Articles about Digital Lifestyle

As someone who switched from Hotmail to Gmail in 2004 and then never looked back, moving to Outlook.com has been quite a weird experience (setting it up was fun in its own right). Some people hate Gmail’s interface, but if you’re used to it, using anything else seems odd.

That said, I’ve adapted to Outlook.com pretty quickly. It feels a bit like going back in time, using an interface similar to the ones I used in the past, but it doesn’t feel dated -- quite the opposite actually -- and I’ve grown to really like it in the short period of time I’ve been using it as my email service.

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On Tuesday, Vonage introduced free video calling into its mobile app for iPhone and Android, rounding out a suite which already offers features like free app-to-app calls, texts, photo and location sharing, as well as international calling.

I chatted to Nick Lazzaro, Vonage’s SVP Product Development, Information Technology and Managing Director Mobile Services, about the new addition, the company’s plans for the future, and what he thinks is next for the mobile industry.

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Although it sounds like a slightly late April Fool’s joke, Amazon has today announced it will be giving customers who have purchased vinyl records from Amazon dating back to 1998, free copies in MP3 format.

It forms part of the AutoRip service which automatically adds MP3s of past and present CD purchases to the shopper’s Cloud Player libraries.

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The notion of a Facebook phone has certainly lingered for a few years now -- the concept reached a point of half-hearted fruition in the HTC ChaCha and Salsa in 2011, but neither really embodied the true potential of a Facebook phone. They were much more of "throw and see what sticks" devices -- with the only tangible evidence of deeper Facebook integration being the Facebook button on the devices’ fronts.

Much has changed in nearly two years: Facebook’s Open Graph, the acquisition of Instagram and the introduction of Facebook Camera and Messenger applications, among others. Perhaps the most strident progression Mark Zuckerberg’s social network has made in the past two years is reaching 1 billion active users. And counting. That’s approximately one in seven people in the world, and an even larger proportion if accounting for the developed world alone.

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The 2012 Kickstarter darling Ouya has been anticipated ever since it skyrocketed past its fund-raising goal and began pre-production. While Sony has released information on its next-generation PlayStation and many people have been talking up the new Xbox, Ouya may have outdone both larger companies in terms of publicity and expectation.

CEO Julie Uhrman announces that "Today we start shipping our early backers their OUYAs. And at our unveiling event this evening, the first of you will get to see OUYA in the flesh (or, metal, as it were)".

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Apple has gone to great trouble to craft its stores and reputation. The company refers to its employees as geniuses, for goodness sake! Taking your device in for repair is alluded to as a visit to the "genius bar". It is an entire ecosystem designed to make the customer feel confident and comfortable when dealing with the company. It is also a setup that lends itself to comedy and U.K. hard cider maker Somersby saw that opportunity.

The company has produced a new one-minute TV spot that portrays the Apple Store as a bar that serves up its cider and the geniuses explain why it is so good. The ad does not so much make fun of Apple (that is what Samsung is for), but instead uses the tech company's concept as a basis for some good tongue-in-cheek humor.

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¡Hola! Many of us use Google Translate, some on a daily basis. For instance, I follow a few blogs in Reader (a moment of silence please) that are published in languages that are foreign to me. For the most part it works well, but can also lead to some rather amusing results. Now you can get those same laughs from your Android phone, even when you are offline.

Today Google's product manager Minqi Jiang announces that the search giant and mobile operating system developer is "launching offline language packages for Google Translate on Android (2.3 and above) with support for 50 languages, from French and Spanish to Chinese and Arabic".

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Today, comScore started a new service that ranks the top U.S. websites by desktop and mobile views -- the latter is a new measurement. Some of them really pop off the chart, with Apple glaring among traditional companies. More than one-third of unique visitors in February accessed the site via mobile device-only. That compares to 5 percent for Microsoft properties. Analysts, bloggers and journalists often portray the fruit-logo company as best representative of the so-called Post-PC era, and Windows' maker the epoch in decline.

The numbers aren't shocking, if you think about them. Windows has little presence on smartphones or tablets. Microsoft mobile OS smartphones share was just 3 percent during fourth quarter, according to Gartner. IDC forecasts Windows tablet market share, based on unit shipments, will be less than 5 percent this year. By comparison, iOS has greater reach, with, according to the company, cumulative shipments exceeding 500 million. Hell, Apple sold 43.5 million iPhones just in Q4, according to Gartner.

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With last week's installment, this little series largely came to an end for now, but it doesn't mean that I am not actively planning for future improvements to the digital lifestyle in our home. In fact, my list of ideas for improvements is a rather lengthy one, though the expenses are enough for now and I have no desire to incur the wrath of my wife with more deliveries showing up on our doorstep.

