By: @Hilzfuld

What was once a small startup company that provided a simple search engine, has become the single most powerful corporation across multiple industries. As the Web and the technology we use daily evolves and becomes more sophisticated, contrary to other areas in which the power is more distributed than ever (see politics), Google is just becoming more powerful every day. Whether it is their entry into new industries like the mobile market with their Nexus One, or their shift to the model of Cloud Computing, there is no denying that Google has become the most significant name in various billion dollar industries.

One such industry, and probably the primary one, is of course search. There is no way around search engine optimization in today’s online world, and it is not an exaggeration to say that if you do not spend your time and resources on advancing your ranking on search engines, and let’s be honest, when we say search engines, we mean Google, your online business, whatever it might be, is doomed for failure.

While new businesses are popping up online by the second, business owners are faced with the complicated and sometimes frustrating task of optimizing their website for Google. This involves first and foremost analysis, but we are getting ahead of ourselves here. What is Search Engine Optimization and how does one do it? Well, to be honest, I am no expert myself, but I have learned a lot about the topic from some serious experts, so I will share with you the little I do know.

Someone smart once told me that Google and the Web is similar to the restaurant industry. He then went on for over an hour laying out the similarities for me. Unfortunately, I did not have a pen or a laptop to write it all down, so I forgot many of the points he made. However, the concept it simple. If you have a restaurant and you want to succeed in bringing people to eat your food, one of the first things you need to do is of course publicize yourself. Who are you and what do you offer? The first step in doing this is of course choosing a name for your vendor and then putting up a relevant and appealing sign on the front to attract visitors. If you have not caught on yet, this is equivalent to selecting the URL for your site, updating the title and descriptions of your home page as well as all the other pages on the site.

From what I understand, these are the most important factors when optimizing a site, the title and descriptions. The similarities are many, but to name a few, imagine your restaurant gets written up in the most prestigious restaurant journal in your area, that will of course have a tremendous affect on your popularity and you might even see the results instantly. One writeup like that in a few journals will of course bring even better results. This is equivalent to serious websites posting a link back to your site. The more links you have from “serious” websites, the better Google will recognize you as a leading “restaurant”.

Other factors that matter when trying to get your name out there is of course the menu or the content. If the content is great on your site, that will obviously advance your ranking in the eyes of the almighty Google as good food on your menu will bring you more visitors. However, to give one example of a less significant SEO issue, if the food on your menu is not original and a certain recipe was “stolen” from a nearby vendor, who just happens to be the biggest restaurant around, people will assume you stole the recipe and not the other way around. Same goes for content, if your site includes articles or content that appears word for word on a leading website, the content can be the best in the world, you still might not get credited for it.

So, now, you should have a very basic idea of what SEO is, but how do I do it? How do I conduct the analysis of my pages? How do I know what title, description, or keywords to use to best advance my site? How do I actually change that information? These are some of the many questions you need to ask yourself before optimizing a site. The answer? Well, there are many tools available, that from my experience each provide a very specific functionality in the process of SEO. There are tools that focus on keywords, those that deal primarily with links, and others that work with your content.

I have had the privilege over the past month to work with and evaluate one of the industry’s most robust and comprehensive web-based software suite. The software is called Drive and was built and engineered by an SEO company called RankAbove. Before I get into the details of what Drive does, and it does a heck of a lot, let me first say that its main advantage from a user’s standpoint is its ultra user-friendly UI. SEO is not an easy process and a complicated and hard-t0-use interface is the last thing a person needs when optimizing their site. Drive, if I am judging by its interface alone, could have just as well been a piece of music-related software, or anything else for that matter. It is very easy to use, explanations of all the different screens are built in, and the entire experience of Drive is top notch.

As for the features provided by Drive, the list is long, but it is important to understand one point before getting into them. SEO, like other industries or fields require a lot of hard work. No matter how good your SEO software is, someone is still going to have to do the “dirty” work. Drive takes care of all your analysis needs, but in terms of implementing the detailed feedback Drive provides, that you are going to have to do yourself.

So, setting up Drive on your website is a breeze, which involves a three step process. The software conducts an extremely in depth analysis of your site, no matter how many pages it includes (RankAbove works with some seriously big names/sites), in just a few clicks. The first time I saw drive working, I was blown away by how much it did in how little time. So, now you are probably thinking “OK, it analyzed my site, now what?” Good question. While Drive does not add titles or keywords for you, it does include a sophisticated prioritization engine that gives you actionable advice based on importance. So, if your home page has a bad title or no title at all, Drive will tell you to forget everything else, and work on that ASAP.

OK, so Drive tells you what needs to be done and in what order to do it. Now comes the time to allocate the tasks to your team. Drive takes care of that too with an advanced SEO Management tool allowing you to assign the various tasks to multiple people.

Getting down to more details, Drive updates itself regularly on the keywords you should be using based on your primary competitors, as well as what keywords are in use throughout your site. This is the kind of information that a company not using Drive might spend days if not weeks trying to find through intense and comprehensive market research. Drive saves you time, energy, and lots of frustration on this front, not to mention that it most likely does a better job at keyword discovery than a person will do when manually researching the market.

Drive also includes all the analytics you would need for your site, by both incorporating the ability to use Google Analytics from within Drive and a partnership with Omniture to provide an analytics suite. The list of features goes on, but the concept is simple. All the SEO analysis tools in one nicely designed interface. Here is the kicker though. SEO is a tricky thing because Google updates their search algorithm daily if not hourly, even if by the smallest parameter, and you need to keep up. Drive also provides daily updated prioritization based on Google’s algorithm, which will ensure that your site is up to date in terms of its optimization level.

Like I said, I can go on for hours about the details of Drive and its long list of features, but at this point, I think you get the drift, so I would like to add one more point regarding RankAbove as a company and less about Drive as software. During this period of testing, I was in contact with various people over at RankAbove, and to say that they have great customer service would be an understatement. They were available with technical questions at any time, and they conducted themselves with the highest level of professionalism when it came to any questions or feedback we had about Drive. Sometimes, when you spend so much time and energy developing something, and then you get feedback on how to improve the product, it is easy to get defensive and block it all out. RankAbove not only heard and listened to our feedback, they very much appreciated it, and intend on implementing it. They are all about user experience and therefore are big believers in user feedback.

In terms of its disadvantages, the tool is Web-based, so while that provides some serious benefits like access from anywhere, it also means you are dependent on the speed of your connection. We found some minor lagging in the interface, but with such a robust and significant tool, that is to be expected. Some of the different tabs in Drive, such as the Reporting section are still being developed based on user feedback, let’s not forget that Drive is still in Beta. All in all, the tool impressed us on all levels, and it is pretty clear that any online entity can benefit from the solution provided by RankAbove’s Drive.

