I think Google has it out for Apple. Just my blatantly honest opinion. I was watching some tech reviews on Youtube, and came across this ad on a TechnoBuffalo  video. 

 Now what I really want to point out is this: at the bottom left corner of the picture is says: “Ads by Google”.

I want to know who approved an ad for an iOS jailbreaking app on a video that has 50,000+ views, on a channel with 230,595,287 video views and 515,797 subscribers.

Just a little food for thought.

Justin Long as Steve Jobs

Funny or Die released a parody biopic type of film starring Justin Long(as Steve Jobs), Jorge Garcia(As Woz), Anthony Gioe(As Justin Long), Michaela Watkins(as Melinda Gates) and more! You can check out the trailer Here.

This is Funny or Dies “comedic” take of the story of Steve Jobs and Apple. The story has some funny moments and some not so funny moments.

Wired gave it a rating of 1/10, but I might of gave it a 2.5/10 maybe…  9to5Mac wrote a in-depth review. It’s one of those films where you’ll wait to rent it on DVD(if those things still exists) but this film skipped the theater, and went straight to DVD Internet, for a rental streaming price of 3.99, FREE!

The rant where Michael Dell goes off how he thinks Apple made all their technology years ago and they are just releasing it bit by bit, and how Dell doesn’t have the smartest people in the world but they are just making cheap computers for cheap college dudes was a pretty funny part.

You can watch the full movie at Funny or Die, if you really want to…

Apple’s system status page http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

For the past couple hours, iMessage and FaceTime has had an outage that is affecting “some users”, according to Apple’s system status page. I noticed the issue a little bit ago when messaging Zac about some server upgrades.

It said to me “<personal info removed redacted> is not registered with iMessage.”, when indeed his address is registered with iMessage.  Then chatting with someone else it only worked on the second send. 

The status page says “some users” but if you search for iMessage on Twitter, you can see lots of incoming real-time tweets about it, so not sure how many people is “some users”, seems more like a lot of users.

We’ll keep you updated on this issue.

Updated:

Apple status page is reporting both iMessage and FaceTime as “Normal” now.

Source: The Next Web

Google Fiber, the 1 Gbit(1,000 Mb/sec download and upload speeds) internet service that is currently in Kansas City, may be heading to Austin Texas. Google and the city of Austin sent out invitations to an event next week. Details are still not known yet fully, and the story is still developing but it’s highly speculated to be Google Fiber. [1]

Google Fiber is taking advantage of “dark fiber” that Google has been buying up since 2005. [2] Dark Fiber is fiber that is already wired underground but isn’t hooked up to any networking equipment. Over time Google lit up some of this fiber(hooking it up to networking equipment) to link up its own data centers and peer up with other internet service providers to save money on bandwidth for products such as YouTube. [3] So since Google already has a large network of unused fiber under the ground already, they can start lighting them up for consumer use.

The cable and cell phone companies get to have a type of monopoly called a oligopoly. Where the government agrees if they pay to build the infrastructure, they will get a monopoly over it. That is one major problem, for competition  In Europe the countries have cheaper and faster internet connections here in America. Got slow internet, blame the government! [4]

I hope Google Fiber will be all over the United States one day and it seems like it might be the plan. One day I hope we can dump our crappy cable connections, and joyfully unite with fiber connections. I’m glad that a company like Google is trying to take on the big evil cable companies, and hope that competition for internet, tv and even phone will skyrocket, with lower prices and better service for consumers!

Sources:

• [1] Google Fiber coming to Austin?
• [2] Google Master Plan Finally Comes To Light With Fiber Network
• [3] YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero
• [4] Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

“Brilliant” ad, features a card app, Pass book and more

“Discover” ad, features GarageBand, 3D Map view of Alcatraz and more

These ads are okay I guess, but not a major fan of them. What do you think of them?

Last summer, Apple called out Samsung on 6 patent infringements for various products. Judge Lucy Koh, who preceded over the trial, originally ordered Samsung to pay just over 1 billion dollars.   According to a report, the award money has been reduced to just under $599 million, under half the original sum. The judge plans to open a new damages trial.

Source: Yahoo! News

So I’m pretty sure he just typed that as the engraving just to have a popular post on Reddit, but anyways I find it funny and noteworthy.

Source: Reddit

This ad is one of those “drum roll ads”, like the iPad Alive Ad and iPad Together Ad. The new ad is called “Hollywood”. The ad features apps such as iMovie, different camera apps and a clapboard app.

These drum roll ads are okay but I’m not a big fan of them, they just seemed to be aimed more towards a young child. But then again, young children seem to enjoy the iPad with schools using them and tons of educational children apps. Another cool thing about marketing products towards children is that they have parents to bug them till they buy it.

Source: 9To5 Mac

There was several rumors that Sony was ditching the Dual Shock controller design, this rumor caused large controversy with blogs and gamers. Many loyal PlayStation players loved the DualShock design and comfort. Sony did not ditch the DualShock, instead now we have the DualShock 4. Lets talk about the specs

• Lightbar!: The lightbar at the top will allow for a simple way to see who is logged into each controller. Making it easier to take that restroom break that you need, the lightbar also senses the depth of the area in front of you. I wonder where they are going with that.
• The share button!: The share button will let you share screenshots, video clips and more from the tap of a button on the front of your controller.
• TouchPad?: They added a touch pad on the controller, similar to the Vita’s touchpad. I see great things coming from this. Wonder how they will use it.
• New sleek design!: They added a headphone jack to the controller for a better game experience, they also tweaked the triggers and the joysticks for a more comfortable gameplay!

All of you are probably thinking “I don’t care about the controller. it’s the experience!” well lets talk about it.

Sony claims that the PS4 will dramatically reduce the lag time between the content and the player. “Suspend mode” or “Power Saver” keeps the console in a low power state when loading game sessions. This will allow games to boot and saved games to load faster.  A user can open the browser or another application  while playing a PS4 game, this will allow for multitasking .

