Google Buzz has been out for a while and just wanted to make a little post about what I think of it.
(more…)
I really thought that Google Wave would be a great tool for using to get people together and collaborating. But it has seemed to peter out after all the initial buzz.
(more…)
Last night I went to go see the band New World Spirits and thought it would be a good place to test the camera on the Nexus One.
Here are a few of them
(more…)
2009 witnessed the rise of grass root citizen activism with millions of ordinary citizens turning out to tea parties all over the country. Without a doubt, history is in the making. So how does the newly energized citizen activist document it? Fortunately, we are living in the midst of a tech boom, especially digital recording and communication. Today’s activist has an astounding array of digital choices for documenting and disseminating the tea party message.
Attending conventions and tea party rallies, I find there’s a great knowledge gap between tech super users and newly energized citizen activists. I spend a fair amount of time evaluating digital technology used to document tea party rallies and have put together a ’starter kit’ for the citizen activist seeking to document history happening in their own backyard. This kit cuts through the clutter and tells you exactly what you need to purchase – without having to apply for a federal bailout loan. Let’s start with a list of items you will need; Digital Camera, Digital video recorder, Netbook, Blog, Business Cards, and Local News Media.
As I said in the earlier quick review, I give the Nexus One a big thumbs up.
There are many things to like about the Nexus One. The speed of the internet compared to the Pearl I had is like night and day, and it is also a full browser. Also I love the WiFi connection ability, even thopugh the 3G connectivity is pretty fast also. The only problem with the 3G or T-Mobile connectivity is in my house if I am in the basement. But any phone will have problems connecting there, I have not had a phone work that well there anyway.
The iPhone may have more apps in their market, but how many apps can you have. I have many for traveling, such as the DC Metro app for when I am in DC later this year for CPAC. And many others for sports scored, and even one to steam up the screen on the phone. So the Android Marlet has pretty much anything you want. I still have not really tried any of the games, but I am sure there are many good ones there also.
The Phone itself works great as a phone. I can hear clearly the voice on the other line and the best thing it has is the microphone noise cancellation, so the people on the other end can hear better if you are in a loud place. So as just a phone it works as good or better than most other phones.
Pros and Cons:
Pros:
1. The screen is very clear and you have 5 home screens to place all of the apps you want to use to easily find them
2. The great web browser that displays a full website, now using wap. I am sure that some of the other new phones are just as good also
3. With a 5 megapixels camera, the pictures you can take are very good. And if I want a better picture I can always use my digital camera.
4, I can also use WPtogo app to post on the various blogs I post to that use the Word Press platform
Cons:
1: Battery life is not that good. On my old Pearl I did not have to charge it for about 2 days usually, but with all the power and apps on the Nexus One, it is going to use battery life faster.
2: The spealers are on the back of the phone. So it sounds better if you have the phone laying on a table better than holdoing it up. But to listen to musio, it is better to use the ear phones anyway.
3. This is a con for now, but the online keyboard is hard to get use to. But I am sure that eventually it will get easier.
But the Nexus One is an excellent phone for anyone that wants to have a powerful phone for using the internet. Google Maps also is very good on the phone and with the GPS you can find almost anything you want to visit.
I have not gotten paid for any of this review and have no connection to Google or HTC.
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook – Green Swirl limited edition
Cover Art of Dell Inspiron Mini 10
Dell netbook with a bold green swirl cover design by Mike Ming. My netbook is #1450 of 6300 – I feel special. To make this more authentic, I’m writing and researching information for the review using the Dell netbook itself.
Why purchase this model? I’ve owned Dell laptops for the past 3 years and am well acquainted with the devil in the details of Dell laptops. Professionally and personally I’ve found myself increasingly attending conferences and workshops. In doing so, lugging around my laptop, photo gear and assorted items tends to get in the way of my work. To alleviate the problem, I’ve been researching options to minimize my gear without sacrificing quality and technology.
Basic specs on this netbook are as follows:
* Intel Atom 1.6 GHz
* 10.1 widescreen display
* Windows 7 Starter
* 1 GB DDRD SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM)
* 160 GB 5400rpm SATA (serial ATA) HD
* Wireless 802.11g mini card
* 6 cell battery estimated to give around 8 hours of work time.
* Built in Webcam and 10/100 ethernet connector
Netbooks are quickly becoming powerful mobile tools thanks to their size and technical power. Before purchasing one it is wise to know a few key ideas about what is packaged in a netbook. You want to consider SDRAM, the type and speed of the processor, the Operating System and battery life. This netbook is not a replacement for your desktop or laptop computer, but a powerful mobile assistant.
I’ve owned the Inspiron Mini 10 netbook for approximately 24 hours. This is a truly fresh out of the box review of the netbook. I was attracted to the Dell for its light weight, battery life, digital card reader and its aesthetics. The green swirl design is way cool! First impressions are how small it is in comparison to my laptop,. You can see the size difference in the photos provided for this review. The touch pad is unique and works in a similar manner as an iphone. After a few minutes working with the touch pad, I installed a wireless Logitech mouse.
Pros:
Brilliant, sharp display – better that I expected a 16.9 aspect ratio. Use the touch pad to easily zoom in on a document for easier reading.
Decent responsiveness with multiple programs open – I did notice some but not considerable lag time.Lightweight and small – this netbook easily fits in my briefcase and purse.
No problems linking up to my home network or printer.
The notebook likes IE, but I managed to get Google Wave installed.
