Monday, Thanksgiving week.. (updated)

A couple of items for you, today, folks.

As you might have noticed, many retailers have started their ‘Black Friday’ sales already. I’ve been keeping my eye on Gadgets and Gizmos, and can tell you that there are deals out there that make waiting for BF (or ‘Cyber Tuesday’) unnecessary. I monitor Tiger Direct and New Egg for my tech deals (links to sales pages). And of course I check Amazon.

* Have you every been minding your own business, and happen to catch  a song that you haven’t heard in a really, really long time, and – magically – forgotten memories come flooding back? That happened to me yesterday when I heard this tune..

* And since that put me in the mood for ‘classic greats’.. here’s another for you (tho, Led Zepplin live is not for ‘everyone’):

Well.. I hope you are all having fun getting ready for your holiday.. ;)

Today’s quote: “Surround yourself with positive people and you’ll be a positive person.” ~ Kellie Pickler

Copyright 2007-2015 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Google Apple Samsung Facebook

Here we go…

It’s deja vu all over again.

* Apple wins U.S. sales injunction against Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Summary: Apple has won a preliminary injunction barring U.S. sales of Samsung’s iPad rival, the Galaxy Tab 10.1.” Read more..

* June has been a busy month with big announcements from Apple and Microsoft. Now it’s Google’s turn. Tune in to CNET and get the news as it’s announced.

CNET’s live coverage of Google’s I/O developers conference, June 27, 2012

Today, June 27 at 9:30 a.m. PT, join us for live coverage of the Google I/O developers conference. There’s no shortage of rumors leading up to the event, including a new 7-inch tablet priced to sell. Check out what other CNET members are speculating. Have some thoughts of your own? Let others hear what you are thinking.

CNET will be there to bring you the action. Our live coverage begins at 9:30 a.m. PT with a live blog.

Can’t make it to the live event? Tune in afterward to get CNET’s detailed coverage and discover what is new from Google. (click here)

Or.. not. (But, it’s “big news”!)

Some of you might need this info.. Facebook changed your e-mail address, here’s how you can change it back.

“Today, Facebook was kind enough to replace the e-mail account listed on your profile with the @Facebook.com e-mail address it provided you with awhile back. Wait, you didn’t give Facebook permission to make the change? No one did. Not cool, Facebook.” Read more..

I’m sorry, but I am LMAO.

Seriously. LMAO.

Wow. What’s next from the Zuckerbergs? (And why do they want to route all your e-correspondence through their servers? Hmm?? [*cough cough*] )

[update: (just in) This guy’s not laughing.. Welcome to the soon-to-be enormous world of Facebook email spam

Summary: “Thanks, Facebook. You just [expletive deleted] us up the [expletive deleted]. [Expletive deleted] you!” Read more…

This is so good.. I can’t resist. Here’s more.

“I am pissed off. Like most other Facebook users, I woke up recently to discover I had a Facebook email address. I don’t want a Facebook email address. Frankly, if I were King of the World, I’d boot Facebook into a giant black hole and laugh gleefully as the entire thing burned to a never-to-haunt-us again crispy hulk.

Fine, I’m mixing metaphors. But I’m pissed.

I didn’t pay all that much attention to this until I read Violet’s piece on Facebook email addresses, and then I realized what a nightmare those [profanity deleted] at Facebook are.“]

Hee, hee! LMAO!

Today’s quote: “Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.” ~ Swami Sivananda

Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

It’s Cyber Monday!

I hope you all had a great weekend. Well, I may as well “go with the flow” and write about how everybody is expected to shop! shop! shop!!! this so-called “Cyber Monday” (a reference to how you are not working, there at work, today, but just pretending to while you surf for bargains online).

I will say, again, be careful of online scams, and look for the “s” (https://) on shopping cart pages, and then point you to some geeky savings. Remember, try to go to the website directly — criminals are ‘poisoning’ search results, so you’ll get directed to their site, and get infected with a virus.

* Genie-soft, makers of the Timeline backup program (see my review here) are offering a 50% off deal here.

* Amazon has special discounts on all categories of items (not just ‘tech’). Their over-view page is here.

* TigerDirect’s “Pink Friday Sale” (named that as they will be donating a minimum of $100,000 to a breast cancer charity) is still available. Check out their discount items here.

* Buy.com says some items are discounted up to 83%.. but it is “while supplies last”, so.. don’t dawdle, click here.

