I spoke too soon.....

So over the weekend I blogged about my frustration that nothing in technology has really grabbed me by the short and curleys, thrown me around the room a few times and then gently lay me down for some real tech goodness. Ok, maybe I got a little carried away there, but I am frustrated that we really haven't had anything earth shattering released this year.

Disagree? C'mon, name something?

iPad? Brilliant, but a fizzer. ICS based tablets? Yeah cool, but it hasn't realligned my world the same time I saw an iPhone. There really hasn't been anything that's excited me greatly in 2012 about tech.

Until now.....

Meet, Pebble

Pebble is a smart watch, that pairs with your IOS or Android and runs it's own apps.

Going for a run and want to check your speed and time? Simply throw your iPhone in a bum bag (or fanny pack if you're that way inclined), start the app and check your speed, distance and time from your wrist.

Playing music at your dorm party and a sucky song comes on? Best party trick I can imagine is changing it from your wrist.

What is really cool about this, is that this watch does not come from Cupertino, Mountain View or Redmond. It comes from a handful of geeks who have designed and developed this little beauty on their own. They've sent the idea out to Kickstarter for funding and in the process have broken all records for the most funded device in the history of Kickstarter. Now thats cool.

So go check out the video, and use your imagination for how this could be used. Just remember, there is an SDK too, so you can even develop your own app for this bad boy.

Enjoy!

Where's The New Stuff?

Is it just me, or has technology been a little bereft of excitement of late?

2012 has given us the release of the new iPad, the HTC One X and....hmmm, ummm, well not much else!

Although we're a quarter of the way through our year I'm still yet to see a technology arrive that really excites me (the Lytro camera I posted about in my last blog was SOOOO 2011!)

So we've had 3D come to televisions, retina screens to tablets, more megapixels to our cameras....yes that means you Nikon D800 and your 36.3mp! Nothing though is really getting me excited.

What do I mean by excited? I remember walking into an Apple Store in Stamford, Connecticut some time in 2007, where I first saw the iPhone. I was stunned, shocked, excited all at once. I knew straight away that this was a game changer. My Nokia N95 and Blackberry Pearl dated by years in one swoop by Apple. I was amazed.

I want to feel that again. So who's it going to be? Apple, Sony, Samsung? Someone put your hand up and give me something revolutionary to play with. That doesn't mean another folding tablet Sony....geez!

So has anyone got any thoughts on whats going to be the next big thing? Feel free to share your thoughts!

What Is A Lytro?

Have you ever taken a great picture, spent time admiring your work, and then realise that it's just a bit out of focus? Or have you just gotten the focus completely wrong in the rush to get the snap away?

A new type of camera was released last year that in time, could make out of focus shots a thing of the past. It's called the "Lytro" Light Field Camera.

The Lytro doesn't loo like a conventional camera, nor does it act like one when capturing an image. The Lytro records information about where light is travelling, therefore building up an almost three dimensional scale of data that can be manipulated at a later date.

It's not an easy concept to understand, but have a read of what our friends at DPReview thought of the Lytro. It's a very interesting concept!

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/lytro/

Auto App Install @ Home?

I'm a guy who builds his own pc's out of specific kit that I think best suits my needs and budget. I'm also a guy who likes to make sure his home computer is running well, as a poorly performing PC annoys the begeezus out of me! This means, the dreaded rebuild is a common occurance for me. When I say common, I'd say I'd rebuild 2-4 times in a calendar year, depending on what crap I've loaded on and how it is currently performing. Anyway.....

Last year I was reading a geek mag. I think it was PC Authority or something along those lines. I found a very tiny tid bit on a website called Ninite.com. This was a site I'd never heard of before, but when I read the article, I jumped straight to Chrome and had a look.

Ninite is a godsend for someone like myself, who rebuilds reasonably regularly, and gets frustrated with having to download Chrome, Firefox, Adobe bloatware, etc etc. Not only is it time consuming finding these common apps, but downloading, installing and configuring them not to kindly announce that they are going to update and restart your computer whilst your fragging in COD!

So what is ninite.com? It's a place to check off the common downloads that the average person will need when rebuilding their PC, which creates a small executable that you download. You then run that executable from your pc and it installs the applications you have selected. Easy right? Yep!

Another nice feature of ninite is that it auto configures the applications you select not to run on startup and prompt you with crap on a regular basis. No toolbars are ever installed and you don't have to click next for every application that installs.You can also run the same executable weeks or months later and it will automatically download and install any updates for the applications you chose. Very cool.

Anyway, I strongly suggest you check it out at ninite.com

ICS on an HP Touchpad?

About 6 months ago I was walking through the city, and saw via a tech mag tweet that HP was going to be selling its $500 Touchpad tablet device for $99, due to the lack of sales in the USA. Not owning a tablet of any flavour at that point, I ran straight to the nearest Harvey Norman in Martin place to try and secure me one of these suckers. I missed out. However, my dear mother had a day off work so I sent her down to the local Harvey Norman where she picked me up a shiny new 16gb model. Woohoo! Now, what would I do with it? The Touchpad actually turned out To be a pretty nifty device.....once it was jail broken, over clocked and tuned up a bit. Without these modifications, the device was sluggish, unpolished and it didn't seem like a finished device. To be honest though, the temptation and real reason for buying the Touchpad was the thought of being able to install Google Android on it. This would open up a world of apps just not available in WebOS land and hopefully make the now discontinued Touchpad a new lease on life. I just needed someone to do a port of Android and I'd be good to go! A group called Cyanogenmod Team took up the challenge and began working on a Gingerbread build of Android for the Touchpad. I resisted installing this as I had heard that there was a build of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the works, which promised greater usability and performance than the old Gingerbread build. To cut a long story short, Cyanogenmod 9 was released earlier in the year and the time came this Easter weekend to get it onto the Touchpad. I grabbed the required files from Rootzwiki, checked and double checked the instructions and went for it. After a false start, ICS was on the Touchpad. How would it work though? After a straight forward setup process where I setup my Gmail account and tablet settings, Android came to life. It c retained looked good, applications seemed to be in place and even the Google Play store was up and running. The learning curve however was going to be a little different to the IOS environment I was now used to. The fluidity of the OS was great, taking advantage of the snappy HP 1.2ghz processor installed in the Touchpad. Browsing was a good experience with no problems loading pages, however many pages displayed as the "mobile" version rather than the full experience which was frustrating and unnecessary from time to time. Email was accessed through the Gmail app and worked great. The Play store gave me access to many of the apps I was used to on the iPhone and iPad and downloading them was a straight forward process. Stick Cricket was always signalled out as the big test of the device. Could Android play it as well as on IOS? The short answer was yes, the experience was very similar to IOS. I knew that the camera wasn't working in this release, but didn't mind that. Other than this, I still haven't found too much that hasn't worked well. The big let down however is in the apps available to Android tablets. There simply aren't that many and those that ar, are generally formatted for mobile phone screens and stretched for the larger screen. Compared to the offerings for iPad, this is the Achilles heel of android tablets. It's disappointing. Very disappointing. Overall though, I'm happy. I have a $99 tablet running the latest Google OS that is a very usable device. Is it as good as an iPad? No, however it's close. Apple's closed system does shine when it comes to the tablet environment in a way that Android is yet to match. Once tablet hardware reaches the magic $199 mark which has been slated by Asus and Google, Android will be a formidable alternative to iPad and IOS. For the time being though Apple still holds the crown in the tablet wars.