#220 - Christmas 2012

Dear blog friends.  Thank you for reading my blog this past year.  I am trying for 2 posts per month in 2013 so if you don't see one for a while please send me a reminder.  This blog let's talk about the latest in Technology and what it could mean for you!

We are still getting used to our new Motorola Droid RAZR cell phones.  Today we investigated the voice recognition capabilities.  We have Android Jelly Bean (the latest) operating system.  It has two apps that provide voice support.  Voice Command lets you use the phone functions.  You start the Voice Command app then can say things like Call Home and it will!  I have found it to be pretty accurate as long as the name you want to call isn't very ethnic or complicated.  You can also ask it to dial a number and it will.  Both are very handy for in the car dialing.  The negative is that you have to start the app by hand.  The other app is Voice Search.  Think of this as Google Search by voice.   The results vary depending on what question word you use (Where - gets google Maps, Who and What get Google search results, Temperature questions gets the Weather App, and Why questions are a mixed bag).  Voice Search takes some getting used to, but is quicker then typing in a search.

You never know where you will learn about new technologies.  I had breakfast this morning with a childhood friend.  She is a retired librarian and enjoys technology, but certainly not a geek.  She asked me if I had heard of Raspberry Pi.  After the yes I love all kinds of pies comment, she let me know that this was a credit card size computer (bare bones) that runs Linux.  Cost is $25 or $35 depending on memory and ports.  You provide the TV (one with HDMI or composite input), Keyboard, Mouse, Operating System (Linux Debian recommended, though others will work), and power supply are extra.  You actually load the Linux on an SD card that can provide storage and other program files.  The company making this product is a charity based in the UK and did this to encourage students to learn about computers.  Here is a link to their site:  http://www.raspberrypi.org/

I saw the Apple iPad mini up close and have several thoughts.  It is nicely designed and may be a great tablet for kids.  Its a bit small for the browsing I like to do.  I was constantly increasing the size of type and that got to be aggravating.  Angry Birds played great on it (as did many other game apps).  Reading a book on it worked fine.  This will probably be a pretty good sales item for Apple due to price and opening up the child owning an iPad market.  For $329 (similar to the gaming systems out there) you can keep a child actively entertained.  The dangers of the Internet remain and I have NOT seen a good parental control app for the iPad.  Let me know if you see one!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Very Happy New Year.

#219 - New Cell Phones!

The Moga family now have new phones.  We chose the Motorola Droid Razr M phone for both Mr. and Mrs. Moga.  The spousal unit has a white phone while the artistically conservative Nick chose Henry Ford Black.   Our 2 year plan with Verizon was up and our phones had admirably supported us with only one small issue.   We took a look at our favorite online wireless site, Wirefly, and found a deal that was tough to turn down.  The phones cost $0.99 each with an updated contract.  We moved to one of Verizons Share anything plan.  We get unlimited minutes, text and 2 GB of shared data for about $9 more per month.  The spousal unit has never had a "smart phone" so there is a learning curve experience going on now.  I'm upgrading from a Motorola Droid Pro so this shouldn't be hard, but the old Pro had Android version 2.3 (code name Gingerbread) while the new phone has the latest Android 4.1.1 (code named JellyBean) operating system.  They are not anything alike so I'm having some upgrade issues also. 

Why this Phone?  Besides the good price, the Razer M has some very good features (and a couple of clunkers, but nothing is perfect).  Here are the specs:  It weighs in at an impressive 4.44 ounces, is water (splash) proof, has a 4.3" edge to edge screen with 540x960 pixels.   It uses the latest Super AMOLED advanced graphics on the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 plus 1.5MHz Dual Core processor.  It has scratch resistant Gorrilla glass screen with a back made of Kevlar fiber.  The Razr M gets a great 20 hours of talk time (you don't have to charge it every night!)  It has 1GB System memory and 8GB of storage for your pictures, apps, music, video etc.  It has a micro SD card slot so you can store up to an additional 32GB (we put a 8GB card in ours - dirt cheap at $10).  The camera is an 8 Megapixal autofocus with LED flash (the least impressive item).  It has a small 0.3 Megapixel front facing camera (real poor resolution!)  It came out in September so it is a relatively new phone that won't be outdated as fast.  The size is also very nice. We looked at the Razr HD and Razer Maxx, but honestly they were too big for the pocket.  They did have great screens.

Testing it out we've found the voice quality to be excellent and the battery as good as advertised.  There are aspects of the Jelly Bean operating system that are infuriating, but that's not Motorola's (or Verizon's) fault.  For some reason Google got rid of the speed dialing feature in the default dialer app.  Easily taken care of by downloading a free dialer app (we use Dialer One).  That's the great thing about smart android phones:  Don't like something I'm absolutely sure that there is an app for that!  The screen is very nice looking and doesn't bleed out in sunlight as bad as my old PRO, but it still a bit hard to read in direct sun situations.  I do like the new 3 circle system info (see it in the picture above) that lets you know the time, any voicemail,  emails, temperature and battery life at a glance.  I moved all my apps from my Droid Pro to the new phone using the MyBackup Pro app ($2.99).  It works slick and saved me tons of time.  I also now have a backup of all my apps and data on my SD card.

We briefly thought about iPhones, but my invested time in droids (and gmail stuff) made that a non starter.  Like most apple products they are pricey and not very flexible (the opposite of what we purchased).  I have my outlook calendar/contacts/tasks going to my gmail stuff and thus to my phone.  That is VERY important to my business.  This can be done on an iPhone, but it would require more work and some expense.  Set up on the Razer M was a breeze.  I put in my account info for email and then used MyBackup Pro for apps.  It took less then an hour and was fairly painless.  The phone's camera is just as bad as that in my Droid Pro.  I'm not sure why Motorola doesn't make a good camera, but they don't.  iPhones certainly win that contest.  On every other front, I've found the Droids from Motorola to be as good as, or even superior to the iPhone. 

As we learn more and try out more items on our phones we'll keep you up to date!