The only tablet is the iPad

One of the biggest insights into today's tablet market can be read in this fine article by Slate's Farhad Manjoo.

It’s been two years since Apple’s tablet went on sale. Rivals have released dozens of alternatives, but the iPad still represents more than 60 percent of market share. Worse, the rest of the market is dominated by two devices that are being sold at a loss—Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Simply put, if you think about what people use as their MP3 players today and the last ten years combined, does anyone think of anything else besides an iPod?

Read it in entirety here: The iPad Is Unbeatable

Great technology with a lot of room to grow

David Pierce's Lytro Review on The Verge in one sentence: The effect is amazing, but the photos aren't.

Catching up to the iPhone

With the release of Google's Galaxy Nexus by Samsung tomorrow on Verizon, I couldn't have pointed it out better myself than Daring Fireball's Mr. John Gruber:  

...The 2008 G1 had a hardware keyboard; a hardware up/down/left/right controller for moving the insertion point in text and navigating menus; dedicated hardware buttons for Menu, Home, Search, and Back; and SD card storage expansion. All of these things were held up by some critics as advantages against the iPhone. Today’s Galaxy Nexus has none of these things.

vs 

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." - Steve Jobs (BusinessWeek / 25 May 1998)

Affirmation: Galaxy Nexus

Amongst my friends, some might call me an Apple Fanboy but at heart I know that I always take into consideration all the pros and cons of all technological devices. I really do try my best to be unbiased and after extensive research, I'll make an argument / recommendation for whatever device will fit your needs. Someone told me last week that I like to be right (duh) but they're missing the bigger picture. It's not about being right or wrong. It's all about making sure that it fits the personality / requirements of that individual and from there I can claim success as long as they enjoy the product. But alas, affirmation from tech pundits always puts a smile on my face.  As some of you might know, I like to be in the know and now!

Onto Google's first Android phone running Ice Cream Sandwich - Galaxy Nexus. Techcrunch editor MG Siegler just released his review and here are some key points:

• ...it feels like I’m Zack Morris holding his Gordon Gekko phone
• still feels rather cheap and plastic-y
• the camera is definitely worse than the iPhone 4S, both in megapixels (8 vs. 5), and in image quality

but of course MG Siegler does admit, "It’s important to emphasize the fact that the Galaxy Nexus is without a doubt the best phone I’ve ever used that’s not an iPhone."

Google also released a pretty cool commercial.

Update: It's official, you can purchase this phone tomorrow for $299.99 + two year contract on Verizon! (via BGR)

Flipboard for iPhone

Flipboard just released their app on Apple's iTunes store and it's simply amazing! Download it, explore it and check it out! It's now a happy resident on my iPhone 4S homescreen.

Another Giveaway Entry for DCRainmaker

What another awesome excuse for a post. If you haven't entered before or even seen a post here on elijahnicolas.com in regards to DCRainmaker's blog giveaway, check it out again. More specifically, check out the post here or just click on the picture of the Garmin 310XT below.  Ending tonight at 11:59pm Eastern, Ray Maker is giving away another Garmin 310XT. What makes his giveaways awesome is that he is actually purchases these gifts for his followers. If I start rolling into that kind of dough, I'm PROMISE, I will start doing the same. Granted his blog is amazing in terms of reviews and just overall content so I have a lot to learn. Here's to making three entries for the latest and greatest!

The Future of Gizmodo and Responsible Journalism / Blogging

During the last week, the tech world has been all a buzz on the next generation iPhone (iPhone 4th Generation).  With blogs posting pictures of a phone that was left in a bar to actual video and tear down followed by the final outcome of a letter from Apple's Executive Counsel demanding the return of stolen property, there have been positive and negative views in terms of how this whole thing was handle.  Jason Chen went on video showing the actual iPhone 4th Gen, then hours later Gizmodo posted a story on the actual individual that left the iPhone at the German Beer Serving Pub.  Granted because of this, Lufthansa is offering an all expense paid flight in business class to Germany for the poor Apple Engineer, but I feel it's still a little harsh that Gizmodo publicly harassed the guy. Who knows, Mr. Powell will be forever infamous just like the little kid who cost a team the championship. I don't know. To date, Gizmodo has been accused and admitted to purchasing the device for a purported $5,000. It has been pointed out by others (prominently John Gruber of Daring Fireball) that these acts were a clear violation of law. Codes in California were even outlined and discussed concerning the transaction and sequence of events that transpired during the resulting loss of the 4th generation iPhone.

It has come to my attention that this entire mess, now comically dubbed iPhonegate, while it did generate an absurd amount of page views on Gizmodo, was mishandled. I have to admit that I am, what some might call, a geek, a tech fan boy, a lover of Apple and such but there is a line to be drawn.  I believe that media outlets, have a responsibility; a civic duty to the companies we all love.

