The Cadillac of ad-blocking plugins is an extension called uBlock Origin. Available for pretty much all browsers, it can best be described more like a web firewall than just another ad browser. It’s the first extension I install when I install a new browser — even, and especially, Chrome.

The extension is extremely powerful, but presents itself as extremely simple on first installation. It has but a single, large on/off button. Defaulting to on, you can turn it off when you wish to allow ads on the page you’re viewing. The power of the extensions comes from toggling the “I am an advanced user” box in the advanced settings. From there, you can do everything from block cookie acceptance pop-ups to have complete, granular control over which third-party resources are allowed to load on the page. This advanced usage is outside the scope of this article, but the point is that uBlock’s utility is nearly unbounded.

The one advanced technique I want to specifically call out, though, is the ability to remove elements from a page. It’s table stakes to block ads from third parties. But what about websites that load their own annoying house ads on their pages? Let’s take a look at how easy it is to fix these pages with uBlock Origin.

We’ll take a well-known site that runs its own ads in a sidebar (right). For the record, I have nothing against this site — it just happens to be a perfect example of a site that runs its own house ads on its own website that also happens to be very well known to the auction industry.

We click on the uBlock Origin icon in the browser toolbar and click the “element picker mode” button which looks like an eyedropper at the lower right of the uBlock control panel. This darkens the window and as we move the mouse around, we see the elements of the page light up. We click on one of the ads in the sidebar, which brings up the element listing at the bottom right. From this list, we start at the top and click each entry below working our way down until the entire column is highlighted but not the rest of the page. Once the column is highlighted, we click the “create” button and the column is gone.

Let’s take a look at an animation to see how fast this can be done.

The beauty is that the filter we’ve just created is saved so when we return to the website, the setting persists. This mechanism can also work well for ads inserted between items in a list. I’m a user of the financial service Mint, which has a bad habit of inserting offers for credit cards or other paid products between transactions. A little trial-and-error with uBlock Origin and they’re gone — at least until the code is updated and you have to create a new filter. The few minutes to get a site looking the way you want it is well worth the lack of distraction from ads and offers and other uselessness.

The web is free and open. It’s our responsibility to control what we see and what we don’t from among the fire hose of crap that nearly all modern websites try to push at us when we visit them with a browser.

The post Advanced ad blocking on the desktop appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

With attacks on our privacy coming from every direction, it’s tough to know where to start. I’d say the best place to begin is Facebook. While the best way to protect your privacy is to not have an account, it’s not always realistic. There’s a way to use Facebook that’s a lot closer to not having an account than to logging on using public Wi-Fi with Internet Explorer. Let’s look at ways to protect your privacy while using the most interesting, if maybe also the most depressing, social network.

Mobile app

One thing is certain: don’t use the official Facebook app or install Facebook Messenger. I’ve never installed Facebook Messenger. I’ve installed the official Facebook app in the past, but have since learned better. There are many alternative Facebook apps, most of which allow advanced, privacy-focused features that include ad blocking. They also have user-interface enhancements including the ability show the most recent posts first instead of whatever Facebook thinks you should see first.

Friendly for Facebook

The best alternative Facebook app that I’ve found is Friendly for Facebook. It ticks all the boxes including the ability to send and receive Facebook messages without needing to install the Facebook Messenger app, the ability to block ads, the ability to hide posts by keyword and the option to display Facebook in a dark mode.

Blocking Facebook ads is table stakes. Any Facebook app should offer the ability to block ads and the couple of bucks to unlock this feature is well worth it.

Facebook Messenger is a disaster of a user experience and a privacy nightmare. I’ve never installed it out of principal, and it’s great that Friendly lets me send and receive Facebook messages to and from the rubes who use it so that I don’t have to install the Facebook Messenger app.

Blocking posts by keyword is the ultimate Facebook customization experience. My current block list includes any post that has the words cats, chiefs, auction or sponsor. My feed went from depressing and uninteresting to useful overnight.

Night mode is also a great option. White text on a black background is a much better experience. You should try it. The official Facebook app doesn’t allow it, but Friendly does. Your mileage may vary.

Browser

Facebook has been in the news for the last several years for the ways it tracks users around the web. This pernicious behavior is easily stopped by using browsers that respect user privacy and support user preferences. The best browser for user privacy is Brave. It’s built on the same code base as Google’s popular Chrome browser but doesn’t include the Google hooks that privacy advocates are worried about. What’s more is that it actively blocks the tracking that ad companies like Facebook and Google use. If you want the easiest way to a tracking-free web experience, switching to Brave is the best thing to do.

Extensions

Brave is great. But there are benefits to Firefox that include better extensions and a commitment to extensions that simply aren’t available on Chromium-based browsers. For those of us who love Firefox, there’s an amazing Facebook extension called Social Fixer that offers many of the same options on the Firefox browser as Friendly offers on mobile including keyword-based post blocking, ad blocking and the ability to show most-recent posts first instead of what Facebook wants to show you.

Another great Firefox extension is called Facebook Container. This amazing extension isolates all your interactions with Facebook to a sandbox so that the rest of your browsing around the web can’t be tracked to your Facebook account. This means all of the user tracking that ad companies enjoy can’t be used on you. The websites see a new, virgin user because your Facebook activity is walled off from your web browsing.

Conclusion

If you see a Facebook ad, or if Facebook sees anything you do around the web, or if your Facebook experience is anything other than fast and great, it’s your fault. Take action now by using the right clients, browsers and extensions to control your experience.

The post Start with Facebook appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

I’m fairly convinced the internet has become a cesspool of advertising and coercive content meant solely to influence people. Marketing feels less about raising awareness of useful products, services and events and more about convincing a predetermined mark to take an action or believe something.

It’s a race to the bottom, with marketers shamelessly using more and more motion, pop-ups, red text and capital letters. Ad tracking on many websites has become so intrusive that there’s little privacy left. Not only does the website you’re on know what you’re viewing and how long you’re spending there, but myriad other services are also watching everything you do.

This tracking creates the ability for an uncanny amount of precision, with marketers being able to target lists of specific users. On social media, politicians can run up the score, putting their posts only in front of those they know are sympathetic to their causes without risking dissent from anyone who may not be supportive. Those marks who then see the ad see nothing but confirmation in the comments.

I’ve had enough, and you should have, too. There are ways we can protect our privacy and security and, by doing so, our sanity. For the foreseeable future, I’ll make an effort to document here all the tools and services I use to protect myself from tracking in hopes that these resources can help others. For now, let’s talk about the categories of tools that exist to anonymize browsing, prevent tracking and secure ourselves from internet malware.

Browser extensions

The easiest tool to implement, browser add-ons exist for all modern browsers. These extensions can change the way our browsers interact with websites, warn us when tracking is occurring and filter out content that is dangerous or obnoxious. Currently, my favorite extensions are UBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Facebook Container and Trocker. Also, you should switch to Firefox as Chrome is planning future changes that make these extensions less useful.

VPN

I’ve written at length about VPNs. Everyone should already use them for security when using insecure wireless networks. However, there’s an increasing case to be made for always using them to prevent your internet service provider from monitoring your browsing and selling that browsing data to third parties. This need varies depending on your ISP.

DNS

This is the most exciting and underutilized area for reducing advertising and increasing security. I’ve written about DNS in the past and it was a big part of Auction Podcast episode 8 over 10 years ago. Simply by using different DNS servers, or by running your own, you can eliminate most ads and tracking on your entire network and even on your mobile phone when away from home.

Sanity

I admit, I used to get excited about finding new and better ways to target users for the marketing I was pushing. However, as a consumer being exposed to the marketing of others I understand how pernicious and invasive marketing has become. Until more services offer to allow users to pay for an ad free experience, they shouldn’t be surprised when more and more of us block more and more ads and trackers

The post Privacy, security and sanity appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

Registration for the webinars is free for anyone who wants to watch live and ask questions to be answered by the presenter at the end of the session. The webinars are saved as videos and are made available in perpetuity, along with the white papers and audio recordings, at auctioneers.org/iseries. The videos are also made available as a YouTube playlist.

As I write this article, registration is now open for the next installment of the iSeries. The webinar will be presented on February 7 by Casey Roberson, entitled Targeting and Profiling Customers.

Knowing how to target buyers and sellers isn’t just a social media advertising skill. It applies to every ad and message! Let #NAAPro Casey Roberson, the marketing director behind McCurdy Auction‘s 2017 NAA/USA Today Auction Marketing Campaign of the Year, teach you how to effectively target customers no matter if you’re using print, digital, or social marketing strategies.

Anyone interested in joining the webinar can register for free.

I was asked to present a webinar last December as part of the iSeries entitled “Your Online Auctions are Terrible.” Here’s the recording of the presentation.

The post iSeries is great; your internet auctions are terrible appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

Galaxy Note8 hardware

To my knowledge, there isn’t a faster phone on Verizon at the moment than the Galaxy Note8. Other phones have the same processor, but the Note8 has a whopping 6 GB of RAM, making it a monster when it comes to specs and speed.

The Note8 is very similar in shape to the Galaxy S8+, with a shape that’s even more tall and narrow than the LG V30 and Pixel 2 XL. The phone is elegantly thin, to the point that it’s extremely difficult to hold without dropping or at least filling the back glass with fingerprints.

The power button is on the right and the volume rocker is on the left. Like the S8, the Note8 has a button on the left side dedicated to the software assistant called Bixby.

Like the S8, the Note8 uses only soft navigation keys, thankfully ditching the physical button on the front in favor of a virtual button — pressing hard on the bottom of the screen from any program will vibrate the phone and function like pressing the home button. Also like the Galaxy S8, the Note8 suffers from a really bad placement of the fingerprint reader. The reader works quite well, but it’s placed immediately adjacent to and in line with the cameras on the back and it’s tough to get to with your finger without accidentally touching the cameras.

The Note8 comes with 64 GB of storage that can be expanded using an SD card up to 256 GB. It’s water- and dust-resistant. It has a headphone jack.

One of the signature features of the Note series is the stylus, or S Pen. The S Pen on the Note8 seems extremely accurate, and I’m sure I could find times when it provides greater control or convenience than using the phone normally, but I simply can’t ever remember that it’s there.

Galaxy Note8 screen

The screen is slightly larger than the Galaxy S8+ and at 6.3″ is the largest screen on a phone I’ve yet seen. Because of the tall shape of the screen and near lack of bezels on the sides, the screen fits in a body that doesn’t feel that much larger than other phones released in 2017.

It’s also gorgeous. It’s bright and doesn’t seem to change much based on the viewing angle, which is a problem other phones struggle with. The edges of the screen are curved, which is an unfortunate trend these days from a functionality perspective, but it sure makes it beautiful.

Galaxy Note8 camera

As much as I like the cameras in the Pixel 2 XL and LG V20 and V30, I have to admit that if each was laying on the table in front of me and I had one chance to take a good picture, I’d reach for the Note8. With dual cameras, optical image stabilization and an app that never seems to have any lag, it’s perhaps the best cell phone camera I’ve ever used.

Like the AR Stickers on Google’s Pixel 2 XL, Samsung has some fun enhancements in the way of live focus and stickers. Live focus creates the bokeh, or blurred background, effect and lets the user control how much is introduced into the image by dragging a slider. The stickers, much like Snapchat filters, allow enhancements like sunglasses or animal ears to be added to the picture or video as it’s taken.

Battery and charging

The Note8 boasts the highest score I’ve yet seen on a stock battery. Lasting 7.5 hours and scoring a 4500 on the Geekbench 4 full-discharge test, I’m not sure I could run the battery down with a full day on the farm. It’s sure to last the average user all day without needing a charge.

The Note8 supports wireless charging so I don’t have to worry about plugging it in to a cable unless I want to utilize fast charging.

Software

The software on the Note8 is definitely the weak spot. The launcher, or home screen, is extremely hard to use. Luckily, it’s easy to install Action Launcher and GBoard to simplify the experience. The navigation buttons are in the wrong order, but it’s easy to set them to standard Android order in the settings so that the back button is on the left.

Like most phones, the Note8 comes with a ton of pre-installed apps from Verizon and Samsung. Many of the games require internet access to play, a problem I didn’t realize until I was on an airplane coming home from Las Vegas.

Samsung has always tried to build software and apps that compete against core Android services. Samsung makes apps for contacts, calendar and even an internet browser that compete with the standard Android apps. The best and most recent example of Samsung trying to reinvent the wheel is with Bixby, Samsung’s virtual assistant.

In many ways, Bixby is a direct competitor to Google’s Assistant. Occupying the left pane of Samsung’s home screen, Bixby hooks to social media and news sources to create a feed of important items, similar to Google Now. While there are distinctions between the abilities of Bixby and Google Assistant, I’m squarely wrapped up in the Google ecosystem and am thankful that Google Assistant works just fine and without conflict on the Note8.

Another extremely frustrating software feature is a warning when turning the volume up above about 60%. I understand the need for parents to limit kids’ listening levels, but there’s now way to disable the warning that I’ve found. I think older Samsung phones had the warning only for wired devices. The Note8 has the warning for Bluetooth headphones as well.

Galaxy Note8 review summary

Even though Samsung has a long way to go to create a software experience that’s as simple and clean as Google’s Pixel, the Note8’s specs and feature list place it squarely ahead of the pack. It’s a beautiful device that’s extremely fast and has an excellent camera, all while ticking the boxes for expandable storage, wireless charging and a headphone jack. It’d be tough to make a claim that there was a better phone currently on the market than the Samsung Galaxy Note8 on Verizon.

Samsung Galaxy Note8 example pictures

Here’s a collection of pictures I took while reviewing the Note8. No editing was done on the pictures. Click to enlarge.

As with all my #vzreview reviews for Verizon, I wasn’t paid or otherwise compensated and my views are my own.