But, where exactly do I want to go from here? The ideas are endless, but for the sake of brevity I will list only a few here. These are the ones I have prioritized at the top of that future list. The ones I consider most important to make everything work quicker and more smoothly.

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You'll never guess what you gave up Google Reader for? The tried-and-true makes way for a few, ah, experiments. Newest: Chrome World Wide Maze. Geekdom is abuzz about the oddity this evening. I'm simply baffled, although I see the benefits as a technology preview, which surely must be the point.

Essentially your mobile device running Chrome becomes a remote control for a 3D-maze makeover of any website. I couldn't help myself. I chose bing.com. The setup is a bit convoluted, using -- and therefore showcasing -- tab sync. The process involves opening the site from tabs already available on the other device and completing a handshake using a six-digit number. Then the fun begins, or would have if Chrome Beta for Android hadn't crashed and disconnected while my wife took photos. (Hey, every story needs art.)

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Confession: I've never used Evernote, much to the abash of colleague Alan Buckingham (or so he expressed in group chat a little while ago). But I would use Google Keep, which released today. Russell Holly calls Keep "the not-quite Evernote clone" -- for anyone making bold comparisons.

You tell me. Does this sound familiar, Evernote and OneNote users? "With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you", Katherine Kuan, Google software engineer, says. "Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand". She adds: "If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine -- Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it".

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Last night something strange caught my attention, nearly enough to post a late-day story. Then this morning I got a little email nudge from Amazon PR, and thought: "Yeah. Why not?" The timing and broader ecosystem implications are interesting for service "Send to Kindle". Just as Google whacks RSS -- pulling feed icons from its products and setting Reader's execution -- Amazon provides a mechanism for saving content you come across, say, browsing at work for reading at home on your ebook reader or tablet.

The concept is by no means new, not even for Amazon. There are several good cloud services dedicated to saving content for later reading or incorporating the capability. Instapaper comes to mind, and Feedly has an easy tap mechanism to save for later. What makes Send to Kindle different is device/app-specificity. Additionally, websites, including WordPress blogs, can place a button supporting the service.

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A week ago, I had a dream. I was sitting on a beach with a glass of wine and a laptop and I was searching the internet using Bing. My wife came up, saw what I was doing, and said "Why aren’t you using Google?" To which I replied, "I’m boycotting it. The company shutdown Reader." Yes, that’s right, I dreamt Reader was being shuttered before Google even announced it, and now I’m using Bing. Spooky or what?

But let’s make one thing very clear here. Although I plan to switch to using Microsoft’s services for a while, it’s not a boycott. I realized, after the dream, that I’ve been so tied into Google that I’ve never really given Microsoft’s alternatives -- Bing, Outlook.com, Bing Maps, and even Internet Explorer -- a fair chance to see how they compare. I've used them, in passing at least, but I've never used them full time. And today that’s about to change.

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I was wrong about the Galaxy S 4. Last week, I asserted that brand sentiments had changed enough here -- given Samsung's rising popularity, Apple's image problems and high-profile iPhone-to-Android switchers -- that the South Korean electronics giant could launch the S 4 in the United States. Nope. Reception among bloggers, journalists and the Technorati is largely ice cold. Most first-takes I see call the handset a S 3s and no better than iPhone 5. Idiots.

If Steve Jobs was still alive and introduced a Star Trek-like universal translator for iPhone, there would be cries: "Apple does it again". Tell me what's not innovative about translation from, say, English to Chinese or Japanese to French. In real time. On your phone. Or text-to-speech and speech-to-text translation capabilities? Imagine Jobs demonstrating the "Eraser" feature by taking a photo and jokingly removing marketing executive Phil Schiller from the photo. He could demonstrate dual-mode video by initiating a call with Schiller that includes members of the audience, which I promise would roar and clap.

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Fourth in a series. Before I go any further I am anticipating the obvious question here -- how can you replace a Windows Media Center HTPC with a box that has no DVR functionality? For many of you this may be impossible, but for me it is simple. We have DirecTV and the HR21 HD DVR for TV -- I cannot live without my NFL Sunday Ticket. The HTPC is simply used for DVD rips, music and pictures, so we never used it to its full capability. That makes the move to the Vizio Co-Star an easy one.

And, after last week's disastrous start to the home theater portion of this endeavor, anything had to be a step up. With the Micca box safely returned to Amazon, it was time to make Google TV the one box to rule them all, replacing both HTPC and Netgear NeoTV 550.

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