Like I said, it was a pleasure working with the guys at RankAbove and I for one, look forward to future cooperation, whether it is testing out new features or versions of Drive, or using the full suite on future websites with which I am involved.

SEO: What Is It and How Do I Get Results? is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

By: @Hilzfuld

All this talk about the Nexus One and the Droid has had two effects on me. For starters, after playing with the Nexus One, I am now 100% convinced that I want one. The phone is extremely impressive both in terms of its hardware and software. It is surprisingly thin and the screen is gigantic, relatively speaking. The entire phone is made out of some sort of rubberized material I have not seen before. In terms of the processor, the Nexus responds extremely fast, way faster than any other phone I have used, but then again, I have never used a Snapdragon device.

The software though is what convinced me that the Nexus One is worthy of all its hype. I have been using Android 1.5 on a Samsung Galaxy, and the phone’s 528mhz processor just prevents you from getting the full Android experience. After playing with the Nexus, I can safely say that Android is the future of mobile phones.

Besides leading me to the conclusion that I want a Nexus One, the other effect all the buzz had on me, was a curiosity to better understand the potential of Android as an open OS. Like I said, I have been using the Galaxy for a few months now, but not as my primary phone, due to a few disadvantages of the phone, the primary one being the relatively slow processor. However, after playing with the Nexus One, I decided to try and get to know my Galaxy a little better and to attempt and take full advantage of its open capabilities.

So, I started to customize the Galaxy in a way you can only do on an open platform, and sure enough, I fell in love with the OS. I am still not throwing away my Bold since I need the push mail and the Galaxy has some funny problems like a lack of lights on the hardware buttons, making it impossible to use at night.

Having said that, I am much more impressed with the Android platform and the Galaxy then I was a month ago, so I thought I would share the potential I recently discovered and how I did that.

So, let me start by saying that if you have been using Android and you have gotten to know the OS well, I am sure most of what I am going to say here will seem obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me.

First of all, one of my biggest complaints from day one of using Android was the keyboard. Comparing it to the keyboard on the iPod Touch, which is the only virtual keyboard I had ever used, left me very frustrated. I found the keyboard difficult to use, and I was unable to write a single sentence without errors.

I was, however, stuck in the mindset that a phone  has one keyboard, and I would have to get used to it. I have Apple to blame for that Jail like mentality, so thanks a lot Steve. With Android, this is very much not the case, and when you are typing something on the phone, whether it is an email or a text message, a simple long press on the input field enables you to switch keyboards. Turns out my provider preinstalled a multi language keyboard on the Galaxy that was bundled with major issues, crashes, and a lack of proper corrective software. Once I switched to the default Android keyboard, life was a whole lot better, but still not as good as it was about to get.

As soon as I found that I can easily change the input method, I figured there has to be a downloadable keyboard that will one up the Android keyboard, and no surprises there, I was right. The name of the app is “Better Keyboard” and despite the lack of creativity is its name, that is exactly what it is, a better keyboard. Searching the Android Market for the words “better keyboard” will show you just how customizable this app is. There are approximately five hundred different skins for Better Keyboard, and each one makes the keyboard appear differently in terms of its size, color, and shape. I can’t help but think how this would never fly on the iPhone.

So my biggest issue was now solved and I was typing just as fast as I would on the iPod Touch if not faster. I was then curious to see what other fundamental features of the phone can be changed using a 3rd party app, and I quickly realized that there was almost nothing that could NOT be changed. I downloaded an app called Open Home, and this app really helped me realize what an open OS means. Forget the keyboard, Open Home provides an entirely new look to your home screen.

Android allows three home screens by default, which might not be enough for users that like to have all their apps on their home screen. With Open Home, you can have seven home screens, now we’re talking. However, that is not it. Open Home, similarly to Better Keyboard comes with hundreds of skins from which to choose. You can make your device’s home screens look like anything you want including any the other popular mobile device. Open Home lets you fully change the look and feel of your Android device, and I mean fully. The one issue I have with Open Home and the reason I am not using it exclusively on my phone (I switch between the default Android home and Open Home) is because there are no available widgets in the Market yet that are compatible with Open Home.

This leads me to my next point, widgets. Forget everything you knew about mobile phones and their settings. Forget having to go  into Settings to make the screen brighter, turn on Bluetooth, see the status of your battery, or anything else you would do on your Settings screen. It is all available as a widget in the App Market. That means that pretty much any functionality you would need from your mobile phone is available with one press. You know how  Apple’s main iPhone campaign is “There’s an app for that too”? Android’s should be “There’s a widget for that too”. Anything you can imagine is available in widget form.

My first home screen (not in Open Home) is full of widgets. I have a widget to turn the phone on silent and then back to loud in one press, I have a widget to enable and disable Bluetooth, adjust the screen’s brightness, turn on/off the Wifi, a post-it widget to quickly add any notes to myself on the home screen, a voice recorder widget, a volume widget, a battery status widget, and others. I think you get the point. Anything I would usually have to open the settings to adjust is available on one home screen.

Other widgets I have include Facebook, TuneWiki, Twitter, and many more. One more widget that deserves a mention is a picture frame widget. I have one on each home screen, which works out well since there are only three home screens allowed and I have three kids. Each home screen has a nice picture frame in the corner with one of my kids. It is the perfect size, not taking up too much room on the screen, but big enough to see the face clearly. The size, however, is also customizable. So that is one major advantage to the Android platform, fully customizable home screen widgets.

Moving along, there are of course home screen shortcuts too. I have forgotten what it means to dial someone’s number or even look for them in my contacts. You can add a shortcut to any contact as an icon on your home screen, and with one press, call or SMS them. You can also add shortcuts to web pages, which will open up the URL with, you guessed it, one press. Using shortcuts combined with widgets, I am not sure I would ever have to leave my home screen to do anything on an Android phone.

Then there are of course apps. You can easily drag any app to any location on one of your three (in the default configuration) or seven (using Open Home) home screens. The problem is, three home screens is just not enough for all the apps I would like to add especially given the large number of widgets and shortcuts I already added. Well, there’s a widget for that too.

I found a widget called Launcher Dock, which enables you to select seven apps, contacts, URLs, or whatever else you want to add, and include them in a dock that appears as an icon on your home screen. The dock is fully customizable including changing the fonts color, the way the dock appears and responds to your touch, as well as whether it provides haptic feedback when you press one of the shortcuts in the dock. So, now you have all the apps, widgets, and shortcuts on your home screen, plus an additional seven that can be accessed with Launcher Dock.

