Amazon this week officially removed the velvet rope from Echo, its "Siri-with-a-speaker" smart home device. You can now buy Echo for $180, no invitation needed, though you have to wait until at least July 14 for it to ship.
"Holy s#!t."
If you've dismissed Apple Maps as extraordinarily inept, it might be time to give the once-beleaguered navigation app another go.
Apple is widely praised for its design sense, and rightly so. However, its Health app has always struck me as oddly un-Apple, thanks to its unsophisticated, off-putting, dated interface.
Smartphones thefts dropped sharply last year, thanks to security innovations such as Apple's "Find My Phone" remote-locator feature. However, a surprising number of consumers still don't protect their phones with password locks, according to a survey from Consumer Reports.
When was the last time your computer crashed? How long has it been since you needed to take your car to the repair shop? The answer to both of these questions is probably not that long. What brings these seemingly unrelated points to mind is this: Google's been trumpeting the safety record of its driverless cars, and the media's been falling all over itself to herald a new automotive era.
Back in the day, I spent a lot of beer-fueled hours playing arcade and console games, including Pong, Tetris, and Pac-Man. Those games are long gone, but certainly not forgotten, and all three, along with Doom, Super Mario Brothershttp://www.letsplaysnes.com/play-super-mario-bros-online-nes/ and World of Warcraft, were just inducted into the newly-established World Video Game Hall of Fame.
Amazon's technology products aren't always a success -- consider the ill-conceived Fire Phone, bless its bumbling little heart. And the ecommerce giant sure draws a lot of "fire" -- check out this 5,000-word Amazon.com controversies Wikipedia article.
One of the fascinating things about the last decade was the iPhone. We had a market dominated by companies like Palm, RIM, Nokia and Samsung. Each was incredibly powerful in its segment and two were massive multinationals. But, despite all that, Apple walked in and cut through them like a knife through butter.
Is Wunderlist, a to-do list manager app, worth between $100 million and $200 million? That's the amount Microsoft reportedly paid to acquire the German app developer, 6Wunderkinder GmbH.
If you're unhappy with your cable TV or broadband provider, you're in good company. A survey of more than 14,000 consumers found that customer satisfaction with information services in the United States is at a seven-year low.
This week was Dell's Annual Analyst Conference (DAAC) and next week is HP Discover [disclaimer: I've worked with HP and Dell for over a decade and covered both firms extensively], but this year I'll pass on the HP event and will be at VCE's analyst conference in Chicago. Here's why.
As if to offer a mea culpa for its previous, woefully inadequate Windows RT tablets, Microsoft delivered the Surface 3 -- a super-cool tablet and laptop that is particularly useful (though not flawless) when combined with Microsoft's OneNote app and the optional Surface pen.
A new extension for Google's Chrome browser pushes the creepy needle into the red zone. Marauders Map tracks the location of anyone using Facebook Messenger who hasn't disabled its access to GPS location information from their smartphones.
You likely believe you've always had the right to sue a company that sells you a defective product, or to take your device anywhere you want to get it repaired without voiding the warranty. In theory, you're correct, but today many companies bully consumers out of asserting their rights. Fortunately, that's about to change.
Would you pay $10 a month for the ability to speak into an Apple Watch and have a personal "concierge" shop for you or book travel tickets?
"Is that the iWatch?"
I don't believe in censorship, and I think it's the responsibility of parents to keep their kids away from inappropriate content on the Web. However, if a service is specifically aimed at children and marketed as a safe offering for them, that's exactly what it should be. YouTube Kids, on the other hand, is loaded with content that children should never see, according to the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy, two consumer protection groups.
Microsoft is so happy about Windows 10 that it is releasing seven different versions. The new OS will launch this summer, and the first choice interested consumers will need to make is which "flavor" to buy. That choice shouldn't be made lightly, because Microsoft says Windows 10 is the end of the line for what you might call "Windows Classic." In other words, you'll have to live with your choice for a while.
I admit it. I'm addicted to racking up as many steps as possible on my Fitbit. However, I do not plan to buy a pricey treadmill desk to feed my step addiction. I searched for apps that can help me get steps while I work, and I found one: Nuance's Dragon Remote Microphone, which is free for Android and iOS.