Digital titles will be able to be played while they are downloading. With only a “fraction” required to start the game.

The PlayStation cloud, the cloud will be rolled out in several phrases, with the goal of putting all previous console titles available for play.

A new feature allows for users watch you play, from their screens, if allowed they can post comments directly to your screen. They also plan to let you be able to take over your friends controller(with permission) to allow you to help your friend to get past that boss stage he just can not find.

The Vita, iOS devices and Android devices will be capable of being second screens for the PS4. They will allow Vita users to pull PS4 titles from their console and play them on the Vita over your Wireless Connection.  The PlayStation app also contributes to a better idea, previously integrated by Nintendo with the Wii U gamepad. You can use the app to display maps, inventory, or maybe even scoping? who knows what the possibilities end at.

Main Processor

• Single-chip custom processor
• CPU : x86-64 AMD “Jaguar”, 8 cores
• GPU : 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next-generation Radeon based graphics engine

Memory

• GDDR5 8GB

Hard Disk Drive

• Built-in(sizes not disclosed)

Optical Drive(Read only of course)

• BD 6xCAV
• DVD 8xCAV

USB 3.0

Communication

• Ethernet(10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)
• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1(EDR)

AV Output

• HDMI
• Analog-AV out
• Digital/Optical output

*These specifications may change without notice.

Watch the conference below.

Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 8.0 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The screen on it is a 8 inch 1280×800 resolution display. It features a 1.6GHz A9 quad-core processor. It has 2GB of ram and has built-in storage options of 16GB or 32GB. if you need more storage, it’s expandable with a MicroSD card. Something not all tablets on the market support, so that’s great!

It features a 5 megapixel back camera and a 1.3 megapixel front camera that seems comparable to the iPad 3 and above , and iPad mini cameras.

The operating system it runs is Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. Networking hardware wise it supports HSPA+ or LTE for cellular networks, and Wi-Fi. It features GPS, a headphone jack and uses a 4,600mAh battery for its power on the go. You know, pretty standard stuff for an Android tablet.

It also uses the Samsung’s S-Pen stylus, to write notes, use a planner, replying to emails using hand writing. The tablet also includes a IR blaster , that let’s you control infrared based devices for things such as your TV.

It ways 338 grams but the thing that makes it really different from all the other tablets is that it includes a phone in the international, non US version. Not sure why not included in the US version. Samsung expects you to hold it up to your ears and talk on it, like a phone… They are being serious. It’s around the same size as the iPad mini, and even Apple didn’t add phone functionality. I guess Samsung likes to think different also.

I think someone using an 8 inch phone would look stupid, seems like it would be prone to dropping since it’s so large compared to a normal 3 or 4 inch phone. I wonder if this trend of bigger and bigger phones every year will continue till we can go out and buy a 52 inch phone.

I guess some people carry a phone in their pocket and a tablet in their purse or messenger bag also, some people might just want to carry one device with them but I still feel like a 8 inch phone is ridiculous.

Samsung says it will be available worldwide in quarter two of this year. Carriers and pricing is not Announced yet.

Source: Mashable, Android Central

But what if I told you there’s an app that will look at your Tweets and use computer algorithms to analyze your Tweets to learn about things you like, your tastes and the way you speak. Then it pretends it’s you, once you’re dead. Sounds like something from The Twilight Zone, right? Well there’s an app for that.

The app is called LivesOn, and it will do just that! It will Learn from your Tweets and then “ When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting”, says the company’s tag line. It will write tweets, share news stories and favorite tweets for you, giving you a social afterlife. It sounds like a viral advertisement for some movie or video game, but apparently the product is real and will be launched in March.

You nominate an “executor” for your account, so once you do die they can go in and press a button to indicate that you died.  Then it looks at your current and past tweets. I assume it uses the new “Twitter archive” feature to get all that old data, since the API only goes back about 2,000 Tweets and I’m currently at 53,871 Tweets on mine.

Then once it has your Tweets, it analyzes them and creates a feed of auto generated tweets where you can give it feedback to help it become more like you. I guess it’s using some sort of machine learning algorithms.

@jeyylowe it’s not a stunt, it’s not commercially viable. we’re doing it with a Uni as R&D A.I experiment.

— LivesOn (@_Liveson) February 21, 2013

It seems to be an experimental Artificial Intelligence research project with an unnamed university. The whole thing sounds insane and funny but interesting at the same time. I’m hoping this will lead to more advanced A.I’s. But then again, if a A.I became better than humans, then what’s the point of us humans anymore? So much excitement and questions at the same time about the future of things. Imagine you’re Tweeting with a bot with a human name and photo, and you didn’t even realize it but held an intelligent conversation.

In the end we’re all just zero and ones.

— LivesOn (@_Liveson) February 14, 2013

So what do you think about this? Would you like to be turned into a robot when you die?

Source: LivesON, SourceFed, WDIV Detroit

Startup WobbleWorks started a KickStarter so they can produce a product called the 3Doodler. It’s the world’s first and only 3D pen that lets you draw in the air, so you could draw the Eiffel tower base on a piece of paper or cardboard and then lift it up into the air off of the paper, creating a 3D model. Way more fun than drawing boring old 2D models.

It heats and cools plastic as you draw, using technology similar to a 3D printer but in a pen, and unlike a 3D printer it doesn’t require a computer and designing models in a program like Maya or Blender. You just start drawing with it and see where it takes you. One thing that you might worry about is getting burnt using it, I guess it would be similar to getting burnt by a glue gun. It is not considered a toy for children and is recommended for ages 12 and up, so it would be great for teens and older folks.

Plastic strands

This product is expected to be sold around $75 dollars a pen and shipped by August. It uses sticks of colored plastic for its “ink”. I myself draw horrible but using this I could see my self creating 3D buildings with this, and other little decorations.