The post Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note8 review appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

In this third installment of my series on security, I’m going to explain what a VPN is and why you should use one every time you’re away from the home or office. You might even want to use one at home, too. If you don’t want to read everything here or you don’t feel like you understand it, here’s the take-home message: if you’re away from your home or office, always use a VPN when you connect to the internet. It’s easy and inexpensive.

Why use a VPN?

I’m sitting in the airport, getting ready to leave for the NAA’s Designation Academy in Las Vegas. I know many other auctioneers from around the country are doing the same thing. I also know that many of them will want to connect to the internet using their phones or computers while they’re away from home. Many, if not most, will do so without using a VPN, putting their accounts and data on their phones and computers at risk.

A VPN is a virtual private network. It’s an encrypted, private tunnel between computers over the internet. There are a few different examples for how useful such a private tunnel can be.

Remote access

Imagine a secure company network. Maybe at your office you have a username and password to login while you’re on the network to access your printers and your server or other computers. However, what if you wanted to access your printer or the files on your server while you weren’t at the building? A VPN would let you safely connect to your network at the office from your house or mobile hotspot. This type of VPN would be configured on your network and your computer and wouldn’t require a third party service, so it’s not really the type of VPN we’re interested in today.

Security and privacy

This is the use I’m focused on today. If you connect to public wifi at a coffee shop, hotel or convention center, much of the communication between your computer and the internet is unencrypted, or in the clear. This means anyone with common software can connect to the same network and watch not only what sites you go to but, in some cases, capture your account information.

Using a VPN when on public wifi would give you both security and privacy. You would connect to the public wifi, but instead of all your traffic going out on the internet from that location, all your traffic would go through the tunnel to the VPN provider before going out onto the internet. This is essentially a game of keep away from anyone else on that free wifi who would like to get at your data. Here’s a diagram from IPVanish showing how it works.

VPN diagram from IPVanish

Bypassing geo fencing

The websites you visit know where you are based on your IP address. If you want to see what those websites can see about you, take a look at infosniper.net. Geofencing is the practice by some streaming services wherein they provide different programming to people in different areas. Netflix, for example, has different content in Canada than they do in the US. ESPN will blackout ballgames for some users based on where they are. Since using a VPN changes your IP address, one common use for VPNs is bypassing this geofencing. Most VPN providers let you select which town or even country you want to appear to come from when using their services.

Using a VPN

It’s true that you could use your own router at home or work to allow you to connect back to your own network from anywhere on the internet to get the same security as one of the paid services, but it’s beyond the scope of this article. I’ll skip discussing the setup and configuration of a roll-your-own VPN setup and look at using a paid service from a VPN provider.

Computer

Your VPN service will have an app for your PC or Mac. When you connect to the public wifi, you simply tell that app to connect to the VPN. You can then browse safely and securely knowing that all your traffic is being transmitted to that VPN provider’s server before it goes out onto the internet.

Phone

Similarly, most VPN providers have apps for Android and iOS that make it just as easy to connect to the VPN. Now that unlimited data plans are becoming ubiquitous, it’s less important to connect to wifi with phones. If you do ever connect your phone to a free wifi network, it’s crucial that you use a VPN.

Selecting a VPN

The first rule when selecting a VPN provider is to never use a free service. There are a few exceptions in the case of reputable VPNs offering a free version that’s slower than using a paid premium account, but the general rule is that if you’re not paying for the VPN then it is making money from you by selling your browsing data.

Most VPNs are really inexpensive. The gold standard is a service called Private Internet Access and it costs under $4 per month if you pay for a couple years at a time. If you’re just wanting something inexpensive to keep you safe while you’re on public wifi, you can also run over to StackSocial and grab one of the lifetime subscriptions to one of the no-name VPNs. They’ll probably do a good job of protecting you from hackers and changing your IP address, but they might not be as reliable at protecting you as PIA if a company or government went to them and asked what you were doing when. A cheaper and less well-known VPN also might go out of business, rendering your lifetime subscription worthless.

If you’re looking for a reputable VPN that offers a free tier to try before you buy, ProXPN is a good option. It’s fast enough to check email and Facebook, but probably not fast enough to stream video.

If you want to learn more about the different VPNs available, TorrentFreak publishes a good question and answer set for myriad VPNs each year. Here’s their 2017 VPN comparison.

Other reasons to use a VPN

Even when you’re at home or using your cell phone’s data or hotspot, your internet provider or cell phone company is tracking your activity. Verizon made news a few years ago when they began adding tracking headers to the traffic of all of their users, allowing websites to track Verizon customers around the web. Users could opt out of this tracking, but I’m guessing a very small percentage of their customers actually did. Some less-than-reputable internet providers also intercept traffic and inject or swap out ads on the pages you visit. Using a VPN would ensure that your traffic isn’t intercepted, monitored or altered by your internet provider.

Downside of a VPN

The only downside of using a VPN, other than the small cost, is speed. Because you’re routing all your traffic through a third-party service, it’s never going to be as fast as directly connecting to the internet. VPN providers are getting better, and reputable VPN services are so fast that the speed difference is usually negligible, but there can be significant differences in performance from one provider to another.

Summary

Don’t connect to the internet away from home without using a VPN. As it looks like we might lose the fight over net neutrality, finding a good and reliable VPN will become an even more imporant part of using the internet safely wherever you are and however you connect.

The post Use a VPN for security and privacy appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

LG V30 review

Just as LG’s G6 gave up some of the features of previous iterations of the G-series, the V30 gives up the expandable battery and second screen found on the V20 while featuring the return of wireless charging and adding a curved OLED screen and glass back. It’s a phone that feels geared for wider adoption from the general public rather than the smaller set of enthusiasts that appreciated the larger feature sets of the V10 and V20.

Hardware

With 4 GB of memory and the same processor found in other current flagship phones such as the Google Pixel 2, Samsung Galaxy S8 and Note 8, the V30 is really fast. I never noticed any lag or stuttering during normal use. It comes with 64GB of storage and features an SD card slot so you never have to worry about running out of space. It’s water resistant and durable, rated at IP68 for water and dirt. LG is the only manufacturer to place the power button on the back of the phone, which is a much better place for it in my opinion. The V30’s power button doubles as the fingerprint sensor which is perfectly placed, unlike the sensor on the Galaxy S8.

The screen is a large, 6″ OLED panel that, like other recent phones, is taller than phones of the past. This 18:9 aspect ratio makes it possible to fit a larger screen on a smaller phone. Indeed, the V30 is noticeably smaller than the V20 with a screen that’s significantly bigger. The screen is curved on the edges. I don’t like curved screens, personally, but they’re quite popular and the V30’s makes it feel much thinner than the G6 even though it’s actually slightly thicker.

Audio

One of the selling points of the V-series is an attention to audio quality. In addition to a real headphone jack, the V30 boasts what LG calls a “32-bit QuadDAC” which creates a much better signal to wired headphones or speakers. While it’s a noticeable improvement for streaming music, I found the experience listening to flac music with studio reference headphones to be absolutely wonderful.

Not only can the V30 reproduce music better than any other phone I’ve heard, it also records sound extremely well. The HD Audio Recorder captures sound in extremely high quality and saves it as a flac file. We recently had our third son by cesarean and were prohibited from recording video in the operating room. With the V30, I was able to capture my son’s first sounds in high resolution.

Camera

Like other recent LG phones, the V30 has a wide-angle front-facing camera and dual rear-facing cameras, a 16 MP standard-angle lens and a 13 MP wide-angle lens. I’m a huge proponent of the wide-angle lens and I still don’t know why other manufacturers don’t follow LG’s lead.

The cameras themselves are significant upgrades from the V20, as you can see in these comparison shots. The V30 standard angle lens seems much more vivid.

The wide-angle lens on the V30 is higher resolution and also seems more vivid.

As always, I’ll have a selection of example pictures I took with the V30 at the end of this post.

The V30 captures great video and, unlike the V20, doesn’t have a problem recording long UHD clips. My V20 gets hot and stops recording after 5 or 10 minutes. In my tests, the V30 captures full 3840×2160 video at 30FPS in 4 GB files until it fills the available space on the phone.

Battery

V30 real world battery life

Battery life is really good. I got just over 7 hours in the Geekbench 4 full-discharge battery test, scoring a 4260, and my real-world testing yielded about 12 hours of usable battery. I’d still prefer the upgradeable battery found on the V20, but the fast charging makes the battery on the V30 definitely usable for all but the most demanding users.

Software

While I’ve never been a huge fan of LG’s software, it’s comparable to what you’ll find on Samsung and HTC phones. The Android experience isn’t clean like a Pixel or pure like a Nexus, but it’s quite usable. You’ll want to replace the home screen with Action Launcher and the keyboard with Gboard. The hotspot doesn’t time out like some other phones and the preinstalled apps from Verizon and LG are unobtrusive and easy to disable.

Case

Knowing that I was in the middle of fall harvest, Verizon sent me their Shell Holster Combo case for the V30. It’s a shell that snaps on the back of the phone that slides into the belt clip. The case is a tight fit and has a kickstand on the back. Unfortunately, even though the phone was in the case the entire time I was testing it, I ended up with a small crack along the top of the screen. If you’re in an industrial environment, you may want to opt for something more durable. If all you’re after is a case that makes the V30 easier to hold on to, the Shell Holster Combo should do the trick.

LG V30 review summary

The LG V30 is one of the best phones on Verizon. It’s fast and the cameras are excellent. It’s hands-down the best phone for anyone who loves to listen to or capture high quality audio. Great battery life and wireless charging mitigate the lack of a removable battery. If you’re looking for a beautiful phone with a curved screen, Verizon’s LG V30 makes an excellent choice.

LG G30 camera examples

These images are unedited and from a variety of lighting conditions and subject types.

As with all my #vzreview reviews for Verizon, I wasn’t paid or otherwise compensated and my views are my own.

The post The LG V30 on Verizon appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

It was 2007. NAA Conference and Show was in San Diego. My bags were packed in my truck. I swung by the office to grab my computer and other electronics that I’d need for the week in California. As I walked out the door for my two hour drive from Manhattan, Kansas, to the Kansas City airport, I realized I’d forgotten something. I sat my computer bag on the ground next to my pickup’s passenger door and went back inside. When I returned, I got in my truck, cranked the wheel to the left and backed out, only to realize that my front tire just rolled over my laptop bag. My computer — and my mood — was crushed. I had unfinished work for upcoming auctions that I’d planned to do on the plane and I had no time before my flight to prep another computer. It made for an interesting and uncomfortable trip.

Broken hardware is one thing, but what if I’d lost the computer? What if instead of picking up pieces off the ground, I was instead unsure of where it was? Had it fallen into malicious hands? Were all the accounts that I’d logged in to now at risk of being compromised? It’s always better to know a computer is destroyed than to wonder if someone is combing through the data.

The scenario is simple — at any time, you can suddenly lose your laptop. In order to make sure that the only cost to you is the value of the hardware, it’s crucial that your computer is encrypted and backed up properly.

Encryption

Computer encryption can get very technical very quickly, but for our purposes it simply means a way of scrambling the data on the computer’s hard drive so it can’t be read by anyone who doesn’t have the password. The password to login to Windows isn’t enough, as it’s fairly trivial to bypass. The correct solution is called full disk encryption, where everything on the computer is encrypted for everyone who doesn’t have the password.

For many years, the right answer for encryption was a product called TrueCrypt. It was free software and the encryption was bulletproof. A few years ago, the TrueCrypt project closed down. Luckily it’s successor, called VeraCrypt, is also free and based on much of the same code base as TrueCrypt. Since it’s open source, third parties have been able to audit the software to make sure there aren’t backdoors or other ways for criminals or governments to bypass the encryption.

Operating systems have their own versions of encryption. Windows has BitLocker and Apple has FileVault. While I’ll always prefer a free and open source solution over one from an operating system provider, these solutions may be a good fit in some situations.

Many modern laptops also provide built-in encryption options on the hardware level. Many of these might work as well as VeraCrypt, though there’s no way to guarantee there isn’t a backdoor. Sometimes, a laptop’s password simply prevents the laptop from booting up and doesn’t actually encrypt the data. This means someone could simply remove the hard drive and put it in another computer to access your files. Make sure if you’re using a built-in password function on your laptop that it’s actually encrypting the data.

Only by using full disk encryption can you rest assured that if your computer falls into the wrong hands, all your data about your auctions, customers, clients and personal accounts won’t be at risk. Entering a password every time you boot your computer is a small price to pay for that peace of mind.

Backup

Encryption prevents the bad guys from getting your data, but what about losing your work? If you drive over your laptop with the front wheel of a diesel pickup, how do you get your files off of a hard drive that’s in pieces on the ground? In addition to the possibility of losing your computer, new viruses called ransomware actually encrypt your files and make you pay a ransom before giving you the key to decrypt them. A good backup solution can mitigate a ransomware infection by allowing you to restore the unencrypted versions of your files.

There is a frequently recited rule of backup called 3-2-1. You need three copies of your data, on two different mediums and one needs to be offsite. Simply buying an external hard drive and copying your files there is better than nothing, but it’s also grossly insufficient and inefficient. A good backup solution will run continually in the background, copying versions of your files offsite as you create them, so you don’t notice it until you need it.

In much the way that TrueCrypt was the best answer for encryption, there was also a best answer for backup called Crashplan. Crashplan allowed users to backup to friends for free. I wrote in 2012 how this was a perfect backup solution that didn’t have a monthly fee like most of the backup services. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, Crashplan announced that it’s discontinuing its free version in October 2018. While I’ve been hunting for a replacement, it’s unlikely that anything will be as simple as Crashplan to use without a monthly fee.