The netbook cover art is quite attractive.
3 USB ports and an HDMI port – WOW!
Keyboard feels solid, with the keys well spaced.
The machine is very, very quiet.
This Dell is green – and I’m not talking about the cover art! This model is Energy Star certified.
Cons:
The ball of my hands rest naturally on the Touch Pad causing deletion of words or moving the cursor somewhere else on the screen. I have to constantly be aware of the position of my hands while typing.
8 hours of battery life – I’m very skeptical and at this point have not done any testing of that claim on this netbook. I speak only from experience.
No ability to increase RAM – conservation is the key, then again, this is not meant to be a full fledged laptop. 160 GB HD is acceptable and you can always backup your files to external storage.
1.3mp webcam – forget about it and continue to use the Canon Vixia HG10.
Battery packs make for a non sleek silhouette.
In summary, this netbook makes for a robust addition to your computing needs. It is powerful, compact and lightweight. A great mobile netbook that does not leave you lacking in computing power when you are away from your home or office network. I’d suggest this model for professionals who travel, bloggers, vloggers, and new media consultants. Individuals who have limited needs for a computer but want to keep up with this technology will also benefit from the cost and performance Dell’s Inspiron Mini 10 netbook.
Want one? You can purchase it HERE
Disclosure: I’ve not received any financial or material compensation from Dell in exchange for this review.
Well I got my Nexus One on Thursday and am very happy with it. I am actually doing the review from the phone itself.
Going from a Motorola razr to the Blackberry Pearl was a jump. But going to the Nexus One is a big jump. The blackberry was a good phone and I liked it. But the speed and ease of use on the Nexus One is excellent.
And the capabilities are endless compared to the blackberry I was using. I am sure the newer blackberries are much better than the old Pearl I had. But as you can see , I am posting from this phone win ease
The battery life is a little short though if you are using the Widgets and apps a lot. And the camera is not the best, but if I want better pictures I have a digital camera for that
All in all I give the Nexus One a big thumbs up. And I have not bought myself a new toy on a while, so I might as well get a new phone.
I will give a more in depth review when I get a better grasp on it.
I added the Post Image on the laptop since there is no way to actually do that from the WPtoGo app.
Emailing and texting just doesn’t get any easier than this. Dragon Dictation is currently a free iPhone app that uses speech-to-text conversion to type out messages. The messages can then be emailed, saved to the clipboard, or sent via text message.
Dragon Dictation is made by Nuance Communications, the people who brought you the popular software Dragon Naturally Speaking. This app is definitely worth a try, especially while it’s still free.
Download it at iTunes.
OK now that I have been playing around with Google wave for a while now, I will give my thoughts on it.
Google WAve looks to be a very useful tool for collaborating and Brain storming
Collaboration: Google Wave can be used much easier than regular email. You can have everyone on the same wave and interact in real time, instead of waiting to receive an email. With Gmail or any other email system you have to wait until the email is received in your inbox, but with Wave you can see the others typing in the wave. This makes Collaboration very easy and very fast. Also another great tool or extension for collaboration is the iframe extension. With this you can add a google docs page into the wave and have everyone edit it in real time, instead of sending it back and forth over email
Clicl here for the video showing it in work
You can also use the iframe extension for embedding any website, such as Google.com, a blog or a news site. http://wave-ide.appspot.com/iframe.xml
Brain Stormimg: Another great extension that you cna use now is the Brain Storm extension. This is good way to collect people’s thoughts on a project: http://www.madin.jp/gadget/index.xml
click here for the video
There are a whole lot of ways you can use Google wave in a collaborative blogging situation, news site situation, educational situation and many more uses.
There are some downfalls as of right now. It is slow at times since it is on a server used by google for everyone. In the future you will be able to host it on your own cloud. There are still some bugs in the system also. Sometimes you can not see if someone is online or not. And the invite only it is hard to get everyone you want on it.
But in all I think it will be a very useful tool for collaboration. education and various other situations in the future.
I will keep on playing around with it some more and probably have some more reviews later on.
Give us your thoughts on Google Wave.
Over the past few months, I’ve been busy test driving two camcorders; the Creative Lab Vado HD camcorder and the Pure Digital Flip Mino HD. Both are powerful, inexpensive tools for bloggers, journalists or anyone interested in stepping into HD video recording – especially parents.
Released in 2008 by Pure Digital, the Flip Mino is the world smallest HD video recorder. The camera can record 720p high definition video for approximately one hour. It comes with 4 gigs of onboard memory. The image sensor is CMOS, with a frame rate of 30 fps. The camera has automatic white balance, automatic exposure control and dynamic exposure compensation and fixed focus lens.( To my photography friends you can equate that to a prime lens – more or less) A NTSC cable is included, and has joined the other NTSC cables I have collected over the years. There is also a port for an HDMI connection, but no cable is provided. The camera also comes with a velvety pouch for storage. The online Flip store allows for custom designs of its HD models. For a great example, check out Lord Matt’s design.
The Vado HD marketed by Creative Labs provides 720p high definition video for two hours. The software allows the user to select a standard definition video setting as well. There are 8 gigs of memory on board the camcorder, along with software to do basic video editing. A CMOS sensor shooting video at 30 fps. A wide angle lens and 2x digital zoom come standard. Like the Flip, I consider it to be a fixed lens as well. It comes with an HDMI cable and plastic protective cover, along with the unrestrained adulation of Chris Pirillo
