they don’t even have to be running the same OS. Fred shows Jeffrey and Steve some of the benefits of this innovative technology, which won a CES Innovation Honoree award.

At its most basic the Wormhole switch is simply a USB 2 cable that connects between two computers, but clever software allows the computers to work together, with one keyboard and mouse being shared between the two. The OS of the two devices doesn’t have to be the same and an Android tablet being controlled by a Windows PC is perfectly possible. Files can be seamlessly transferred between the two machines as well. Pretty smart.

Moving on to a second product, j5 create has a very desirable line of small docking stations for laptops that are little more than foot-long shiny tubes with a plethora of ports. Branded “ultrastations” and connecting via USB 3, these take full advantage of the faster data rate to provide a myriad of connections, including HDMI, through a single USB 3 cable. Nice.

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of The Geekazine Podcast and Steve Lee of Netcast Studio.

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Posted in Android, Apple, ces, google, IPAD, Microsoft, Special Media, USB, Windows

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I Feel Stupid

Posted by Andrew at 7:25 AM on December 28, 2011

Windows Phone 7Over the break, there’s been a bit of discussion by some of the big names regarding the reasons why Windows Phone 7 handsets haven’t been flying off the shelves this holiday season. Charlie Kindel started the debate with “Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t It Taken Off?” and largely faults the relationship between the OEMs, Microsoft and the carriers.

MG Siegler responded with a fairly weak response largely citing the mantra of “too late and not enough apps” but as can be seen from today’s news of 50,000 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, the latter argument really isn’t that valid.

As usual, Robert Scoble hits the nail on the head. People buy Android or iOS because it’s a safe bet and they don’t want to look stupid or uncool by buying something else. Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and RIM’s Blackberries simply don’t have the gold-plated appeal of a sure-thing.

And he’s right. I was a big Palm fan and look how that turned out. I do feel stupid. After spending years waiting for Palm to move from PalmOS to WebOS and then HP promising to do big things. I bought in with a succession of Pre phones and pre-ordered a TouchPad. Maybe I shouldn’t be so shallow and have a less of an ego, because WebOS is a great operating system and even with the smaller app selection, it does 99% of what I need a phone to do. But when everyone else is, “Have you got this app and that app” on their Galaxy S IIs and iPhone 4Ss, you do feel a bit of a chump.

So thanks, HP. I feel stupid.

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Posted in Android, Apple, application, blackberry, Geek Culture, google, HP, HTC, iOS, IPAD, iPhone, Microsoft, mobile, Operating Systems, Palm, smartphone, tablet, Windows Phone 7

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Microsoft’s Last CES?

Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 6:14 PM on December 21, 2011
microsoft logo

microsoft logo

I’m not sure if Microsoft is following Apple’s footsteps from a few years ago, but it was announced earlier today that after CES2012, Microsoft is pulling out of Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

From Microsoft’s Blog: “We have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES. We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.”

For the last 20 years, Microsoft has been a big part of CES. The opening keynote has been given by Microsoft’s Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer during those 20 years.

Now, there have been some posts that say Microsoft is pulling out completely. As far as this blog goes, it sounds like Microsoft is only relinquishing the Opening keynote spot. Not the Microsoft booth.

Still, one has to wonder what this means for the Consumer Electronics Show. The opening keynote was always a hot ticket for the show – How do you replace that? Better yet, is there anyone that can replace that?

 

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Posted in Microsoft

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XBox adds Voice, Gestures with TV Update

Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 9:28 AM on December 5, 2011
Xbox 360

Xbox 360

A new interface for XBox 360 game console users allows you to use your voice to navigate through the games, TV shows, movies and music.

Steve Ballmer showed off this technology back in September, but starting this Tuesday, this becomes reality. It adds not only remote gesture control, but also remote voice commands. Therefore, if you don’t have a Kinect motion controller, you still can control without a remote.

The Associated Press got a special demonstration of the new features. When the Microsoft employee said “XBox Bing ‘Iron Man’,” a search for Iron Man came up. When the employee said “XBox, show movies,” a list of movies from various sources appeared.

With over 57 million XBox units sold, Microsoft is expecting to make a real impact in the cord cutters market. Adding pay channel partners like Verizon FIOS means that XBox will get into the Over the top TV market with a vengeance. You will have to use over-the-air or alternate cable methods to get network TV like NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox.

The real question is how this will affect your household. Will you cut your cord over this update? Will you start to use the XBox as more than a gaming system?