There are still myriad subscription backup services. Some of the best known are Carbonite, Backblaze and Mozy, and each has a different pricing plan based on the amount of data to store and how many computers will be using the service. As you shop around for the best deal, pay attention to the cost to get your data back. In 2011, I lost 2 terabytes of data that was backed up with Mozy. Only then did I learn that they charged $.50 per gigabyte to restore the data, and I had to come up with the $1000 within 30 days before my files were deleted.

In the auction business, like any business, time is money. Some backup solution is better than nothing. In my search for a Crashplan replacement, I’ve found a lot of negative comments about Carbonite and a lot of positive comments about Backblaze, so if I were looking for a simple turn-key subscription backup service, I’d probably start with Backblaze.

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Backup and encryption

In summary, disaster happens when we least expect it. We need to take steps now to ensure that when, not if, we lose a computer, it might cost us money to replace the device but it doesn’t cost us time to recreate all our work or, worse, cost us sleep worrying about who might have our data and what he or she might be doing with it.

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I was a huge fan of the Nexus 7. It was Google’s first tablet, released in 2012, and the first Android tablet that I felt got it right. I’d used the Acer Iconia and Toshiba Thrive and Samsung Galaxy Tab and nothing seemed to work right until the Nexus 7. It was the perfect size and ran pure Android. The second generation Nexus 7, released in 2013, was even better and with a sleeker, more modern shape.

Huawei MediaPad M3

Over the next few years, I bought the Nexus 10 and Nexus 9. Each had problems, mainly that they were quite slow and sluggish. I actually bought a second Nexus 9 when my first one broke because I needed a tablet to control my drone and my Behringer XR-18 mixer for my band. The second Nexus 9 seemed to slow down faster than the first, even after factory resets.

A few months ago, I’d finally had enough of the unreliability of the Nexus 9 and began searching for a replacement tablet. I looked at the Samsung options, but wanted something with an IPS screen and a smaller screen than the Tab S3 offered. I took a chance on the Huawei MediaPad M3 and have been quite impressed.

I’ve never used a Huawei device before, and I was a little nervous placing the order. I knew that it was a premium tablet, even though the name sounds like one of those $50 tablets you can find at your local Quick Trip. Even though I knew that Huawei makes huge numbers of device around the world, their comparatively smaller market share in the US gave me pause. I’m glad I placed the order.

The reason the Nexus 7 was such a great size was that it split the difference between a phone and a full size tablet. As phones got gradually bigger, there wasn’t much of a difference anymore between a 7″ tablet and the 6″ Nexus 6. At 8.4″, the MediaPad feels again like the perfect balance of a larger screen yet not cumbersome like a 10″ tablet. It’s really thin and difficult to hold, though, so I grabbed a kwmobile Crystal Case TPU silicone protective cover and Mr. Shield tempered glass screen protector since I knew I’d be using it on the farm. It’s easier to hold now and I can use the tablet without fear of dropping it or damaging the screen.

Huawei MediaPad M3 with Crystal Case

The MediaPad is fast, with specs on par with modern phones. It’s so nice to have a tablet that’s not frustratingly slow. While a new Nexus 9 or 10 feels fast, it doesn’t take long for it to seem slow. I’ve used the MediaPad M3 for the last couple months and it feels as fast as it was when I got it.

The screen is an IPS panel that’s bright and beautiful but not polarized like the Nexus 7 so I don’t have to take my prescription sunglasses off when using it in landscape orientation. The bezels are small enough that, even at 8.4″, the tablet is easy to grab with one hand.

Battery life has been quite sufficient. I don’t carry it everywhere I go, so it’s easy to leave on a charger when not in use.

The front facing fingerprint reader doubles as a multifunction button. Touching it functions like a back button. A long touch is like pressing the home key. Swiping horizontally brings up the recent apps display and swiping up triggers search. There’s also a setting to enable soft keys like a standard Android experience, but I noticed some random bugs so I keep them off. I also quickly became frustrated at how easy the search function is to trigger — luckily there’s an app called SwipeLaunch Disabler that disables the search triggering.

Huawei MediaPad M3

The software on the MediaPad initially sucked. A lot. It runs Huawei’s EMUI, which was every bit as bad as Samsung’s TouchWiz. A few weeks ago, the tablet upgraded to Android 7 and EMUI 5, and brought with it a new notification shade design that makes it very similar to Android devices from other manufacturers. It’s quite usable now, especially with Action Launcher and Gboard.

The MediaPad M3 isn’t without flaws. I really wish it came in a color other than “Moonlight Silver” [read:white] and that it used a USB Type-C port instead of the Micro-USB port. There’s also an issue with the Wi-Fi only working on 2.4 GHz in the US, so it won’t connect to any 5 GHz access points.

Overall, I’m really happy with the Huawei MediaPad M3. I don’t use it to take pictures and I don’t use it to type, though I did type over half of this review on the tablet before finishing up on my Chromebook. It works great with my drone and my mixer for my band and is much more pleasant to read than my phones. Fast, modern Android tablets are harder and harder to find. If you’re looking for a simple, fast Android tablet that’s easy to hold and fun to use, get the Huawei MediaPad M3.

The post The MediaPad M3 is a fast, modern Android tablet appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

Maybe that’s your niche. Maybe you you decided that your company’s brand strategy is to compete on price and your slogan is “we sell things at auction at bargain-basement prices!” You’re willing to do anything you can to catch someone’s eye, even if it means using emoji in the subject of your bulk emails.

Maybe you read an article or have first-hand experience that yellow is the best color to catch someone’s eye, so all your flyers and signs are on a yellow background. You don’t care that yellow also means cheap, because your job is to do the best job for the seller you’re working for to the exclusion of all other priorities — including your and your company’s dignity.

This race to the bottom, in the long run, hurts your company’s brand. Worse yet, it hurts our industry. If our customers see that every call to action we use has the volume knob turned to 11, then they’re likely to lump our content into the same bucket as other similarly faux-important, hair-on-fire materials they receive — spam.

My friend Ryan George frequently says, “If everything is bold, nothing is.” He’s usually talking about flyer design, but the saying perfectly summarizes the challenge that we auctioneers face. Each auction deserves our best effort, so why shouldn’t we try to convey to our prospective bidders that it’s the most relevant-to-them event we’ve ever conducted?

Because they’re not stupid. They know that every auction we have can’t be our most important sale. They know that we’re in the business of finding repeat business, and they can see through our smoke and mirrors. They lose respect for a furniture store that has more than one going-out-of-business sale per year, so why do we think we can convince them that every sale we have is the opportunity of a lifetime?

We should know that the harder we try to iterate on the most eye-catching, routine-disturbing subject line or post title, the more our content looks like spam. We should know that success is built on establishing a company brand that’s respected for quality of service, not our willingness to busk or feign phony plumage.

I’m not saying we should sandbag our marketing efforts and underrepresent the items in our auctions. By the same token, I don’t want to work in an industry where everything is superlative. I believe that the best way to retain the customers we want is to treat them — and their attention — with respect.

The post Your call to action is on fire, and your brand is burning appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

UPDATE April 2022: Since this article was published, LastPass has implemented changes and has new ownership. A few years ago, I switched to Bitwarden which offers essentially the same features while being, in my opinion, more trustworthy. If you’re still using LastPass, there’s no need to change — I continue to believe it’s still really good. But if you’re starting from scratch with a new password manager, I now strongly recommend Bitwarden.

Password management can be challenging. Proper password hygiene requires a different, secure password for each service. Let’s take a look at what these two requirements mean and why they’re important.

Secure passwords

A secure password is one with enough entropy and length to resist brute force attacks. Entropy, in this context, is the amount of randomness in the password. A password that comprises words in the dictionary has a very low entropy, while a password made up of random characters has a high degree of entropy. A brute force attack uses a powerful computer to try every possible combination of characters until one works. Modern offline brute force attacks can attempt billions or trillions of combinations per second.

Entropy is important because modern password cracking processes are smarter than just starting with A and then trying AB and then ABC. They use patterns derived from the millions of leaked passwords to determine commonalities likely found in your password, and they try those first before moving on to more random combinations.

Length is important because it’s how we can easily make the brute forcing process take much longer. Each character in the alphabet can be upper and lower case, which means every letter we add forces an additional 52 possibilities. Adding numbers and special characters to the password “alphabet” can increase the character depth to 92. There’s the great Password Haystacks tool at GRC to analyze password strength and length and tell you how long a brute force attack would take on the password you give it. Don’t worry – nothing is sent through the internet…it’s all done with your browser, which is important for reasons we’ll examine later in this post.

Different passwords

We’ve all heard of the myriad password leaks from major internet businesses in the last few years. These leaks seem to be increasing  – Yahoo is usually good for a new breach announcement every few months now. When passwords are leaked from one service, every user who used the same password on a different service is suddenly vulnerable. If every password you use is unique to each service, then a password breach only impacts your account at the service that was breached.

Rotating password

Why do some security experts recommend, or in some cases demand, that we change our passwords every so often? Because if our password is one that we’ve reused on multiple sites, then the longer we use it, the better the chances that it’ll have been involved in a breach of some service somewhere and our password will be floating around in one of the databases-for-sale available to the hacking community. A frequently refreshed password mitigates this danger. But, if we make sure that each website has a different and secure password, then there’s no need to ever change it.

Here’s a bad password.

Auction123

Here’s a good password.

VSSK}5kQeJu>F3*,IIK|CWzUa6<SkPQLbxJnc/k}XlS3,nDrI`{K!b<jyAp8|=5

It’s unrealistic to think any of us can remember a good password for the hundreds of sites that we use on a regular basis. We must use a password management system.

LastPass is the right password manager

While there are many services that compete for each class of service these days, in my experience there are some absolutely right answers. CrashPlan, for example, is the right answer for file backup. TrueCrypt was the right answer for encryption when I wrote about it in 2008, now it’s TrueCrypt’s offspring VeraCrypt. Doggcatcher is the right answer for podcasts. For password management, the right answer is LastPass.

LastPass is the Cadillac of password management systems. There are several out there — 1Password, KeePass, Dashlane — but in my research and experience, none offers the combination of security, simplicity and enormous feature set found in LastPass.

You name it, and LastPass does it. Browser extensions and an excellent mobile app mean you only have to log in to LastPass and LastPass logs you in everywhere else, automatically filling in your username and password across the web and in your local apps and even Wi-Fi networks. Passwords are only the beginning, as you can store notes, SSNs, QR codes, images and credit card information completely securely. Shopping becomes much easier when LastPass populates credit card information and addresses into web forms.

It features two-factor authentication, so you can enter a one-time-use code in addition to your LastPass password for that important second layer of security. The first time you log in to a site, it pops-up an option to automatically store that credential so you never have to worry about it again. When you’re creating accounts, it generates extremely secure passwords so you don’t have the stress of having to come up with something yourself. It can also audit your security, letting you know which sites have weak passwords and offering you the ability to easily change them. For most sites, it can actually change your passwords for you to something much more secure.

You can also share passwords securely with other LastPass users, which lets us share the ability to login with employees without giving those employees the actual passwords. If an employee leaves, we simply turn off the sharing of the login with that user instead of having to actually change passwords to the different sites the employee was using.

The best part about LastPass is that all your content — passwords, SSNs, notes and even images — is encrypted on your computer before it’s transmitted to the LastPass servers. LastPass never has access to the master password since it, too, is encrypted before it leaves your computer. Even if the LastPass servers are compromised, all a hacker would have access to is the encrypted data which, assuming the master password has enough entropy and length, is useless to anyone other than you.

LastPass has  a free tier, which lets you sync any of the same type of device. If you set up your account on a desktop, you can sync with any other computer for free. If you create your account on a phone, you can sync to other mobile devices for free. To sync your phone and computer, you need to upgrade to LastPass Premium, which, at $1 per month, would be a steal at 10 times the price.

If you don’t have a password system in place, get LastPass today. If you currently use one of the other password management systems, take a hard look at LastPass and see if it might make your life even easier. If you look at LastPass and think one of the other solutions works better, I’d love to know why and how — let me know in the comments.

The post Proper password management appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

LG V20 hardware

The V20 is one of the largest phones available. At 5.7″, it’s the largest phone currently available from Verizon, along with the V10 and Stylo 2 V which also have 5.7″ displays. The V20’s screen is a beautiful IPS display, which I prefer to the AMOLED panels offered by other manufacturers.

The 4 GB of memory and Snapdragon 820 processor mean that the phone is among the fastest ever released. Currently, only the Google Pixel has a better processor, and I personally didn’t notice a difference in performance using them side by side.

In addition to the large primary screen, there’s a second screen that sits just above the main display. This always-on screen can be configured to show time and notifications, media controls, recent apps, quick contacts, app shortcuts or upcoming plans.

The headphone jack, USB Type-C port and speaker are all on the bottom of the phone. Unfortunately, in a departure from last year’s designs of the G4 and V10, LG has moved the volume buttons to the left side of the phone. The power button with a fast and accurate fingerprint sensor is still conveniently on the back, but I found the volume buttons to be inconvenient to use when holding the phone with my right hand.

One of my favorite features of the LG V20 is the removable back that exposes a removable battery and the SD card slot. The phone comes with 64 GB of internal storage, which should be enough for most people. Support for an SD card means there’s not really a way to run out of space.

The sound quality of the V20 is stunning. Playback is enhanced with what LG calls the Hi-Fi Quad DAC, or digital audio converter, that provides amazing sound quality for wired connections. While I nearly always use Bluetooth, I did enjoy comparing the sound quality of the V20 to the Nexus 6 with a set of Sony MDR-7506 headphones. The V20 was not only louder, but it was cleaner and clearer with improved frequency response all over the spectrum.

In addition to the best audio playback I’ve ever heard from a phone, the V20 boasts improved recording abilities. It ships with the HD Audio Recorder app which is the best audio recording app I’ve ever seen. It can record to 24-bit FLAC at 96 kHz, and allows the user to adjust gain, add a low cut filter and control the limiter.

