Month: August 2012

Barnes & Noble Lowers The Price of Its Nook Tablets & Tablets Are An Easy Sell For Millennials

Linda Reimer

Barnes & Noble Lowers The Price of Its Nook Tablets: Barnes & Noble has lowered the price of its 7” tablets: The Nook Color and Nook Tablet. Despite the names both really are entry level Android (aka running Google’s operating system) tablets and not just fancy e-book readers. And B&N has cut the price of the Nook Color and 8 GB Nook Tablet by $20 to $150 and $180 respectively; and has dropped the price of the 16 GB Nook Tablet by $50 to $200.

It is not difficult to see why B&N has lowered the prices on its series of tablets – Google’s new Nexus 7 costs $199, is selling like proverbial hotcakes, and really is an Android Tablet – translation – it has more bells and whistles like a front facing camera for video chats. The B&N tablets are very nice but are really fancy color e-readers made to consume e-books and media content from Barnes & Noble. Ditto that for Amazon’s Kindle series –for although it is true you can get apps for all the B&N and Amazon tablets they really are devices created to primarily access content from their respective stores – e-books, music, video and limited app content from B&N and Amazon. The Nexus 7 in contrast allow you to access all the 600,000 apps in the Google App Store, offers a front facing camera, access to a greater variety of media content and additional bells and whistles.  And all of that is not to mention the fact that Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are expected to unveil new tablets by the end of the year so it really isn’t surprisingly that Barnes & Noble has lowered the prices on its tablet series.

Here’s a link to a PC World article on the Nook Price Cuts:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/260783/barnes_and_noble_cuts_nook_prices.html

And a link to the Google Nexus 7 page:

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_7_8gb

Tablets Are An Easy Sell For The Millennials:  Rob Enderle, a tech writer for TechNewsWorld, offers an article this morning titled The Windows 8 Generation Gap: Size Matters. And I have to start out my comments about the article by pondering how fast the years go! I think the author, who describes himself as being part of the generation that came of age in the opening days of the PC era, is probably in his forties just like me. And I have to say in reading his article I was left with that feeling of oh-how-fast-time-flies! Because I too recall first getting a PC when they were the new, cool tech item and how exciting that was and how cool it was to send those early e-mails and work on those early Macs here at the library in the eighties! And I agree with Mr. Enderle that change is harder for people as they get older and that those people that have come of age since the year 2000 are much more likely to like using tablets right off the top than those of us who came of age earlier. It makes sense because those people grew up with the Internet, and later touch screens and smart phones  and are really are native users of those devices and thus can type up a storm on a touch screen device whether that typing consist of texting someone else or typing an email. In contrast, computer users who are older than the Millennials might love tech gadgets but like yours truly might not like to type on a virtual tablet keyboard. I don’t  have to worry for I known physical keyboards are likely to be around for a number of years to come but eventually, I am sure, they too will fall out of mainstream usage just like typewriters have in the last twenty odd  years. Of course if they just hurry up and perfect voice recognition technology – I’ll be all set! I won’t have to type at all I’ll just be able to talk to my tablet and tell it what to do – and I can do that!

Here’s a link to the Enderle article titled The Windows 8 Generation Gap Size Matters:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/The-Windows-8-Generation-Gap-Size-Matters-75868.html

Linda R. 

The Future of Shopping & A New Angry Bird

Linda Reimer

The Future of Shopping: Technological change is happing so quickly today that it is literally transforming the way we live in ways both large and small. And so much technological change is happening so quickly that we sometimes lose track of how recently things have changed! For example, consider the fact that the iPhone, which one sees in the hands of many, many people seemingly on every street corner, subway station and in almost every store and restaurant didn’t even exist six years ago. Nor, correspondingly, did the mainstream persons’ expectation of being able to instantly connect to the Internet, watch videos, listen to music, type text message, play games, read e-books or simply check email instantly and at any time from just about anywhere in the world via a touch screen device. And yet today most of us do expect to be able to do just that; have the ability to access the Internet, communicate with almost anyone almost anywhere in the world and access a great variety of media items at any time we wish by using a smart phone or tablet.