In the future they plan to make different sizes tips for thickness, sorta like having different brushes. Also might make lower heat versions that could work with food for uses such as cake and cupcake decorating.

I think this product seems really cool, and would enjoy playing with it in the future. What would you create using one?

Source: NewScientist, KickStarter

AOL Dial-Up accounts for most of  their profit, so as Dial-Up is dying out in general, AOL is looking for other ways to profit such as content based sites like The Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch to just name a few.

I still remember using AOL Dialup back in the early 2000′s before switching to Road Runner in about 2006. Surprised Dial-Up is still as popular as it is. Anyways, what do you think of the future of AOL will be once more and more people move over to broadband?

Source: Business Insider

But just recently they released a mobile app to search for, fund, manage, and create new projects. The app is very well made and I have had no bugs so far. Here’s a few screenshots of the app.

The app in my opinion is very well met for some people. I know a few friends who have used Kickstarter in the past and would have loved the usability and mobility of managing their projects on-the-go. What do you think of the new mobile app? To check it out for yourself, head over to Kickstarter and click the download button. It is iPad, iPhone, and iPod friendly. Maybe Android in the near future?

Source: Kickstarter

First image cred: Engadget

Just thought this was sorta interesting and creepy at the same time. Anyways, what do you all think of this feature? Do you like or dislike it, find it useful?

Around September 2012 Facebook started rolling out a gift feature to its users, that allows you to pick a physical gift for a friend and then pay for it, then Facebook sends them a notification with a preview of the gift along with a virtual Card to the recipient alerting them to enter in their shipping address.

You normally see the option to send a gift when viewing a birthday reminder, and a gift button in the area where you write on someone else’s wall.

Facebook is promoting this feature today for Valentine’s day by featuring a little ad above your news feed. If you’re in a relationship, it will say something like “Add [gift name] to your list of Valentine’s Day surprises for [the person you're in a relationship with].” Single people, like me, sees a more generic message saying “Surprise Your Friends For [dollar amount]“ featuring a random Valentine’s Day related product, like the one pictured in this article.

I wonder how successful this campaign will be with Facebook having 618 million daily active users, some with more or less money than others. What other holidays would you like to see a similar promotion on? I expect for Christmas they’ll do a similar promotion but a week or so before Christmas so it can say something like “Order by December ##, and get it shipped before Christmas.”.

Source: Facebook Gifts, CNET, Facebook Key Facts

Apple today announced some updates to its MacBook line up. The 13″ Retina MacBook Pro starts at $1,499 for 128GB of flash storage. The 256GB version with a new 2.6GHz processer starts at $1,699. About 200 dollars cheaper. So that’s great news and I expect that over time Retina MacBook Pro’s prices will eventually become around the same prices as the non-Retina MacBook Pro’s and replace them in the MacBook Product line.

Also the 15″ Retina MacBook pro specs got bumped to a slightly faster 2.7 GHz quad-core processor and 16GB of ram staying at the same price. They also lowered the price of the 256GB 13″ MacBook Pro, making it now costing $1,399.

Source: Apple Press Info

Im in ur srvr eatin ur dataz

Twitter has started testing out a new language translation on the site. So instead of plain old English you can change your language to LOLCATZ (Beta). For those who are unfamiliar with lol cats, those are the funny pictures of cats with captions floating around the internet.

But anyways, I decided to try it. Stuff like “Interactions” turn into “INTERACSHUNS”, “Worldwide Trends” turn into “WURLDWIDE TRENDS”, “follows you” becomes “FOLLOWS U” and so on.

Twitter’s new language setting reminds me a lot of Facebook’s Pirate and it’s upside down language translations. It also reminds me of Google leetspeak. These are the only funny little language easter eggs I know off the top of my head. Know more?

LOLCat Twitter

Source: SFGate

Updated (Feb 12, 2012 at 9:30 PM EST)

The LOLCat language setting seems to have disappeared and my language setting defaulted back to English. Not sure if this is a glitch or if the language was only ment for a certain time.

Twitter in Lolcat was a Hack Week project. We hope it increases awareness of how we translate Twitter. Check out translate.twitter.com

— Twitter Int’l (@international) February 8, 2013

That Tweet makes me wonder if it was just a temporary thing to promote Twitter’s language translation project. I’m hoping it will come back, but as of now there is no official word from the company on while it disappeared. Anyways, it was fun while it lasted.

A watch band on the 2010 iPod Nano

Apple is rumored to be experimenting with wrist watches that would run iOS and feature curved glass. This is just a rumor and the exact feature set is unknown but we can always speculate, and with major news publications relaying these rumours, they may have some truth to them. The source wasn’t named but it seems it could have been an Apple employee familiar with the prototypes who leaked the info, wishing to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

Corning, the company that makes the Gorilla Glass that is used on the iPhone, announced last year that it has been developing thin flexible glass for the last decade.

Wearable computers are predicted to be the next big thing. I currently wear a Nike FuelBand, Tim Cook, who is on the board of Nike, wears one also. Apple just might be interested in wearable computers too.

We all know Google is working on Google Project Glass, in its Google X labs and shared some details publicly about it at Google IO 2012 last year.

I assume Google Glass or the Apple Wrist Watch(if it is real) would extent your Android or iPhone as another display, and would let you access data really quick in a simple interface without taking your phone out of your pocket. Part of me thinks that Smart Glasses would be a better wearable computer since it would be looking at things as you look and give you more info about the stuff you’re seeing or do turn-by-turn navigation while walking on a sidewalk. Watches, on the other hand, would be great to check the current time (obviously), as well as stocks, weather and various notifications, like say from your calendar, unread email count or @replies to you on Twitter.

It would be cool to wear both Google Glass and Apple’s Watch but I have a feeling Google Glass would only work with an Android phone, and Apple watch would only work with an iPhone, so I guess if you wanted to wear both you would have to bring two phones with you. I hope that isn’t the case and wish companies would work together but it’s doubtful at this point.

