Articles about Digital Lifestyle

I join colleagues Mihaita Bamburic, Alan Buckingham and Wayne Williams recounting what tech I used in 2012. But unlike them, I made dramatic platform changes, more significant than first using Windows over New Years holiday 1994, buying a reburbished PowerBook in February 1999, adopting Facebook and Twitter in 2006 or purchasing Nexus One in January 2010. Each of these marked major platform changes -- and some not always lasting. Consider this: in early 2012, I owned a 1.8GHz Intel Core i7 MacBook Air, iPhone 4S and iPad 3. I end the year using Chromebook and Android smartphone and tablets.

During the year I moved from OS X and Windows running on Intel to an ARM-and-Chrome OS laptop, and after several failed attempts at adopting tablets (three generations of iPads, really), I embraced not one but two Android slates. I store all my data in the cloud -- local storage is now merely a way station between destinations rather than personal repository. This old dog is learning new tricks, and if I make such dramatic platform changes what does that mean for younger users who are more flexible and not as financially or habitually Apple/Microsoft/Intel committed? Look around, the PC era rapidly evaporates around you and its disappearance will be difficult to ignore in 2013.

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I wrote here nearly a year ago that there would be no more annual lists of predictions and I’m sticking to that, but I want to take the time for a series of columns on what I think will be an important trend in 2013 -- the battle for Hollywood and home entertainment.

The players here, with some of them coming and some of them going, are Amazon and Apple and Cisco and Google and Intel and Microsoft and maybe a few more. The battleground comes down to platforms and content and will, by 2015 at the latest, determine where home entertainment is headed in America and the world for the rest of the century. The winners and losers are not at all clear to me yet, though I have a strong sense of what the battle will be like.

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Some years I make resolutions, others I don’t. The ones I make are usually the same -- lose weight and get fitter (something I finally achieved this year thanks to the Zombies, Run app), get that novel finished and land a book deal (another tick in the 2012 "done" box), and cut back on the amount of caffeine I consume (well, you can’t win them all).

For 2013 I thought I’d make a short list of tech-related resolutions, things I genuinely plan to do or achieve, and share them with you. So, in no particular order, here they are:

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The year has almost passed and that makes it a great time for reflection. Of course, I have thought most about my family -- what we did in 2012 and our plans for 2013. I have thought of household repairs and projects planned for the coming year, goals I would like to attain, but I also considered what technology I used the most and the changes I made.

My colleagues and I plan personal tech retrospectives. I'm first up.

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We're not dead, at least not as I write. Dec. 21, 2012 is supposed to be the end of the world, based on ancient Mayan prophecies. If we do all die today, well, it was nice knowing you. Humans certainly are obsessed with apocalypse. Hell, it's biblical. Civilization's end, and how survivors cope, is quite the popular theme in literature and other artwork, including movies and television. I got to thinking: "Why not review some of the classics?"

So I've compiled a list of my favorites, from least to most, all but one from the twentieth century (the other circa 1898). Sorry, "The Walking Dead" fans. I also skip late-1990 movies like "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact". Some of the works are deliberately chosen for not being mainstream but worthy of the world-ending genre.

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If you're a heavy Google user, every day is like Christmas -- well, in 2012. Not a day goes by that the company doesn't release something new. Updates are relentless, with products in continual states of improvement. Today's touted 18 24 Google+ enhancements are examples. Editor's note: Hours after we posted, Google changed the number from 18 to 24. The approach is philosophical and corporate cultural and defies traditional software development cycles Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others adopted long ago. The relentless releases is for stuff Google mostly gives away for free. Now why is that?

Years ago, I wrote several seething stories about perpetual Google betas (Gmail was 5 years, right?) and Microsoft somewhat mimicking the approach. (I can't find the stories this morning. If you can, please link in comments.) The search giant's work was never done, while competitors rolled major enhancements together made available all at once on long lead cycles (Hey, three years separate Windows 7 and 8 launches). Microsoft chooses the big blockbuster movie approach, which predicates a work largely done -- a story completely told. Google is the serialist, telling an ongoing story in a quick succession of releases. Which works better? You tell me.

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The original iPad didn't excite me very much. In fact, I was confused what to do with it. Over time, I ended up using the iPad 2, and recently its successor. I’ve also tried the Blackberry PlayBook, the HP TouchPad, and more recently Google Nexus 7.

But, for the first time in a long time, I was very excited to get a tablet -- the new Microsoft Surface. I think Windows RT had a lot to do with it, and the touchscreen aspect.

