Where’s those thunderbolt devices?

Fourth months ago, a new MacBook Pro line was released. And as I said here, it was a total disappointment. The biggest thing on it was probably the new “Thunderbolt” port, which is a port with the same form-factor as the Mini DisplayPort, however it allows for transfer up to 10 GBPS. Yah, that’s fast.

Everyone I talked to said that it was awesome; it would be so good to use.

My argument was that it was too proprietary – Only three models of computers have that port, so why would a manufacturer go after making products for it?

The usual argument was that “It will standardize and products will be released for it eventually.”

Okay…

So here we are four months later, and the only product I’ve ever seen compatible with the thunderbolt port is an external hard drive from LaCie.

That’s it.

So….. Where’s those thunderbolt devices?

I believe that thunderbolt was (and still is) a total failure. Nobody uses it – and because no body uses it, manufacturers won’t create devices for it. And because manufacturers won’t create devices for it, nobody uses it. It’s a total loop – a manufacturer would have to make a product for it, so people would use it, so other manufacturers would make more products for it.

Nowadays, the only other computer line with a thunderbolt port is the most recent line-up of iMacs, which few people have.

But there still is hope for Thunderbolt. If every single Mac gets a thunderbolt port, after a while every Mac that is in use will have a port – that’s when manufacturers will start making products for it.

But until then, don’t expect much from Thunderbolt.

Facebook announces video integration with Skype

During a live facebook event that took place today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has partnered with skype to provide one click video chatting to users.

It is referred to as a “mini skype client” by the CEO of Skype, and installs with a simple download of a java applet.

Zuckerberg claimed that there are no financial agreements with Skype, which is interesting to try and figure out who is benefiting from this. Skype CEO Tony Bates said that “We are planning to add paid skype over time as well.” This means that if you have a skype premium plan, you might be able to group video chat – but that’s just an assumption.

Speaking of group video chat, Facebook doesn’t have it! With Google Hangouts, Google’s chat service that allows up to 10 person video calling, may have an advantage over facebook. However, facebook has 750+ Million users – that’s a lot of people that are one click away from a video chat.

Video chat is available now to the public, just click here to get started.

Skype 5.2 released with group screen sharing

Skype has released an updated version of their quite popular video sharing app which brings a couple of new features to the table, mainly group screen sharing.

Skype has always had the capability to group video chat, but group screen share is kinda new. It’s a welcome addition – I could see it coming in handy for many people around the world.

The only other new update is a mini-call-window, which will always sit on top of your other apps and allow you to watch/control your call whilst multitasking.  I could see this coming in handy, and I usually have to use a third party app like Afloat to keep my skype window over the others.

The new “Call control bar” is available free with the update to skype 5.2; group screen sharing isn’t. You need to have a subscription to Skype Premium, which will cost you $4.50 a month if you go for a 12 month subscription.

Interesting about the timing, didn’t Google just release Hangouts with Google+? In case you don’t know, Hangouts is google’s group video calling servgroup-video-sharing-460.jpgice that is integrated into Google+. A timing coincidence? I think not.

Skype is trying to keep ahead of everyone else with new features, but because social networks are so popular and you already have lots of contacts added, they are going to get an advantage over proprietary networks such as skype.

Search Google – now with your Voice

Google's Voice Search integrated into the web

Since its debut in 1997, Google Search in general has grown in size and strength.

Since then, the keyboard and mouse have always been a primary tool in searches.

In 2008, the Google Mobile App was released to the Android and iOS operating systems, allowing native and mobile searching of the web.

A few months later, they integrated a new feature that they had been working on into the mobile apps called Voice Search. Voice search was a new idea on how to revolutionize searching. But most Google searches were done on the computer, so even if everyone used voice search on their phones, more requests would be made from a keyboard.

Google took a surprising 2½ years to make their next move. Then about a month ago, they released Voice Search online, using the same microphone input as Gmail chat. However, they confined it the Chrome as an experimental search feature.

I think that Google really has enough “innovations” that they’ve given to us and that using a keyboard is just fine for searches. Personally, I talk faster than I type, but I am so used to typing that a switch to talking instead is actually harder, at least for a while. I see where they are going with the user-friendly ideas, but this is one of their kind of unnecessary ones. The recognition accuracy is ok, but as I expected it doesn’t work well with names, even of well-known people.

If you want to try it out, head on over here in Google Chrome and hit Try It Out.

Google+ iPhone App Awaiting Approval

Google+ is already available via the web and an Android app, and now Google has submitted their iPhone app to Apple for approval into the app store.

Everyone knew that Google was going to develop an iPhone app for Google+ eventually, but we weren’t aware that they had already created a full app and submitted it.