Other Android defaults I changed include the browser, which I replaced with an app called Dolphin Browser that provides a new level of browsing the Web. I also changed the SMS interface and how the phone notifies me of an incoming message. This was done using an app called SMS Popup, not a very creative name, but an amazing app.

I could really go on about the different things I did to customize the Galaxy and make it my own, but I think you get the drift. The bottom line is, all the comparisons across the Web between the iPhone OS and Android are in my opinion, ridiculous. While the iPhone OS is “What you see is what you get”, the Android platform is just a platform, and can be completely 100% customized to your needs. There really is no comparing the two.

I am going to continue to use the Galaxy and see what other tricks I discover, but all this Android playing just strengthens initial decision that I gotta get me one of those Nexus One devices. You hear that Google? I am at @hilzfuld if you need my address for shipping.

Why There is No Comparing The iPhone to Android Phones is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

by: Eli Ungar-Sargon

The wait is finally over. Sort of. Early on Wednesday, Apple unveiled its long-rumored tablet computer, the iPad, and announced that it would start shipping at the end of March.Is this the reinvention of portable computing as we know it? Probably not, but it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. Let’s take a a moment to step away from the famous Steve Jobs reality distortion field and evaluate what we know so far.

The Hardware

The iPad is a multitouch Tablet computer running a variant of the iPhone operating system on a custom built “Apple A4” chip. It has a 9.7’’ LED backlit display, boasts 10 hours of battery life and comes in three basic models: 16 GB ($499), 32 GB ($599), and 64 GB ($699). All of the models come with Wifi 802.11 a/b/g/n, but if you want the convenience of 3G connectivity, you will need to pay another $130 over the base price of each model and to use it, you will need to sign up for a pay-as-you-go data plan with AT&T. Two such plans will be available when the iPad ships: A $14.99 monthly plan with a 250 MB limit and a $29.99 monthly plan with unlimited data. The Wifi only iPads will be available on March 27 and the 3G enabled iPads will be available on April 27. International carrier deals are still pending, but they should be in place by June. So much for the hard facts.

The New Kid on the Block

The most important question that everyone had going into this event was: Where will this product fit into our lives? Personally, I thought that there simply wasn’t enough room in between the laptop and the smartphone to justify a distinct product category. I reasoned that Apple must be going for a laptop replacement and my expectations were set accordingly. I now know that Apple disagrees with me on this point.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, he did so with one of his brilliantly simple slides. It was divided into three segments with an iPhone on the left, a Macbook Pro on the right, and an open space in the center. Jobs then went on to say that for a product to succeed in this in-between space it would need to do the following things better than both a smarthone and a laptop: Web browsing, email, photos, video, music, games, and eBooks. He then proceded to explain why the iPad was better suited to these tasks than either a smartphone or a laptop. It’s a provocative argument. Let’s examine it more closely.

Web Browsing

Ever since I got my first iPhone, I’ve felt that touching a link on a website is a more intuitive way of browsing the internet than using a mouse, or a trackpad. The one thing that makes the experience of browsing the web on the iPhone less than ideal is its size. The iPad solves this and maintains the touch advantage. Interestingly, the iPad continues the iPhone’s venerable tradition of locking Flash content out of the experience. Overall I have to agree with Steve on this one. Despite the inconvenience of not having flash, surfing the web on a touch tablet of this size should provide a superior experience.

Email

When it comes to email, a laptop has a clear advantage over a smartphone, due to the comfort and accuracy of having a real keyboard. The iPad has a virtual touch keybard that is almost the size of an actual hardware keyboard when it’s in landscape mode. Surely, you might opine, the iPad’s virtual keyboard isn’t superior to a laptop for typing out emails! And you would be correct. In this arena, the experience of typing on an iPad alone would fall somewhere in between that of a smartphone and a laptop. Fortunately, Apple also announced that they will be shipping an accessory physical keyboard for the iPad that will be priced at $69. I’m going to disagree with Steve on this one. I think that a laptop still provides the best email experience.

Photos and Video

The superiority of interacting with photos on a large multitouch screen is fairly obvious. When it comes to photographs, bigger is better and in the case of the iPad, Apple was actually able to improve upon the excellent multitouch interface found in the iPhone photo app. But what about video? Here things don’t seem as obvious to me. For the iPad to be a really excellent web surfing device, it had to maintain a 4:3 aspect ratio screen. However, most video content these days is produced at or near a 16:9 aspect ratio. This means that the viewer will have to choose between seeing the entire image with black bars on top and bottom or filling the screen and cutting off the sides. Granted, even with black bars, the iPad video image is much larger than that of the iPhone, but most laptops these days have 16:9 screens, not to mention higher resolution displays (the iPad comes in at a little under 720p). Nevertheless, I can’t think of another device that allows 10 hours straight of near HD quality video playback on a single charge. When it comes to photos, the iPad comes out on top. For video, I think it’s a toss up between the iPad and a laptop.

Music and Games

For music, an argument can be made that more screen real-estate yields benefits for managing a music library and it seems that Apple has rewritten their music-related applications to take advantage of the iPad’s larger screen. The iPad has an even clearer advantage when it comes to gaming. The combination of multitouch and the built in accelerometer made the iPhone a very succesful protable gaming platform, but there are times when the size of the screen is a limiting factor. The combination of touch and a larger screen will be put to great use by game developers, some of whom gave impressive demonstrations at the presentation. The music point seems debatable, but I see a clear advantage to gaming on the iPad.

eBooks

It’s the final category, eBooks, in which the iPad really shines. Because of its form factor, the iPad provides a reading experience that is an order of magnitude better than what either a smartphone, or a laptop can provide. On this subject, Apple announced a new app called iBook which is designed specifically for the iPad. Borrowing its user interface from a great iPhone app “Classics,” the iBook app presents the user with a virtual bookshelf populated by books that can be purchased in the built in iBook Store. Apple also announced that a handfull of the biggest publishers have already signed up to sell their books through the iBook Store and Jobs invited all of the other publishers to join in the coming months. I think that eBooks on the iPad is a slam-dunk. No other eBook reader can touch it.

Another Apple Success?

Three years ago, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld, I had a gut feeling that it would be a revolutionary device. I don’t have the same feeling about the iPad. First, it’s just not as easy to explain. How would you describe the iPad to your aunt? Okay, so first you’d have to apologize for the gender-insensitive name, but once you got that out of the way, what would you say? That it’s an oversized iPhone without the phone? A big iPod Touch? Jobs had a nice line in his presentation. He said “It’s more intuitive than a laptop and more capable than a smartphone.”But if that’s the best that the greatest marketer of our time can come up with, it makes me wonder who the iPad will appeal to. Mr. Jobs’s logic seems for the most part to be sound. The iPad does MOST of the above computing tasks better than a smartphone or a laptop. The real question, however, is whether it does those tasks so much better that we’ll spend between $500 and $800 on it… My suspicion is that for most people the answer to that question is no. But the truth is that we don’t really know enough yet to call this one. The iPad has tremendous potential as an all-around content consumption device. Moreover, once developers get their hands on it, there’s no telling what it will be capable of. In the end, it will be the content providers and app developers who determine the success or failure of the iPad.

