Gizmo Ninja

Call of Duty: Black Ops II Gets a Two Minute Trailer [Video]

Erron Reed — Wed, 02 May 2012 02:05:56 +0000

The fall season of gaming is already starting to get a huge lineup. With a new Halo and a New Call of Duty Gamers are getting excited. The official worldwide trailer for BOII has been released and shows the future of war. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3tedlWs1XY

Google Drive Cloud Storage Goes Live

Todd Tabern — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:55:49 +0000

After many leaks and and rumors, Google has finally released its Drive cloud storage service for the masses.

Google Drive will compete with the likes of Dropbox, Box, SugarSync and Microsoft SkyDrive. It most closely resembles Dropbox, giving users access to cloud-connected storage on PCs, Macs, smartphones, and tablets.

Every Drive user will be graced with 5GB of free storage for “documents, videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs, etc.” If you need to shoot more than 5GB worth of data up to the clouds you can get 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month, or 1TB for $49.99/month. Upgrading to one of the additional storage options will also expand your Gmail storage to the same capacity.

When signing into Google Drive the interface will be very familiar to those that have used Google Docs, because it’s basically the Docs interface, modified. Drive pretty much takes the place of Docs, while keeping all of the Docs functionality within. Even the Android Google Docs app magically turns into Google Drive once you install it.

Google highlights the following features:

Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

Here are a couple of videos explaining their new cloud storage solution:

Source: Google Drive, Google Play, Official Google Blog

Samsung Galaxy SIII to Be Revealed May 3

Erron Reed — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:27:31 +0000

We don’t report rumors here so we spared you 800 stories about when the s3 would show up or what it looked like. This is factual; we will know everything May 3 at 2pm EST. That is when Samsung is having a presser to show off what is likely to blow our socks off. We will report back on the phone that day or when real information comes out. Only 17 days until most of us may see our next phone.

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In Canada You Can Pay for Your Flipper Pie With a Glow in the Dark Dinosaur Coin

Erron Reed — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:21:55 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, Canada announced it will stop producing pennies because the cost to produce the coin was too much over the value of said coin. This week, they announced the availability of a quarter that will feature dinosaurs on one side and will produce a skeleton of the Dino that will glow in the dark when the lights go out. There will be four different quarters with different Dinos and they quarters will run you just $30. It seems they wouldn’t need to sell many of the four coin sets to offset the cost of all that penny producing. I am not going to lie, these are pretty awesome an I wouldn’t mind having one. But not for $30.

Source: Geekologie

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Space Shuttle Discovery Will Fly Around Washington, DC at Just 1500 Feet

Erron Reed — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:35 +0000

The headline may have been a bit off, but not at the same time. As everyone knows, manned space shuttle launches paid for the the US government are a thing of the past. Of the five shuttles that have attempted a launch into space only three made it back to earth successfully every time. There are 6 shuttles in total, but one never made a space flight. The remaining shuttles are retired and will find resting places in various museums across the US. April 17th, space shuttle Discovery will be flown around the DC area at just 1500 ft. The shuttle will be placed on top of a 747, but will still be very visible from the ground. This will mark one of if not the last time to see one of the United States’ biggest accomplishments doing what it should be, flying. If you are a fan of NASA, space or just aircraft in general go hang out in DC next week and find a good zoom lens to grab a picture you can show while telling stories of when you saw the end of an era. NASA will also be streaming the event live on their website.

Source: NASA

Best Buy CEO Resigns and the Company Is Losing Money by the Millisecond, So They Make Returns More Difficult

Erron Reed — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:41:08 +0000

I am pretty sure Best Buy hasn’t been paying much attention to the guys over at RIM lately. Best Buy’s profits are half of what they were two years ago. That’s a major loss considering this is supposed to be the time when the economy is recovering. RIM(Blackberry) went through the same kind of dramatic loss in profit an may never recover. One thing that has appeased investors for now is the resignation of the companies CEO, Brian Dunn. The company recently announced they were going to be focusing on smaller stores and online sales which may require a whole new set of people running the company.

So what is the first thing the company will do to help increase profits? Only allow customers to return one item every 90 days, and scanning your drivers license to make sure they keep up with you. I understand the move is to protect the company from scammers but it’s just not the right time to implement such a policy. At Lowe’s, if you return something without a receipt they take your license as well and store the information. If you have more than two returns a week you name is flagged in the system and you get some special attention in stores if you are spotted. That may be the idea that BBY will follow, but it’s just poor timing. More and more customers are turning away from you and looking online for purchases, don’t make your already terrible return policy more aggravating best buy.

