When was the last time you moved? Actually, scratch that. Let’s narrow it down to when you first moved out of your parent’s house. If you were a movie nut you probably had a healthy collection of DVDs (and dare I add a few VHS tapes you just couldn’t throw out) and if music was your thing you might have a hefty case or two of CDs, maybe even a couple crates of LPs if you were cool or something like that. Or you might have been like me and just had a bit of everything. You don’t realize how stupid it all is until you’re too far invested and you just can’t tell yourself to cut it out (I’m not insulting you, just myself). The first time I heard of someone completely getting rid of their CD collection in favor of the digital age, I was a junior in … Continue reading
Author Archives: Tim Pickett
A Tech-Filled Fall
Fall is fast approaching which means the holiday season is faster approaching but do you know what that really means? Announcements, announcements everywhere! What fun tech gadget announcement is going to capture your heart and dominate your gift list this 2012 holiday season? Here’s a couple that have caught my eye. Tablets are pretty cool but up until recently, you had to dish out some serious cash. The iPad is no longer theuncontested king and if you’re just getting into the tablet game there are more options. Two new announcements are the Google Nexus 7 and the new line of Kindle Fire tablets, which now boasts HD capabilities. Nexus 7 is a 7” tablet with WiFi and the 8GB model is $199 and the 16GB is $249. Fully compatible with the Google Chrome App store, there are plenty of games and apps to play with. Amazon one-upped Google and has … Continue reading
Time To Speed Up Your Site
In a world that becomes less and less patient everyday, eliminating down time is a natural progression in business models; a text book case of supply and demand. Hungry? Why wait. Need car insurance? Well 15 minutes could save you 15% or more. Don’t have 15 minutes? Go online. To go online, use Google’s new Chromebook or Chromebox, Google’s new laptop and home computer. You may be asking yourself, “Why would I want a Google computer?” And the advertisements will tell you (as one of the main selling points) that your Google laptop and/or home desktop can boot up in a matter of seconds, eliminating as much down time as possible. Once it’s booted up, it’s only a matter of seconds to get on the web. So if you want to get online to see the hours of that restaurant that you’re trying to hurry to, you can check that … Continue reading
Competition is the Fuel of Technological Advancements
Recently inspired by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s two-part YouTube video entitled “We Stopped Dreaming” about NASA space travel (check out Episode I and Episode II if you’d like), I started thinking about how much competition actually sparks advancement. In the purest form of competition we have sports; and when you compete in sports you compete to advance, to reach the ultimate goal of a championship. As Mr. Tyson exclaims, what people don’t understand, or forgot, is that NASA was able to get man on the moon because Russia was able to launch Sputnik before us, sparking a competition on a colossal scale. This competition died when the Cold War ended, and with it the motivation to further advance our space traveling program. Now let’s switch gears to something smaller, like this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which is the biggest video game conference of the year. I’m not here to talk … Continue reading
Google Glass and Its Potential Affect on Social Networking
Robin Sloan, a writer and media inventor based in San Francisco, wrote a great article about Facebook and Google, basically pitting them against each other. I’m going to borrow some information from his post and build upon it, but you should check out the original article here. As Sloan states in his article, when you strip Facebook down, what you get is a massively successful and well-executed photo sharing site. In the last three months of 2011, users uploaded up to 250 million photos every day. All of the sudden the acquisition of Instagram for such a large price tag makes a lot of sense. If another picture sharing website rises in popularity, Facebook loses users. Remember MySpace? Of course you don’t. That’s because Facebook came up with a much better formula for uploading and sharing pictures with your friends. In my opinion, Google+ is a long way off from … Continue reading