I guess the next step after wearable computers will be implantable computers, then we can start making Cyborgs and programming Skynet! Anyways, what do you think the Apple iWatch would be, or wearable computing in general?

Source: New York Times

Michael Dell

Dell’s founder Michael Dell announced today that Silver Lake(A firm that invests in technology companies) and he are going to take Dell private again. Michael Dell and Silver Lake will be buying up the company at $13.65 per share. This deal is valued approximately at 24.4 Billion dollars.

By being a private company Dell won’t have to worry about impressing share holders each fiscal quarter. So now they can focus on whatever they want such as trying new interesting things. This is basically like becoming a startup again.

I’m wondering what the future of dell will be like. They will need to do something that will separate themselves from competitors such as HP, Acer, and other vendors so they stand out. Most of the computer vendors just builds the hardware than slaps Windows on it and sells it.

Apple on the other hand, makes both the hardware and software making their products unique compared to other vendors. You get something different if you buy a Mac such as its great design and exclusive operating system, It’s not just some clone of another computer that runs Windows.

Dell is one of the major PC vendors that sells laptops pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux and tests them to make sure all the drivers and everything functions as one would expect, as sometimes stuff like Wi-Fi may not work if you just install Ubuntu on just any random laptop. So that’s one thing that makes them slightly different from other major players

How do you think this deal and the future of Dell will pan out?

Source: Business Wire

Yes, the singer! Which is great since Ms. Keys connects better with the young hip target audience that they need to compete better with iPhone and Android.

BlackBerry also announced BlackBerry 10 OS and its new phones, the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10, both run BlackBerry 10. The BlackBerry Z10 has a touch screen while the BlackBerry Q10 has a physical QWERTY keyboard. I guess they did both because some customers prefer touch and some like physical keyboards. So you have choice. The BlackBerry Z10 does not have a home button, to switch apps you swipe. The BlackBerry Q10 runs all the same stuff as the BlackBerry Z10 but the keyboard is always there whether you need it or not.

BlackBerry Z10 has a neat keyboard that seems similar to Swype. The keyboard starts learning where you hit keys using heat maps and can correct misspellings. Seems like a more advance auto correct system and looks like a fun new way to type!

Another interesting feature is BlackBerry Balance that lets you have one phone and keep your personal life and business stuff separate. So you have two different home screens with separate apps on both. So both are sandboxed and separated.

It sorta reminds me of Kid’s Corner on Windows Phone but instead of keeping you and your kids stuff separate its keeps you and your work stuff separate. It’s like having two phones in one basically.

BlackBerry Messenger is also in the new operating system, but it includes Video Calls also now. Seems like they are catching up with FaceTime with this one. Sadly all these messages and video services like iMessage, FaceTime, BBM, Facebook, Skype are all separate protocols. I wish the industry would adopt or create an open protocol with the same features, sorta like how email works on all devices and can message people using email no matter what device or provider they use.

BlackBerry Remember is another new feature they announced. Where you can create Notebooks with groups of information such as notes, voice notes, emails and lists. Looks interesting to keep yourself organized. So far it looks like it’s only on BlackBerry 10, but would really be useful if they made a Mac and Windows app for it to access the same data no matter if you’re working on your phone or desktop.

Also the camera app has a Picture Editor were you can crop pictures and add filters similar to Instagram.

The BlackBerry World has over 70,000 applications already! That’s a lot for a new platform. I wonder if this is because they were paying developers to port over apps. Apps such as Skype, Amazon Kindle, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Linked In, TuneIn radio. So if you’re switching from iPhone or Android to BlackBerry 10, there’s a chance you’ll find apps you know and love from the other platforms. BlackBerry World will also sell TV Shows, Movies, and Music.

At&t, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile will be the carriers for it in the US. The Z10 is expected to be out in March, and February 5th in Canada. So with all these changes, maybe it’s still to soon to write BlackBerry off yet as being dead. I’m excited to watch how the future of BlackBerry plays off. Part of me wonders if they are too late, I doubt a lot of people in Apple’s Ecosystem would want to switch. No iTunes Sync, No iCloud on it to sync notes, reminders and contacts. Some people don’t want just a phone, they want an ecosystem of products that share the same DNA. Maybe an open notes and contact system protocol is needed next, so people can have everything they want no matter what phone or device they use.

Check out the full keynote on YouTube.

Sent from my new BlackBerry Z10. (not really, but would love to play with one hands on)

Stickam has announced that it’s closing down on January 31 at 11:59 PM, that is tonight. The site posted the news 21 hours ago on its official blog. A short notice, and they didn’t state a reason why they were shutting it down.

The site is currently 7 years old, so I’m speculating  that maybe they weren’t as profitable as they used to be now that live video streaming is more widely used on several different sites now compared to back then in 2005.

While I didn’t use the site much other than watching a few shows and friends, Stickam will certainly be missed. I always find it sad when a good site I used shuts down.  I guess the only tiny little bit of good news from this is that the site will let you download your recordings until February 28, 2013.

Source: Stickam’s Blog

Apple has had the technology for this for about 3 and a half years and just recently purchased more. An inside source at Apple is saying that it will most likely be on the next generation iPhone.

What are your thoughts? Would you like to see this feature in future Apple devices? How do you think they would implement it? Redesigned home button or just built right into the screen? Let me know what you think.

Add about 70 bucks to the Wi-Fi + Cellular model price and you could get the base MacBook Air, and for some that would be more worthwhile, as some people tend to see the iPad as more of a toy, and a Mac as a powerful tool. All I use my iPad for is reading, Twitter and games. I have a few apps for blogging and coding, but never feel productive using them. On my Mac I’m very productive when it comes to getting stuff like code and blog posts done.

Do you think Apple will increase the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad mini to 128GB in the future, to match the space of the new iPad?