If all goes well, the app will be available to iOS users in about two weeks.

But…

Who was here for Google Voice?

You may remember that the Google Voice app sat waiting for approval for months, and was eventually rejected.

Then google resubmitted it, this time not so happy. Apple finally approved it, and I currently have Google Voice on my iPhone.

I hope that Google+ doesn’t end up going down this same disapproval tunnel…

Only time will tell if Apple wants to really battle Google in this way, which could be cause for some kind of lawsuit from Google.

(Personally, I just want to get Google+ on my iPhone, lawsuits not necessary)

(via Mashable)

 

Hey! That’s not the theme I’m used to!

A little while back I changed the theme of Good Morning Geek to a theme called Arras. It had a very newspaper-like feeling, which I really liked.

Then, WordPress 3.2 was released. I upgraded and got a long fatal error.

Crap.

I figure out that it has to do with arras and SSH to my server and delete the theme. I was then able to login and change the theme.

But that means no more arras 🙁

I am using the new Twenty Eleven theme from WordPress, and I like it a lot. I had to redesign the header as in Twenty Eleven the header is much taller than in Twenty Ten – but that was a very minor setback.

So that is the story of the sudden theme change.

Google+

You may remember Google Buzz, the Gmail integrated failure of a social network. From the get-go it was obvious that it would fail – mainly because it was so dependent on Gmail.

But Google is back – and this time they’ve got something new called Google+.

You probably expect google+ to fail like Buzz. But there are two things that might get people to switch over, which ultimately means facebook’s downfall.

Circles

So on Facebook, you have all these friends. Family, business, college buddies, and everything inbetween. When you share a post on facebook, it goes to everybody you’re friends with. 

But what if you only want to share some things with Family, somethings with College buddies, and absolutely nothing with your business friends?

Google circles solves that problem.

You can add people to different circles – a circle for friends, a circle for family, and you can have lots of circles with whatever names you want.

Then, you can view posts from one circle at a time. So if you want to view just the posts from your family, you can click the “Family” Circle and see just the posts from the people in that circle.

When it comes to sharing, it’s just as simple. Click the “Share” button and you will see an empty box, with selections to share a picture, a link, a place, etc. Once you’ve crafted your wonderful post, you can then select which circles you want it to be viewable to. This means that only the people in that circle will be able to see it, and nobody else. Of course, you can share with more than one circle, one person at a time, with all of your circles, and publicly. It also makes it easy to share absolutely nothing with your boss!

 

API

The other thing that may determine the success of Google+ is something that hasn’t been added yet – an API. An API is an interface that developers can put in their apps to integrate with different services. An API is what allows Twitter to have so many apps that post to it. And if there’s no way to post to Google+ other than the official website or app, nobody is going to want to switch. After all, we all want to boast our high scores from useless iPhone apps to all of our friends, right? Without an API Google+ isn’t going to get far.

A couple of other features…

Google+ is a great social network, and all it needs to become better than facebook is an API.

As far as features go, Sparks and Hangouts are two things I didn’t mention.

Sparks is a way to follow your interests. I can have a Technology spark, an Android spark, a Cooking spark, etc. I don’t find them very useful – all it does is aggregate posts that are relevant to whatever keyword you put in.

Then, there’s Hangouts. This is a multi-person video chat that is executed very well. (P.S. the below photo was taken of/by Greg Sterling)

Yes, it works as well as it looks.

But not everybody will find these features useful enough to want to switch over from facebook, which is why I think that Circles is the real big thing with Google+.

Google+ is only available by invite at the moment, but should be released to the public soon.

 

Oh, How Far Computers Have Come

Computers have come a long way in the past half century. I’m going to compare two computers, one from 1946, the other from 2011.

Lets start out with one of the earliest computers, the ENIAC. ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator. It was able to do simple equations, like find the circumference of circles. It was able to process at 0.1 Mhz. To put this into perspective, the iPhone can run at 800Mhz, which is 8,000 times faster! The ENIAC weighed 30 tons, used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes, had 3000 switches, and produced the same amount of heat as 3,000 lightbulbs. Yet, it could only hold 20 numbers at a time!

Here’s a picture of this goliath dinosaur.

Now I’d like to introduce the new Habey SOM-6670 E6XX Tunnel Creek QSeven computer module (quite a name, right?).

Check out the size of this little thing:

The orange thing is post-it notes.

 

That little thing can pump out a bit more than 1GHz, which is 10,000 times faster than that ENIAC. And look at it’s size!

This tiny little computer is capable of decoding two 1080p HD video streams simultaneously to an external monitor. That ENIAC could barely contain 20 numbers!

If you don’t believe me, check out this video.

Pretty awesome, right?