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Posted in Microsoft

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EA Releases Need for Speed Hot Pursuit for Android

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 5:48 PM on November 5, 2011

EA, one of the most popular game makers, has been in the mobile market for some time now.  Thanks to a deal with some handset makers, like Motorola, preview editions of their games come pre-installed.  That’s great but, of course, to get the whole game you have to pay up.  Also, in some cases the games are not even an option for uninstall.  That’s bad, but here’s what is not so bad – EA makes some really good games.  Their flagship racing game, Need for Speed, has been a best-seller in the Android Market with the “NSF Shift” version.

Now NSF Shift has been surpassed by EA’s latest release, which hit the market a couple of days ago.  Need for Speed Hot Pursuit is now available with a host of cool features.  You can choose from a variety of sports cars that will make the average male drool.  There’s the Porsche, Pagani, Bugotti, and Lamborghini Murcielago to name just a few.  Or, if you choose to be the cop in this game, you can get the rarest of them all – the Lamborghini Reventon.

Before you get too excited though, there’s one key thing you need to know.  To get the hottest cars you will need to unlock them.  Unlocking a car requires a certain amount of points.  With each point level reached another vehicle becomes available.  Once you get a car you can choose to use it or any of the ones you have already unlocked.  You can also customize its color by using sliders to choose the way you want your vehicle to look.  Like the previous NSF Shift, it uses your phone’s accelerometer to control the car.

The game is available for $6.99 from the Android Market.  It’s not a small download, being around 500MB when it’s all said and done, but it will entertain any mobile gamer.  In the first 24 hours my son is up to a Porsche Cayman, but I would really like my Droid back…

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Posted in Android, Gaming, Microsoft

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Android Handsets More Unreliable

Posted by Andrew at 2:15 PM on November 3, 2011

Android LogoWireless expert WDS is reporting that high failure rates in Android handsets are costing mobile network operators as much as $2 billion per year in dealing with repairs and returns. Reviewing the four leading mobile operating systems, its study found that Android-based devices seemed more prone to failure as 14% of technical support calls on Android were for hardware, versus 11% for Windows Phone, 7% for iOS and just 6% for BlackBerry OS.

Simplistically, Android handsets were twice as likely to suffer a hardware fault that an Apple or RIM device. The study suggests that cheaper hardware, software customisations and OS updates all contribute to the failure rate and in turn, the increased impact on the network operators to provide technical support and customer service. WDS analysed over 600,000 technical support calls from July 2010 to August 2011.

“One thing we must be absolutely clear on,” says Tim Deluca-Smith, Vice President of Marketing at WDS, “is that our analysis does not find any inherent fault with the Android platform. Its openness has enabled the ecosystem to grow to a phenomenal size, at a phenomenal rate, and it’s this success that is proving challenging.”

He added, “The Android customer experience differs enormously between devices and this means that the way in which Android devices are retailed and supported must consider factors such as the hardware build and quality of components.”

If you are thinking about buying or upgrading your smartphone, you might want to bear this research in mind before you purchase.

The full WDS whitepaper can be downloaded from this page.

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Posted in Android, Apple, blackberry, Microsoft, RIM, smartphone, Windows Phone 7

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Ubuntu Linux Heads for Smartphones and Tablets

Posted by Andrew at 5:01 PM on October 30, 2011

ZDNet is reporting that Canonical is intending to make the next release of Ubuntu, 12.04, a LTS (Long Term Support) release with intention of then expanding Ubuntu beyond desktops and laptops into smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, with a target of 2014 for an all-platform release.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, in an interview said, “This is a natural expansion of our idea as Ubuntu as Linux for human beings. As people have moved from desktop to new form factors for computing, it’s important for us to reach out to out community on these platforms. So, we’ll embrace the challenge of how to use Ubuntu on smartphones, tablets and smart-screens.” The full announcement is expected at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, which starts tomorrow and runs for a week in Orlando, Florida.

Having already been in discussions with partners for around 18 months, it seems that this is more than wishful thinking, but one can’t help feel that the whole Palm-HP-WebOS debacle bodes badly for any company wanting to get in on the smartphone and tablet space. If HP can’t make it happen with a solid OS and Zen of Palm, what hope has Canonical? When quizzed about this, Shuttleworth said that he saw “Android as its primary competitor…..We’ve also already heard from people who are already shipping tablets that they want Ubuntu on the tablet.” And of course, “Ubuntu already has a developer and customer base.”

While there’s no doubt that the mobile space is still maturing and there’s plenty of change still to come,  I have a hard time seeing Ubuntu on anything but a small niche of tablets and an even smaller niche of smartphones. iOS and Android have their foothold and Microsoft will be a solid third if Windows Phone 7 continues to deliver and Windows 8 delivers as expected. A fourth player is going to have difficulty making inroads, especially one as relatively unknown as Canonical and Ubuntu.