The secrecy that Apple goes through to product their product launches and hide their work from competition is second to none in the industry.  This is also a reason why we get so excited and that excitement was taken away by the greedy.  What kind of "umph" does Steve Jobs and the rest of the crew have?   I'm sure they are scrambling around to get together some new slides (probably some depicting Gizmodo in a bad light.)  sidenote: are they still going to be invited to the conference?

Admittedly, I can't wait to fall in line all over again, buy two iPhones, one for me and the other for my fiance, and start video chatting.  I want to know more about the new iPhone but that's what the pent up demand and interest lead to... anticipation and excitement.  Leaks are completely different and are approached as rumors which make it fun. With the devolution of almost all the surprises, June/July 2010 is going to be less exciting.

It would have been a smart move to keep it amongst themselves and "do the right thing" for this slip up crossed the line.  If you want to read all about the next iPhone...check out Gizmodo's iPhone page!

Apple's Free Marketing?! updated: lost and not a hoax // Apple wants it back

Spanning over the last couple of days, two of my favorite tech blogs (Gizmodo / Engadget) released amazing images of what appears to be the next iPhone 4th Generation.  (I'm not going to refer to it as the iPhone 4G because I don't think that it is going to have a 4G chipset i.e. MircoSIM card slot or maybe that's what LTE is going to have)  Initially deemed to be real, then fake, now *definitely* real after a tear down revealing Apple logos in the internals, the weekend included people calling each other names, pointing out pictures from other forums, and tying this phone to a Japanese knock-off.  But the most blatant fact is that it happens to be recognized by iTunes.  Conveniently being remotely wiped by Apple when it was reported by the scared individual, I hope that this guy still has his job.  Although now I'm even thinking that it maybe was his job. I initially thought that there was only "one" lost iPhone 4th Generation but both blogs, I guess, are playing nice and sharing their spoils!?  The internet, particularly Techmeme, is all the buzz on iPhone 4G news and it's two months before the purported launch.  That's 60 days of free marketing and stock price adjustment!  Can anyone say amazing marketing scheme?!  It's all free, becoming viral and an exponential rate, and everyone knows that us tech pundits that haven't upgraded to the 3GS are eagerly & tirelessly waiting for a complete redesign since last year.  Of course the nerd, geeks, Apple fanboys, and dorks are going to be gobbling up all these good stories.  People at work today are going to be talking all about the good news.  Daring Fireball has even went on record stating that he does believe in fact that Apple has lost an iPhone.

The question here is who dropped this phone?  Was it really just an accident or a planned & amazing way to generate crazy excitement and hype?!  Did an exchange of money happen?  Viral explosion has definitely proven to be the best way of marketing on the internet.  Trending on twitter already for the last few days as well is creating a lot of buzz.  Even Jonathan Ive just reported via twitter "This isn't good" What really is going on lately with all the leaks at Apple?  If this leak was unintentional, I hope Steve Jobs doesn't go crazy or have a heart attack due to an increase in blood pressure.  I can imagine emergency meetings all over the Cupertino Offices right now.  On the other hand, I bet the guy that's tied to this phone is in Apple's dungeon getting some form of punishment.  All these stories in just the past few days are causing a frenzy and it's not going to stop until it's released!  It seems to be trumping all the iPad news but I guess in tech world, the Apple iPad is old news.  Coinciding with AT&T revoking any vacation for June, it's working out to bet a perfect media storm.  Everyone loves summer and I'm hoping that the "one more thing" is that it's going to be offered on Verizon!  Better yet, Sprint with it's $69.99 EVERYTHING plan!

(another story one about a Canadian Wireless Carrier claiming the iPhone 4th Gen in June)

update: Well, there we have it...the lost & stolen iPhone belonged to an Apple Software Engineer by the name of Gray Powell.  He happened to be drinking too many German Beers and the result: left his disguised iPhone at the bar.  I wish him well in the tech world. I'm sure he's famous now and can start his own blog too. (via @Gizmodo)

update2: Apple wants it's phone back. Gizmodo states that they didn't know it was stolen!? Seriously?! Here's the letter and the link! (via @Gizmodo)

Web 2.0 and the Posterous New Blog

Intro:

I recently signed up for a posterous site, http://adellelijah.posterous.com, to host both Adelle and I together in one cloud space and in doing so, I actually ended up creating two more different posterous sites, http://adellelisa.posterous.com and http://elijahnicolas.posterous.com so that we can post on an individual basis.  Adelle actually didn't like me posting my stuff to "our" site so I decided that we each needed a separate one for self preservation.  I'll just admit it already: I am a posting whore.