The Apple iPad: iSuccess or iFlop? is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

By: @Hilzfuld

This might be the most difficult post I have ever written. I am literally forcing myself to write these words. The reason I am finding it so difficult to write about the iPad is two fold. For starters, I do not know my own opinion yet. On the one hand, there is no denying it is a beautiful product like only Apple knows how to make. On the other hand, did they really reinvent the wheel here? Does it include anything particularly exciting on the technology side of things? I think not. I am sorry to be the millionth person to say this, but with the addition of a faster processor and some new software capabilities, the iPad is a giant iPod. But is that really so bad? You starting to get why this is a challenging topic for me?

The other reason I was hesitant to write this post is because the iPad had to have been the single most talked about product in history prior to its launch. There must have been close to 50 mock ups circulating the Web in the weeks leading up to yesterday’s announcement. The first hour of the event had over 170,000 tweets with the word iPad in them. Everyone was, and still is talking about this device. There were people who pretended they had one prior to the launch, there were people who were utterly disappointed with the product and did not bother hiding that, and there were those that were overly excited by the iPad. What they all share in common is that they were all talking about it.

So, I thought to myself , “Do I really have what to add?” The truth is before I sit down to write a blog post, I generally formulate my thoughts and opinions of the matter at hand. I did not do that in this case, since I do not yet know what I think. Before I talk about what excites me and what disappoints me about this device in terms of its specs, let me just tell those of you who are not in the loop what the iPad is.

I think it is safe to say anyone who has not been frozen for the last few years knows what an iPod is. It is the device that single handedly changed multiple billion dollar industries such as the music and gaming industries to name a few. The mobile world has never been the same since the iPod, which eventually turned into the iPhone accompanied by its own 140,000 apps and over 2 billion downloads.

Well, according to Apple, the iPad will revolutionize those industries and add a few more to the list. You can include internet, and I do not mean the mobile internet, I mean the full fledged internet, the iPad will most likely change that forever. Books, magazines, those are another two markets that will feel the effect. The iPad is essentially a large iPod in terms of its media capabilities, a stunning eBook reader with a significant market and a beautiful interface for storing and reading books, as well as a very impressive gaming device that will blow its competition out of the water.

However, in certain ways, the iPad really does disappoint. Should we start with the name? iPad? Really? Maybe I am missing some brilliant marketing strategy, but judging from the amount of jokes surrounding its  name and the association with certain “girl” products, I would say I am not alone. Maybe this is a classic example of there is “No such thing as bad press”. Having said that, iSlate might have worked better, although as someone pointed out to me yesterday, that also spells “Is Late” and we know Apple is never late to anything.

OK, so I don’t love the name, but let’s get serious here. No camera?? This is by far the biggest disappointment for me. I was thinking based on the current trends in technology and the overflow of rumors on the Web that the Apple tablet would have two cameras. OK, not two, but none? That is bad news. Moving along, just like its baby brother, the iPad does not allow you to run multiple apps. OK, so what is this thing then? Is it a computer that only allows you to do one thing at a time? Is it an iPhone with a bigger screen? No, no phone calls. It is just confusing to me.

Regarding the eReader side of things, there is no denying the Kindle’s throne as the king of eReaders, and this device will not change  that. Why? Well, there really are a few reasons that just like everything else the iPad does, it does not do eReading the best. The Kindle’s 400,000 book collection is one thing that will keep it on top, but its battery life leaves no room for the iPad and its 10 hour battery (as impressive as that might be for a media device/laptop/netbook/mobile phone, what is this thing?). 10 hours is nice, but not as nice as a week of reading time on the Kindle with the Wifi enabled (two weeks without).

One last reason the iPad will not become the ultimate eBook reader, which will turn the book and magazine industries upside down, is of course its connectivity. The basic iPad has Wifi and no 3G. For you non techies among us, that means if you are not in a hot spot (Starbucks or McDonald’s for example), you have no Web access. Yes, you can buy the more expensive model with 3G, but that also requires a data plan, whereas the Kindle has free 3G. So, I think it is safe to say, the Kindle can continue to sleep well at night.

I could really go on for a long time about the minuses of the iPad, but let me just summarize it by saying, the iPad is not the best device out there for anything. A computer that runs one app at a time wont work for most heavy users. An eBook reader with no constant and cheap access to the book store doesn’t cut it. A Web surfing device with no Adobe Flash is so 2009. I think the fact that the iPad is no smartphone is clear and obvious to all, unless your pants have some seriously large pockets. No USB port, no dragging and dropping files, no video output, and no memory expansion slot.  So, I ask you this, what is the iPad in one, two, or three words?

Before I get pounded in the comments by all the fanboys, let me make myself 100% clear, the iPad’s interface is beautiful, the hardware is of course unprecedented in its simplicity, and the user experience looks like there is not much room for improvement. The fact that the hardware and software including the processor were all manufactured by Apple inc. is of course a huge advantage, but I just do not see how I, or anyone else who uses their computer, smartphone, or eBook reader intensively will be satisfied with the iPad’s specs and capabilities. To be honest, I am not even sure how I would hold the thing comfortably in a way that it would not feel awkward in my hand. That pretty much sums up the issue in a nutshell. If the iPad was the ultimate computing device, one that would compete with a Macbook for example, we would perhaps know how to hold the device. If it was a smartphone, I know how to hold a phone. An eBook reader, sure, hold it like a book. So, let’s leave it at this. Someone please define to me in the comments what the iPad is, so when I eventually do buy it (did you really doubt it for a second?), I will know how to hold the thing.

<

iPad: What Is It and How Would I Use It? Anyone? is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

by: Eli Ungar-Sargon

If, like me, you’ve been following coverage of the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, you will have noticed that the big trend this year was 3D TV’s. All of the major flat panel manufacturers were in Las Vegas showing off HDTV’s capable of displaying content in 3D. This fact, coupled with the runaway success of James Cameron’s 3D film “Avatar,” has brought the third dimension back into the limelight. With so much buzz around 3D, you might be wondering whether this is the future of cinema. Don’t believe the hype. Here are the top five reasons why 3D has no future:

1: There isn’t enough content.