Software

The phone comes with LG UX 5.0+, which displays all apps on the home screens by default. A tweak to the settings will restore the app drawer to restore sanity, but it’s best to install a third-party launcher like Action Launcher 3 or the Google Now Launcher. The LG default keyboard works, but isn’t as clean as the Google Keyboard.

The best use for the second screen is for notifications. Normally, notifications on Android pop up and interfere with whatever app is in use at the time. The V20’s second screen shows these notifications, leaving the primary screen dedicated to the app that’s in use at the time.

Another nice software feature is the ability to scale the content of the screen. The beautiful 2560 x 1440 Quad HD screen can be set to show a lot of small content or a lesser amount of larger content. The default setting didn’t show enough content on the screen for my taste, and I was thankful it was easy to change to take advantage of the large, high resolution screen.

Battery and power management

The V20 is one of the only recently released phones that has a removable battery. I was slightly disappointed by the battery life on the V20. I reviewed the V20 immediately after testing the Pixel XL, which I found to have phenomenal battery life considering the size of battery it had. The V20 is okay, and certainly as good as any other Verizon phones released in 2016 with the exception of the Pixel XL, but I wasn’t able to get anywhere near a full day out of it, even when at my desk. It supports Quick Charge, so recharging it with a cable during the day didn’t take too long, but it’s still not as convenient as only having to charge a phone at night.

Disappointingly, unlike the G4 and V10, the V20 doesn’t support wireless charging with the addition of a special back cover. However, it appears ZeroLemon will be selling a battery upgrade for the V20, replacing the 3,200 mAh battery with a 10,000 mAh brick. A battery this big would mean I would only have to plug the V20 in at night, eliminating the need to recharge it to get through the day.

Camera

Saving the best for last, the V20’s cornerstone feature is the camera configuration. The back features a 16 MP camera with laser autofocus and optical image stabilization that I found to be just as good as the camera on the Pixel XL. It also has a wide-angle lens on the back, which is amazingly convenient. This was the deal-making feature on the LG G5 that caused me to immediately order one for my wife, and it’s one of several features that will cause me to pick the V20 over the Pixel XL for my next phone.

Not content with the winning camera configuration on the back, LG also uses a wide-angle camera on the front to make it easier to capture selfies of multiple people or capture more of the background environment. They’ve simply done everything right when it comes to cameras on the V20.

As you can see in the example below, the V20 easily bests the LG Stylo 2 V and the Motorola Nexus 6.

Compared to Google’s Pixel XL, the V20’s camera runs neck and neck, in my opinion.

While the video stabilization isn’t as freakishly good as that which is found on the Pixel XL, it’s still really, really good. Here’s a 4K video I took of a tractor for an auction. Make sure to bump the quality to 4K to see the high quality of the video camera on the V20.

Summary

The LG V20 ticks all the boxes. It’s like a Swiss Army knife – they threw in nearly every feature that I want in a phone.

• Large 5.7″ IPS screen
• Removable battery
• Excellent primary camera
• Additional wide-angle camera on back
• Wide-angle front-facing camera
• Large 64 GB built-in storage
• SD card for external storage
• Quick Charge 3.0
• Power button on the back
• Headphone jack on the bottom

The even threw in a couple of features I didn’t know that I wanted in a phone, but now that I’ve seen them, I love them.

• Second screen
• Hi-Fi Quad DAC audio system

There are a few features missing, though.

• Wireless charging not supported
• Volume buttons are on the left side
• Google Assistant not yet available on phones other than Pixel

I’m really going to miss this phone when I mail it back to Verizon. It’s the best all-around phone I’ve ever used. If you’re a fan of large phones and want the best specs and most features anyone has ever crammed into a smart phone, the LG V20 is the perfect device.

The LG V20 is currently available for $672 from Verizon.

LG V20 picture gallery

As always, here is a selection of example pictures I took over the last couple of weeks while carrying the V20 as my primary phone.

The post The LG V20 is Verizon’s best phone of 2016 appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

I’ve recently accepted that there are practicing auction law attorneys who make compelling cases that it’s actually legal to override the UCC with an auction’s terms and conditions, and that it’s okay to do so. However, even if it’s legal and common to override the default, why on Earth would you want to? I’m no legal expert, but I intend to show from a customer experience perspective that it’s better for the bidders, the auctioneer and the seller if “sold” means sold.

The UCC provides a default standard of practice that involves an offer and an acceptance method of establishing the sales price and buyer for an item at auction. The strict interpretation, of which I’m quite fond, is that the auctioneer is the only person with the authority to accept an offer made by a bidder. Once no other offers are tendered, the auctioneer sells the item to the bidder he recognized as making the last, highest offer.

When an auctioneer says sold, the contract is formed between the bidder in the auctioneer’s mind and the seller. In the event that another bidder believed he or she had made a valid offer, the UCC’s default position is that only the bidder in the auctioneer’s mind is the buyer and that the second bidder has no claim of ownership.

This situation can seem unfair to the second bidder. Because of this specious unfairness, some auctioneers add terms to the auction that allow them to “reopen” the bidding to give the “missed” bidder an opportunity to advance the sales price to become the buyer. This practice of overriding the default way an auction should work creates problems for the bidders, the auctioneer and the seller and, in my opinion, should be avoided.

Bidders

Bidders should expect auctions from different auctioneers to work similarly. The UCC establishes that default expectation. When an auctioneer overrides that default, he’s creating a set of “house rules” that may be confusing to bidders. Now, I accept that common practice for an area of the country might be the same set of house rules and that bidders from the area may all be accustomed to that same set of changes imposed by most of the local auctioneers, but we can’t expect all bidders who may not be familiar with the changes to hunt for them in the terms and conditions.

Most of the examples given for reopening bidding involve being fair to the missed bidder, but they ignore that the bid caller has said “sold” and established a buyer. That buyer believes he or she is the owner of the item and then is told that when the bid caller said “sold” he didn’t really mean it. The terms and conditions said he could offer the item again to someone else. Even if the missed bidder elects not to advance the bid, the buyer will likely, or at least should, still feel wronged and lose some respect for what should be the absolute authority of the bid caller.

Auctioneer

An auctioneer should strive to create an environment where bidders know who is currently winning and at what price, and that if they aren’t sure that they’re winning or not, that they won’t accidentally advance their own bids if they bid again to be sure. If the auctioneer finds himself in a situation where the bid caller and a ringman have indicated to separate bidders that each is the currently winning bidder, then that auction crew has failed spectacularly.

It’s no secret that I’m not fond of ringmen, but my personal feelings notwithstanding, a ringman’s job is very important — to relay bids to the bid caller, not accept them on behalf of him (I understand there may be a state-specific exemption to this job description). If the ringman has given indication to anyone that the winning bidder is someone other than the bidder the auctioneer has recognized at that increment, that ringman has not only performed his job incorrectly, he’s created an opportunity for disaster. Should the bid caller declare the item sold, then at least one bidder will feel wronged by the auction crew, regardless of how the situation is handled.

The bid caller is not without fault in the situation. Any time ringmen are involved in an auction, the bid caller has a responsibility to the bidders and the ringmen to make very clear before selling each item who the currently winning bidder is. I’ve attended too many auctions in my 15 years in the industry where bid callers are either lazy, apathetic or lack the skill to specify in the chant where the winning bidder is before declaring a buyer.

If the bid caller failed to make clear who the winning bidder was before saying “sold”, he then has to choose between being loyal to the the bidder he declared to be the buyer and a bidder who mistakenly believed he or she was the currently winning bidder. I think it’s best for bidders as a whole to trust that the bid caller will be loyal to the buyer with whom he’s already created the contract. I think it’s much easier to explain to a missed bidder than an item can’t be unsold than to tell the buyer that the word “sold” doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.

Seller

An auctioneer has a fiduciary obligation to the seller. This set of responsibilities often requires the auctioneer to obtain the highest price for each item sold. It’s this flag that most proponents of reopening bidding wave when defending the practice of modifying the common auction rules set forth by the UCC in order to allow them to unsell an item long enough to see if another bidder will advance the bidding. Indeed, it seems to make sense — our job as auctioneers is to take as many bids as we can, so why wouldn’t we want to establish every set of house rules possible that allows us to take more bids?

In Auction Podcast episode 13 I discussed the appearance of dual agency regarding absentee bids, where I made the case that, on the aggregate, sellers benefited most and would realize higher overall proceeds when an auction created an environment of trust among the bidders — that we work best for our client only when we treat our customers fairly. If bidders believe their bids will be handled fairly, they’ll bid more and higher. The flip side of that axiom is that if bidders don’t have trust in an auctioneer, they’ll be less excited to participate to the fullest extent.

By creating an environment wherein a bid caller saying “sold” doesn’t actually and absolutely create a buyer, the bidders’ faith in the process will likely be diminished. The auction process is a simple one. The more complex we make it, the more difficult it is for our customers to understand and participate. By adding house rules that increase complexity above and beyond what’s established by the UCC, we’re creating opportunities to depress bidder participation and, thus, not being true to the duties we owe our sellers.

Summary

I’m not a legal expert, and I hope I didn’t get too far into the law here. There are heated discussions on the book of faces that are picking the legal arguments apart on both sides, but I posit that it’s not really a question of law but of how we treat our customers. I have spent countless hours thinking about and writing about the customer experience at auctions. Whenever I think about the issue of reopening the bidding, it’s clear to me that doing so ends up having a negative impact on the experience for bidders, the auctioneer and the seller.

The post When “sold” doesn’t mean sold appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

The Google Pixel XL

Since the day it was announced, I’ve been anxious to get my hands on a Google Pixel XL. Google makes Android, which has historically run only on hardware designed by third party manufacturers. The Google Nexus line has been sold by Google, but it was still hardware designed by other companies. With the Pixel, Google designed both the hardware and the software to work together. I love a pure Android experience, and the combination of unadulterated Android on premium hardware from Google sounded like the perfect combination. My friends at Verizon let me spend the last month with a Pixel XL, the larger version of the two Pixel models, and I’ve been really impressed with the quality and the experience.

Hardware

The phone comes in 32GB or 128GB capacities and is available in colors called Very Silver, Quite Black and Really Blue. My review unit was Very Silver.

The build quality of the Pixel XL is superlative. The metal back and sides yield a solid feel in the hand, and the phone is devoid of branding or logos, save for a tasteful G on the back. There’s a layer of smooth paint surrounding the fingerprint reader on the back, which is an interesting embellishment to an otherwise silver back. The power button and volume rocker are on the right side, the headphone jack is on the top and the USB Type-C port is on the bottom between the stereo speakers.

The Pixel XL has a 5.5″ AMOLED screen, which I think is a great size for most people who like larger phones. The Pixel XL is too thin and smooth for me to use comfortably without a case, and I’m not big on putting my phone in my pocket, so I grabbed a Youmaker belt clip holster case that made the Pixel XL really easy to use and keep with me on the farm and around the house.

The phone unfortunately lacks an SD card slot, and 32GB is getting to be too small, especially for lots of photos and podcasts, so the 128GB is definitely the version of the Pixel to get.

Software

The Pixel brings a very clean implementation of the latest version of Android, but also includes features not found yet on other phones running Google’s software. Google Assistant is a new voice only interface to Google’s services that’s only currently available on the Pixel, Google Home and within Google’s new messaging app, Allo. While there’s speculation that Assistant may be available on other devices in the future, right now it’s a very compelling reason to get a Pixel.

Moves is a section in settings that allows me to enable the triggering of events based on physical actions. For example, swiping down on the fingerprint reader can display the notification shade. Double pressing the power button can launch the camera. It seems to be an area that Google will continue to update, as news broke last night that some users are seeing two new moves added with a recent update, including my beloved double-tap to wake. The new moves aren’t yet on my Pixel XL, but I can only assume they’ll be coming with the next software update.

The new Night Light setting will reduce the amount of blue light during night hours, and the times can be configured manually or synchronized with sunset. It allegedly makes it easier to sleep, though I find the red screen sometimes difficult to use.

I did find one noticeable software problem that seems to be unique to Google’s pure versions of Android. On both my Nexus 6 and the Pixel, I can find no way to disable the hotspot timeout. I rely heavily on my phone’s hotspot for my tablets and laptops, and it’s really frustrating to have to re-enable the hotspot every time it decides to turn itself off. Other phones have a setting to adjust the timeout or turn it off, but not the Pixel. I hope this oversight is fixed in future updates.

Camera

Camera ranking company DxOMark gave the 12.3MP camera on the Pixel the highest score of any phone on the market. It really is quite good, but instead of providing a bunch of manual controls like other phones, the Pixel wants to make taking pictures easy. The interface is simple and uncluttered, and aside from settings for HDR, white balance and flash, there’s not much the I had to worry about when taking some of the fastest and most reliably good pictures from any phone on I’ve seen. Here’s a comparison between the Pixel XL, left, and the LG V20, right.

The video from the camera is even more impressive. Videos shot with the Pixel XL can be automatically stabilized. The video below is unedited, and the picture is so stable it looks like it was shot with a drone or a steadycam.

Also worth noting is that Google Photos offers unlimited backup for Pixel photos at the original image quality. Because it’s keeping the original images, a setting called Smart Storage can be configured to automatically remove older pictures and videos from the phone, while keeping them safely in the cloud.

Battery and power management

The battery curve is really good

The Pixel XL is the first phone I’ve tested that has a battery that I believe might get me through most of the day. I’m notoriously hard on batteries, especially when I’m on the farm on the fringes of mobile data coverage. Most phones, including recent releases like the Galaxy S7 and LG G5, leave me looking for a charger in the midafternoon. One day I cut milo starting at 11 a.m. with spotty coverage on only a part of the field, and the Pixel was still alive, though barely, at 6 p.m.