As you can tell, computation has come extremely far in 65 years. Yes, the ENIAC was created in 1946!

And the speed of computer evolution only increases as time goes on. In only a few years, we will have some ridiculous technology. It was only a few years ago that laptops were big, bulky, and not so powerful. And now we have computers like the MacBook!

I’m quite excited for what the future of technology holds for all of us!

The NEX-5 Revisited

You may remember this review of the NEX-5 that I did.Well, it’s quite a while later and I just wanted to revisit this camera.I feel that the NEX-5 is proof that the size of your camera doesn’t mean that it’s more or less capable of taking great photos. The NEX has taken some amazing photos, and I never have to do any staging, fiddling with settings, or laboring by carrying a huge 10 pound SLR. Here’s a couple of the photos that I’ve taken with the NEX:

Long exposure shot from my backyard.

As you can tell, the NEX can take some dang good photos. It’s a small and compact camera, but it is still capable of taking amazing pictures without much effort. It’s a nice balance between the ease of use and size of a compact digital camera, but has near equivalent picture quality and advanced features as a full SLR. When you hold the camera in your hand it feels great, as it has some weight to it, but isn’t a huge SLR that’s a pain to carry. It’s nice to be able to have extremely great picture quality without having to go through the pain of carrying a bulky SLR.
And as you can tell from the pictures above, the NEX can take SLR photos without all of that bulkiness that advanced users may have gotten used to.
If you are interested in the NEX-5, please click here to read my full review and purchase it.

Notification Revamp for iOS 5?

I’m not the only one that says the iOS notification system is in DIRE need of a revamp. Apple’s current notification system is flawed, to say the least. Issues that seem to plague the user range from lack of information, to disruption in the middle of a game or video, to a lack of management. A few users have even gone to the extent to draw up some concepts of systems they would like to see implemented. The rumor mill is spinning up with the addition of widgets and a notification system change. iPhone users everywhere hold their breath for a total redraw of the system. But what are the top things users are looking for?

 

Home Screen Availability

iOS supports being able to push notifications while the phone is locked, but you can only ever see one at a time. Users have to unlock their phone and scroll through all of the apps that might have sent them at notification in order to find what they were notified about. Many concepts have combated this issue by putting all the user’s notifications right on the home screen as they happen. They’ll offer a just enough information for the user to get a sense of what the notification is about (emails show sender/title, tweets show the mentioner and the beginning of the message, texts show the sender and the beginning of the text). However, these notifications should be hide-able by the user on their home screen, in order to keep a minimalistic feel to the iPhone, and as not to block your cute cat lock screen wallpaper.

 

Minimalistic Notifications

One of the most annoying parts of Angry Birds, despite missing that last pig, is when your gameplay is interrupted by an annoying text message or notification. These concepts tackle this issue by allowing a customizable list of applications that while that app is running, the user will not have any notifications pushed to them. Concepts of a redesign of the notification message altogether put the messages unobtrusively at the top of the iPhone screen, as opposed to stopping everything and putting them right in the middle. Clicking them will allow a drop down of your usual options.

 

Management Area

All of these concepts also show a management area for notifications. Users are able to see all of their recent notifications, and clicking on them will result in an appropriate action. This allows a quick and easy way for users to see what notifications they might have missed while watching a video or playing a game. This helps to streamline notifications from a black hole of tones and pop ups to short snippets of information relating to the user.

 

 

We’re hoping to see some, or all, of these changes in Apple’s notification system during WWDC. If you can’t stand using the current notifications (or, worse, if we don’t see an update at WWDC) and you don’t mind voiding your warranty, you can jailbreak your phone and download MobileNotifier, which seems to be the front runner in jailbroken notification systems. Ssshhh, but don’t tell Apple!

 

Looking for writers!

I’m looking to recruit some writers, as I would like to have this site posted to more often while I can handle all of the other stuff that I have to do.

Here’s the criteria:

a. You must be passionate and informed about tech.

I want the integrity of knowledge on this website to remain this good.

b. You must be under 16 years of age.

One of the whole things about this site is that it’s written from a younger yet still informed group of people. I’m not trying to be ageist, but I want to keep this blog unique as it is written from a younger point of view.

c. You must not expect payment.

I have been criticized for this, as people say that good writers deserve money for their time and efforts. But with the age group that I’m targeting, money is all that matters. If I offer money, every person that meets criteria b will jump onboard and write crap just for the money. I feel that if a teen is passionate about tech, they’d be happy to get their work out there and heard by the public, get credit for their posts, get writing experience, and get a nice addition to their resume saying that they wrote for a tech blog at the age of <16.

If you know anybody (or are someone) that meets the above criteria, please send me an email at writers@goodmorninggeek.com.

Thanks for your interest!

–Max