Time of the Tech

Many days, weeks, and months have passed since my last post. The main reason I have been away so long is because of the birth of my beautiful daughter. And what a joy she is. On many occasions I started drafting a post, only to never finish it. But finally I was driven to blog again. You see my friends, three and half years ago I left Facebook. I subsequently wrote three articles about how Facebook sucked and how it was going to collapse like Friendster and MySpace. And now I am back on Facebook... Did I miss Facebook? No, life was good without it. Every now and then a site would require a Facebook login, like Spotify. However, there were always ways around it, like using my wife's Facebook account. But then I came across Generation Y 1 . In our Church group, I needed to communicate with them. My preferred method of communication for a group like that is e-mail. To my surprise, not everyone in Generation Y checks their e-mail on a daily basis. So one of the members of our g

Several months ago, my sole daily reader, co-worker, and friend- Matthew- showed me a small green plastic airplane. The green plastic airplane was no bigger than three inches from nose to rudder. He told me that the airplane was created from a 3-D printer. At first, I did not believe him. But then I used some logic, if humans have fission energy, made it to the moon, and created iPhones, then why not 3-D printers? Never doubt the ingenuity of humans. If we can imagine something, it will be a possibility one day. After my internal monologue, which happened in less than three seconds, I must have responded to Matthew with a calm, "Cool". And indeed the 3-D airplane was cool. Some weeks passed by, then Matthew brings me a 3-D printed barrel, pictured above. I begin to ask more questions about this printer. Apparently, the printer is custom made. The limitations of this printer are a length and width of a few inches, the height being more flexible. This particular printer

There are many keyboards out there for Android. To name a few, they are: Android Stock HTC Sense Samsung TouchWiz Swipe Swiftkey None of these keyboards are the perfection that is the iPhone keyboard. Hence, if you have an Android phone like me, you are stuck with the second best keyboard experience. The second best experience is not automatically a bad thing. Insane example, would you not like to be world's second richest person? Swiftkey is the best Android keyboard option for the simple reason that it will give you the fastest and most accurate experience. The auto-correction is the best in the business and it only gets better over time as it learns from your past inputs. Here is a comparison of the the previous version of Swiftkey versus the Ice Cream Sandwich stock keyboard. The newest Swiftkey introduced "flow" which is essentially Swipe. But you are not obligated to "flow", since you will still have the best auto-correcting ex

Let us get two things clear, I am not working on Wall Street and I am not a "douchebag", but I have a Bluetooth earpiece. Do Wall Street people even wear a Bluetooth earpiece? Anyways, while not as popular as in years past, I do believe there is value in these earpieces. I recently got a Plantronics Bluetooth earpiece for $30 at Costco. And by "I got it" that means that I accompanied my dad to Costco and threw the Bluetooth earpiece in the cart. And since I do not have a Costco membership, pops had to pay to for it. Thanks dad. After using the earpiece for 7 days, I firmly believe more people should be using Bluetooth earpieces. The main reason I got the earpiece was to drive and talk on the phone with a peace of mind. With a Bluetooth earpiece you are able to easily answer a call while driving. Making a call is a little tougher because it depends on how good your phone picks up your voice, but it is still better than using the speaker function on your phone o

The last weeks have been a whirlwind. After patiently waiting for the Samsung Galaxy Note II to come out on Verizon for three months, I snapped. On Friday, November 23, 2012, which is also known as "Black Friday", I bought the HTC Droid DNA. Why would I buy the HTC Droid, if I wanted the Galaxy Note II? Two good reasons at the time. One, I wanted a large screen, the Droid DNA has a large 5 inch display with a stunning 441 pixels per inch. Two, I knew that the Galaxy Note II was coming out in less than a week, so if I had buyer's remorse, I could "easily" exchange the Droid DNA. Since the horrible exchange experience I suffered through is not the topic of this story, I will quickly summarize it: Two phone calls to *611 which is Verizon's customer support Three trips to three different Verizon corporate stores Two long nights of searching for a non-existing paper receipt Unnecessary stress on my sweet wife I will never buy something again, if I h

So while the suits in Motorola are chewing bubble gum, checking for updates on their Facebook page, and holding meetings, Samsung is preparing to host a big event on October 24, 2012. The Samsung event will be about their upcoming Galaxy Note II phone. Samsung is going to do what Motorola cannot do, they are going to give their formally announced product a release date. The Samsung Galaxy Note II will be another monstrous phone much like the original Galaxy Note. The original Galaxy Note has a 5.5 inch display, the Galaxy Note II has a 5.55 inch display. For reference, all iPhones (except the iPhone 5) have a 3.5 inch display and most Android phones have between 4 to 4.8 inch display. Bottom line, the Galaxy Note line of phones is gigantic. The tech blogs refer to these phones as "phablets". The offspring of a phone and a tablet. Yesterday, while at Costco on an errand to pick up some garlic french bread, my wife wandered over to the jewelry section. At the speed of lig

I mentioned in my previous post that there are a lot of great phones coming soon. Of all the upcoming phones, the one that catches my eye the most is the Motorola Razr HD Maxx (pictured above). The problem is... there is no release date for the Razr HD Maxx. And I will not twiddle my thumbs and patiently wait for Motorola to release the phone. The wait could be months! Motorola announced the phone and we deserve to know when it will be released. Motorola forgets that we have options. So last Saturday on September 22, 2012, I sent Motorola an e-mail regarding the unknown release date of the Razr HD Maxx. Here was my e-mail: Hello Motorola, I ask that you please give us the consumers a release date for the Razr HD/ Maxx. There are too many good phones out on the market (e.g., SGIII, iPhone 5) for those like me that would like the new Razr HD Maxx, but don't want to wait for an unspecified amount of time. Soon our patience will fade. Thank you, Enrique Esparza And h