Source: Apple Press Info

Apple has just released iOS 6.1 today, the latest update to iOS. It brings LTE to 36 additional carriers on iPhone and 23 additional carriers on iPad. iTunes Match subscribers can download individual songs from iCloud now. A new way to reset your advertising tracking Identifier. Seems like the most exciting feature is now you can buy movie tickets with Fandango using Siri(currently in the US only).

The music controls on the lock screen have been redesigned. On Maps you can now report a problem. So it seems like Apple is trying to improve its highly criticized map service.

So some minor improvements to iOS, nothing major that excites me. It seem’s like Apple has been slowly improving iOS, but I hope iOS 7 will have some major improvements like widgets on home screen, live wallpapers. Oh and NFC on the next iPhone.

New “Report a Problem” button in maps

New iOS 6.1 media controls on lock screen

New Ad Tracking Options under About

Source: Apple Press Info

Currently we have a wallpaper that is great for your desktop background, and another one covering the iPad and iPad mini. Then the rest cover some of the popular phones such as the iPhone (both 3.5 and 4 inch displays) and the Samsung Galaxy S3.

What other devices would you like to see iGeekable wallpapers for?

So here I am with this new Epson WF-3520, it’s a wireless printer all-in-one copier/fax/scanner that works with Mac, Windows, AirPrint and Google Cloud Print which means all the computers in the house are able to print. Even my iPad can print!

Setup was pretty easy and simple. Once unboxed, you just plug it in and load in the ink. It’s the kind of printer where each ink cartridge is separates so you have a separate black, magenta, cyan and yellow cartridge.

Since I heard about them, I prefer a separate ink cartridge for each color because they save on ink. The ones where you have a black cartridge and a color cartridge, if you printed pages with lots of blue (let’s say it’s your favorite color), you’d have lots of red and yellow ink wasted when you replace the color cartridge just because you needed some more blue.

Once I had the ink loaded, I closed it back up and it sat there for like five minutes priming. Then I got to load the paper in it. The pull out tray is barn-door style. It seems to load a lot of paper, maybe even a whole ream, but I haven’t tried that much yet. I think with the amount of paper my family uses, we should be set for a couple of months now.

After that it was time to connect to the Wi-Fi. I used the “Push Button Setup (WPS)” option so I wouldn’t have to type in the long Wi-Fi password on it, as my router supports that. I’m using an AirPort Extreme 802.11n (2nd Generation), which supports WPS if you use the older “AirPort Utility 5.6″, and go to the “Add Wireless Clients.” For some reason Apple removed that option in AirPort Utility 6.0, so I keep an older copy installed alongside the current one.

Once it was on the Wi-Fi network, I could go into the “Print & scan” settings of my Mac and remove the old printer since I won’t be using it anymore, which took like 10 seconds maybe. Next I went in to add the new printer which took maybe 15 seconds. After that was done it printed a test page. Yay! It worked!

Next I tested AirPrint on Apple’s homepage, it was wonderful and magical to print from iOS on my iPad! The output quality seems similar to the old printer, which was wonderful.

I then went upstairs to uninstall the old printer drivers and install the new ones on my grandpa’s laptop running Windows 7 with an i5. The uninstall took about 8 minutes and installing the new one took about 10 minutes. Windows seems a lot slower at doing these sorts of tasks. I was installing from the CD on Windows as that’s the only way I knew. It successfully did a test print then gave the option of checking for firmware updates. It found one and updated it in roughly a minute.

On OS X, if you click “Options & Supplies…”, under where it lists the driver version you should see a button that says “Show Printer Webpage”, then if you click Back to Main, you can see the link to “Firmware Update” in the option list and next to that is the current version. Using that page you can check for an update to the firmware from a web browser on a Mac.

For those who don’t know, Firmware is similar to your operating system but for embedded systems such as a printer, router, TVs, remotes. Some products firmware can be updated, and some are meant to stay the same for the whole product life, which is useful for simple things such as a remote which only requires a small amount of software to function.

So far, everything I played with is working great. A lot of the stuff on this printer works the same as the Workforce 610, so there’s some familiarity with it. It seems like a major improvement, though, over the old one it looks better, has a few more features, and seems a lot faster. Both prints and scans seem way faster compared to my older one.

I am, however, a little disappointed that the Epson 68 ink I got left from the old printer. It won’t work in the new one since it takes 126′s. The ink cartridges look the same as the old ones, but I better not try putting it in as I don’t want to break the printer. I guess they make the ink not the same for every model is so if you stock up on ink since it becomes useless if you buy a different model printer, or in our case when the old one breaks and they don’t have the older model to replace it anymore.

I give the Epson WF-3520 4.85 out of 5 stars. If you’re interested in getting a new printer. Check them out on Amazon and if you buy from one of the above links you’ll be helping out iGeekable!

Back when life moved a little slower because we were stuck with 56K dial-up modems and didn’t have Smartphones to always be connected 24/7. Without a smartphone, the only thing buzzing in our pockets was a Tamagotchi. When a troll was your friend. Back before everyone posted pictures of their food on Instagram. Everything was simpler back then.

Then towards the end of the ad, it says “The future was bright, You grew up. So did we.”.  Well I think the future is still bright, not just for Microsoft but for all of us. I also agree Microsoft has “grew up”. it seems they are betting the whole company on Windows 8, that’s a very grown up thing to do since you have to be 21 years old to gamble.

Anyways, what did you all think of the ad?

Camera phones are replacing regular point-and-shoot cameras. An iPhone 4s and an iPhone 5 record in 1080p, which is the same as my high-end Canon EOS 320HS point-and-shoot.

The question for today is, will camera phones eventually just take the place of point-and shoot cameras? The iPhone 4 has become the number one camera on Flickr, most of the pictures I see on FaceBook and Twitter nowadays are from Instagram, a Smartphone only app.

Only time will tell.