Over the last few months, I've been using the Thesis Wordpress Theme in order to help with Search Engine Optimization on elijahnicolas.com.  I love the simplistic layout of the Thesis Theme so much that I even ended up buying the commercial license to use on Peak Interest (www.whatspyi.com) as well as my fiance's blog (www.adellelisa.com) which she is very hesitant to update but at least it's there.  Over the years, I have graduated from the Blogger platform hosting a multitude of different sites, to trying out joomla for a hot second to finally settling down on wordpress as my choice for a content management system.  Of course, twitter came around along with friendfeed and now posterous all within the last year or so and I indulged.  All the while, I was only looking for that singular reasonable mean to have all my personalities talk to each other and reflect each other's status'.  With posterous, I think I may have found the perfect solution!

Body 1:

The basic idea of Web 2.0 was to forge a design template that allowed for an easy GUI interface for those that weren't code savvy.  It was to provide a simpler means to update ones' online mediums / personality sites and in doing so, collaborate with others in the virtual arena.  That's my personal spin in layman's terms.  If you want the "real deal," here's Wikipedia's here.

Posterous has done just that.  They simplified the entire process.  They have taken out the horrific means of uploading to an FTP site or Content Management System and instead substituted it with the easy medium we use everyday: e-mailing.  You can "attach photos, videos, MP3s and files" to your e-mails, send it off to space and boom...it's that simple!  You could always do that on Blogger.com with text and photos and use a not so great plug-in with WordPress, but with one touch, I can upload a picture with a small post to my posterous account directly from my email address, it detects where I want it to go and publishes instantly without a hitch not only to posterous, but to anywhere else that I'm connected to be it my facebook, blogger, wordpress or even twitter account.

I was thinking of having it update my actual wordpress blog, but that's when things started to come together in my head.  I finally drew somewhat distinct lines.  I have come to the definite conclusion that my posterous and mobile blog are one in the same.  That's almost a no brainer, with a slight difference that the blogger site has a black background and posterous has a white one.  Posterous and my trelijah mobile blog are just quick snippets of my life.  Twitpic and twitter are just even quicker moments that I deem "3rd class" per say.  Of course the hierarchy of it all would be a long post, such as this one, on elijahnicolas.com, a picture accompanied by a posterous moment then a tweet.

Conclusion:

It is however convenient to have one place to update every personality, but duplication starts to become rampant and I don't want that to happen.  For now, I guess I'll keep trelijah going along with elijahnicolas.posterous.com and maybe with time, just end trelijah.  But as I always keep on saying, you can always count on me for some type of update.  That's enough.

p.s.  I had to edit the template of trelijah to fit the new format of pictures.  I like them in the full form.  Nice stuff!

WordPress & the Veritable Plethora of Plug-ins

I just had to make a shout out and create a separate post on this awesome plug-in by BraveNewCode:WPTouch (Plug-In Website)/ WPtouch iPhone Theme (WordPress Plug-In Site)

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into a web-application experience when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch or Android touch mobile device. It comes complete with all the standard WordPress blog features: search, login, categories, tags, archives, photos & more. WPtouch also offers many customization features through a beautifully designed WordPress admin panel.

It's awesome as you can now visit simply elijahnicolas.com on your iPhone/iTouch/Android mobile device and load up a very friendly iPhone/iTouch/Android webpage.  Check it out, browse around and post a comment!

It was easy to activate as I don't feel the need to edit or do anything with it.  It's was way too simple as are many of the various plug-ins that are available on the WordPress Content Manager Platform.  Of course, if you want to view my website in it's normal site appearance, there's an option in the footer courtesy of the app's awesome interface options.

rating: Perfect 10!!!

The Last Month

It's been over a month since my last update, but since then, I've moved over to the CRJ700 / CRJ900 making an extra $1.00 for flying 20-26 more passengers while operating an aircraft approximately 20,000 pounds heavier.   It's been such a great aircraft but the mere fact that I'm flying something new and learning again keeps me grounded.

I've also started up another venture called "peak interest" so make sure to visit the website.  You can also follow @whatspyi on twitter for more up-to-date messages and happenings.  I've always wanted to start a podcast, so I finally found someone I can jibe with back and forth for countless hours and "peak interest" is the culmination of our efforts.  Beyond being a work in progress, it's rough on many edges, but fine tuning it is something that will keep me busy throughout the next few weeks.  I'm sitting here at Starbucks in Rancho Penasquitos and within the first 40 minutes, I've already added a few widgets to the new Thesis theme that I deployed a couple of days ago.  I know it's dangerous to go live right away with kinks, but since we're growing, I'm sure you wouldn't mind growing with us.

If you haven't already, listen to our podcast on www.whatspyi.com or subscribe on iTunes via this link (opens iTunes).

what's peaking your interest?