Reviews and Rants
I have been using an iPhone for a few years now as my primary mobile device. Of course, I have a few other devices I play with throughout the day, many of them running Android but my main phone has been an iPhone since I ditched my BlackBerry.
Looks like College Humor has done it again, created a spot-on video. The app described in the video below is exactly what every person who has ever thought of an app idea needs desperately.
By: Hillel Fuld (@hilzfuld)
Every so often a new technology comes along that you instantly know will be a hit and set a new standard. You know, the original iPhone is an obvious one, but there are other ones that are smaller and also left their impression on the world of technology.
Things like the Kinect, ICQ, the thumb drive, and even different input methods for mobile phones, like Swype.
Well, a new accessory that is now available for preorder for $70 can join the group. It is called The Leap and it basically brings the gestures of Minority Report to real life and let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to be Tom Cruise in Minority Report?
Anyway, multitouch was brought to mainstream consciousness by the iPhone then duplicated by… well, everyone. Gesture recognition was brought to the market with the Wii and Kinect and that is a hot trend right now, as well. Now The Leap combines the two and brings multitouch technology to the world of gesture recognition, and enables us to interact with our computers in a whole new way that is well, unbelievably awesome.
Take a look and pardon me while I go preorder one right now.
Twitter, as a company, has made its share of mistakes over the years. These include implementing its own retweeting system that makes it significantly more difficult to see how many people retweeted you and who they are (not to mention the fact that when I use the Twitter retweet, I can’t add my two cents to the original tweet, it all kind of defeats the purpose), the Twitter URL shortening service, which seems to break more links than it shortens, or many others. But the good news was that with all these issues, I always had Tweetdeck to fall back on. Then Twitter bought Tweetdeck.
Truth be told, I kinda love putting these posts together, it helps me feel productive by seeing exactly how many posts I have written in the last week or month. The fact that people keep telling me they love them and use them as a resource to catch up on all the technology news they missed, well that is just the icing on the cake.
So I just finished reading the biography of Steve Jobs and to say I loved every word of it would be an understatement. I wrote a review of the book and if you can only read one post, this one or that one, read my review. Of course, what made the book so amazing was not just my love for technology or Apple products, nor was it my admiration for Steve Jobs, it was the story of a man filled with contradictions who ended up revolutionizing anywhere between seven and nine industries, depending who you ask.
It has been quite a crazy month in and out of the tech industry and while I usually try to post these articles on a weekly basis, clearly, that did not work too well in the last couple of week. But since many (many) people seem to depend on these posts to get up to date, I am forcing myself to get back into the swing of things.
The technology reporting scene on the Web is always full of excitement and drama. Paul Carr makes sure of it. The man is a constant source of entertainment both in his blog posts and on Twitter. The latest TechCrunch story brought out the best in Paul and as soon as Arrington was not permitted to choose his successor as the Editor of TechCrunch, Paul left, just like he promised he would.
This week will most definitely go down in the books as the most monumental week in its effect on the tech industry. Except, I mean that in the worst possible way. We lost the father of tech, the legendary Steve Jobs, and many industries will never be the same.
By: Hillel Fuld
It is that time of the week again, time to sum up all the tech news of the previous week in one easy-to-read blog post. This edition of Above the Fuld is a little shorter than usual, as I was on vacation for three days this week. That means no coverage of the Amazon announcement for example, among other things.
OK here goes:
Ever wonder what it is like for Tim Cook to fill the shoes of Steve Jobs? ok ok, maybe slightly immature on the part of College Humor, but c’mon, you know you laughed.
What would a tech summary be without an iPhone 5 rumor? A very interesting video shedding some light on the specs of the upcoming iPhone 5. Or is it called iPhone 4gs? Who knows…
iOS5 will have some pretty neat features, this one leads the pack: We might just finally discover why Apple bought Siri back in 2010. Check out this demo video of the upcoming iOS5 Assistant feature.
Google+ for iOS gets a major update: Finally, the Google+ iOS app is on par with the site and its competitors. Especially the mobile hangouts, which bring video chatting to a whole new level.
Another interesting solution for monetizing Android apps: Startapp definitely thought out of the box on this one by giving developers an easy way to monetize Android apps via search.
While I was on vacation for the announcement, I discussed the Amazon tablet here: Looks like someone has understood that Apple’s success is not hardware or even software-related. It is all in the ecosystem and Amazon has a nice ecosystem of its own!
Finally! Mango is live! An interesting video demo of Windows Phone Mango. Is it interesting enough though or is Microsoft falling behind the curve?
Looks like Facebook for iPad will finally show its long overdue face this week: Facebook is expected to announce a new HTML5 app store along with its new iPad app. Check out some of the screen shots in the post.
A new Skype iOS app is born with Bluetooth support, Anti Shake technology, and (drumroll please) ads! Looks like yet another leading mobile developer is adopting the mobile advertising model to monetize. I wonder if Microsoft was involved in this decision.
Boom! My interview with Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare: Took me over a year to land this interview but it was well worth it. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a mobile fanatic, or just a plain old geek, you will find some gems in this interview.
I recently tweeted this question. Out of the tens of responses I got to the question “What services do you use daily” almost half of them included Foursquare, along with Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter. If you are not familiar with Foursquare, it is the undisputed king of location-based services. The concept is simple. You “check in” to locations and let your friends across the Web know where you are.