And just as the way we communicate with others and access information has been transformed by technological progress so too will our shopping experience be transformed in the near future. Sometime in the next ten to fifteen years we will do most of our shopping online. Brick and mortar stores will still exist but only as places to go and check out products before ordering them online and having them quickly delivered to our homes and offices. Additionally, computer technology will advance to a point that we’ll be able to virtually try on sunglasses, clothes, make-up and other accessories and really be able to see how we’ll look wearing those items via an accurate, computer generated three dimensional image of our selves. And 3 D printers will eventually allow us to easily produce new clothes, household textiles and other items at home at the touch of a button. So in ten to fifteen years’ time we may be explaining to our children or grandchildren what it was like to actually have to go to a store and spend hours looking through racks and racks of clothes and then trying them on to find a new pair of pants that actually fit!

USA Today has a cool article on this subject, titled Why shopping will never be the same, and it can be accessed via the following link:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-05/future-retail-tech/56880626/1

A New Angry Bird: Rovio the makers of the hugely popular game Angry Birds are adding a new bird to their Angry Birds Seasons game. The new bird, aptly named Pink Bird, is pink with blue eyes and is able to produce deadly bubbles with which to combat those sheepishly laughing green pigs.

Information Week offers more in-depth information at the following link:

http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-sold-24-times-more-tablets-than-sa/240005268

Have a great weekend everyone!

Linda R.

Netflix For Kids & Presidential Foods

Linda Reimer

Netflix For Kids:  Netflix for Kids has come to the Xbox. This “just for Kids” service features movies and television shows that are just for kids – with the Trix Rabbit nowhere in sight!

This exciting service is already available online and on the PS3 and Wii gaming consoles and the Apple TV and now families with Xbox consoles can enjoy the service too.

And this new service is also exciting for another reason, other than because kids will like it! It is exciting too because it shows we are in the early stages of a shift in how we watch videos. As in the near future we’ll be able to personalize our digital video content. For example, just as this service is tailored for kids in the near future we’ll be able to access video content that is tailored to our personal tastes so if I prefer historical documentaries, high end science fiction and fantasy and video news stories from NPR and the Wall Street Journal but don’t like comedies or sports news;  I’ll be able to tailor my viewing experience so when I turn on my TV to see what videos I’d like to watch I’m shown outstanding historical documentaries, high end science fiction and fantasy shows and video news stories from NPR and the Wall Street Journal without a comedy or sports video in sight!

Here’s a link to a Gigaom article titled Why Just for Kids is such a big deal for Netflix which offers more information on the Netflix for Kids service:

http://gigaom.com/video/just-for-kids-xbox-personalization/

Presidential Foods: And on a completely non-technology note I came across a neat NPR article, with accompanying audio podcast, titled Presidential Foods And What They Say About Our Leaders which offers this tantalizing, and delicious tid-bit of information – namely that what foods the President of the U.S. prefer and have eaten sheds light on who those presidents and their first ladies were, or are as the case may be, and what they value or valued. The article even offers a few recipes including one for Dolly Madison’s Layer Cake!

The article, Presidential Foods And What They Say About Our Leaders can be accessed at this link:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/08/08/158219217/presidential-foods-and-what-they-say-about-our-leaders

Linda R. 

Amazon & Apple Change Security Procedures & Starbucks To Use Square

Linda Reimer

Amazon & Apple Change Security Procedures: In the aftermath of Wired tech columnist Mat Honan’s horrific hack experience*1 over the weekend Amazon and Apple have, not surprisingly updated their security procedures. Amazon has changed its procedure by doing away with the option to allow customers to change account information by telephone. And Apple has at least temporarily suspended the option for people to call and re-set password information over the phone while the company reviews its security policy and procedures. I find this a very serious issue because we are transitioning at almost warp speed to being a society that stores massive amounts of information in the cloud (meaning online). So to further highlight this issue, here are three articles on the subject for your perusal:

1) The first article, from the tech site Mashable, is titled Hackers Force Apple, Amazon To Change Security Policy:

http://mashable.com/2012/08/08/hackers-amazon-apple-policy/

2) The second article, from CNET, is titled Amazon addresses security exploit after journalist hack:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57488759-83/amazon-addresses-security-exploit-after-journalist-hack/

3) And the third article, from PC World, is titled Mat Honan Hack Pokes Holes in Apple iCloud:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/260574/mat_honan_hack_pokes_holes_in_apple_icloud.html

Starbucks To Use Square: I’ve previously mentioned in this blog that there is a new high tech process for people to pay for items sold by vendors and in stores and restaurants via apps like Foursquare set up on their smart phones. This new high tech process allow merchants to know both that the customers are in their store or restaurant and for those customers, once they set up the service, to pay for items by simply approaching the merchant’s computer and saying their name. And now Starbucks has become one of the first major companies to adopt this service. So if you have a smartphone you can download the Square app from your respective app store and the next time you purchase a coffee at Starbucks you’ll be able to pay via this new high tech process!