It is true that in an effort to lure people back into theaters, the studios have been pushing 3D hard lately. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple to produce a 3D live action film as it is a 3D animation. To achieve 3D in animation, one instructs a computer to render a second channel of video slightly offset from the first.This is not significantly more onerous than creating an ordinary 2D CG animation. For live action films, however, 3D requires special cameras that are heavy and inconvenient to use. The practical upshot of this is that most of the 3D films being produced today are animated. This, of course, has implications for watching 3D films both in the theater and at home. If 3D continues to fail in winning over live action filmmakers, there simply won’t be much to look at. And while the studios have promised a handful of (mostly animated) 3D Blu-ray releases for 2010, there’s just isn’t enough content available now to make it a must-have home theater technology.

2. The upfront cost of 3D hardware is too steep.

The reintroduction of 3D into mainstream movies has seen a modest degree of success over the past few years. Theaters have been able to charge more for tickets to 3D screenings, which has helped them in offsetting the exorbitant cost of upgrading their projection hardware. But 3D still accounts for a mere fraction of overall ticket sales. This is because even with higher ticket prices, exhibitors cannot afford to make all of their screens 3D-ready. The cost of upgrading is also a problem in the home theater market, where HDTV’s have finally made their way into a majority of American homes. The vast majority of these households have only recently bought in. Is it really reasonable to expect people who just shelled out serious money for their new flat screens to go out and buy another $3000 TV? The value-add, especially considering the endemic lack of 3D content, is just not enough to justify the purchase. Even if the consumer in question did have the money, they would be wiser to spend it on upgrading their sound system, before going to 3D.

3. The quality of the experience is inconsistent and problematic.
I saw Avatar in IMAX 3D, which is the oldest of the 3D technologies currently in use. I then went and suffered through all 172 minutes of it again in RealD. The IMAX 3D experience was not great. First, the glasses were recycled and although I was seeing the film on opening day, they seemed somewhat warped. Even after I had changed glasses, the 3D illusion was broken every time I moved my head. It was exhausting to have to hold one position for close to three hours, but it was either that, or stare at a blurry image. I walked out of the IMAX 3D screening with a crick in my neck. The RealD screening did provide a better overall 3D experience. The illusion was not broken by head movements and so I was able to watch it in a more comfortable position. Unfortunately, when I left the RealD screening, I had a headache that lasted for an hour and a half (more on this special 3D headache later). Suffice to say that even the most recent implementations of 3D leave something to be desired.

4. The glasses are a literal barrier to entry.

While there have been many advances in 3D technology over the years, one thing that has not changed is the need for glasses. Depending on the particular type of 3D technology, these glasses work in slightly different ways, but the reliance on them to send offset images to the brain is still a mainstay of any 3D viewing experience. This is also true of the latest 3D HDTV’s which, we learned at CES, will ship with battery-powered 3D glasses. This is an annoyance at the theater, but can you imagine having to put on a pair of glasses to watch TV in your living room? And what do you do if you wear reading glasses? How about when friends come over to watch the Super Bowl, or theOscars? The glasses make a hard sell even harder.

5. Filmmakers, James Cameron included, do not really understand 3D.

Film, like photography and perspective painting, is already a three dimensional medium. Monocular cues like linear perspective, occlusion, and shadow, to name but a few, all provide the same sense of depth perception in a film, photograph, or painting as they do in real life. It is true that binocular cues add dimension to the other depth cues (when looking at objects up to 100 feet away), but it is a subtle effect and not the only way we see depth in the world or in film. While many filmmakers have an intuitive understanding of the principles of human perception, it’s not something that they study formally. Most get by in 2D, because there are established filmmaking conventions that they conform to which happen to play well with human perception. Unfortunately, 3D hasn’t been around long enough for such conventions to develop. 3D filmmakers end up using 2D film techniques that induce depth cues which are then contradicted by some of the 3D binocular cues that are layered over everything. When your brain is presented with such conflicting depth information, it will choose one version over the other, but when such conflicts happen many times over the course of a few hours, you end up with a perception headache.

There are many other factors that influence our perception of 3D, including the focal length of the lens, the composition of the shot, and the movement of the camera, but modern filmmakers don’t seem to be aware of the effects of these important factors on the perception of their films. This is why watching a 3D movie doesn’t really feel like being there, it just feels like its own, somewhat annoying, thing.

The push for 3D comes from a confluence of the old desire to create a more immersive cinema experience and the contemporary need to get people excited about going to the movies again. Unfortunately, the current 3D technology fails to deliver on the former and so it is destined to fail at the latter. A much more fruitful approach would be to adapt Douglas Trumball’s Showscan technology. What Trumbull demonstrated was that by shooting and projecting film at higher frame rates, he could create a much more immersive and realistic experience than what we get with a traditional 24 frames per second projection. His system, which involved 70 mm film shot and projected at 60 frames per second was dismissed as impractical and excessively expensive. In the digital age, this objection is no longer relevant. It is already possible to design reasonably priced digital cinema cameras and projectors that shoot and project at high resolutions and fast frame rates. This, it seems to me, is the next logical step in the evolution of cinema. Not the gimmick that we now call 3D.

The Top Five Reasons Why 3D Has No Future is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

By: @Hilzfuld

While the mobile industry is busy talking about and comparing the Nexus One and the iPhone, there is one phone that really gives a clear perspective of the entire market and sums up the industry in a nutshell. It was not long ago when I first laid hand on the famous Motorola RAZR. “Wow, what a phone”, I thought, but what was it about the RAZR that so impressed people. What did the phone really being to the table that made people by the RAZR by the millions? Let’s be honest, was it the features that the phone offered or was it simply a pure case of style over substance? Did the RAZR revolutionize the mobile phone in that it offered better wireless broadband? Did it offer a better camera? Was its user experience superior to its predecessors?

The answer is a big fat no. The RAZR did nothing in terms of functionality. The only thing it did was push the boundaries of mobile hardware. Motorola managed to build a mobile phone that would amaze anyone that would hold it. We all fell for it. Not only did us “dumb” consumers fall into the trap, but all of Motorola’s competitors did too. All the big corporations that spend billions on market research, spent the next year or two competing who could make the thinnest phone. What about functionality? What about experience? Not many phones before or after the RAZR offered such a poor user experience. So how were we so blind?

Instead of trying to answer “what were we all thinking?”, what we should be trying to answer is “Have we learned from our mistakes?” I believe we have and the HTC HD2 proves my point. The mobile industry has completely evolved in my opinion from a hardware-centric market to a software-obsessed one. Why obsessed? Because, today, many consumers are purchasing their mobile handsets based on the number of apps the market that compliments that phone hosts. I have heard on many occasions (and I will not deny that I have even said this) consumers trashing the Android platform because compared to Apple’s 130,000 apps, the Android Market has only 20,000. Think about that for a second, 20,000 apps to install on your mobile phone. Who needs so many? OK, so you are probably thinking that it is not the number that matters, rather the variety. While the App Store has an app for “pretty much anything”, there are many things not yet available in the Android Market. This is true, but I would dare to say that you can find 99% of apps you will need in the Market.