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Ofcom’s seventh International Communications Market Report, which examines take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV, radio and post across 17 major countries, has discovered that people in the United Kingdom typically spend more on online shopping, watch more TV on the web, and download more data on their mobiles and tablets than any other leading nation.

I’m British, do all my shopping online (even groceries), almost never watch live television and access the web on the go pretty much daily, so this news doesn’t come as any great surprise to me, but even so the gap between my country and other much larger nations is a bit of a revelation (and also slightly suspect in some cases).

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Within the past few days Instagram has divorced Twitter and added a new filter, Twitter got into the Instagram game by adding photo filters and now Yahoo-owned photo sharing service Flickr has joined the fray with its new iPhone app update. You can probably guess where this announcement is going.

Yes, Flickr has added a set of filters that users can access upon snapping a photo. Like Instagram and now Twitter, there are a standard set of filters including black and white and 15 others that are now part of the built-in editor, which also allows you to crop your image right on the spot. You can then share it via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or email.

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It's no secret that Microsoft sees its Xbox platform as much more than just a gaming console. It wants the device to act as the digital hub of our living rooms, and today the company took another step in that direction, announcing more than 40 new entertainment apps.

Xbox Live's Larry Hryb, AKA Major Nelson, posted the news this morning that "more than 40 new global entertainment partners [are] coming to Xbox LIVE, including new apps launching this week."

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Nexus devices are largely sold out this holiday season. Supply can't meet demand, particularly the new smartphone. But one Google gadget is missing altogether, pulled before official sales started. I've got Nexus Q, and you should be able to have one, too. The entertainment device is quirky, but I like it. Surely there is stock sitting around in some warehouse somewhere. Sell it out, Google. Give geeks something else to clamor for and recover some of the development and manufacturing costs.

The sphere-shaped device is a remarkable product, and changes fundamental concepts about digitally-delivered entertainment. Users stream music or movies from the cloud, using Android smartphone or tablet as remote control. The approach solves a fundamental end-user problem with digital content: Simple sharing.

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US consumers love to use cloud-connected mobile devices to enhance their shopping experience -- surely something more than a few of you do now that holidays are here. Perhaps least surprising is the number of Americans using smartphones to find local stores -- 78 percent, says Nielsen. That's good news for Google Now, standard browser search services or even Apple's Siri. Sixty-three percent of shoppers check prices in the store. Hey, I do that all the time. Place orders, too. Can you say Amazon?

More Americans use tablets to research items than smartphones (68 percent to 61 percent) or to read reviews of recent or future purchases (53 percent to 45 percent). Forty-eight percent of tablet owners purchase digital items and 43 percent physical goods from their devices. Mea culpa, I do both.

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The iPad's flagship newspaper is finished. Today News Corp. promised what some of us in the media long hoped for. Big boss Rupert Murdoch will take The Daily out back of the barn and shoot it in the head on December 15, putting the godawful digital rag, its editors and the few readers out of their misery. Thus ends the iPad's big, publishing experiment. In ruins.

What a mess it is, too. News Corp. spent $30 million just to launch The Daily, which debuted in February 2011 on iPad. Apple joined the revelry that made the then less-than-year-old device seemingly legitimate -- a truly compelling platform for digital publishing. But News Corp's. digital newspaper stumbled right at the start. Early users complained about constant crashes and slow updates. The Daily promised ongoing content updates to the app, but they proved to be too much -- even after new versions released. Fundamentally, however, The Daily's failure is about editorial content.

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A port of the incredibly popular indie sandbox survival game Minecraft will soon be available for the Raspberry Pi, and if that news isn’t enough to get you excited, the price might -- it will be entirely free.

Minecraft: Pi Edition (a port of Minecraft: Pocket Edition) was officially unveiled at Minecon in Paris, and offers a revised feature set and support for several programming languages, so users can code directly into the game. According to Minecraft publisher Mojang, users will be able to "start by building structures in the traditional Minecraft way, but once you’ve got to grips with the in-game features, there’s opportunity to break open the code and use programming language to manipulate things in the game world. You’ll be learning new skills through Minecraft".

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A new report from Ofcom reveals that one in six Internet users in the United Kingdom access films, TV shows, music, or eBooks through illegal means. Published this week, the first results from an ongoing study of Internet users aged 12 and above also reveals that 47 percent are unsure whether the online content they download, stream or share is legal or not.

During the three-month period from May to July 2012, Ofcom found that the levels of infringement varied considerably depending on content type. For example, while 8 percent of users accessed music illegally and 6 percent consumed films that way, just 2 percent downloaded games and software. That said, of all the computer software obtained online, 47 percent of it was acquired illegally.

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