Quick Review of CES 2013

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Image Credits: Masterimage3D

CES 2013 stunners

You’re probably sitting there after a long day scrolling through Twitter and Google+ hashtags and stories announcing some of the key items this year’s CES show. Your eyes are either on fire from staring at the screen too long or you can’t focus anymore because there’s just too much cool stuff. Yeah, we feel the same way! So let’s get to the good stuff right away and announce what we think are this year’s CES stunners.

Smartphones

The Sony Xperia Z, Alcatel  One Touch Idol Ultra (who names these things?) and Samsung flexible display named “Youm” were all unveiled this year. In particular, the much-awaited flexible display Samsung put forth at the Keynote was jaw-dropping.

Samsung flexible OLED Display

There’s been a lot of hype and rumors since last year’s CES, when the rumors first started about the mega-corp was developing cool 21st century that would save us from cracked screens. At the time, Apple was still taking a lot of heat for its screens being too fragile, so this was perfect timing on Sammy’s part. Fast forward to this week’s CES and we now have a working prototype, in which it has been said a new ecosystem can be created from this concept device. The video below shows us more on this amazing new tech development!

Alcatel One Touch Idol Utlra

Onwards to the real fireworks, and the newest titleholder of “world’s slimmest smartphone”. Alcatel outdid themselves at the show and may be one to watch in the future. So how thin is this device? Alcatel’s official measurements put the One Touch Idol Ultra at a paltry 6.45mm! This is definitely poking into Samsung’s flexible OLED display territory. As far as specs are concerned on this bad boy, it sports a 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU, a 4.7-inch 720p AMOLED display, the standard 1 GB of RAM and an 8.0 MP rear camera.

Sony Xperia Z

Last but not least, is the dust and water-resistant smartphone aptly put into the ongoing Xperia series. The durable display on its slim 7.9 mm body holds its dual superpowers discreetly.  The full HD 5” 1080 x 1920p “Reality Display” is really the stunner on this handheld wonder, but let’s be honest: most people will go right out and dump it in their toilet to test out its water resistance level. Sony lists these at IP55 and IP57, respectively. Rounding out the specs,  a Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core CPU, a 13 megapixel camera and of course, screaming fast 4G LTE make this a solidly built smartphone.

Automobiles

You wouldn’t expect to talk about cars but it is CES after all, and it’s not limited to mobile tech and computing. This year we saw Volvo, Toyota, and Audi put their best foot forward. And best foot it was! I think they may have put both forward in order to make a giant leap into the future of how we visualize and implement our vehicles into daily life.

Volvo Sensus Connected Touch

First up is Volvo and their “inlaid iPad” dubbed Sensus Connected Touch. While many have scoffed at the idea of having a touchscreen in their vehicle (it’s nothing new, people have been modding their vehicles for quite some time), the concept displayed by Volvo is (sorry, Transformers franchise) more than meets the eye. The following video shows more info, and pay close attention to all the bells and whistles that can be found in this highly-connected piece of equipment!

Toyota Autonomous Robot Car

Remember that cool scene in the last Terminator movie when the motorcycles were chasing after Christian Bale? Well, now that’s a reality and it’s being brought to you by none other than Toyota. The company has done its absolute best to wipe the slate clean between them and consumers since their disastrous brake scandal. But let’s do away with that morbid news and get to the meat.

2010 Autonomous Audi TTS

On much the same news, comes Audi with their autonomous research facility’s beautiful piece of road art. Something to note with this story is that Nevada granted Audi the first automaker permit and thus, has allowed them to operate autonomous vehicles on public roads! Move over Jetsons!

Source Credits: http://www.audiusanews.com

http://travelgadgets.me/post/40178188948/sony-xperia-z

http://www.binlogs.com/9267/samsung-flexible-oled-display-youm/

http://www.theverge.com/products/one-touch-idol-ultra/6533

Top Blogger Smartphone Apps

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Because of the seemingly countless mobile s made for just about anything you can think of, writing blog posts, using social media, and checking website traffic stats for your business outside of desktops and laptops have become possible. Indeed, blogging has now entered the domain of mobile phones.

If you’ve never experienced the freedom of blogging anywhere, then it’s time you do. To get you started, here are the top blogging s that you should get for your smartphone. [Read more…]

Insta-WP Makes Wallpaper Creation Fun With Instagram Integration

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Insta-WP LogoSeveral months ago I wrote an article about InstaBG.com, a platform that allows users to create daily or static Twitter backgrounds using Instagram photos. Now the company behind InstaBG has created Insta-WP, a program that once again integrates with Instagram, this time to create wallpaper images of various sizes.

Using Insta-WP is very simple, users starts by navigating to Insta-WP at which time they click on the “Create “InstaWallpaper” button.

Insta-WP Main Screen

The next part of the setup is to choose the wallpaper size which ranges from 320 x 480 pixels to a much larger 2048 x 1536. One of the nicest parts of the options screen is that Insta-WP tells you which sizes to use for each of your devices. For example the iPad 3 can use 2048 x 1536 pixel wallpapers while the Galaxy Tab 7.0 relies on 1024 x 600 pixels.

Here’s a preview of the Insta-WP screen size setup: [Read more…]

ManageWP Makes Multi-Blog WordPress Management Easy And Affordable

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ManageWP FrontpageManaging even a handful of WordPress websites can be a pain, for example 10 websites means 10 different login accounts that you must access each time you want to write an article, update plugins or change theme settings. While you could give WordPress Multi-Site a chance that system can be confusing and time consuming for non-Wordpress experts. ManageWP however takes care of multi-site management by installing a simple plugin on each of your WordPress blogs which then allows them to be controlled by a single user login interface found at ManageWP.com

Once you have signed up for a free trial account you simply install the sites plugin on each of your websites. This plugin essentially gives you access to your blogs from within the ManageWP administration panel.

After the system has been installed you will be asked to add websites to your panel, those websites will then be accessible via the ManageWP login panel. Once installed the system then provides many useful features.

For example you can choose to add and upgrade themes for all of your websites from one screen, removing the need to log into various accounts.  The system also allows users to be bulk added for login purposes.

If you run a network in which posts are added to more than one website at a time ManageWP also provides a “Bulk Add” option for posts and pages. I personally found the “Add New Page” option helpful when creating privacy and copyright polices for various websites. [Read more…]

Life after Google+: Going around in Circles

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Will Google+ (plus) bitch slap Facebook and Twitter?  Will the king of search become the king of social too?

There are a number of ways to look at the brewing feud between Google+ and two of the most popular social media sites.  One way is to look at the numbers of registered users, another way is look at the quality of user experience, and yet another is the revenue that the sites generate — not just for itself, but for its users.

Right now, in terms of number and user experience, Google+ has a sparse landscape.  There are no page updates, no game or application notifications, no mindless tagging, no incessant and irrelevant wall posts, and no scrolling streams of updates.

Coming from Facebook or Twitter, it can feel like opening a window and finding yourself confronted with an Alaskan or Siberian landscape after all the snow in the world has fallen.

The usual question that comes to mind is, “So, what’s next?” and answering it is actually when the “fun” starts.

It actually begins when you start looking for other people that you know who are already on Google+ and start adding them in “Circles”.

[Read more…]