Sometimes, it’s best to cut out the middleman.
* Hewlett-Packard has some deals (includes free shipping) here.
* Dell, for one day only, has savings of up to 80% on select products, here.
* Apple is offering savings on accessories (ahem.. accessories?) here.

Don’t forget Office Depot. I know it isn’t the first place you think of, but sometimes I think it should be. See their “while supplies last” deals here.

There.

That ought to help you be non-productive for a while. Have fun browsing!

Tip of the day: If you have a great friend, take the time to let them know that they are great.

Today’s quotable quote: “Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths. At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings.” ~ J. Robert Moskin

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

More Good News For California – Amazon Drops Us

“To call it an ignorant and short-sighted move is an understatement so massive, it’s frightening.“

For you thinkers out there, a ‘must read’: Amazon Drops California In Growing E-Commerce Affiliate Tax Law War

“In the ongoing state-by-state battle over tax collection on affiliate website sales, this afternoon Amazon warned thousands of affiliates their revenue streams would be shut off if a tax bill would be signed into law. Mere hours later, Governor Jerry Brown signed ABx1 28 into law, signifying tough times ahead for many online business owners.” Read more..

This is just a symptom folks, the disease (bankruptcy) is much scarier. Please read the whole article.. and have your thinking caps on..

Today’s free download: If you are hooked on both your Outlook and Twitter accounts, you can use the two together to become more efficient with you communications. There is an TwInbox add-on for Outlook that allows you to send and receive messages, update your Twitter status, receive friend updates, check messages, assign categories to messages, shorten URLs with TinyURL and archive/search your messages.

Today’s quote: “Success will never be a big step in the future, success is a small step taken just now.”  ~ Jonatan Mårtensson

Making the world a better place department: If you believe all those speed limit signs are set just way too fast, and you are going to go a nice, safe, 10 miles per hour under what they say.. Or perhaps you retired and so every day is a Sunday to you (perpetual Sunday Driver).. Don’t ever drive again. You are causing accidents, I guaranty. (Show this to the guilty you know.)

How ’bout some fun – it’s Summertime:

Also: For those of you who remember me talking about Genie Timeline (backup software), you may want to be aware they are having a 4th of July sale.. 4th of July 2011 50% OFF everything.

Last day of June already…

Also #2: Expect more massively ignorant and short-sighted moves. It’s SOP/”Situation: Normal” on planet earth. (More so in CA.)

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

Fools Rush In… (aka "Let’s Go Slate-boarding!")

Those who know me personally, know that a little thing like last week’s predictions setback (25% accuracy) is not going to stop me from continuing to post my Playoff Picks…

And Now For The Tech:
It has been published that sales of PC’s was better than expected this holiday season – Intel and Acer doing particularly well.

Yes. I said Acer. The big sellers were a relative newcomer to the PC market, the category of small, portable, “netbooks” (see, It’s Time We Talked About Netbooks) of which the Acer models seemed to be preferred. It seems everybody wants a netbook.

And Then Came Apple.. And CES

More predictions: But netbooks and Christmas sales are ancient history already, and everybody’s looking ahead. And the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is where we get to see what the manufacturers will be bringing us soon.

It seems our future is something called a “slate”.

Photo source: Gizmodo.com

* Apple’s next “big thing” is supposed to be something named “iSlate”.
* Microsoft is hyping Windows 7’s “touchscreen” features.
* iPhone sales were ginormous, and everyone figured it was the ‘touchscreen’ that explained it.
* “gestures” and “multitouch” are seen as replacing the mouse and eventually the keyboard…

In spite of the fact that this all is vaguely reminiscent of the “voice recognition” and text-to-speech of Windows XP (that was supposed to give us “hands free computing“), you add up those bullet points, and you are not surprised when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer uses his CES Keynote Address to show us a tablet PC.. and refer to it as a “slate”. (As well he could, it was an HP prototype named “the Slate”.)

Reaction?
“The HP Slate was underwhelming, to say the least. Hailed by Ballmer as “something that’s almost as portable as a phone and that’s as powerful as a PC running Windows 7“, the demonstration showed a flat panel computing device that seemed more equivalent to a color Kindle than to a Windows 7 wonder-tablet.”

Yes.. the utter prior failure of tablet PC’s in the marketplace was simply due to the fact that touchscreen and gestures weren’t here yet. Windows 7 changes that, so… touch tablets. Oops. Excuse me. Touch slates.