Twitter reported that 100% of the senate and 90% of the house are on Twitter for the 113th Congress compared to the 112th congress which was only 44% of the senate and 35% of the house on Twitter.

Want to stay connected to elected officials in Congress on Twitter? Subscribe to our lists: twitter.com/gov/us-senate and twitter.com/gov/us-house.

— Twitter Government (@gov) January 18, 2013

Over the past 4 to 6 years, social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have become widely used in American politics. Though people talked about issues and candidates before they were using social networks, it seems that social networks are helping people talk more about politics and brings in people who normally would not talk about politics since social networks give people a larger voice than ever before, and make it simple and convenient.

Over the past couple years people spoke up on social networks against things they didn’t support, as well as rallied behind things they did support. Things they didn’t support were issues such as SOPA and PIPA, etc. Things they did support included human rights, ending the war, etc.

How do you prefer to contact your elected officials to tell them how they are doing, or discuss an issue that’s very important to you? We can mail them using that antiquated thing called snail mail, we can call them, send them an email, tweet them or even sometimes meet them in person. We have so many more options available to us than our great grandparents did.

I myself would use email, phone and Twitter, or even meeting them in person at a public event. I don’t really care for snail mail, and you have to lick those nasty envelopes, yuck!

Source: Twitter’s Blog

Atari, one of the pioneers in gaming announced today that they filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. They are aiming to keep the US operations separate from the french parent holding company Atari SA. Within the next few months they are going to sell their assets such as Pong, Asteroids, Missile Command and other titles. They may even sell their logo, leaving them with just a name.

I hardly thought about Atari in recent years. I didn’t even know they were around still. I figured the majority of people forgot about them, and only cared about current systems like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Atari’s last released console was the Atari Jaguar back in 1993. It’s rival Nintendo released its latest console, the Wii U in November 2012.

The future of Atari US is focusing on iOS and Android games, the company said. Looks like they are no longer going to be focusing on hardware.  Do you think Atari will make games for other platforms like Xbox 360 and other consoles, Mac and PC eventually if they get their health back?

The company has announced in the past they have upcoming mobile games based on Rollercoaster Tycoon and Atari Casino. They are seeking 5.25 million dollars in funding for their new ventures. Do you think Atari will save itself and be a success again or fade into the dust?

Source: PR Newswire

If you want to watch the inauguration live, There’s an app for that. I’m not an extremely political person, but I do find the Inauguration interesting. The app idea is pretty smart for people who want to watch it on the go or at work. The app is available for iPhone and Android.

Oh, and I’m watching on the app. You can download the app on the Apple App Store, and Google Play store for free.

Source: RedmondPie

When the iPhone first came out, it was all the rage. In 2007, it was pretty popular, albeit hard to afford with its $500-$600 price point.  I remember my youth pastors going and sitting in line for it (and they have had every generation since).

The iPhone was a status symbol. If you could afford it, you were awesome.  People would flash it whenever they could. “Oh yeah, I saw that on my new iPhone.” “Oh Check out my new iPhone.” and so on.

But now it’s become pretty easy to get an iPhone. With AT&T, you can sign a two year contract and get an iPhone 4 for free. They are taking away the cool factor of having an iPhone. Heck, someone on unemployment can afford an iPhone now.

A recent study shows teenagers would rather have the Microsoft Surface or the Samsung Galaxy Note II than the iPhone, just because they are newer and cooler.

Okay, I want to talk about me for a second. I am sort of an Apple fanboy. I love all my Apple products. My Mac is very important to me. But if I were to go out and buy a phone right this minute, my choice would be the HTC One X+. If I were to pick up a second laptop, it would probably be the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro Computer/Tablet.

Apple is losing it “cool factor”. Think about it. When a parent has an iPhone 4 and they upgrade to the 5, who gets the 4? The kid who wants a phone. When the phone becomes a “hand-me-down”, the kid thinks of this is old, “why can’t I have (insert popular phone here)?”.

Apple’s flagship devices is about out of rope, unless they completely overhaul the software and even the hardware, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant.

Source: TechnoBuffalo 

I, myself used to be a big fan of Pandora and still am but I listen to it less than I did before Spotify came to the US. Spotify also has a similar radio station feature where you can put in a song and thumb up and down to have it learn your tastes, and if you like it, add it right to your music collection, but I hardly use that feature. Most of the music I listen to is what other people I’m friends with on Facebook are listening to.

Pandora was and still is really great for music discovery based on your tastes, and if you find a song you really like you can buy it on iTunes or type in the song into another service to add it to your collection.

It seems like over the past two years, other than just iTunes and Pandora music listening options have exploded. Just wondering, What is your favorite online music service’s?

Source: Pandora’s Blog

Positons:

•Writers: We are looking for 2-3 writers to write content for the blog.

•Site Manager: We are looking for 1-2 people to do site maintenance and updates. A WordPress and/or coding background preferable or the willingness to learn.

•Publicity Crew: Looking for about 2-5 individuals that are good at marketing and publicity.

•Podcast Crew: Editor: Looking for 1 person to do the Audio editing; Research team: 2 people to do research for content.

•Media Editor: We use images around the site a lot as well as for publicity. Looking for a person, needs to have Photoshop/Illustrator background (or similar programs), to handle this.

For all inquiries, Email Zac Murphy or Kevin Whitman. Click on one of the names to email either of us.

Zac Murphy
Vice President
iGeekable.com

Zac Murphy
Vice President
iGeekable.com

Research In Motion(RIM) is offering to pay $100 per app that Android developers port over to BlackBerry 10, up to 20 apps per developer in its BlackBerry 10 Last Chance Port-A-Thon that runs for 36 hours.

I was wondering how you could port 20 apps to BlackBerry 10 for the maximum of $2,000 and they have some sort of App Generator tool, that claims to allow you to build apps for BlackBerry Smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook in under 10 minutes without any technical knowledge… So that make’s me wonder how advance these apps will be or will they just be fart apps or simple content based apps. Do they care more about quantity or quality? I guess at the launch event the CEO might think it’s cool to say something like “We’ve already got X apps, ready for the new platform!”.

BlackBerry 10 is the upcoming new version of BlackBerry’s mobile operating system. We should hear more about BlackBerry as we get closer to the January 30, 2013 launch date of the new system. Think developers care about BlackBerry? Will BlackBerry make a come back?

Source: AndroidGuys

My iDevices back up to my Mac and to my iCloud storage. My Mac also backs up to iCloud.
All of my graphic and video work that I do is kept on my external drives, as well as well as my Dropbox. All of my scripts and idea sheets are typed in Word for Mac and then copied and pasted into Google Drive and sometimes even into Pages which syncs with iCloud. I make sure if, God forbid, any of my hardware crashes, it’s data is safe.

So I want to talk about backup options. There are two main ways of data storage and back-up: to the cloud, or to an external drive.

I use cloud personally, though I will probably get a 1 terabyte external pretty soon. Cloud is pretty easy actually. You have all of your files stored to where you can access them anywhere, you can manage backups, and even schedule them. I use a number of online storage sites, such as DropBox, iCloud, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Storage, and a few more. Cloud’s biggest advantage is the ability to access your data anywhere, when you need to. The downside to these online storage sites is that, God forbid, they get hacked and your data gets stolen. Then you’re screwed.

Now as I said the other way of storage is an external/physical drive. Those are just like the ones in your computer now. These have so pros and cons as well. They are easy to back-up to, i.e. Most harddrives are compatible with Mac’s TimeMachine program. Most are very small and portable. Another advantage that these have as well, is say you have a app, say Final Cut Pro X, and your friend wants it. You can put it on a hard drive and put it on his computer. Easy as that. But now for the downside. These drives can crash. Just like the one in your computer, these can just go kaput.

Each way has its pros and cons. Its up to you which one you use, but I recommend jumping on it, even free online services and inexpensive hard drives, It’s all worth it in the end.

According to CEO Tom Katis of Voxer, Facebook emailed the company wanting to hold a phone conference with them to discuss why Facebook killed its API access. This news comes out days after Facebook added voice calling to it’s messager app. I wonder if Voxer friend finding service losing access to the Facebook API is related in any ways? I think it’s very possible, and if this story gets popular we might see a public statement from Facebook about this.

This incident is very similar to how Twitter disabled “Find Friends” on Instagram, after Facebook bought out Instagram for 1 billion dollars! Then after that Facebook disabled Twitter’s “card” feature that allowed previewing Instagram images on Twitter, forcing users to view images on Instagram’s website. Then a few days after that, Twitter added filters to its own mobile apps similar to Instagram’s. So in previous cases both major social networks, Facebook and Twitter have disabled access to competitors products, so it’s not unheard of this happening.

Sadly I hate how these companies don’t want to play together. I view less images on Instagram because of it, viewing images inline is quicker and convenient. I’m one of those folks that views each image I see posted in my Twitter feed. Instatgram images still shows up in Facebook’s news feed, and rumors that Facebook will add Instagram images to it’s new graph search eventually. So seems like Facebook wants to keep Instagram and it’s data all to its self.

Do you wish companies products would play nicer together?

Source: AllThingsD

Now also with all the controversy surrounding the privacy policy with Instagram, they finally reverted back to the original ones.

My least favorite part of Instagram is all the nudity that tends to sneak in. While FaceBook and Twitter get ride of even slightly provocative images within minutes of being reported, it took almost a year for #nudes to get removed, along with others.

That being said, My questions for today is, “What is your favorite and least favorite part about Instagram?” and “If you don’t have and account, why?”

If it weren’t for that, and add in a chat function. Instagram would be the perfect  social network. Twitter and FaceBook don’t fall far behind.

Lady Gaga was live today at http://www.skypeball.com/skypewithgaga, answering questions of fans, in a Google Plus styled Skype chat. This seems like a viral promotion for Skype, the well known internet phone, and video chat cross platform application. It seems like Skype selected 5 fans to talk with Gaga before the live stream that started at 2PM PST/5pm EST.

Sadly there was some technical issues.

the skype with gaga worked for like 5 min then it crashed on me….and now its over?! #Skypeball #FAIL

— Danny Boy (@heymisterdj) January 17, 2013

BREAKING: Video chat service “Skype” has crashed due to an overloaded Lady Gaga live show.

— EVAN MIXON (@EVANMIXON) January 17, 2013

We are experiencing technical difficulties. Stay tuned to skypeball.com/skypewithgaga

— Skype Events (@SkypeEvents) January 17, 2013

For anyone that missed it, Skype is said to be posted a recording to its YouTube channel. For the live show about 130,000 people were viewing, or trying to at least.

BREAKING: Over 130,000 people are trying to view Lady Gaga on Skype, number growing still. #SKYPEBALL

— EVAN MIXON (@EVANMIXON) January 17, 2013

One question Gaga was asked “What was your favorite Skype moment?”, and she giggled and said “It’s not rated for children”. Funny! I think Gaga on Skype was an interesting event. Wondering if more artists and celebrities will start to do this?

If you could Skype with anyone, who would it be? Do you have a favorite Skype moment?

Updated: Video up now, so if you missed it you can watch below!

The Facebook Mobile App for iPhone now supports a VOiP calling service for inside the US. It’s voice only calling but this could, in my opinion, provides a huge competition for Skype, Cisco and other VOiP services. It’s also iPhone only, for now.

Source: TechnoBuffalo

Now supported devices such as the iPhone 4S, third generation iPad and newer, and lastly the iPad mini will be available to use FaceTime over cellular once it is rolled out to you. At&t said “the update will be applied automatically over the next few months”.

So for some people, this change is greatly welcomed, but for some reason Skype can be used on all plans for video calls, yet At&t limits FaceTime, which to lots of people and including me it makes no sense.

