iPhone4idiots

Amazon announced a new “tablet” today called the Amazon Fire. It has a 7” color display and runs a version of Android. As expected, this low end tablet will have no impact on iPad sales while certainly cannibalizing existing Kindle sales and hurting Nook sales too. It’s really not a tablet, but a high end e-reader. How can people call it a tablet with no camera, no microphone and almost no apps? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Amazon as they just want to sell books, magazines and movies. The price is only $199 and at the same time they are dropping the price of the Kindle to $79. At these prices I fully suspect Amazon loses or makes almost no money on each sale. Actually to me the biggest news today might be the e-ink Kindle is now only $79. Christmas gifts anyone?? At that price I might even get one just to see if it helps me read more. Continue Reading…

Apple will finally announce the iPhone 5 next Tuesday, October 4. Although, it might be called the iPhone 4s. Despite rumors I’m very confident it won’t be both as it makes no sense to have consumers ready to buy or upgrade their iPhone have to choose. Almost all will buy whichever is offered. If I had to guess I think it will be an iPhone 5 as it’s been almost 18 months since the iPhone 4 so it’s time for a more substantial upgrade. So what are the major upgrades going to be? Principally, the camera, processor, RAM and according to 9to5Mac a major voice recognition feature called Assistant which sounds too good to be true! Continue Reading…

The biggest news this week should come Wednesday as Amazon will announce their long awaited entry into the tablet market. I’m very interested to see what Amazon offers. Rumors have a 7 inch tablet that runs Android with a emphasis on media, but no apps. This would keep the price around $250. If this is the case I see it taking market share from the Kindle, not the iPad. Yes, the price point is nice, but you have to have apps to be a true tablet. Also, I’ve mentioned before how 7 inch displays are a huge mistake. People are using tablets to view media and a bigger screen is better. A 10 inch still fits nicely into almost any bag or purse. We’ll see Wednesday, but I’m already laughing at the articles coming soon titled, “Amazon’s iPad Killer.” Won’t happen. But for those of you with a Kindle or Nook, this might be something you’ll want?

Since I rarely use Facebook anymore I wasn’t going to write about this, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced some major changes today. With 800 million users (half a billion daily users) I’m clearly in the minority thinking Facebook is going the way of MySpace. Anyway, you might have noticed over the past month that Facebook has revamped the Friend Lists, added a real-time ticker, launched changes to News Feed and rolled out a Subscribe button for following anybody’s public updates. This is nothing compared to what is coming – Timeline and Open Graph. Facebook is going to look dramatically different with Timeline. Zuckerberg, descirbed Timeline as a place to share your stories, apps and express who you are. It’s quite interesting but has me convinced Facebook is moving in the wrong direction! Continue Reading…

Parking Mania, Clickgamer Technologies $0.99, is game that test your abilities to park. I thought of playing against my wife, but I already know I’m a better driver. There are a hundred levels and about 30 cars. The graphics on the cars are poor, but gameplay is still fun. The app smartly offers three modes of control. You can tilt your iDevice to steer, use a slider to turn the wheel or a steering wheel (this is what I prefer and is pictured here). This gives you options to figure out how best to move your automobile. The levels start simple and slowly get harder. Arrows show you the direction you must drive to get to your parking spot. Crash five times and you have to start the level over. Some levels require you to park two or three cars. Around level 15 you are given an 18 wheeler to try and navigate through the turns. Obviously, this is much more challenging. This app only held my interest for a couple of days. I would only get the free lite version if you want to give it a try.

So if you look back through my tweets you come across this gem from 7/12/2011, “@netflix just became my #1 tech stock to short! Kiss subscriber growth goodbye with that price increase.” Just 70 days later the stock price is down 50% and the destruction of this company is even a little shocking to me. CEO, Reed Hastings put out a YouTube video apologizing for screwing up the company with the price increase. He tried to explain that they know the future is streaming but letting go of the mail business which made Netflix so successful was hard to do. Instead of taking the price increase back, Netflix decided to spin off the mail order business and in a few weeks is changing the name to Qwikster. I’m sure whatever small percentage of their customers were still subscribing to both services loves that they will soon have to login to two different websites and get two different bills. And Qwikster, holy crap, what a terrible name. On top of that, the @qwikster on Twitter is some stoner who hadn’t tweeted in months. Imagine his surprise to seeing his email get slammed with over 8000 new followers in the past 24 hours. I know the mail order business is a dead man walking, but it could have kept walking for years. Mr. Hastings has damaged the brand in a way that can’t be fixed. Hulu, Apple and others should send him a thank you gift. At this point I only see one way Netflix can be saved. Quickly become the best streaming site on the web. Biggest selection with the best quality streams. It might even help if they re-branded the Netflix name to something people know and trust when it comes to quality online movies. Like maybe the Pirate Bay.

Back in the mid 1990’s I used to listen to music a lot. I spent a good bit of money on speakers, amp, subwoofer and Adcom 5-disc cd changer. I’d wake up in the morning load five cd’s and hit random and listen to music at volumes that my neighbor would comment on. New albums would come out at midnight on Tuesday’s and about once per month I’d be there so I had something to listen to at work the next day. Then came Napster and I quit going to Tower Records. About 10 years later it closed. If I needed a song or album I just did a quick search and downloaded it to my computer in minutes. Ripping cd’s and Napster is how I got the majority of music on my Mac today. Currently I listen to music I’ve synced through iTunes or Pandora. Actually, I’ve been listening to Pandora more this week since I downloaded PandoraSkips (a cool Cydia tweak that gives you unlimited skips). I haven’t tried Spotify, but I know it’s popular along with satellite radio. There are just so many ways to consume music these days. Apparently Facebook is planning on getting into the act by offering free music. I don’t see myself using this and figure it will die like Facebook Deals and Facebook Places have. With so many changes over of the past 10-15 years I realized I have no idea how people listen to music anymore. So that’s my new poll question. How do you mainly listen to music today? You can vote for more than one in this poll.

Jetpack Joyride, $0.99 Halfbrick Studios, has been in the top five of paid apps in the iTunes App Store for weeks. After playing it and watching my five and seven year olds play it for weeks it confirms something I believe. The best and most popular iPhone games are simple. The graphics don’t have to be the best as long as the game play experience is fun. Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja, Spy Mouse and Plants vs. Zombies prove this. The goal of Jetpack Joyride is to get as far as you can. You fly in only one direction (left to right) and tap the screen to raise up or go down. As you move along you collect coins and dodge lasers, electricity fields and missiles. There is a special box that when you fly into gives you one of five special powers: a stomping robot machine, a motorcycle, a flying bird machine, a teleporter or upside gravity suit. Any of these essentially gives you an extra life as the first time you crash it is removed and you go back to the jetpack. As you build up coins you can goto the Stash to buy additional jetpacks. Some use steam others use rainbows or bullets. Even after death the game may not be over as you are given the chance to pull a slot machine. You can win coins, a blast to push you further down the “course” or even an extra life. Continue Reading…

As you know I’ve been looking for an alternative to MegaUpload for awhile. I liked FileServe, but unfortunately it wouldn’t download direct to most iOS devices. Well WUpload is a new player that is gaining market share rapidly. Thus, I thought I would give it a try. I know it downloads fine to an iPhone 4 with the Downloads Lite app. Thus, you will start seeing a few files going to WUpload as I test out people’s reaction to it. It works just like all the others. Just scroll down to the right and click “Slow Download” in the regular download box. Once clicked you’ll have a twenty second countdown before a captcha box appears. Enter the captcha and click submit. You should immediately see and “Download Now” button in the same place. Click that and your download starts. Let me know what you think of WUpload.