So, how does the HD2 prove this point? Well, the HD2 is the ultimate phone, or at least it would have been back in the RAZR days. In terms of its hardware, it lacks nothing. Where do I start? The screen is a ridiculous 4.3′ (compared to the miniature 3.5′ on the iPhone), the processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which is 1GHZ compared to the 600MHZ on the iPhone (this means everything works faster on the phone, including how fast you can access the wireless internet, not to be confused with how fast the actual connection is). The camera is 5MP with an LED flash. The entire phone is 11mm thick, which when compared to the RAZR’s 14mm (when closed) is just insane.  When I said it lacks nothing, I was not kidding.

So, why are people busy talking about the iPhone and the Nexus One when there is an HD2? The answer? No one cares about hardware nowadays. The Windows Marketplace, which is the equivalent of the App Store on the iPhone is just non existent. I mean it exists, but with the numbers and the variety of apps it provides, it might as well not exist. Like a friend who recently reviewed the HD2 told me, there is only a limited amount of time you can spend on Youtube.

To be fair,  I will say that the HD2 is not all hardware. HTC did as good of a job as they could at covering up the origins of the phone’s OS. At first glance (that might actually last a long time), you do not even know you are on a Windows Mobile phone. The phone is also the first Windows device to have a capacitive touch screen, as opposed to the resistive touch screen, which can be found on all the older Windows Mobile devices. No need for a stylus with the HD2. However, if you are like me and enjoy getting to know your phone well, you will eventually encounter the old Windows Mobile you once saw in older devices. It is hidden well, but it is very much there.

In addition to the fantastic job HTC did designing the UI, all the various social tools are integrated into the new OS. Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, they are all preinstalled. A nice touch, but not enough. The bottom line is, we seemed to have learned our lesson. The HD2 is the modern RAZR, as I see it. It is beautifully designed, it really is. The experience, if I am being honest, is leaps and bounds ahead of what the RAZR was, and I am not just talking about something that happens over the years. I do not blame HTC for the HD2’s lack of popularity, I blame Microsoft. They need to get with the program, make app development as easy as it is on the competing platforms, and most of all, they need to get their priorities straight.

I don’t know about you, but this whole “Microsoft falling behind Apple technologically”, is Deja Vu of the whole Mac VS. PC saga. All I can say is, this is still a new space relatively speaking, and so it is not too late for Windows Mobile, but if Microsoft does not make a major switch in the way it views its mobile OS and its ecosystem, the Apple commercials mocking the Windows Mobile platform are not far off.

On the flip side, if you want a phone that incorporates all the new technology and pushes the limits of the mobile industry, the HD2 has it all. The internet on the HD2 for example, is less like the mobile Web as we know it (http://www.broadbandexpert.com.au/), and more like the desktop experience we have grown accustomed to. That is what 4.3′ of screen will do for you. Let’s sum it up by saying, take the HD2’s looks and slap on some of Apple or Android’s personality (and by personality, I mean 3rd party apps), and you got yourself a phone that will beat out any and all competition.

HTC HD2: A Clear Picture of Where the Industry is Headed is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

By: @Hilzfuld

I think it is safe to say that the mobile space is heading in the direction of user experience. Mobile operating systems that offer annoying and complicated experiences are just not gonna make it in the long run against names like iPhone and Android. This is true for Symbian, it is true for Windows Mobile (although I hear the newer 6.5 is a huge improvement), and some will say it is true for BlackBerry.

While the Nexus One is making huge waves, a small company that has developed a Linux-based mobile operating system as well as an actual device, seem to be popping up more and more. I am referring to the First ELSE, which I probably heard about for the first time 6 months ago. They were at CES showing off their “revolutionary” mobile device, and without passing any judgement, I present to you two videos about the First ELSE. I will say it is different, but I am interested to hear what you think about their interface and the potential of such a device.

The UI is said to be optimized for one hand use, and you can read about the phone and its specifications on the Else Mobile website.

Do you think it will dominate the space? Does it look easy to use or do you think it is a little over the top? Please let us know in the comments:

The First ELSE: A Mobile Phone from The Future (Videos) is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

By: @HilzFuld

I hesitated for days before writing this post because this topic is just so overblogged already that it has gotten borderline boring. Having said that, I am now strongly considering replacing my Bold with an iPhone 3Gs, and almost everyone that has heard that has asked me the same question: “Why not get the Google phone?” As I write this post, I honestly do not know the reasons that will appear below as for why I am not going to get a Nexus One, but one thing is for sure, I am not.

I would also like to step away from the rest of the million blog posts about why the iPhone is better than the Nexus, and I will do that by taking a beginner’s approach to the issue. I find it hard to believe (not really), but there are many people out there, and even many people reading this blog post that are not “techies”, and have no clue what Android is. In fact, just two days ago, in response to a tweet about Android, two of my followers asked me what Android is. I am not going to discuss the entire history of the Google mobile OS, but I think I will give a little overview of what Android is and what makes it special.

Android is the name of the first mobile operating system that was designed and engineered (Well, kinda. They actually bought out a company called Android in 2005. Thanks Itamar.) by Google. Why do you care? Well, for starters, historically speaking, it is safe to say that any almost industry that Google has entered has changed drastically as a result. Take email for example. Yes, there was Hotmail and AOL in the Web mail space years before Gmail ever showed its face, but without even checking the official numbers, it is a fact that Web mail’s popularity over native clients such as Outlook has grown tremendously since the introduction of Gmail. Gmail changed the way we access our email forever, and I, for one, will never feel the need to use a 3rd party client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or even Thunderbird again. Gmail is just that good!

This is true about endless industries including maps (bye bye Garmin, hello Google Maps), document editors (bye bye Microsoft Word, hello Google Docs), calendars/organizers (bye bye Outlook, hello Google Calendar), and many more. With the introduction of Android, it was clear to all, that the mobile industry was going to experience an earthquake the likes of one we have not seen since Apple entered the arena. Were we right? Well, yes and no!

On the one hand, while the Android numbers do not yet compare to those of Apple, I think in the long run, as things stand now, Google is the only one making Apple a little nervous about their current status of Makers of the Smartphone King. Unless RIM decides to pull something unbelievably different out of its sleeve, Apple and RIM primarily target different audiences. Android on the other hand, do not need to completely redo their entire OS or do anything major in order to take the throne. They are so close, yet so far.