Here’s a link to a New York Times article, titled Starbucks and Square Team Up, on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/technology/starbucks-and-square-to-team-up.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Linda R.

*1 The hack entailed hackers breaking into Honan’s Amazon, Apple, Gmail and iCould accounts via “social engineering;” a term that is defined as a hacker calling a company and impersonating the person whose online accounts they are trying to break into so they can gain control of those accounts.

*2 the previous blog posting on this subject was posted July 21, 2012 and is titled Apple TV Really Isn’t A Hobby, E-Books Are Gaining in Popularity, The High Tech Future of Buying Things & A Cool Star Wars Mug

Tech Journalist Mat Honan’s Horrific Hack Story & How You Can Keep Your Cloud (Online) Data Safer

Linda Reimer

Tech Journalist Mat Honan’s Horrific Hack Story & How You Can Keep Your Cloud (Online) Data Safer: Over the weekend tech journalist Mat Honan had his Gmail, iTunes (Apple’s music/video store), iCloud (Apple’s online storage account for Apple Mac, iPhone and iPad owners), Amazon and Twitter accounts broken into. It seems a 19-year-old hacker liked Mr. Honan’s Twitter name and decided to hijack his accounts to that he could post comments on Twitter from said Twitter account. This hacker and his partner succeeded in their hack in the main because Apple and Amazon, in their quest to be user friendly companies that make the process of buying items online easy; didn’t have and/or follow appropriate security measures. It turns out that the hackers were able to break into all Mr. Honan’s linked accounts by searching for his address information online, breaking into his Gmail account and obtaining his alternate email address and then by calling Amazon twice. The first time the hacker called Amazon he pretended to be Mr. Honan and asked to attach new credit card number for purchases to his account which Amazon Customer Service allowed him to do; and the second time he called he claimed he had forgotten his (Mr. Honan’s) log in information but could provide a credit card number – the credit card number he had given a different Amazon representative minutes before – and with this information in hand the hacker and his partner were able to also log into Mr. Honan’s iCould account and both re-set his iCloud log in information and remotely erase all the information he had stored on his iPad, iPhone and Mac – including photos of the first year of his young daughter’s life.

Mr. Honan knew within half an hour of the hack that someone had broken into his accounts and spent a great deal of time and effort on the phone with several Apple Customer Care reps to try and sort out the issue. Because Mr. Honan was quickly aware of the hack within a few days he was able to get access to most of the hacked accounts restored. However, he is still trying to restore access to his Gmail account and to get his iCloud data restored. And Mr. Honan knows all the details of this saga because after the hack he was contacted by none-other than the hacker himself who explained in detail how the hack had been carried out.

And I think two of the big things we can take-away from Mr. Honan’s experience are:

1) Back Up Your Data: Always back up important personal data like irreplaceable photos either to an external storage device or an online data storage site. Mr. Honan as a tech journalist does state that the fact that he didn’t back up his data was his own fault and a big mistake.

2) Don’t Use The Same User ID For All Your Online Accounts: Don’t link all your online accounts by using same user ID. Mr. Honan’s experience wouldn’t have been quite as horrific if he had used a different user ID for his Apple iCloud account as compared to using the same user ID for that account that he used for his Apple iTunes account; because the hackers wouldn’t have been able to get into his iCloud account with that same information (and thus would not have been able to remotely wipe out all the information he had stored on his iPad, iPhone and Mac).

And two other things we should all remember to keep our online accounts safe regard passwords:

1) Don’t Use Simple Passwords: It is human nature to want a simple password for an online account – one that you can easily remember. However, if you can easily remember your password then it may be one that hackers can easily guess. One of the ways to create a password you can remember that isn’t simple to guess but is simple for you to remember is to turn a catch phrase into a password. For example, CNET gives the following example using the phrase “I hope the Giants will win the World Series in 2013!” – they take the first letter of each word as it appears in the sentence and use those letters along with the four digit year to create a password. Thus the phrase “I hope the Giant will win the World Series in 2013” becomes IhtGwwtWSi2013! – and that is a much better, safer and harder to crack password than some of the simple easily cracked passwords people tend to use like “123456,” “11111,” “qwert” or the first name or birthday of the password owner.

2) Don’t Use The Same Password For All Your Accounts: This is another item in the – it is human nature vein to want passwords to be easy to remember. Many online residents in trying to remember their passwords use the same password for all their online accounts – and that is a big no-no; because if your log in information for all your accounts consist of the same email address for the user ID and the same password for each account – a hacker can break into all your accounts by determining what your email address and password are.  

