Posted by The Blogging Desk on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 @ 07:48 AM
I feel like everything I say after that will fall flat. Just go watch the video again. This changes everything we know about lame international tourists. Well, they will most likely still be lame, but they can at least find their way around town a little bit better.
The future!
Yowza. Augmented reality at one time held the promise of something special. It's great to finally see those things come to fruition.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Dec 14, 2010 @ 01:00 PM
Amazon:
Thank you Kindle customers!
Thanks to you, in just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we've already sold millions of our all-new Kindles with the latest E Ink Pearl display. In fact, in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009. We're grateful for and energized by the overwhelming customer response.
It's about time Amazon has finally come out and said something about their Kindle sales. Most have assumed that since Amazon hadn't released sales figures previously, the Kindle was a dud. Now there are at least some figures to back up their "best selling" claims.
This seems to prove that Kindle is indeed a fine alternative to the iPad as a dedicated reader.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Thu, Dec 09, 2010 @ 11:00 AM
The Loop:
Reports earlier this week claimed Apple would launch the Mac App Store on December 13, ahead of the holiday shopping season. However, according to my sources, Apple will launch the store in the new year.
While a specific date was not given for the official opening of the store by my sources, Apple will meet the 90-day deadline given during its October “Back to the Mac” media event.
Given the date of the media event and Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ commitment to launch the store within 90-days, we should see the Mac App Store sometime on or before the third week of January.
Jim's sources with-in, or close to, Apple have historically been very accurate. The Mac App Store has the potential to create the ultimate alternative to searching and Googling for apps on your Mac.
If this store is a success, it has the chance to break that hesitation for new buyers now that they know the app finding/buying process is just as easy on their iOS device. This could be a huge change on the computing landscape.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Mon, Dec 06, 2010 @ 07:11 AM
Google Blog:
Today is the first page in a new chapter of our mission to improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we know as books. Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. Find the latest bestsellers like James Patterson’s Cross Fire and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, dig into popular reads like Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken and catch up on the classics like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Gulliver’s Travels.
Very interesting move from Google. Now they are joining the fray with Amazon and Apple in terms of the selling and distribution of digital ebooks. This paragraph and on really sells the main difference with their model, though.
We designed Google eBooks to be open. Many devices are compatible with Google eBooks—everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers. With the newGoogle eBooks Web Reader, you can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud. That means you can access your ebooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.
Is it possible for Google to succeed give Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad dominance?
It is nice to alway have an alternative.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Fri, Nov 19, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Via MacRumors:
The 11-inch model received a "very good" rating for ergonomics and display, a "good" rating for performance and "fair" ratings for versatility and speakers. Consumer Reports also found the MacBook Air had battery life of 6.25 hours. The Toshiba's battery life came in at 5.5 hours of battery life.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Tue, Nov 16, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
Official Google Blog:
To continue helping our publishers, today we’re excited to be rolling out a completely new AdSense interface to all of our AdSense publishers, globally, in more than 30 languages and in each of the 200+ countries where AdSense is available. The AdSense interface is how publishers set up, manage, optimize and see reports on the ads on their sites.
With this new interface, AdSense is even easier to use, and we’re also providing publishers with all the tools they need to manage and increase their advertising revenue. We used lots of direct feedback from our publishers to make this overhaul.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Tue, Nov 16, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Gizmodo:
Typically, the point of a compromise is to bring together the best of both sides. The Tab is like a compromise's evil twin, merging the worst of a tablet and the worst of a phone. It has all of the input problems of a tablet, with almost none of the consumption benefits. With more apps geared to its tweener size, it could be a lot better, but it's not clear they're coming anytime soon, if ever. The Tab is an awkward first attempt at this kind of tablet—wait for somebody else to do it better.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Fri, Nov 12, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Ken Segall:
This ad clearly says that the iPad has now available on Verizon. It has special effects. It uses the word “magic.” What more do you need?
Apple hates relying on other people’s creativity. When all they can do is say yea or nay, at some point they’re forced to approve — if only to ensure that the ad airs within our lifetime.
But let’s not lose sight of the important thing: Verizon and Apple are finally working together. This should make 2011 a much more interesting year. There’s plenty of time to worry about the pesky little details later. Like better ads.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Mon, Oct 04, 2010 @ 08:15 AM
- by Andrew Levin
So, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about regarding Google Apps so I decided to take it for a test run myself. As it turns out, I was very impressed by the surprisingly simplistic configuration process. I was able to sign up, configure my account, repoint my domain, get apps configured, setup users, and email flowing all in under 30 minutes. Granted, everything was a vanilla configuration, but just being able to experience how quickly an administrator could get fundamental IT services up and running so quickly was very promising.
In a nutshell, I will outline the basic configuration process just so you can get a feel of how easy it is.
- I went to https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new in order to sign up for the free service.
- Followed the prompts to input basic domain information
- Created an administrator account
- Verified ownership of my domain by adding a C-Name record specified by Google
- Successfully logged into my account and was taken to the administrator’s dashboard
- Poked around through all the available settings to get a feel for everything
- Clicked the setup guide to learn how to create custom URLs for my domain, instead of using Google’s.
- Sub domains can be created for any of the provided features. For example, docs.yourdomain.com or email.yourdomain.com. All it takes is adding the proper CNAME value within your domain’s DNS manager and point it to ghs.google.com. Then you simply specify the sub domain name in your Google Apps admin dashboard and they take care of the rest of the redirection.
8. Reviewed the setup guide
I then began poking around admin dashboard to see what other options were available. It has a similar look and feel of other Google offerings which makes it pretty simple. Also, which is great, there isn’t really that much to it. I mean, you have your domain settings, users and groups, service settings, support tools, and you’re good to go. Although I only performed a cursory review, my first impression was that of a design objective similar to Microsoft’s Small Business Server. Google Apps facilitates the ability to not require specifically skilled IT administrators to run and support the essential features of your business’s infrastructure.
My overall expectations weren’t to see an elaborate feature set, stunning graphics, or an advanced admin console. I expected to see a simplistic, but intuitive UI, both from the user and administrator side, as well as services that fulfilled the fundamental needs of small to mid-sized businesses. That is exactly what I saw. No frills here, it just gets down to business. The goal of Google Apps isn’t to rival the feature set of MS Office because that would be pointless. The goal is to answer the need for a simplified means of deploying, implementing, managing and using core IT services in a business environment. Impressively, that is exactly what Google Apps has accomplished.
Keep in mind too; this is only the first release…