It’s my understanding that the Pixel’s battery longevity is due to software optimizations. I still wish it had a replaceable battery and wireless charging, but it does support USB Power Delivery, which means it can simultaneously use data and charge quickly over the USB Type-C connection. While USB Power Delivery is the best standard for future fast charging, it only charges at regular speed with the myriad Quick Charge chargers that litter my house and vehicles.

Reception

I don’t have a way to objectively test phone reception, but ever since the Galaxy Note 3 taught me how different phones can perform on the same network, I’ve always tried to pay attention to cellular performance. I used LTE Discovery to compare the signal strength of the Pixel XL with the Nexus 6 while riding in a car on a road with poor coverage. I’ve always considered the Nexus 6 to have excellent reception, but the Pixel XL always showed an equal or stronger signal than the Nexus 6.

Summary

As I put the Pixel XL back in the mail to Verizon today, I’m going to miss the speed and drop-dead simplicity of the camera. I’ll miss the full resolution backups offered by Google Photos and the Google Assistant. If I were to improve on the Pixel, I’d add a removable battery, wireless charging and an SD card slot.

The Pixel is Google’s first attempt at making a smartphone from start to finish, and it delivered a premium phone with excellent software and a great camera.

Google Pixel XL camera demonstration

As always, here’s a selection of unedited pictures I took while reviewing the Pixel XL.

The post Pixel XL on Verizon is Google’s first phone appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

Today, I’m going to address websites for state auctioneer associations. Auction Zip has historically hosted many – if not the majority of – state websites. However, as Auction Zip becomes more difficult to work with, many associations are left wondering how to transition to a new website that provides membership listings and auction calendaring functions without paying a firm to develop one from scratch.

The KAA website

I have extensive experience with association websites, having served on the NAA’s Technology Committee years ago when we designed the last auction calendar. I’ve also served on the Kansas Auctioneers Association’s Technology Committee since 2010 when we built our own website and have managed it since. I believe our current solution in Kansas is the right answer for most, if not all, state associations.

I know there are vendors in the auction industry who either specialize in or offer this service free to associations. I applaud them for providing this service, because while it’s valuable to the associations who haven’t had many other options until now, it must be a huge headache that’s both thankless and unprofitable. However, there’s no reason now that an association can’t own its web presence.

Let’s first look at the requirements. While these will vary from state to state, I think it’s safe to say that most would like to have a web presence that fits the following criteria.

• Modern, responsive layout that looks good on any device
• Auction calendar that displays member auctions
• Member list that shows a profile or at least contact information for each member
• Listing of upcoming association events
• News and event recaps
• Payment mechanism for dues and event registration
• Complete control of content by the association without relying on a third party

While these criteria make the project seem challenging, there are modular solutions that, when tied together, make for a simple, elegant solution.

WordPress
In order to solve the last, most important bullet in the list above, we’ll start with a content management system. Using a CMS ensures that anyone in the association has the ability to add or change the content on the website. We’ll select WordPress, since WordPress is as easy as it gets – if a board member or executive director can check email and use Microsoft Word, he’s got enough skills to handle WordPress. While stats vary, WordPress runs more than 25% of all websites on the Internet, and has greater than 50% market share among those websites that use a known CMS. If it’s good enough for Disney, CNN, TechCrunch, Vogue – you get the picture…it’s good enough for an association website.

I’m not advocating that the association set it up. It’s good to have a vendor on your side who can deal with installation and configuration. Finding a local firm will ensure that you have face-to-face support when you need it, and should help keep costs down and your money local compared to national design companies. All said and done, you should be able to find someone who can help you select a modern theme and get it up and running for fewer than a couple hundred dollars. Maintenance costs and domain registration should be under $50 per year.

Now that we have a good looking theme running on WordPress, we’ve satisfied most of the requirements listed above. We have a place where anyone in our association with permission can post pictures, news and events that looks great on all devices.

Membership listings with Siteshot

Connections
Because WordPress is open source and runs so many of the world’s websites, there are a ton of plugins available that are either free or inexpensive. Membership management is crucial to an association website that has the goal of facing the public. There are several plugins available that serve this function, but the KAA selected Connections Pro. It lets us house our membership database on our website, so that anyone on our membership committee can see who is and who isn’t a member without having to contact our executive director. It does a great job displaying profiles for each member, and my favorite feature is Siteshot, which shows a thumbnail image of the members’ websites next to their profiles.

Auction Guy
While there are exceptions, most auctioneer associations want to provide a calendar to the membership where members can post auction listings. This requirement is what has historically limited the ability of an association to build a website itself. Developing an auction calendar isn’t easy or cheap, so they were limited to vendors such as Auction Zip and Auction Services. While those providers can serve the need, Global Auction Guide Media Group has released a WordPress plugin for its free auction calendar, Auction Guy.

Auction calendar plugin

Auction Guy is the largest calendar of auctions in North America that I’ve seen. Using the WordPress plugin allows an association to have its members’ auctions show on the association’s website without having to handle the headache of auction calendar management. The association simply tells Auction Guy which auctioneers are members and gives the members the link to add the auctions. Auction Guy has the vast majority of auctions already in its database, so it’s rare that a member will ever even have to manually add auctions.

I know there are other auction calendaring plugins, and I have experience with all that I’m aware of. Some are difficult or confusing to use. Some don’t allow formatting or restrict the ability to list complete descriptions and pictures of each item with direct links back to the members’ websites. Some actually charge the auctioneers, which should be an immediate red flag for an association. Auction Guy is the best looking, most customizable and easiest-to-use WordPress calendaring plugin – and did I mention it’s free to the association and the members?

Flint

UPDATE: Shortly after I published this article, Flint went out of business. We’re currently using Paypal for website payments and our existing credit card vendor for everything else. If you know of a good solution, let me know in the comments.

I’m a member of several associations, and dealing with the hassle of paper registration forms for conventions and dues renewal is a headache, not to mention the stress involved in writing a credit card number on a PDF that I’m getting ready to email. An association needs a payment processing solution that can handle traditional in-person physical credit card payments as well as website integration that doesn’t involve PCI compliance or handling secure transactions on the association’s website. There are myriad Internet payment options, but we’ve recently begun to implement Flint at the KAA. It doesn’t require any physical hardware – simply use the camera on your phone to take pictures of the credit card and it processes the transaction. It’s cheaper than TSYS, easier than Stripe and will integrate with our website and with QuickBooks. We’ll be implementing it in Kansas in the next few weeks.

Summary
State auctioneer associations should own and operate their websites. Turning that responsibility over in its entirety to a third party introduces friction for the board of directors and the membership. Building a site from scratch is cost prohibitive and unnecessary. The right answer is using WordPress and a few third-party products to provide complete functionality for the public and benefits to the membership.

The post The state auctioneers association website solution appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. The edge display is a gimmick. But it’s a really cool gimmick. Not only do the edges of the screen curve, the software allows it to display content like the time or a sports ticker while the main screen is off. It’s not as functional in my opinion as the secondary screen on the LG V10, but it’s neat nonetheless. I took the edge+ to a couple different auctioneer conventions and was frequently asked about it, with comments ranging from how thin the phone is to how slick the curved screen looks.

The edge+ display can show time and notifications even when the rest of the screen is off.

The glass back and metal edges make the S6 edge+ feel like the premium phone that it is. It takes most of its design cues from the Galaxy S6, which I reviewed last spring, which is smaller and lacks the curved edges on the display. It has the same camera and internals, but boasts an extra gigabyte of memory. It’s remarkably fast and I couldn’t find any instance of lag or a time when I wished it were faster.

Like the S6, the S6 edge+ has a fast and accurate fingerprint reader and a stunning camera that’s both extremely fast and feature rich. I’ll post some pictures I took with the S6 edge+ at the end of this article. I found myself taking more pictures with this phone than I normally do. I honestly think that it was because the camera is so much faster that I didn’t mind using it more.

I prefer to stream auctioneer competitions to YouTube when I have my computer, but I’ve been forced to use UStream at the Kansas State Fair since YouTube doesn’t support streaming from phones. The camera on the S6 edge+ actually does support streaming directly to YouTube, which could lead to a much better experience watching our state auctioneer championship this fall.

I was very surprised with the battery life on the S6 edge+. The original S6 had atrocious battery life. The S6 edge+ does have a slightly bigger battery, but I assumed that it wouldn’t hold up to the big, beautiful screen. I was wrong. The battery life seemed on par with my Nexus 6, lasting the better part of a work day. While the S6 edge+ unfortunately doesn’t have a removable battery, Samsung did include both quick charging and wireless charging, so at least it’s convenient to charge and can be charged in a hurry when necessary.

Nolan playing with Verizon’s Star Wars Cardboard viewer

The S6 edge+ is a great all-around device, pairing quickly and easily to my Zenwatch and LG Tone headset army and various other devices. Nolan sure enjoyed playing with Verizon’s Star Wars Cardboard viewer that they sent us to play with ahead of the release of the new film.

While there are many reasons to love the S6 edge+, there are some things that Samsung could do to make me love it even more. I’m actually not a fan of the glass back, which becomes a fingerprint magnet. It’s not really an issue, however, because there’s no way I could use this phone without a case. It’s simply too thin. It’s so thin that it’s actually not easy for me to pick it up when it’s laying flat on the table – I found myself looking for things to lean the phone up against so it would be easy to pick up. I ordered a $9 belt clip case from Amazon, and while I was waiting on it I printed one from Thingiverse. Putting a case on the phone is undesirable because it takes away from the beauty of the edges and actually makes it harder to type on the keys at the edges of the screen.

 Samsung is known for installing extra software and apps, and they did again with the S6 edge+. Luckily, these apps are fairly easy to disable. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way to fix the physical buttons, which are switched from every other modern Android device. The biggest single improvement Samsung could make would be to simply remove the physical buttons like other phones.

Backwards physical buttons and the extra software notwithstanding, the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ is an absolutely beautiful piece of hardware. While the edge display probably isn’t my cup of tea, the phone is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to make a stylistic statement without compromising on features.

Here’s the photo gallery – as usual, I’ve made no edits to these photos. They’re straight off the camera.

The post Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ on Verizon appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

We learn in algebra that we can convert one value to another by using a unit multiplier. If I want to convert 5 miles per hour to feet per second, I have to multiply 5 miles/hour by 1hour/60min by 1min/60sec by 5280ft/mile.

We can cancel one unit in the numerator with the matching unit in the denominator, leaving us with (5 x 5280) / (60 x 60) = 7.33 ft / second. We use minutes in our math, but we don’t have minutes in the original problem or the solution because they cancel out.

When auctioneers begin to consider implementing Internet bidding in their auctions, many wonder about changes they’ll have to make in their business model, advertising methods and data management processes. Changing a variable as important as the way bids are collected in an auction must mean fundamental shifts to many other parts of the business.

In fact, nothing should change as a result of taking Internet bids. Advertising should always be based on the asset type and the appropriate demographic, not the way in which bidders are expected to participate. Data management processes for a good in-person auction marketer should already be based on taking pictures of individual items and listing them separately. The business model of a professional auction firm is no more tied to bid calling than my farm is tied to which crops I produce or which equipment I use to do it. If changes must be made to advertising, data management or a business model due to changing the way bids are accepted at an event, something more fundamental is wrong in the operation that won’t be fixed by flipping the Internet bidding switch.

I’ve found that bidding type doesn’t actually matter much to the rest of the operation. If the auction business were a long equation, bidding method would cancel out. Internet bidding is like the minutes used in our algebra example. We need it to get the desired result, but it’s not something that we use when identifying the problem nor do we expect it to be present in the solution of a successful event.

The post Internet auction bidding units cancel appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

I’ve been an Android Wear enthusiast for over a year now. I ordered the Samsung Gear Live when it was announced and shortly thereafter upgraded to the ASUS ZenWatch. Both of those watches are rectangular, and I never had the opportunity to use a round Wear device – until now. My friends at Verizon let me spend the last several weeks with the LG Watch Urbane. While the specs are very similar to my ZenWatch, it’s clear that the Urbane is designed with an emphasis on style.

Android Wear works better on rectangular devices; there’s no way around that. While a round watch is best for displaying an analog watch face, every other use I can imagine involves interacting with text or images. These interactions are inherently less efficient if the image or text is reduced in size or cropped to fit a round display.

Unlike rectangular Wear watches, however, the Urbane doesn’t make me feel like I’m that guy wearing a calculator watch. It gets noticed as a watch first and a computer accessory second. It also has a completely round display, unlike LG’s competition in the round Android Wear arena, the Motorola 360, which has a notch out of the bottom of the screen that’s commonly referred to as a flat tire.

Android Wear performs great on the Urbane. Interactions are snappy and it’s great to be able to delete emails and dismiss other messages without having to take out my phone. The button on the side brings up the launcher, allowing a quick way to launch common or recently used Wear apps.

The stitched leather strap that came with my silver Urbane demo watch looked nice but seemed somewhat difficult to latch and unlatch. Perhaps that’s something that would break in over time, but the Urbane supports standard 22mm straps for easy and inexpensive customization.

The charger on the Urbane is much better designed than the Wear watches I’ve owned in the past. Other watches utilize a clip-on charging cradle that can break or be arduous to attach every night. The Urbane has a dock that weighs enough to sit on a table and stay put when you lay the watch on top of it at night and remove it in the morning.

The Urbane is a little thicker than I like, and I’m not sold on the round shape as the most efficient display for day-to-day functionality. However, if I wanted a fashion accessory that was also a smartwatch, it’d be difficult to imagine a more stylish way to carry Android Wear. The LG Watch Urbane is a really good looking round watch that runs Android Wear very well.