For those of you who read this far, this article: HP Slate Lowers the Bar for Apple’s Tablet PC.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :

Women and Video Games

There’s been a recent “paradigm shift” and all of a sudden women are buying video games.

What happened? Wii Fit. And sales are through the roof.

Wii Fit from Nintendo was introduced in May last year, becoming the best-selling game over its first 12 months and the most successful console title designed for women. Nintendo has sold more than 7 million copies of the game, which retails for $90 with a Wii Balance Board accessory.

Other companies have jumped on the “fitness game” bandwagon. “Everyone has seen that if you put out a good fitness product, you do good business and now everyone is getting in the game,” said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Ubisoft. “There is going to be a lot of fitness games coming to the Wii this holiday.”*

Yes, another inroad on the path to a totally shut in society. Why go to the gym? There’s sweaty people there. Ew!

“When you think of the core level of people wanting to be healthy, as long as the industry can provide a way that’s convenient, fun and cheaper, it’s staggering how big the opportunity can be,” Jordan Edelstein, vice president of marketing at EA Canada, said.

There’s a downside though. As a study in England showed, women exercising indoors have caused up to £1.3 billion in accidental damage in the last year (yes, BILLION), as they increasingly give up gym memberships and use games consoles. (See, Women injured by Nintendo Wii and home gyms)

And last year researchers at Leeds Teaching Hospital identified an injury they called “Wii knee”. Osteopaths have also reported they saw an increase in back patients after Christmas, blaming the trend on fathers trying to keep up with their children on the machines.

I’m not terribly worried about this “paradigm shift” though, as I am kind of a grumpy old cynic, and I’d say that in about a year’s time that Wii Fit pad will be sitting next to the Nordic Track, and StairMaster and Ex-r-Cycle, underneath Sweating To The Oldies and Jane Fonda’s Workout tapes, out in the garage.. or at the back of the closet. About as remembered as “The All-Grapefruit Diet”.

But I could be wrong. Wii Fit certainly looks like more fun than the Nordic Track!

* Quotes from SF Chronicle  Wii Fit taps into new market for video games

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :

Harry Potter Movie Is Going To Fail

$100,000,000 cash

It would appear that the latest”Harry Potter” movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” has earned $107 million in its first three days in U.S. theaters; and judging by the fact that people are still waiting to see it due to sold-out showings, it will probably make some more $$$ before its 15 minutes in the spotlight have passed.

It would also appear that the movie is being mentioned on the Internet just a tiny bit, too…

.. All this in spite of the lame poster..

I have, here in my hands, eyewitness reports of movie theater parking lots being “jam packed”. I understand also that there’s an IMAX version waiting to be released, though those reports I would have to label as “unsubstantiated”.

With a production budget of a quarter BILLION dollars (sheeze, that’s a lot of tacos), and another $155,000,000 spent on marketing (that’s $355,000,000 total) this film is going to lose money in a big way. Sure as I’m sitting here.

Now, I will grant you that the other films did okay. They must have, as this is number 6. And I suppose one should add in the video game sales (yes, EA has made a game for each of the movies..) and other “memorabilia” sales… No. I changed my mind. Not the game sales. Those are a separate thing, and I don’t think they sell.

And.. yes. The film has been praised for its cinematography, visual effects, production design and art direction, improved acting, as well as the darker theme.

But I think six is stretching too far, and the Law Of Diminishing Returns Hollywood Style (known as “One Sequel Too Many”) will catch up with Master Potter just as it did Death Wish, Dirty Harry, Predator, and the Halloween series. (To name just a few.) Hollywood always does that – milk it ’till the well runs dry – and it’s we who suffer (can you say Weekend At Bernie’s II ?).

Nah. They have to make $248 million more just to break even, and that’s not going to happen. We Americans are fickle and have short attention spans, and we’ll be on to other things/fads by Tuesday.

[note: I usually post my humor pieces on Fridays.]

Today’s free link: Surf Safely This Summer – PandaLabs’ Safe Summer Web Guide

Today’s free download: Backup your e-mail (called “archiving”) with MailStore Home. “MailStore Home is a solution for people who have a need to backup their e-mails in a straightforward and simple fashion. It works with all POP3 and IMAP accounts, as well as Thunderbird, Outlook, Exchange Server, and Windows Mail.”

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :