It’s here! After months of waiting and numerous delays, my Pebble smartwatch has finally arrived. Even though I’ve only had it for about an hour, I can already tell the wait was worth it. It feels good to wear, it looks good, and the interface is pleasantly simple. This post isn’t a review though, so let’s look at what we’re here for: the unboxing. Pebble’s product box is also its shipping box, reducing the amount of packaging required.
My office ordered a Nexus 7 tablet, which I’ll be using. It arrived this week, and so far I’m pretty blown away by it. I’m not going to go into too many details about features and day-to-day with it yet, but I figured I’d provide some pictures.
Google has just released the first video showing off what their long-rumored wearable augmented reality tech might look like. Simply put, it looks amazing. The idea that news, weather, communications, geographic-specific overlays, etc. can all appear seamlessly in front of your eyes as you go about your business is just about the ultimate in personal computing. I will admit, it also seems super nerdy. However, so did the portable computer, the pager, the PDA, the cell phone, and numerous other technologies when they first came along.
Marketplace Tech reported today that a UK insurance company called Motaquote is rolling out the ability to record your driving habits using a TomTom GPS unit, and use that data to set your car insurance rate. The idea is that the policy and pricing can be tailored to better reflect your specific driving, rather than base it off of actuarial tables. If you’re a “safe” driver you could be spending less, and if you’re an “unsafe” driver you could be spending more.
Amazon released an update for the Kindle Fire today aimed at fixing some of the bugs and interface frustrations people were complaining about. The update brings the Fire’s software to version 6.2.1 and so far does seem to be a noticeable improvement. Touch responses are far more accurate, and everything feels snappier in general. If your device doesn’t automatically prompt you to update, you can do it manually by downloading the file from Amazon.
My office ordered a Kindle Fire for me to use, and it just arrived! Being an Amazon product, it arrived in what they call “frustration-free packaging” with which I would agree. All I had to do was pull a rip tab to open the box, and there was my Kindle. Below the device itself was the charging cable, and inside the lid was a small card introducing the user to the Kindle Fire.
For the past six months I’ve used the Cr-48 I got in December on a daily basis. As you may recall, the Cr-48 is a test computer Google created and sent to chosen applicants to field test their new Chrome OS. I received one, and I’ve used it all the time. Since Google just announced that Chromebooks will start being sold commercially on June 15, I thought it was time I talked about my experience using it.
There have been no definite numbers from Google regarding how many Cr-48s they planned to ship, or when the shipments would end. A tweet from Sundar Pichai a couple of days ago has cleared all of that up, and if you’ve yet to receive one of the test notebooks then you probably won’t like the news. @palmjeff Sorry we have shipped all units for now. Thanks for your interest and we will have partner devices out mid-year.
As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I’m kind of a security geek. I’m fascinated by encryption, data protection, strong passwords, and generally locking things down just because I can. For a long time there was a challenge with some of my friends to see if any of them could get into my computer, or at the very least figure out one of the 4 passwords required to boot it up to a desktop.
I got one! I wasn’t expecting it, but it came! Google’s Cr-48 notebook they’re shipping to selected applicants as a test platform for their new operating system, Chrome OS, is now in my possession - and it’s awesome. Soft touch everything, matte black, matte screen, nice keyboard, webcam & microphone, SD card slot, USB port, and a host of other cool features optimized for a browser-based OS that I’ll go into further down.