The post The LG Watch Urbane is a beautiful smartwatch appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

The LG G4

The G4 is the perfect size. The gorgeous 5.5″ screen is significantly bigger than the S6 and M9, but pleasantly smaller than the Nexus 6. The G4 is slightly larger than the G3, and features a slight curvature that’s stylish enough to be neat but no so pronounced that it’s annoying. The plastic back doesn’t feel quite as good as the aluminum of the One M9, but it’s much better than the glass back on the Galaxy S6. The power and volume buttons are located on the back of the phone just below the camera, like the G3, which makes them easy to access regardless of which hand is used or how it’s held.

The 16 MP camera on the G4 is the best camera on a phone I’ve seen so far. I don’t have a lot of requirements in a camera nor do I use many of the advanced features, but I do want a camera that’s fast and produces great pictures. I love the laser autofocus and optical image stabilization on the G4, two features that allow the 16 MP camera to outperform the 20 MP camera on the M9. The pictures from the G4 seem as good if not better than the pictures I took with the S6. The G4 also has a huge 8 MP front camera. I’m not big on selfies, but it also takes great pictures.

Power and volume buttons are located on the back below the camera

The G4 is fast and cool. I notice no appreciable difference in performance among the flagship phones. While the One M9 had a tendency to get hot when charging and while under heavy use, the G4 doesn’t seem to get nearly as warm. I did, however, have the G4 turn off on me once. I was working outside when the temperature was around 100° and had the phone in a holster on my belt. It’s unfortunate that the thermal protection kicked in due to the outside temperature, but it’s not an environment that the average user will likely encounter on a regular basis.

I selected the Customerfirst LG G4 case as an inexpensive belt holster case and it worked very well. I received my G4 just as I started drilling milo and I immediately transferred my Google Voice number and podcasts to it in an attempt to use it as my primary phone. Unfortunately, I found the battery life to be only slightly better than the S6 and One M9, lasting me only from about 6 a.m. to just after noon on the farm. I got a good 8 hours or more out of the battery using it around the house. I wish the G4 would have shipped with wireless charging, but the availability of aftermarket Qi charging stickers makes that oversight easy to fix. The expandable battery means that the G4 is the only one of the recent flagship phones that I’ll actually be able to use on the farm without worrying about finding a charger during the day. The expandable storage means I’ll be able to use an SD card to hold all the podcasts I want without having to worry about filling up phone.

The software on the G4 is definitely colored by a custom overlay on top of Android. It’s not as intrusive as Sense on the M9 or TouchWiz on the S6, but it’s definitely not as clean as the stock experience on the Nexus 6. As with any non-Nexus device, I recommend immediately installing the Google Now Launcher and SwiftKey to get a jump on creating a clean and productive Android experience.

I really like the G4. It’s the perfect size and has the best smartphone camera I’ve ever used. The expandable storage and upgradable battery make this phone far superior for my needs than the S6, M9 and Nexus 6. I’ll be upgrading as soon as a company releases an extended battery for the G4 so I can get through the whole day.

As always, here’s the gallery of unedited images taken with the G4. You can easily download the original from the attachment page by clicking on the dimensions link above the picture.

The post The LG G4 on Verizon is the perfect phone for 2015 appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

HTC One M9

It was about a year ago when Verizon let me review the HTC One M8. It was a great phone with an interesting camera approach. I’ve used quite a few phones since then, including the recently released Samsung Galaxy S6. I gladly accepted Verizon’s recent offer to spend a few weeks with the new HTC One M9 to see how it stacks up.

The M9 features perhaps the best build quality I’ve seen in a phone to date. It’s an aluminum unibody, with two color schemes – gold on silver or gunmetal grey. The aluminum back is much easier to hold than the glass backs found on the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Sony Xperia Z3v. The edge around the screen seems sharper than the M8. This edge initially seemed awkward, but has grown on me as it seems to make the phone easier to hold. It actually feels really good in the hand. The power button was on the top on the M8, but it’s on the side of the M9. It’s now so close to the volume buttons that sometimes I get them confused. The M9 has the now-common double-tap to wake feature, so the power button position isn’t a problem.

Battery lasted from 9 a.m. to about 6 p.m. The only significant screen time was about 30 minutes, shortly after noon. The rest of the time I was listening to podcasts over Bluetooth with the screen off.

The 5″ screen on the M9 has the same 1920×1080 resolution as was on the M8. As much as I squint, I can’t tell a difference in clarity between the screen on the M9 and the higher resolution screens on the LG G3 or the Nexus 6. By bucking the trend of manufacturers racing to the highest pixel count for their latest flagships, HTC should garner significant improvements in battery life. However, they’ve packed the M9 with the latest 8-core processor and 3 GB of RAM. These specs make it amazingly fast but also fairly battery-hungry. The Galaxy S6 had pretty short battery life in my tests, and the HTC One M9 seems to actually fair worse. Unfortunately, the battery isn’t expandable. Luckily, HTC built in Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 so it recharges in a flash – so long as you can find a place to plug in during the day.

HTC One M9

Last year’s M8 tried a new approach to the rear camera, using two cameras instead of one. The primary Ultrapixel camera was only 4 megapixel, but its pixels were much larger than cameras in other phones. The secondary camera on the M8 sensed depth to create special effects. I found the Duo Camera to be quite good in the M8, but many found it inferior to other competing phones. HTC has ditched the larger pixels in the M9 and rejoined the spec race with a 20 megapixel camera that is a higher resolution than the Galaxy S6, but it lacks optical image stabilization. I found the M9 camera to be good, but not quite as good as the S6. Here are a couple of comparison shots showing the M9 against the Nexus 6 and the LG G3. No editing, other than cropping, has been performed on the images.

HTC One M9, on the right, does a better job with the colors of the sky

Nexus 6, left; HTC One M9, middle; LG G3, right

The back of the HTC One M9

The software on the M9 is the latest version of HTC’s Sense overlay, version 7. I remarked in my M8 review how Sense 6 was beautiful and stayed out of the way. While Samsung’s latest TouchWiz has reduced its footprint, the new Sense seems to have become more invasive. It’s mostly fixable with the installation of the Google Now Launcher and SwiftKey keyboard, but the larger footprint reduces the storage available for content. I’ve got about 15 GB of podcasts to catch up on, and after I installed all my apps and synced DoggCatcher, Evernote and gReader, the phone was complaining that it was running out of storage space. Indeed, PhoneArena notes that the user storage available on the 32 GB M8 was 24 GB and is down to 21 GB on the M9. Fortunately, the M9 features expandable storage, so the problem was easily fixed by throwing in an SD card.

The one aspect of the phone that I really appreciated was call quality. I don’t normally remark on call quality, since I don’t really take calls and those I do are on my LG Tone. However, there were a couple calls I took on the phone itself when my headset wasn’t connected. The calls were loud and crystal clear, thanks to Verizon’s new Advanced Calling feature.

The HTC One M9 is a solid phone. Having spent time recently with both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the M9, I’d definitely prefer the M9 to the S6 for the build quality and expandable storage ability. They’re both great phones. The camera on the M9 isn’t quite as good nor the software as clean as the S6, but the M9 just feels better in the hand and looks better to the eye.

As usual, here are some additional video and pictures taken with the HTC One M9.

The post HTC One M9 appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

Image from Wikipedia

I’ve been addicted to podcasts for the last eight years or so. Earlier this year, a couple of events made me really think about podcasts – partly about how create them but mostly about how I consume them. First, a question from a viewer of the Auction Video Podcast episode 15 asked about the hardware setup I have for recording commercials and podcasts, leading to the post describing it. Second, my appearance on the Fast Talking Podcast episode 49 led me to think about the more than 50 podcasts to which I subscribe, as well as how I consume them.

I remember hearing about podcasts for years before I actually began listening – for some reason, I perceived a barrier to entry that simply wasn’t there. For anyone unfamiliar with podcasts, the concept is dead simple. Episodic content is delivered to a mobile device that you can listen to on your own schedule. While you can listen to or watch them on your computer, it’s much more convenient to consume on the go.

A podcatcher is any app that will allow you to subscribe to podcast feeds and automatically download them so they’ll be ready to play at any time. While it’s possible to stream podcasts and play them on the fly, it’s much better to set your phone to download them ahead of time while it’s plugged in and on wifi so it doesn’t drain your battery or use up your data. It’s also quite frustrating to stream a podcast and have it quit when cellular data coverage fails.

As I was thinking of the way I consume podcasts, I realized there are several requirements I have in a podcatcher and that not all podcatching apps satisfy all requirements nor are the requirements satisfied in the same way.

Custom listening speed
Most podcast apps these days allow the listener to increase the speed of playback. When I used to listen on Apple products, the built-in podcast app would let me toggle 2x listening speed,  but it was really 1.25x on iPods and 1.5x speed on iPads. Any good podcatcher should let the user enter a custom speed and actually playback at that speed without altering the pitch of the recordings. I listen at 1.75x to get through the large number of podcasts I consume regularly. I find that I pay more attention and retain more of what I’ve heard than listening at normal speed, which now seems way to slow.

Sync to multiple devices
I have a lot of devices, and I frequently review devices for Verizon both here on AuctioneerTech and on my personal blog at aarontraffas.com. When I stop listening on one device, I want to be able to pick up another device and begin listening exactly where I left off. Many podcatchers advertise a way to sync between devices, but not all of them will actually do it right. Pocket Casts, for example, is a very popular podcatcher that doesn’t get it right. It will sync playback progress, subscriptions, filters and starred episodes, but it doesn’t actually sync the podcasts. When I asked the developer what good the metadata was without the data, I was told that if they synced the podcasts it would download each episode more than once. That’s the whole point! Sync is worthless otherwise. Each episode should sync to each device so it’s ready to play. After an episode is completed on one episode, it should be automatically deleted from the other synced devices.

Virtual feeds
A virtual feed turns a directory on a phone into a podcast episode list. There are some podcasts to which I pay for a subscription that aren’t delivered by a standard podcast feed. In this case, I download the episodes to my phone manually. Some podcast apps don’t support playing manually from a folder on the phone, so they simply don’t work for these types of podcasts.

Episode pinning
Some podcast feeds artificially limit the number of episodes they make available. There are some feeds that only make one episode available each day and remove all previous episodes from the feed. If you miss listening to an episode and try to get it later, it’s gone for good. Episode pinning is a setting, specific to each podcast, that keeps the episodes from these feeds saved on the device until they’re manually deleted. Sometimes I fall behind on podcasts, like the Mike O’Meara show, for more than the 20 episodes they make available in the feed. Episode pinning lets me make sure I don’t get so far behind that the old episodes disappear before I get the chance to listen.

DoggCatcher is the right answer
The only podcatching app I’ve found that satisfies all my requirements in the correct way is DoggCatcher. It may not be the best looking podcatcher, but it is by far the most feature complete. It has a very large directory of podcasts and supports searching and browsing for new podcasts in several ways, making adding new subscriptions trivially easy. It also allows manual podcast feed additions for podcasts that aren’t yet listed in its directory as well as creating virtual feeds from folders on the phone itself. The Cloud Sync feature works just as it should, automatically downloading and deleting episode files on all devices.

Development is quite active, with updates to the app bringing new features very regularly. I recently had a question for DoggCatcher support regarding some user interface changes, and the response was back to me within minutes. The only feature I wish it supported was a web player or computer client of some kind so I could play my podcasts from my computer when I’m at my desk, but that’s a small feature request for what is truly a feature-complete Swiss army knife of podcatcher apps. DoggCatcher is available for less than the cost of a beer at an auctioneers’ conference, and you can pick it up in the Google Play Store.

Do you have other requirements for your podcast consumption or other features that you’ve found useful? Do you have a better app that you prefer to use? Let me know in the comments.

The post The best podcatcher is DoggCatcher appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

The first thing I noticed about the S6 is the premium build quality. Gone is the plastic, removable back from previous generations, replaced by a glass back. The phone is so thin that the camera module actually protrudes from the back in a way that made me nervous when setting down the phone. I like large phones, and at 5.1 inches, the S6 isn’t one. However, it’s big enough and long enough that it’s comfortable to use and hold.

The hardware changes did prove a little inconvenient for me at times. Samsung’s packed a huge, beautiful screen in a small device by minimizing the bezels, or the borders around the screen. I occasionally found myself triggering unintentional screen presses on the edges when I was using the phone with one hand. The glass on the back also makes the phone slippery and difficult to hold. The first night I was leaned back and playing with the phone with my six-month old son next to me the phone slipped out of my hand and hit him. I immediately ordered a Fintie Guardian Series case, which turned out to be a great belt-clip case for about $7. It made the phone much easier to hold and also solved the problem of the accidental touches around the screen edge.

The camera protrudes from the back of the extremely thin Galaxy S6

The physical buttons on the bottom of Samsung phones have always frustrated me. The S6 still has them, and the back button is still annoyingly on the wrong side, but the home button now features a fingerprint reader. It’s the first phone I’ve used that had one, and I found it to be amazingly accurate and consistent. It works quite nicely with Lastpass. It also works as a screen lock, but there were times when I was in a hurry and didn’t know if I needed to use my fingerprint or just swipe to unlock and the few extra seconds of indecision were inconvenient. I also spent a fair amount of time during my review fixing fence on the farm, and taking my gloves off to authenticate was frustrating when all I wanted to do was to switch from music to podcasts. It’s certainly not the phone’s fault, but I always forgot to change the lock screen before going to work.

The S6 is really fast, but it’s also really thin. This combination makes good battery life difficult to achieve. I attended a wedding in an area with 3G coverage and sent perhaps 10 pictures by email. I pulled the fully-charged phone off the charger at 3:30 p.m. and by 6:30 p.m. was down to 20% remaining. This 80% drain in three hours example is extreme, but under normal usage I wouldn’t expect to get more than six or eight hours out of the S6. It’s not a huge problem for anyone within frequent range of a desk or a car, as Samsung’s built both fast charging and wireless charging into the S6, so finding a power refill during the day is as quick and convenient as possible.

