Photo by theilr
As the household IT/tech guy in my family, I’ve spent a fair amount of time educating my parents on good security practices like using strong passwords, ignoring requests for personal information via email or phone, and updating your software regularly. Believe it or not, I was able to convince my father to set up two-factor authentication for his Google account! You see, miracles are possible.
For the nascent Internet user, Yahoo Answers was one of the first major Q&A website that was widely used. Unlike the impersonal experience of a Google search, Yahoo Answers was inherently social. Behind every question there was a face, an avatar, a person. It was enough to give the service the heartbeat it needed to thrive.
The Dell Venue 8 Pro is a tablet I never thought I would like.
It is also the first tablet I (sort of) own; my dad picked it up when it was on sale during Christmas for $199. I’ve never needed a tablet before, but if I ever did buy one for myself I always figured it would be an iPad.
It was another fantastic year in apps. Both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store hit the 1 million app mark. Apple's latest version of Mac OS X was released for free. Some of my favorite apps received major updates this year including 1Password 4, Alfred 2, and Evernote 5.
What were some of your favorites?
I wanted to take a deeper dive at the apps I purchased. After some proper accounting, I discovered that I spent around $350 on apps in 2013.
Startup accelerator Y Combinator’s annual Startup School is a one-day event that draws hundreds of budding entrepreneurs for a day of talks featuring tech luminaries including AirBnB’s Brian Chesky, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, and Andreessen Horowitz’s Marc Andreesen.
This year’s event was held last month on October 19. If you weren’t able to attend or watch the live stream, fear not. Y Combinator has posted the videos on their Youtube channel.
You will find videos of talks from Jack Dorsey, Phil Libin, and Chase Adams. The Q&A between Paul Graham and Mark Zuckerberg though, is a must watch. It’s also the only video I’ve watched.
The duo spent a large portion of their 36-minute conversation talking about the early days of Facebook. Zuckerberg elucidated on the mistakes he made as an entrepreneur and how little he really knew about starting a company as a 19-year old student at Harvard.
I’ve been playing with the Dell Venue 8 Pro for about a week now and so I thought I’d share some quick thoughts about my early impressions, specifically with Windows 8. With my affinity for Mac OS X, I have spent relatively little time using Windows 8 since its release last year beyond some brief interactions at a Microsoft Store or Best Buy.
Earlier this week, Microsoft hosted the first of its 12 Days of Christmas promotion by discounting a limited (read: 20 units per store, 100 units online) Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet by a whopping 66%! Unfortunately for me, I had to settle for the slightly less satisfying $199 price, which was a pretty good deal for a 32GB tablet.
With its impending arrival, a thought trickled into my mind: What better way to christen the arrival of a new gadget in your life than to record an unboxing?
One step closer to tech blogging infamy.
In case you are wondering, I recorded the video with my Nexus 4. Since I don’t own a dedicated tripod I had to improvise and use a car mount. The audio was done separately using the Blue Yeti Microphone, the same device I use for the podcast. The editing was then completed using iMovie.
As always with any new endeavor, I welcome your thoughts on the video. Did I forget to mention something important? Was it paced well? Did you find it informative?
Thanks for watching!
The power of lightness, the essence of beauty.
If you, dear reader, were to tell me after I had purchased the original iPad Mini that I would make the jump to the larger and heavier iPad Air a little over a year later, I would have scoffed at your remarks. Why wouldn’t I? The iPad (or future iterations thereof) is a heavy, bulky, and overpowered piece of gadgetry. I already have a MacBook Air for all my portable computing needs, so why in the world would my next tablet be the larger and more expensive iPad when I could wait for the retina iPad Mini? Hell would have to freeze over before I would make that change.
A year later, hell has frozen over.