CNET offers two great articles on the subject of creating secure passwords. The first is titled The Guide to Password Security and Why You Should Care and it offers additional insight as to why this issue is so important today. Here’s the link:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57431102-285/the-guide-to-password-security-and-why-you-should-care/

And the second CNET article is titled How to Master the Art of Passwords,  and it describes just that – how to create great passwords:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57347932-285/how-to-master-the-art-of-passwords/

Likewise the tech site Gigaom offers an article titled 6 Ways to Keep Your Data Safe in the Cloud which discusses ways you can protect your online date; it can be accessed at this web page:

http://gigaom.com/cloud/6-ways-to-keep-your-data-safe-in-the-cloud/

And for those who’d like to know more about Mat Honan’s story here are links to two articles that offer the entire story;

The first is a simple overview from the New York Times Bits Blog, titled Apple Account Break-In Highlights Security Weakness:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/mat-honan-itunes-hack/?ref=technology

And the second is from Mat Honan himself, via his Wired column, in an article titled: How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/

Linda R.

YouTube App Disappearing From iPad And iPhone

Linda Reimer

Hi everyone, just a quick afternoon update for all the iPad and iPhone users out there!

When we all upgrade to Apple’s iOS 6 in the fall – the YouTube app, which has come pre-installed on all three generations of the iPad to date, will disappear from our iPads and iPhones. Apple and Google, the owner of YouTube, are experiencing some friction with each other as both try and dominate portions of the tech market Google with its Nexus 7 Tablet and Apple with its iPad and iPhone.

Apple has stated of this change that YouTube will still be accessible through the Safari web browser and that Google is working on a YouTube app to place in Apple’s App Store.

Here’s a link to an Apple Insider article titled Apple removes YouTube app from iOS with beta 4 release of iOS 6:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/08/06/apple_re_releases_4th_beta_of_ios_6_to_developers_after_mislabeling.html

Linda R.

How Angry Birds Saved Plush Toys & How Cord-Nevers Will Help Transform The Way We Watch TV

Linda Reimer

Happy Monday everyone! I came across two articles over the weekend that I thought I’d share. One of them I found vastly amusing! The first article regarding how the plush toy industry, which had recently fallen on hard times, has been offered a tremendous shot in the arm by an app game – titled, and you guessed it I’m sure! – Angry Birds! And the second article discusses how young people who are coming of age today, and have grown up with Internet access via portable Wi-Fi devices as a ubiquitous fact of their lives – are going to transform the cable industry in the near future because they won’t subscribe to cable television but instead will access all their video content online. 

How Angry Birds Saved Plush Toys: The Wall Street Journal has a neat article titled How Angry Birds Is Helping Rescue Plush Toys which relays the story of  how the Commonwealth Toy & Novelty Co., a small family business that sells plush toys, found a unique way to entice the public to buy plush toys again. It seems plush toys had fallen out of favor with kids desiring portable electronic devices instead of plush toys; and correspondingly sales of plush toys had fallen dramatically. And then, a new employee at the Commonwealth Toy Company had an idea – the idea was to license the rights to manufacture and sell plush toys made to look like the characters in a very popular game app called Angry Birds. And the far-seeing employee was right! When, Rovio the company that makes the popular Angry Birds game put game related merchandise on its website, the company figured it would sell out in a couple of weeks and instead everything sold out in two hours! So not surprisingly the Commonwealth Toy Company’s licensing of the rights to make and sell plush versions of the pigs and birds seen in the game has really paid off – the sale of the Angry Birds plush toys has become a great boon for the company; they sold around 200 million dollars worth of Angry Birds plush toys last year and are projecting that number will rise to 400 million this year.

And thus plush toys, at least in the form of green pigs and colorful birds, are popular once more!

Here’s a link to a Wall Street Journal article titled How Angry Birds Is Helping Rescue Plush Toys that offers more information on the subject:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/08/02/how-angry-birds-is-helping-rescue-plush-toys/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=

How Cord-Nevers Will Help Transform The Way We Watch TV: The Atlantic offers a cool article that sheds light on how growing Internet connectivity, specifically the way people increasingly have more ways to watch video content on portable Wi-Fi devices like smart phones and tablets, will change how we watch television shows and movies in the future. The article makes the point that the switch from watching television on a TV via a cable company connection to watching television on Wi-Fi devices via the Internet is going to be accelerated not just by people who already have cable television subscriptions and do the “Cord-Cutting” thing and drop those subscriptions to stream video content via the web; but also by “Cord-Nevers” a term they’ve coined to describe young adults who have grown up with Internet access and are used to watching video content on the web and will not pay for cable subscriptions in the future.