Previous generations of the S series have had removable backs and expandable storage. The S6 doesn’t, so getting an extended battery or adding an SD card are no longer options. My review unit was the 32 GB model, and by the time I had my podcasts synced, I had about 1 GB remaining. Not everyone is as addicted to podcasts as I am, but shutterbugs can use up storage space in a hurry, so anyone purchasing an S6 should definitely opt for at least the 64GB version.

My biggest complaint with the Galaxy Note 3 was the antenna. I’m in an area that has spotty coverage, and service on the Note 3 was markedly poorer than the HTC One M8, Moto X, Kyocera Brigadier, Droid Turbo, Sony Xperia Z3v – basically every other phone I tested greatly out performed the Note 3 in this area. The Galaxy S6 performs much better than the Note 3 in this regard. It’s not quite as good as the Nexus 6 – the S6 seemed faster to drop to 3G than the Nexus 6 and didn’t seem to perform as fast once it did – but it’s definitely not plagued with the antenna problems of the Note 3.

Samsung has always had great cameras, and the camera is definitely the best feature of the S6. At 16 megapixel with optical image stabilization, it’s really very difficult to take a bad picture. It’s fast to launch, too, especially with the double-tap shortcut on the home button. As usual, I’ll have some real world examples in the gallery at the end of this article, but here are a few comparison pictures against the Nexus 6. No resizing or editing has been done – they’ve only been cropped so that the dimensions are the same size. In every example, the S6 pictures are brighter and more vibrant. Guess which side the S6 images are on.

In each example, the pictures from the Galaxy S6 are on the left, while the images from the Nexus 6 are on the right.

I’ve always found TouchWiz, Samsung’s customization layer that it installs over Android, to be frustrating, ugly and cumbersome. While it’s not gone in the S6, it’s toned down substantially – much improved over the mess of previous generations. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to launch Google Now – neither swiping up nor swiping to the left worked, which are the most common ways – so I installed the Google Now Launcher as usual. This was the first time I didn’t replace the default keyboard with SwiftKey, as I found the Samsung keyboard to be surprisingly good.

I did have problems copying files to the phone. I plugged it in by USB, but I was always presented with an error when trying to copy my podcasts to the device. No amount of searching yielded a solution, so I was forced to find a wireless transfer method. It was much slower than transferring by cable, but it worked. I had no problems copying photos from the phone to my computer.

The S6 performed flawlessly with a range of activities and accessories. I listened constantly to podcasts and music through my LG Tone, as well as used it with my Asus ZenWatch and to pilot my DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ quadcopter. I did have problems installing Google Fit from the Play Store – it said it wasn’t compatible with the device – but manually installing the APK seemed to work fine.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 is a very solid device that will probably be one of Samsung’s and Verizon’s best selling phones. It’s sad to see Samsung do away with the expandable battery and storage, and I can’t use it or even hold the S6 without a case. However, the S6 is a great choice for anyone who wants an amazing camera on a fast, beautiful and stylish smartphone.

Picture gallery

The post Samsung Galaxy S6 appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

Hardware
The latest flagship phone from Google in the Nexus line is made by Motorola. It’s huge. Featuring a 5.96″ screen with a quad HD 1440 x 2560 resolution AMOLED screen, this dreadnought is definitely the largest phone I’ve ever held. I used the Galaxy Note 3 for the better part of last year. It felt big initially, but I got used to it. Likewise, I’m slowly getting used to the size of the Nexus 6. This phone is .3″ bigger than the Note 3. The iPhone 6 Plus is only 5.5″, so the Nexus 6 is a full half-inch bigger than Apple’s largest phone.

The Nexus 6 is rocket fast, with plenty of memory and a top-of-the-line processor that makes using the pure version of Android Lollipop smooth and seamless. Front-facing speakers make it really loud. The speed and sound quality are quite nice, especially for someone who likes to watch a lot of basketball this time of year when I’m away from a TV.
The phone looks like a cartoon sized version of the 2014 Moto X. That’s not a bad thing, as the Moto X is an absolutely beautiful device. The power and volume buttons are on the right side and easy to get to. The micro-USB port is on the bottom and the headphone jack is on the top. With wireless Qi charging and Bluetooth 4.1 built-in, I really don’t find myself using either the USB port or the headphone jack.

Expandability
The only downside to the Nexus 6 is expandability. The aluminum body contains a sealed battery and no slot for a memory card. My unlimited data plan means the lack of expandable storage doesn’t bother me, but the non-expandable battery is unquestionably the biggest problem with the Nexus 6. The battery will last all day at my desk, but only a few hours in the spotty coverage at the farm. The phone does support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0, which will allow the included Motorola Turbo Charger to charge the phone much faster than traditional phones and chargers, but it’s still a drag to have to worry about a phone that won’t last all morning, much less all day, in a real world work environment.

The power button and volume rockers are easy to get to

Camera
The camera is good. It’s not as good as the camera on the LG G3, but it does have optical image stabilization on a 13 MP sensor. The new Lollipop camera software allows third party apps to take advantage of advanced features of the sensor, and there are some users taking extraordinary photos with the Nexus 6. For my uses, the stock camera is quite sufficient. I posted pictures comparing the Nexus 6 and the Sony Xperia Z3v in December’s review of the Z3v.

Problems
My experience with the Nexus 6 wasn’t without a few difficulties. Shortly after it arrived, I began to encounter random reboots of the device. It would simply restart. Occasionally, it would turn off and take as many as 30 minutes before it would turn on again. I also rely heavily on the wireless hotspot feature when I travel, and I had a very obscure and annoying problem with the wireless network created by the Nexus 6 hotspot disappearing frequently. I would start the hotspot and connect my computer, and then, within a minute or two, the network would seem to disappear. The computer would disconnect and I’d have to refresh the network list to find the hotspot again. This flaky wifi teather problem made using the phone as a hotspot essentially useless.

The reboots and the hotspot problem caused me to work with Motorola to obtain a replacement device. The replacement phone has only rebooted once or twice since I received it, so I consider that particular problem fixed. However, the hotspot issues persisted on the new device. With the help of a user on Reddit, I finally was able to track the problem down to an app called Automatic. Once I removed Automatic from my phone, the hotspot works like it does on all other phones.

Cases
I purchased two cases for my Nexus 6, the SUPCASE belt clip holster case and the Spigen gunmetal bumper case with clear back. I use the Spigen case when I’m on the road traveling to auction conventions and I use the belt clip case when I’m on the farm. I’m quite happy with both of them – pictures of each can be found in the gallery at the end of this post.

Summary
It may sound silly to drop $650 just to get a phone on Verizon that doesn’t come with NFL Mobile. For someone as passionate about pure Android as I am, it makes perfect sense. The Nexus 6 is simply the perfect Android experience, and using it on Verizon means I don’t have to compromise by downgrading to a shoddy network.

As I write this article, rumors are that Verizon might launch the Nexus 6 this week, with their devices sporting Android 5.1 and VoLTE calling. I can only hope that the software upgrade path for my Nexus 6 purchased directly from Motorola will be quick and painless. It would be very unfortunate for Verizon to punish us early adopters by not allowing us to get the VoLTE upgrade.

If you like big phones, the Nexus 6 is, without a doubt, the best phone on the market. If a huge phone isn’t your preference, here’s to hoping that the next Nexus will be slightly smaller, more expandable and supported by Verizon.

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I want my cake and to eat it, too
Picture by Tama Leaver on Flickr

Hello. My name is Aaron, and I’m a rabid Android fanboy. I write this post while perched high on one of my favorite soap boxes. This is the back story to the review that I will post later this week of my Google Nexus 6 smartphone that I’ve been using for the last four months on Verizon.

There’s nothing more refreshing than a pure Android experience, free of the bloat that is frequently installed by manufacturers or carriers. I’ve spent many hours of my life installing custom ROMs on my phones and deactivating apps for friends and family in order to make phones easier and cleaner to use.

Modern versions of Android have made removing the junk from phones easier, as most apps can now be deactivated from the app info screen. Installing the Google Now Launcher from the Google Play Store now makes it easy to remove a big chunk of the problem of manufacturer overlays such as TouchWiz and Sense. While these tweaks can make phones usable for most people, it’s just not good enough for me. I want a phone that I don’t have to root to remove all traces of manufacturer and carrier interference between me and my Android experience. I don’t want to have to take the step of deactivating the Amazon App Store or NFL Mobile to get them out of my app tray.

I live in a rural area and am stuck on Verizon. There are so many phones I’d like to try, from manufacturers such as Blu and OnePlus, but because Verizon must pre-approve each device, I’ll never get to try them. I’ve tried other carriers, specifically AT&T and Sprint, but their networks simply don’t cover my farm.

Google knows how good vanilla Android can be, even while they tolerate the manufacturers and carriers adding junk to Android in order to differentiate themselves. To that end, they created the Nexus program, wherein they partner with manufacturers to create Google-branded phones that have the pure Android experience that I – and many others – crave.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

I was a huge fan of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It was the first Nexus device on Verizon, and I bought it when my original Motorola Droid finally died. I wasn’t excited about it, as I’d always loved Motorola phones, but it was the best option available at the time. I wasn’t aware how amazing the Nexus program was until my Galaxy Nexus died and I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. I’ve written before how horrible the Note 3 experience was. I longed to be able to use another Nexus phone, but resigned myself to the prevailing wisdom at the time that Verizon would never again allow a Nexus device on its network.

Last fall, I’d heard rumors of the next Google phone. It was to be huge and made by Motorola. It was to be the first phone running the latest version of Android, Lollipop. Knowing I’d never get the opportunity to use the Nexus 6 on Verizon, I reluctantly ordered an LG G3. I was really happy with the G3, as I’ve written earlier. What I didn’t know was that the biggest part of the Nexus 6 announcement was that it would work on all four major US carriers – including Verizon.

I was with Alltel when it was acquired by Verizon. Before that, I was with Kansas Cellular when it was acquired by Alltel. I don’t change plans or carriers frequently, and I’m still grandfathered into my unlimited data plan. Because Verizon will force a plan change if I buy a new phone with a subsidy, I’ve been paying outright for every phone since they eliminated their unlimited data options.

Nexus 6

Because I knew I would pay full price for my Nexus 6, I didn’t have to wait for an official release by Verizon. I knew from forums that the phone should work with any preactivated nano-SIM from Verizon. I set out to be one of the first to get the phone, which was plagued with supply problems. It would go on sale for a few seconds at a time each Wednesday, starting on October 29, on the Google Play store. I tried and tried, but wasn’t ever successful. I finally got lucky ordering directly from Motorola on November 6. When I saw that I was able to add one to my cart, I pulled over to the side of the road and could not enter my credit card number fast enough on the order page.

From reading the forums, I was one of only a few who was successful at making the purchase. My Nexus 6 arrived on November 17. I inserted my SIM and crossed my fingers. It worked perfectly. Check back tomorrow for the review of the Google Nexus 6 on Verizon.

The post Android, Nexus and Verizon appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

If you have comments, or have suggestions for the next episode, drop me a line in the comments below.

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Battlestation – my podcasting workstation

Overview
The goal of any audio recording is low noise and high control. The software is outside the scope of this article, but the requirements of the hardware are to record separate sources at the highest quality and lowest noise possible. When recording a commercial or a podcast without a guest, one computer is sufficient. I’ve found, however, that when recording a call, making the call and recording the call from the same computer is tricky. For that reason, I always use a laptop to run Skype or, now that Skype no longer works well, Google Hangouts, and I connect it to the desktop computer that will be recording the caller and my voice separately.

Microphone
The first thing every auctioneer is going to ask about is the microphone. When I first started recording the AuctioneerTech Auction Podcast in 2008, I used an ART USB Dual Pre and a Shure SM57 microphone. The SM57 has a much more favorable frequency response than the more popular SM58, and the Dual Pre let me record two sources separately.

The Dual Pre worked great under Linux, which is what I used to record at the time, but as I moved away from Linux I found that using the Dual Pre under Windows introduced a significant amount of noise. I decided to try to simplify my setup, so I ordered a Samson G-Track, which has a built-in USB interface. It worked well under Windows, and I used it for several years. It had a line-in that let me record and monitor the sources separately from the mic itself, which made it a better choice for recording calls than other USB mics. It’s still the USB mic I’d recommend to anyone looking to find a decent quality and simple podcast recording setup as cheap as possible.

While the G-Track worked, it was still a consumer USB mic. The noise floor was better than the Dual Pre, but it still wasn’t as low as I wanted. I wanted a professional, large diaphragm dynamic microphone. I found the Heil PR40 and I love it. There are definitely better microphones, but the PR40 strikes a balance of extreme quality, great sound and a still somewhat reasonable price. If you’re lucky enough to have your own desk, splurge for a swing arm – you won’t regret it.

Heil PR 40 microphone with optional pop guard

Console
The PR40 is not a USB mic. It has an XLR output, which means I need a recording interface. I’ve always used a console to control the sound around my desk, and I decided it was time to ditch my rickety old board and get a new one that had a USB interface built in. I initially tried a Behringer XENYX X1204USB. It simply didn’t work the way I wanted it to work. It would record just fine, but there wasn’t an easy way to use headphones and my speakers simultaneously. After being frustrated with the Behringer for months, I broke down and traded for a Mackie ProFX8. It’s the perfect console. The USB interface works great and features a ridiculously low noise floor. The inputs and outputs make sense, and I can use headphones, speakers or both and effortlessly switch between the two.