Source: AT&T Blog

Any good geek knows of the ongoing war between top tech companies Apple and Samsung. With the all of the battles, in and out of the courtroom, is Apple able to continue the war?

My initial thought, as said on TechnoBuffalo, Was “Yes, Of course.” But then I started taking into consideration everything Apple is up against. Not just Samsung, but HTC, Motorola, Pantech, LG, Google, RIM, Microsoft, Nokia, and many more. Apple is looking at a very hard battle. We are now around 6 mo. away from the iPhone 5 announcement/launch and with reports of Apple cutting the production of the 5, the tech guru may be in trouble. TechnoBuffalo stated that right now consumers are deciding whether or not to by the current iPhone, or wait “for the new one”.

With people like the aforementioned companies coming out with new phones and tablets every week or month, respectively, it makes one think that Apple should step up their game and start producing more hardware or even just update the software more. Once a year seems to not be cutting it for “the Big A”

But only time can tell. What are you’re thoughts? Leave them in the comment section below.

Source: TechnoBuffalo

Everyone want’s to keep their precious iPhone protected and everybody loves candy, right! Well, ThinkGeek has just the product you’re looking for, Edible Gummy iPhone Cases. Comes in 8 flavors.

Put it on your iPhone, then when you’re bored in a boring meeting, just start chewing on your iPhone case! Well, uh, I doubt I really would do that. Imagine all the germs you will pick up from setting it on tables, putting it in your dirty linty jeans pocket… Well you get the idea, but It’s funny. This is more of a joke product. Would make a perfect novelty gift, to bad the holidays are over for another year. I guess you still have birthdays!

Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook today announced graph search, a new search product for Facebook. Web search allows you to use keywords, but Graph search is more structured, and searches Facebook’s database vs. the whole web. For example you could search “my friends in New York who like Jay-Z” then you would get back posts, photos, places and more content they shared related to that search query.

Currently Facebook is rolling out graph search “very slowly” and isn’t available to everyone yet. Graph search is said to respect current Facebook privacy settings and only search for content that has been shared with you.

Maybe you moved to a new area and need to find a dentist, you could search “Dentists liked by my friends“, to see dentists your friends like, and probably go to. Before graph search, you would have to Google for a dentist and look at the reviews.

Wonder what type of music Mit Romney Fans listen to, Well Facebook has an answer! Just search “Music liked by people who like Mitt Romney” and Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Nickelback, Pink Floyd came back in the demo showed today at Facebook’s headquarters.

Want to see photos of you and someone else, search “Photos of me and _____“, for example in the demo Mark searched “Photos of me and Priscilla“, then it came back with pictures of him and his wife, Priscilla.

Maybe you’re planing a trip to Chicago, you could search “Restaurants in Chicago“, and get back restaurants in Facebook’s Places database, but along with that you might see stuff your friends said about it.

Wonder what music most of your friends like, Well Facebook has an answer for that also. Just search “Music my friends like“.

Facebook seems to be making search more social with this, and for some things I would rather search Facebook over Google now, like music, places, photos, movies and shows to watch since it uses data from my friends and if you’re friends in the first place, that most likely means you have stuff in common, so it’s sorta like getting recommendations from your friends

For other things, searching for stuff may not be best suited for Facebook, like maybe statistics about city crime rates or something technical like PHP functions. Some stuff I might try searching both Facebook and Google. I think what search engine to use depends on what type of use case it is, but seems like Facebook search will show Bing results for things that would be better suited for a more traditional search engine, or what it can’t find results for within Facebook.

I think Facebook’s new search might be very useful, can’t wait to get to try it hands on. Facebook posted a few pages about Graph search on their website at https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch. Think Google should start to worry yet?

Sources: FB News Room, Verge Live Blog

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has cut orders for iPhone 5 components by half. Apple notified its suppliers last month of this cut, an anonymous source familiar to the situation said. Speculation is that the iPhone 5 is not selling as well as expected. Apple is still selling the iPhone 4s, the previous generation iPhone. The 4S is believed to be currently outselling the iPhone 5.

The iPhone 5 has higher specs than the 4S, and has a .5 inches longer screen than the 4S. The 4s has a 3.5 inches screen, and the 5 has a 4 inches screen size. The iPhone 4s is sold at $99 on contract at only 16GB. The 16GB iPhone 5 is $199, then for 32GB, it adds another hundred dollars. The 64GB model adds two hundred dollars compared to the base 16GB model.

Also as prepaid is being promoted more and more, Virgin Mobile sells the iPhone 4S on prepaid, along with even the iPhone 4 still. Walmart and Straight Talk Wireless recently as of Jan 11 started offering the iPhone 5 for prepaid.

So if you want an iPhone today, you have many more options than just getting an iPhone 5, and for lots of people the 4S is still a great little powerful phone, despite being a year old. Also another thing you have to consider is contracts, some people will only upgrade their iPhone every two years on contracts. Samsung also rose 31.3% in the third quarter of 2012. Maybe people are liking the smaller form factor of the iPhone 4S compared to the iPhone 5. Hard to tell, with the changes to the iPhone 5 compared to the 4S, and lots more options in the phone market for iPhone, and other competing phones.

Why do you think iPhone 5 is selling worse than expected?

Source: WSJ

We love you all and can’t wait to see where this year takes us

Zac Murphy
Vice President
iGeekable.com

Mac mini update

iMac update

Fusion drive!

iPad mini!

iPad 4!

Apple Stores
iPhone 5
iOS 6
New iPod Nano
New iPod Touch
Picks of the Week

Liam: iOS Youtube app

Zac: iOS Google Drive app

Kevin: Caffeine Mac app

iOS 6

Mat Honan Hack

Amazon/Apple/Google Security Holes

Kevin, Zac, and Liam’s Personal Lives

Picks of the Week:

Kevin - Sip

Zac - Ouya

Liam - iOS WordPress App