In fact, the article makes a solid case that cable companies should be more nervous about how the Cord-Nevers will quickly change the cable TV status quo by the simple fact that those young people will not subscribe to cable TV at all and the cable industry will lose its traditional continual influx of new cable subscribers.

The Atlantic article is titled Forget Cord Cutters Cable Companies Should Worry About Cord Nevers, here’s the link:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/08/forget-cord-cutters-cable-companies-should-worry-about-cord-nevers/55380/

Linda R.

David Pogue’s Lost iPhone & BBC On The Future Of TV

Linda Reimer

David Pogue’s Lost iPhone: For those of you who may not be familiar with the name David Pogue is the preeminent Tech reporter for the New York Times. And earlier this week Pogue while Pogue was on a trip to Philadelphia to film content for the PBS Nova series someone stole his iPhone. Being the creative and crafty sort Pogue posted a video chronicling his dilemma on Twitter and people responded in droves! It took three days to track down the phone but with the assistance of the Find My iPhone app, Twitter fans, who posted videos of the house where the iPhone signal was coming from and the assistance of local police the phone was eventually recovered.

And not surprisingly the New York Times, via David Pogue’s column, relays the entire adventure which is both a vastly amusing tale and also offers an interesting insight as to how technology really is a tool we can use in our daily lives! Here’s the link:

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/where-is-david-pogues-phone/?ref=technology

BBC On The Future Of TV: And the BBC has created a really neat 44 page slideshow titled The Future of Television that offers an in-depth look at how the way people view video content is changing, from sitting in front of a TV in the home and watching cable TV to streaming video to TVs, smart phones and tablets. The article also offers some really interesting insight into how the changing way we view video content will change even further in the near future – basically by allowing consumers to view a wider array of video content when and were they want on demand.

Here’s the link to the slide show:

http://www.slideshare.net/expathos/bbc-presention-future-of-tv

Linda R.

Speculating On The Name Of The New Smaller iPad

Linda Reimer

Reputable tech sources have said that Apple will be unveiling a smaller iPad, perhaps a 7” iPad at the same September 12 press conference they are hosting to unveil the next generation iPhone; and there is a great deal of speculation from tech reviewers as to what this new iPad will be called – not to mention of course, what features it will have and how much it will cost! Here’s a link to a CNET article by tech reviewer David Carnoy on just this subject!

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57485519-243/what-will-the-smaller-ipad-be-called/

Linda R.

Google Pulls The Nexus Q Media Player, Amazon Instant Video iPad App Now Available & Is Craigslist Stuck In The 1990s?

Linda Reimer

Google Pulls The Nexus Q Media Player: Google has pulled the Nexus Q media streaming player from the market before it has even gone on sale! Google has done this due to the great many negative reviews the device has received from Tech reviewers. The Nexus Q is another media streaming device, like the Apple TV and Roku players that allows users to stream content from the Internet to their television sets. Apparently, Google decided, based upon the overwhelming negative reviews of the device; that is isn’t ready from prime time yet. And for those lucky persons who pre-ordered the device – they will actually receive a free version of the media streaming player.

Here’s a link to a New York Times Bits blog article on the subject tilted Google Delays The Nexus Q After Poor Reviews:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/google-delays-the-nexus-q-after-poor-reviews/

Amazon Instant Video iPad App Now Available: Amazon has just released an iPad app for their video store. So now you can rent or purchase videos from Amazon and watch them on your iPad. You can also access any TV shows or movies you have previously purchased from Amazon. And on a related note, you can also watch any movies or TV shows you purchase from Amazon on your TV via a media streaming player like the Roku Player.

The tech site Mashable offers an article on this subject today it is the aptly titled Amazon Instant Video iPad App, here’s the link:

http://mashable.com/2012/08/01/amazon-instant-video-ipad-app/

Is Craigslist Stuck In The 1990s?: The New York Times Bits blog also offers an article today detailing how the very popular Craigslist site, that allows users to sell their goods online, has not kept up with the times and has also tried to stamp out innovative ways users have come up with to more easily search the site. The article is titled Disruptions: Innovations Snuffed Out by Craigslist – here’s the link:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/when-craigslist-blocks-innovations-disruptions/?ref=technology

Linda R.