Moving on from the name behind Android, it does bring a lot to the smartphone table besides the Google stamp of approval. Android is open while the iPhone OS is closed. What does that mean? Well, it actually means different things to different people. From a developer’s point of view, the Android Market is open in that there is no annoying and nerve wracking approval process like there is when submitting an iPhone app to Apple. I completely understand the frustration of developers when working on an app for months and having it rejected by Apple for no apparent reason. Apple does not allow Google apps in the app store, so there clearly is no pulling strings with Apple. They decide what to let into the App Store and that decision is almost always final.

Going beyond the approval process, the actual development for Android is completely different than on the iPhone. The Android code (and I have to admit here that I know close to nothing about app development, so if I got the lingo wrong, please forgive me) is open source, so anyone can access it and customize it how they see fit. That is why you will see one Android on the Samsung Galaxy and a totally different looking OS on the HTC Magic. Each manufacturer changed the OS to fit their own needs. Now on the one hand, transparency is always good, so having access to the insides of the Android OS is a blessed initiative on the part of Google. However, as usual, from a consumer’s point of view, this is a disaster. Every app developed for the Android platform has to be redeveloped for each and every phone. An app that works flawlessly on the Droid might not even work on the Nexus. This obviously causes frustration among Android users, and from what an Android developer, who will remain unnamed, told me, it does not make their life easier either.

However, the development process is not where it ends. Apple’s entire experience is closed. This can be felt in all aspects of the iPhone from the non-replaceable battery, to the inability to run more than one app at a time, to the lack of full customization of the iPhone, which can be seen in changing things as basic as ringtones. At the end of the day, Google’s OS is best known for its open nature, while the iPhone is known to be jail-like.

OK, now you should have a basic idea of what all the excitement is about, and when you add to all that, the fact that Google actually designed the hardware of the Nexus One in addition to its OS, you might get a clearer picture of the unprecedented hype it has generated.

Now to the big question… iPhone or Nexus? Well, as tempted as I am to write a short list of things I like better about the iPhone OS and the iPhone itself, the reasons I am not getting a Nexus cannot be summarized in the bullets of a blog post. As so many reviewers have written, Android, even with all the improvements of version 2.1, still feels half baked when compared to the most polished mobile OS in the industry.

Before I get into Android and its shortcomings, to be fair, I will say that the Nexus has some serious advantages over the iPhone, and to ignore them, would just be lying to my readers. I am sure I am going to get many comments on this post calling me an Apple fanboy, and writing about the iPhone’s disadvantages won’t change that, but to clarify, I am still using a BlackBerry as my primary mobile device, and I am still not sure that is going to change any time soon.

So the Nexus has a bigger and higher resolution screen than the iPhone, you can’t argue with facts. The processor is significantly faster than that of the iPhone. The initial reviews point to a stronger and longer lasting battery, but more important than the battery’s standby time, the Nexus One has a replaceable battery, while the iPhone does not and you need to have Apple replace it for you, which takes both time and money from the consumer. The Nexus has expandable memory, which might be an advantage when Micro SD cards exceed their current capacity, but right now, the iPhone 3Gs offers 32GB of storage, and with an SD card, the Nexus, I believe maxes out at 32GB as well. Then again, when they start making 64GB SD cards, I am pretty sure there will be a higher capacity iPhone on the market as well. The Nexus has some other advantages over the iPhone, but generally speaking, they all stem from the basic philosophical differences of Open vs Closed.

So, this all sounds great, why am I not getting a Nexus? In reality, I could end this post with a link to one of my favorite tech blogs, Boy Genius Report, where he discusses his personal feelings about using a Nexus vs an iPhone. The post can basically be summarized by saying that Android OS was clearly designed from the ground up based on statistics and numbers, while the Apple OS was designed purely based on the most superior user experience. Apple spent years researching what users like in their phones, and built the ultimate device in terms of its usability. For that reason exactly, the iPhone is closed. They do not want you “damaging” their phone’s exreme ease of use with apps running in the background eating away at the battery. Apple wants to carefully monitor what apps are approved for the App Store, since they spent all that time making the phone so user friendly (yes, I know this does not explain the Google apps rejections), and Apple does not want people opening the phone both hardware and software, since they believe they have created the perfect overall device.

So, it seems like I am justifying Apple’s jail-like mentality. Well, in a way, I am. Yes, in an ideal world, I would like the entire mobile experience to be in the hands of the consumer, but today, when the two choices are complete freedom or top notch user experience, both in terms of app development and usability, I prefer a better experience. Before you jump down my throat, and claim that the Android experience is not any worse than the iPhone’s, let me give you a few examples of what I mean. A perfect indication or summary of the App Store (Apple) vs the App Market (Android) debate is Twitter apps. Whatever Twitter app you choose on the iPhone, open it, then take Seesmic, which is generally considered to be the best Android Twitter app, and compare the two apps. I could go on and on explaining how, as much as I like Seesmic for Android, comparing it to Echofon, Tweetie 2, Twittelator Pro, or Tweetings, would be like comparing a Nissan to a Mercedes. They both get the job done, but the experience…

So, that is in regard to 3rd party apps and I took Twitter apps as an example, but feel free to run that comparison with any other app on the two platforms, try Facebook for another extreme example. Let me also clarify that at no point did I mention the 130,000 apps on the App Store compared to the 20,000 on the Market, since if those 20,000 were quality apps, I would not even pay attention to the numbers. I am talking quality here, not quantity.

“OK, so the App Store has better apps, but the phone’s experience is just as good on the Nexus.” Is that what you were about to say? Well, I disagree. One of the common threads I have noticed in almost all the Android reviews I have read (and I have read a lot) is that when using Android for the first time, you generally don’t “get it”, but after a week or two, you discover the Menu button or you begin to understand the concept of the Back button and it all starts to click. That, I think, pretty much sums up the basic difference between Android and iPhone OS. With iPhone OS, you do not need that week, when you open the iPhone for the first time, whether you are 3 or 70 years old, it all clicks (trust me, I tested this). For some concrete examples of Android usability issues including screen shots, check out this review.

Generally speaking, the iPhone is the ultimate phone in terms of usability and when the first generation iPhone was released that simplicity came as a tradeoff for “advanced” features such as 3G or copy and paste. Now, 3 generations later, the iPhone as a smartphone, can pretty much compete with the best of them, with the exception, some might say, of the email experience and running background apps.