Mackie ProFX8 has the right amount of inputs and a USB interface

Preamp
While the PR40 works fine running directly into the ProFX8, the output of the PR40 is low enough to justify a preamp. I found a budget preamp, that also has a compressor, in the ART TubeMP/C. A compressor is an audio circuit that reduces the dynamic range of a signal. It’s used, for example, to prevent equipment or hearing damage caused by auctioneers who yell into the microphone by automatically reducing the volume of loud sources while not reducing the volume of normal sources. I don’t use the compressor when I’m recording podcasts, as I prefer to apply compression with software, but it’s going to be very valuable when I stream auctioneer contests at state association conventions.

Headphones
Headphones are crucial to any recording, and even just for a computer call or conference. I’ve sat through a hundred calls that are ruined by the echo caused by someone who doesn’t know better or who thinks he’s to cool to need headphones. For normal commercials and podcasts, I like the Sony MDR-7506 reference cans that I’ve had since college. They’re comfortable and easy to take on and off. When video is involved, however, you don’t want to be the dork that looks like he’s in a sound booth at a radio station. Any set of noise-cancelling in-ear monitors will work, but I like the Westone UM Pro10 for their balance of comfort, sound quality and price. I’ve tried both Shure in-ears and generics on stage in the Aaron Traffas Band, and the Westone are definitely my favorite. However, if the $150 price tag isn’t in the budget, the MEElectronics M6 are an attractive alternative that’s nearly as comfortable.

Video
Any off-the-shelf USB webcam will work for podcasting and video calls. Look for anything that’s widescreen 1080p for the best quality. I have the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920. More important than the choice of webcam is the placement of lights. It’s crucial to light yourself well from the direction of the camera. As you can see in the picture below, the camera is above the monitor on the left. I have two lights on swing arms that can be easily positioned between the camera and me whenever I turn on my webcam.

Lights on swing arms allow easy positioning for optimum video podcast lighting.

Software
I’m not going to get too deep in software, as there are a ton of different options. I like Cakewalk Sonar X3, as that’s what I’m used to using to record music. Audacity is a free and open source tool that I’ve also used in the past. The point isn’t that a specific software is better, but that whatever software you use, make sure to record each source separately. Separate tracks allow compression and equalization and other effects to be applied appropriately.

There is no right way, but this is my way. Do you have a better way or a suggestion for improving my setup? Please let me know in the comments.

The post Podcasting hardware appeared first on AuctioneerTech.

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Sony Xperia Z3v

The Xperia Z3v is a Verizon exclusive version of the popular Xperia Z3 that Sony released to other carriers. The Z3v is slightly larger than Sony’s Z3, though the screen is the same 5.2 inches on both versions. The shape of the phone feels great. It feels longer and narrower than most phones I’ve used recently, which is a welcome change. It’s got glass on both the front and the back, which is also a design approach I haven’t felt before. While the dual glass construction makes the phone harder to hold, it does convey an impression of solid build quality. If I owned the phone, I’d have it in a case anyway, so the back glass isn’t a problem for me.

The phone features a micro-SD slot, which is great, but the battery isn’t upgradeable, which isn’t so great. Flaps cover all the ports, providing water and dust resistance, and Qi charging is built in so it’s possible to never need to open a flap during normal usage. It has a volume rocker next to the power button in the middle of the right side, right next to your thumb or index finger as you would hold the phone, so there isn’t any awkward reaching for volume while you’re on a call. It also has a dedicated camera button which can launch the camera app and then functions like the button on a point-and-shoot camera – hold it halfway down to focus, completely down to take a picture.

Side view shows the buttons

The camera is probably the most attractive feature of the Z3v. It’s a 20.7MP sensor that takes very, very good pictures, even though it lacks optical image stabilization. I’ll show a few unedited pictures in the gallery at the end of this post, but here are a couple side-by-side comparisons against the camera on the Nexus 6. The Z3v is on the left in each of these shots while the Nexus 6 is on the right. I left everything on auto and tried to take pictures like most general consumers would. You can zoom in if you like by viewing the original from the link on the attachment page.

The Z3v seems to capture colors much better here.

The Nexus 6 seems too dark, though the colors on the Z3v don’t seem as rich.

The colors are more rich on the Nexus 6, and the background is more focused, but the Z3v seems more accurate here.

The Z3v seems to handle the contrast between sunlight and shadows better than the Nexus 6.

I do like Sony’s camera app. Not only does it make it easy to take great automatic pictures, it offers manual controls for exposure and white balance. It also features myriad effects – not filters – that can allow you to stream video to YouTube, take time-lapse video, shoot panoramas, use augmented reality and much more. They even offer the ability to download additional camera apps. Next to Motorola’s smart apps, the Sony camera ecosystem is probably the best example of a positive manufacturer enhancement to an Android device.

Glass back of the Z3v

As good as the camera app is, the rest of the software experience on the Z3v isn’t great. It’s not as bad as TouchWiz, but it’s still an unnecessary layer on top of Android. The phone is fast, but there’s definitely some lag when moving home screens in the Xperia Launcher that comes installed on the phone. Most of the software issues can be fixed by installing the Google Now Launcher and SwiftKey, but you’re still left with Sony’s notification shade customizations as well as unnecessary apps for Sony-specific music and media.

Overall, I had a good time with the Sony Xperia Z3v. I’m not wild about Sony’s software customizations or the lack of an upgradeable battery, but I’d recommend it for anyone who wants a fast, uniquely stylish phone with an amazing camera.

The pictures below are unedited.

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Include
Your email signature should be used sparingly to brand yourself and your company. Make it easy for someone to, at a glance, know who you are, what you do and how to contact you. The first line should always be your name and professional designations. You paid money for these designations, and your email signature is a perfect opportunity to leverage them to potential customers – everyone you communicate with should be considered a potential customer.

Email signature should be short and simple

Directly below your name and designations should be your email address. That’s the most relevant contact method, since we’re talking about email to begin with, so that’s what the person you’re corresponding with should see first. Some people might argue that it’s not necessary, but if you’ve branded yourself properly, your email address should include your website and it’s a great opportunity for a branding impression. If you have a mobile phone number that you want to include, it should tag along with your name and email address here.

Company information comes next. I like to separate the company block from the personal block with a blank line. Include your firm’s name and, if you need your mailing address, you can include it, too. I think the physical address adds extra weight to the signature and is rarely needed, so I omit it, but I can’t fault someone for including a company address. Your company’s public phone number and website address go next.

You can include social media links, but only include links – never icons – and make sure to include only links to profiles that are active. Don’t include a link to your YouTube page unless you offer value there and post frequent videos. Just because you have a social media presence somewhere doesn’t give you license to include it in your email signature.

Omit
Never include images in your email signature. Don’t do it. Ever. I don’t want to have to click the extra button in my email client to display images that I think might be relevant to the conversation, only to find out that it’s your company logo or, worse, social media icons. Also don’t include a vCard. It causes the same problem as images, but is even more arduous to deal with.

It’s not necessary to include patronizing labels for the components of your signature. We know what a website looks like; we know what a phone number looks like. You don’t need to label what they are in your signature. The possible exception is disambiguating a fax number from a phone number, but if you’re including a fax number in your signature you need to have a long conversation with yourself about what decade you’re living in.

Don’t include a quote. You might have a saying that feels good to you, but its rare that an inspirational quote won’t offend someone somewhere. It’s usually me, so leave it out. It’s unnecessary and unprofessional.

Leave out the confidentiality notice. Every article I’ve ever read about confidentiality notices in email signatures says that they’re not enforceable. Why add all the extra garbage that nobody reads or cares about?

Lastly, leave out the stock closing message. Including “Thanks,” or “Cheers,” or “Respects,” as the first line of the signature to make it look like you typed it works only the first time. The second email in an exchange will out you as simply lazy.

Professional presentation
Stay away from HTML. I’ve railed for years on the benefit of plain text email for bulk email newsletters, and we can argue about the benefits of pictures and fonts for advertising and marketing purposes, but when it comes to correspondence between two people, there’s absolutely no call for HTML email. It’s simply unprofessional and adds junk that can only take focus away from the conversation. Fonts and colors have no place in email.

Use plain text to arrange your signature in such a way that it’s easy to read and takes up as few lines of vertical space as possible. I like to use the pipe as a way to include more than one piece of information on the same line, but make sure to keep the number of characters per line under 72 so it doesn’t break in weird places. As an example of pipe usage, here’s my personal three-line signature, which includes my name, email address, two social media accounts and three websites. Remember that pretty much all email clients will turn the plain-text links into the active, clickable links.

Aaron | twitter.com/Traffas
aaron@aarontraffas.com | facebook.com/traffas
aarontraffas.com | aarontraffasband.com | auctioneertech.com

Here’s my professional signature which includes my name, designations, company name, website, profile page and two social media accounts. We have many more social media presences, but someone interested in me or the company can learn everything possible from the few links I’ve included in my signature.

Aaron Traffas, CAI, ATS, CES
aaron.traffas@purplewave.com
Purple Wave, Inc. | purplewave.com | purplewave.com/aarontraffas
twitter.com/purplewave | facebook.com/purplewaveinc

In summary, a professional email signature is simple and short, doesn’t include images or formatting, and contains just the right amount of appropriate information.

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Verizon’s Droid Turbo

Let’s get one thing clear, right off the bat. Not all Android phones are Droids, but all Droids run Android. A Droid is one of a line of phones exclusively from Verizon, but not all Android phones from Verizon are Droids. I just wanted to get that out of the way, as it greatly frustrates me to hear many in my social circles using Droid to refer generically to any Android phone from any carrier.

I haven’t owned a Droid since the original Motorola Droid. It was a great phone which, especially after my brief stint with the Palm Pre, solidified Android as the mobile operating system for me. It had a very clean Android experience, but future Droids from Motorola came with Motoblur, an overlay on top of Android which soured me on the entire Droid line. Until now.

Verizon’s latest addition to its Droid line is the Droid Turbo from Motorola. Verizon let me spend the last few weeks with one, and it became immediately clear that this is Verizon’s best phone to date.

In a nutshell, the Droid Turbo has the interface of the Moto X, the bleeding edge specs of the Nexus 6, a 21 MP camera and a battery that’s bigger than anything we’ve seen so far.

The screen is a QHD behemoth packed in to a 5.2″ size. Quad HD is 2560 x 1440, so the number of pixels per inch is 565. By comparison, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have 326 and 401 pixels per inch, respectively. I do wish they’d have made the screen a little bigger and used standard on-screen buttons rather than putting a row of three capacitive buttons at the bottom of the device. Google has been trying to move away from hardware buttons for a few years now, and the reason Motorola went with permanent buttons on the Turbo is honestly a head-scratcher.

The Turbo is fast. As I write this review, phoneArena.com lists the Droid Turbo as one of the fastest phones on the market. It’s by far the fastest of the major brands’ flagship devices, easily besting the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, HTC One M8, LG G3 and, of course, the Moto X 2014. With one of the fastest mobile processors I’ve seen yet in a phone, combined with 3 GB of RAM, the Turbo never lags or slows down, even while driving that massive screen.

The 21 MP camera is supported by a dual-LED flash. Even though it lacks optical image stabilization, it’s a very good camera, especially in daylight. The full 21 MP resolution is only available in a 4×3 aspect ratio, but that’s what I prefer anyway. I found the flash really helps low light performance. I’m not a fan of the camera app that ships with the Turbo, as the slide-out settings wheel is frustrating and confusing. I want buttons on the camera screen for settings and shutter, but the great thing about Android is that I can install a third-party picture app that will add those features. The Turbo does seem a little slow to take pictures when you have it on the highest of the automatic settings, but I’m hoping the upgrade to the newest version of Android called Lollipop will help the speed issue dramatically. I’ll post some example pictures at the end of this review.

The software on the Droid Turbo at launch is nearly identical to that of the Moto X. Motorola included Assist, Actions, Display and Voice that were found in the Moto X, as well as the Droid Zap app from Verizon that lets Droid users share files with one another in proximity. The relatively clean version of Android that’s on the Turbo is a joy to use, and the few additions from Motorola contribute in a good way to the user experience.

Reception with the Turbo was very good. I’d say it might be just a touch better than the G3 in areas of weak coverage. Motorola is my favorite manufacturer with regards to antenna performance, and the Turbo doesn’t let me down.

The Turbo is the first phone with a stock battery big enough to get me through the day. The second day I used it, I had 15 hours and 32 minutes off the battery with 8 hours 37 minutes of screen on time. For a stock battery, those are some amazing numbers. The shortest time I had from fully charged to dead was just over 9 hours, which means my phone was dead at 5 p.m., but it’s still drastically better than the battery life of any other stock phone I’ve tested. I still wish they’d have built the Droid Turbo with a removable back so that I could put a bigger battery in it and truly get the two-day battery life they’re advertising.

Charging the Turbo during the day is not something an average user is likely to have to do, but it does feature Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology, which boasts 8 hours of battery life from only 15 minutes of charge time.

All in all, the Droid Turbo is the best phone Verizon has ever launched. I’m honestly going to miss it when I send it back to Verizon, and I’m sure I’ll feel silly waving my hand over other phones in hopes it will wake them up or twisting them with my wrist to launch the camera. My only complaints with the Turbo are the lack of an upgradable battery and SD card slot, the capacitive buttons on the screen, the lack of optical image stabilization in the camera. It’s super fast and has a gorgeous display, smart software additions, a solid camera and a big battery. Once it gets the Lollipop upgrade, it’ll be even better. If you’ve been looking for a phone with amazing specs that doesn’t have a huge screen, the Droid Turbo is absolutely the phone for you.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Droid Turbo, I spent an hour talking in-depth with Joe Maring and Tony McAfee as a video podcast for their Mobile Cup of Joe show. Here’s the full video.

Finally, here are some sample pictures taken with the camera on the Droid Turbo. They’re unedited, and you can view the original by clicking the full size download link from the attachment page. Enjoy!

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