Smart TVs are a more plausible destination as the internal software is of less concern to the consumer. Most people buying a TV are looking at the exterior brand such as Sony, Samsung or LG, and not what’s inside, although this may change if a “Powered by Roku” or “Google TV inside” campaign runs. Plenty of change to come in this space too.

I wish Ubuntu every success.

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Posted in Android, google, GoogleTV, Linux, Microsoft, ROKU, Windows, Windows Phone 7

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Windows 8, As In It Boots In 8 Seconds

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 5:43 PM on September 9, 2011

Recently Microsoft rep Steven Sinofsky has been blogging about the next version of their OS, Windows 8.  He has announced and documented extensively the changes and benefits we can expect.  He showed off the Explorer ribbon interface and improving file management, to name two things.  Yesterday, however, Sinofsky wrote about the future of Windows start-up times.  If you are interested in the technical, very geeky, details of hibernation, cold starts, kernels, and the like, then I recommend you head over to his blog post for the details.  You will also find lots of graphs and charts that compare Windows 8 to Windows 7.

If you just want your PC to start up quickly when you really need it, without all of the technical jargon,then check out the video post below, which was included in Sinofsky’s post.  You will see a laptop with no power cord and no battery go from dead to ready-to-use in about 8 seconds.

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Posted in Microsoft, Windows

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Is Snow Leopard The New XP?

Posted by tomwiles at 11:18 PM on August 31, 2011

Like a lot of people, I purchased the Lion upgrade on the first day of availability from the Apple App store.

I upgraded two late-model Mac Minis along with an older 17” MacBook Pro. The Lion upgrade solved a freezing problem on the Mac Mini I use as an HD-DVR. However, it created a number of serious problems on the MacBook Pro – Lion would not work with my Verizon USB aircard, it would not back up to my HP Windows Home Server, and it would not work properly with the Ubercaster podcast recording application.

After living with these Lion-induced problems for more than a month on the MacBook Pro, I downgraded it back to a prior (and fully functional) Snow Leopard backup image. Everything is now back to normal, with everything once again functioning the way it should.

My MacBook Pro is no slouch, yet it seemed a bit sluggish running Lion compared to Snow Leopard.

If you have a Mac that’s more than a couple of years old, and/or you are running a variety of software and hardware that Lion likely won’t support and/or that may never be updated to run properly on Lion, I would strongly suggest skipping the Lion upgrade.

I found the Lion interface changes mostly annoying. On a computer (as opposed to an iPod), I prefer normal scroll bars. In Lion you can turn the scroll bars so that they remain on, but they are thin little gray lines that I have a hard time seeing and grabbing with the mouse. I don’t like the changes Apple made to the Finder in Lion, nor do I like the changes they made to the Spotlight Search functionality. I found the changes to the Mail program to be of dubious value, as well as the cosmetic changes to the Address Book adding no functionality.

Snow Leopard runs perfectly well and just might be the new XP.

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Posted in Apple, application, backup, Information, ipod, mac, Microsoft, Opinion, Windows

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Microsoft Poaching webOS Developers

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 9:00 AM on August 20, 2011

A few days ago we received the sad news that HP was discontinuing webOS devices.  The only good news out of that was for gadget lovers – HP has slashed prices on the recently released TouchPad (it’s already out-of-stock at Walmart online).  The bad news for HP, beyond the bad press and bad stock prices, was that Microsoft leaped on the news and immediately began recruiting webOS developers for their Windows Phone platform.

Microsoft’s Brandon Walsh reached out to webOS developers on Twitter, and began the process of bringing them over to Windows Phone.  He even went so far as to offer free phones and other tools.  At last check, he had received more than 200 replies.

While HP has killed off the hardware-making side of their webOS business, they are hoping to keep the software alive by licensing it to third-party hardware makers, as Google does with Android.  That means HP needs to keep these developers on board.  That will be difficult with no agreements in place yet to ensure the OS’s future.  Still, they are trying their best to maintain ties – see their blog post The Next Chapter for webOS.

Given the current state, it will be hard for HP to hold onto these developers, and given what they have already done, it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t pull the plug on the software side of webOS at any moment.  This has been a short ride for HP and webOS, and I can’t help but think that they didn’t give it it’s deserved time and effort.  Consider it a premature death.

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Posted in HP, Microsoft, Palm, Windows Phone 7

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