Like I said in the beginning of this post, the reasons I am not considering a Nexus cannot be summed up in a list called “Five Reasons I Am Getting a Nexus over an iPhone”. Trust me, I wish they could, it would get a lot more attention from the online community (people like lists), but there is no such list for me. I could give some examples of why I prefer the iPhone OS over the Android OS, the biggest one for me being the text input, which is one of the more frustrating things I have experienced in a long time. However, the bottom line is, I prefer the iPhone, not because of this feature or that. To me, a phone, which serves my every need throughout the day must have the best user experience. If that means, developers are going to have to make a top notch app in order to make it into the App Store, as much as I feel for developers who get rejected, at the end of the day, the app is here to serve the user and not the other way around. A short walk through the Android App Market will clear things up for you. It is confusing, hard to navigate, and overflowing with bad apps, not to mention loaded with things that are not even apps, but rather add ons to existing apps. That would not fly with Apple.

In conclusion, I am sure if anyone in the market is making Steve Jobs lose sleep at night, it is Google, but the time when Google will really offer a consumer experience equal to the iPhone’s, in my opinion, is far off. Having said that, the Nexus is BY FAR (I don’t generally like capital letters mid sentence, but extreme times call for extreme measures) the best Android phone to date and there are definitely some users who will prefer the Nexus One over the iPhone. There are those that will prefer it out of protest of Apple’s closed philosophy, there are those power users that will prefer it since running one app at a time aint gonna cut it for them, and there are those that will prefer it because they see what Android might be five years down the road.

For me, I need a top notch user experience now, I need quantity and quality apps for my phone, and I need to be able to type on my phone without getting more grey hairs every time. Now, the big question is, am I willing to give up on my first rate email experience courtesy of my BlackBerry Bold, in order to have all those things? Check back with me in a week, might know more then.

What are your thoughts on the whole Apple/Google/RIM battle? Who is your favorite and why? Please let us know in the comments.

What Lies Beneath the iPhone/Nexus One Question is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

When I think about how many boxes I have connected to my home theatre system, I feel a little ridiculous. There’s the Tivo HD for my cable and time-shifting needs, the Sling Box Pro HD for my location-shifting needs, the Apple T.V. for easy access to iTunes content, and the Blu-ray player for BD’s and DVD’s. But the really sad thing is that even with all of these different boxes and their bundled services, I still don’t feel that I have the kind of control that I want over my media.

To illustrate the limitations of my current system, consider what it would take to get an episode of “The Daily Show” from my Tivo HD on to my iPhone. I would need to hook a computer up to the Tivo via Ethernet cable, transfer the episode on to the computer, transcode the Tivo formatted file into a video format that the iPhone can display (and pray that this doesn’t introduce any sync problems), import the resulting file into iTunes and transfer it over to the iPhone. Phew. I get dizzy just thinking about it! Sure I could pay for an iTunes download that comes pre-formatted for the iPhone, but why should I pay an extra two dollars when I’ve already paid Comcast and Tivo for the content?

I believe that this situation is a symptom of the transitional age that we are living in. As the digital march continues inexorably forward, content creators and distributors are scrambling to keep up. The default tactic of the Film and TV industries has been to lock everything down. So we find ourselves in the absurd position of not having control over the manner in which we consume our paid content. And, of course, the tactic is not working as intended. The measures adopted thus far, have proven completely ineffective at stemming the tide of piracy and the only people who are really being punished are those of us who actually pay for content. Let’s pretend, for a glorious moment, that there were no gatekeepers fighting tooth and nail to protect their out-of-date business models. What would the perfect set-top box look like? What would it do?

My perfect set-top box would combine the functions of a Tivo, a Sling Box, and a Blu-ray player. There would be one unified and easy-to-use interface. Tivo’s UI would be a great model as it is the essence of good design. Furthermore, unlike the Apple T.V., the everything box would support a wide array of video and audio formats. It would play nicely with portable media devices and allow the ripping of BD’s and DVD’s on to a spacious internal hard drive. Finally, there would be the option of paying a flat monthly fee that would include basic cable as well as an all-you-can eat movie plan, with the quality of the Apple TV’s HD content and the breadth of Netflix’s streaming library.There are a number of media-center style PC’s that come close to offering all of the functions that I have described here, but these devices are pricey and overly complicated. I envision a device in the ballpark of $300, perhaps subsidized like a cellphone, with a contract and a monthly service charge.

Of course such a device is a pipe dream. When I think about how difficult it was to get Comcast to just give me the necessary hardware to use a Tivo, this dream seems more like a fantasy. But consider the following: If you had told me a couple of years ago that Apple would be selling all of its music without DRM, I would have laughed cynically and called you naiive. Yet here we are. You’ll recall that at first there was only one major music label, EMI, who agreed to sell their music DRM-free. They were rewarded by increased sales and the others labels eventually followed suit. I believe that in the not-too-distant future, the Film and TV industries will wake up and realize the wisdom in EMI’s DRM-free philosophy. Because in the end, the only way to effectively compete with digital piracy is to offer a more reliable product that is more convenient to consume.   Once they get that, my Everything Box will just be a matter of time.

One Box to Rule Them All is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing

By: Hillel Fuld

Ever since I joined Twitter pretty much, there has been an ongoing debate as to the best 3rd party client to access your tweets. For you newbies out there, let me explain what the heck I am talking about. Twitter? Ever hear of it? Well, it is all based on an ultra simplistic website called Twitter.com, upon which an entire industry was built. Among the endless Twitter services out there, the most important is the actual software you use to access Twitter.com.

I think it is safe to say that most people who join Twitter use the Web interface at least in the beginning, but at some point, switch over to a Twitter application that enables them to follow their Twitter stream more effectively than the website. How is it more effective? Well, that is a tricky question since the Web interface is updated frequently. Since the site now includes Auto Refresh, a RT button, Twitter Lists, and notifications of new tweets, the advantages of using a 3rd party client are not what they used to be. Having said that, it is still more efficient to use a client that enables you to add your Facebook account, Linkedin account, built in search, lists, groups, and many more features. The big question is, which client is the best?

There are those, myself included, that swear by Tweetdeck. Then there are the other applications, which include lots of different options, but from what I can tell, the most popular one is Seesmic. Seesmic has some seriously good Twitter applications across multiple platforms, and I personally love their Android app, but have never made the switch from Tweetdeck to Seesmic, mainly because I am used to Tweetdeck.

However, as of a few hours ago, Seesmic acquired a company called Ping.fm, which enables you to post your tweets to 50 different social networks in one action. This is huge! I have been looking for such a solution for a while since I generally post content on anywhere between 10-20 sites, and until now I had to do it manually. I think this acquisition might mean goodbye to my beloved Tweetdeck, at least for now.

As soon as the new version of Seesmic is released, which knowing their track record, won’t be long, I will be giving it a shot. Will let you know how it goes. What application are you using? Will news like this make you switch to Seesmic? Please let me know in the comments.

Seesmic Buys ping.fm! Blasts your Tweets to 50 Social Networks is a post from: Mobile | Social Media | Newest Technologies by Tech N' Marketing