When You Combine 35,000 Photos Taking 7 Months to Capture, You Get an Amazing Video [Video]

Erron Reed — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:24:49 +0000

The video is named Asylum, because it was shot in an old abandoned asylum of course. The makers of this video took the time to snap over 35k photos using time-lapse and HDR photography to bring a feel that is truly creepy and beautiful at the same time. Living Detroit, I get to spend a lot of time photographing inside abandoned and desolate looking places. Seeing this makes me a bit jealous I have not thought of trying to put something together like this. I think I am more surprised none of my friends with their swanky 5dmkII’s or even my one snotty friend with his mkIII haven’t made mention of doing this. The mkIII guy is actually really nice and makes great videos, that was a bit of jealous name calling. Take a few minutes to check the video out, and hopefully you can appreciate it as much as I did. You may need to have spent time in places like this or have spent hours and hours getting one good HDR shot as many of us have to appreciate the video fully, but you will like it either way. The music is decent as well.

Via: Gizmodo

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Verizon Wireless Plans on Charging You $30 to Upgrade Your Phone

Todd Tabern — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:11:39 +0000

Yep, you read that right. Starting on April 22, Verizon Wireless will start charging a $30 “upgrade fee” to those who purchase a new phone at a discounted rate on contract. So if you are up for an upgrade and want to grab one of the latest and greatest smartphones you can plan on tacking an extra thirty bucks to the listed discounted price. Verizon’s reasoning behind this is as follows:

On April 22, Verizon Wireless is implementing a $30 upgrade fee for existing customers purchasing new mobile equipment at a discounted price with a two-year contract. This fee will help us continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect which includes Wireless Workshops, online educational tools, and consultations with experts who provide advice and guidance on devices that are more sophisticated than ever.

Below is an internal memo on the new fee:

They’re basically claiming that the fee is to cover the cost of teaching customers how to use their phones. It doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced user who is well versed at using your phone and transferring your data to a new phone – you’ll be paying the fee to help cover those who need the help.

Their closest competitors, Sprint and AT&T, apparently charge even more for an upgrade fee (something like $36) – But both also charge less overall for their services. Verizon is also notorious for charging $100+ more than their competitors for comparable top tier phones, they now want even more money from your pocket book.

The whole thing smells like a money grab, to me… Why can’t they just charge this fee to the customers who actually want to partake in the workshops and data transfer services?

Oh, and in case you have your objections all ready in order to have the fee waived, check out the image below to see what your rep’s robo-responses will be:

So, if you plan on upgrading your phone here soon you might want to do so before April 22nd. Of course, there’s always the chance that VZW could change their mind on this, like they did with that $2 online payment fee that everybody on the internet expressed their displeasure about. In fact, an online petition has already been started in an attempt to give this fee the same fate. Petition link below.

Petition – Verizon Wireless: Discontinue $30 Upgrade Fee

Image Source: Droid-Life

Google Drive Is Coming Soon

Erron Reed — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:01:17 +0000

It looks like Google Drive is getting pretty close to a release, and now a screenshot has surfaced that shows it is just about ready for the masses. Google drive will be just about the same as dropbox, but it is rumored to come with 5gb of free storage as opposed to dropbox’s 2. Drive will also sync your Google Docs with any docs you have on your drive account. I am sure an app will pop up that will allow mobile access easily as well. For now this is just a rumor but it is pretty solid since mention of drive has popped up in some support pages for Google Docs. Word on the street is that the service may launch next month, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it unveiled at IO.

Source: Technobuffalo

Sony Posts ICS Beta for Developers to Test on the Xperia Play

Erron Reed — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:22:19 +0000

Sony took a pretty bit hit in the face with their first Android Xperia phone. It was laggy, bad poor hardware reliability and was slower than the Samsung of old to get an update. Sony has since taken a new approach to update phones quickly and provide good phones and good customer service to back those phones. With Android ICS update announcements coming eery day for devices, Sony wanted to start getting their update ready. The company posted a beta version of the software for devs to try out and report which games do and do not work on the Xperia play. Before you head over to the Sony support site and get to downloading keep a few things in mind. To use this you must unlock your bootloader, which will make the official ICS update (at least from Sony) unable to be put on your device. The beta is also missing many key components of Android such as Google maps and Gmail. As of now you are better off heading to XDA developers and trying some of the ICS based roms that are available over there for your device.

Source: Sony