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gdgt weekly 056

by Jonathan Downin in Tech974 days ago

The Zune HD is sweeping the tech world.  Initial reviews have been quite positive with the gdgt guys praising it as well.  The user interface continues to be hailed as highly usable and fresh.  The OLED display handles blacks well and Ryan compliments the UI’s use of black as good design both aesthetically and in function to preserve battery life.  The guys are planning a full Zune HD round-table episode soon, so look out for that. The new iPod Touch comes under some more scrutiny here with some talk about the lack of a camera and the...

gdgt weekly 055

by Jonathan Downin in Tech979 days ago

Apple’s iPod event on Tuesday turned out to be devoid of any big announcements.  The addition of a video camera to the iPod nano is welcome, but not Earth-shattering.  The storage bump and internal specs revision on the iPod touch are similarly uninspiring and they guys say as much here. As seems to be the case every week, there was a lot of cellphone news this week lead by Palm’s announcement of the Pixi and Motorola’s Cliq.  Ryan shares that after having some hands-on time with the Pixi, it feels distractingly sluggish in...

gdgt weekly 054

by Jonathan Downin in Tech988 days ago

The guys are moving through the news quick this week.  The big news up front it Apple’s iPod event announced for September 9th.  They just skim over a few predictions before talking about the Xbox 360′s recent price drop.  They feel like the new price is a decent deal, but Ryan thinks it would make sense for Microsoft to keep the Pro around for a $50 up-sell. With the release of the Zune HD, all other Zune models are slated to be discontinued.  Could this be a direction we see Apple going after their event next week as well? There...

gdgt weekly 053

by Jonathan Downin in Tech995 days ago

The first gadget up this week is Sony’s new Reader Daily Edition.  This seems to be Sony’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle with a similar screen size and a persistent 3G connection via AT&T.  The big differentiator here between Sony’s new reader and the Kindle on a hardware level is that the Reader Daily Edition has a touch screen.  This, along with a more open approach to content procurement, which even includes the ability to “borrow” books from a library, may just tip the scales in Sony’s favor.  It...

gdgt weekly 052

by Jonathan Downin in Tech999 days ago

Gdgt weekly is fairly late this week with its normal release happening on Thursdays.  Peter and Ryan are covering a lot of the same topics which the Engadget guys went over last week, but they have a few new observations to add to the discussion. The PS3 slim starts off the conversation with Ryan having a lot of problems with Sony’s approach over the last few years.  He is particularly unhappy about the PS3′s lack of any kind of PS2 backwards compatibility.  Moving onto phone talk, the new Nokia N900 and Dell Mini 3i get the same...

gdgt weekly 051

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1009 days ago

Xbox and the new Dashboard update are the big news of the week and the guys have been very pleased with it.  The conversation is centered around the increased Netflix functionality and the recent announcement that the service will be console-exclusive to the 360.  This seems to be a departure for Netflix who has traditionally tried to get their service on as many devices as possible. The Zune HD is getting a lot of good press and some video of the device in action leaked from the gdgt launch party where it was shown publicly for the first time. ...

gdgt weekly 050

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1013 days ago

This week’s episode is a bit late due to travel issues connected to the gdgt event that took place earlier in the week in San Francisco.  It sounds like it was a big hit with a lot of people showing up.  They are holding another one in New York next month so stay tuned on details on that. First news topic up this week is that of Google’s CEO resigning from the Apple board of directors.  The guys are a little late to the game on this, so you have probably heard all the commentary you really need, but they do riff on where the big companies...

gdgt weekly 049

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1023 days ago

The rumored Apple tablet continues to dominate discussion in the tech world.  Ryan feels like it will be atypical of Apple if it does actually get announced any time soon.  This is true, but with so many credible sources it seems almost guaranteed by next spring.  The rumors of Verizon fast-tracking their LTE service in preparation for such a device is particularly interesting. Sprint has been losing a lot of customers recently.  This is particularly troubling since this points out the fact that the Palm Pre has not been their iPhone.  This...

gdgt weekly 048

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1029 days ago

Amazon remotely removed copies of 1984 from users’ Kindles last week and subsequently baffled many with the irony of their actions.  Things have since been explained, but it still spurs a lot of discussion on the still-present problems DRM poses.  It’s inexplicably weird how the book this happened with was 1984.  Irony at its finest. After developing HD-DVD, and subsequently losing out to Sony’s standard, Toshiba is now ready to produce Blu-ray players.  This is not too surprising after the recent announcement that Blu-ray...

gdgt weekly 047

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1035 days ago

Along with the Engadget guys, Peter and Ryan are discussing the release of the Palm Pre SDK.  Ryan throws out the idea that Palm should offer a standard app demo system for every app.  This makes a lot of sense and would differentiate the Pre app store from the iPhone app store in a meaningful way. Apple blocking the Pre from iTunes syncing is another big tech story of the week and the guys pontificate that Palm probably expected this and are playing this as a kind of “underdog card.” It’s a short episode this week ending with...

gdgt weekly 046

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1044 days ago

The news of Google developing their own operating system is, by far, the biggest news of the week.  There has been a lot of speculation about this, but no one saw this announcement coming when it did.  There are a lot of questions and with a 1 1/2 until its release, there is plenty of time for information to trickle out. Sony is finally dipping the toes in the netbook arena with the Vaio W.  The guys have not gotten hands-on with it yet, but they are a little down on its high price and somewhat cheap-looking aesthetics. An image that is rumored...

gdgt weekly 045 – the launch show

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1051 days ago

Gdgt.com has launched and it is a huge database of gadgets where you can find, claim, rate and discuss your favorite gadgets.  In a lot of way it is similar to Giant Bomb’s approach to video games. In this episode the guys discuss the new site and what you can expect from it.  It really is a cool new place to scratch your gadget itch. You can add me as a friend on there if you like.  My username is JonathanDownin. We can hardly believe it ourselves, but we’ve finally launched! Of course, gdgt weekly listeners are truly the gdgt first...

gdgt weekly 044 – 06.25.2009

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1058 days ago

The Android platform is finally starting to get some new handsets other than the G1.  The HTC Hero and myTouch 3G are talked about here with multitouch being worked into the mix even though Android doesn’t support it natively. Inexplicably there is some printer talk on this week.  It’s obvious that we don’t really need printers to do much more than print things as easily, flexibly and fast as possible.  We don’t need touchscreen printers. The guys keep teasing the launch of gdgt.com so it must be close.  I think we are...

gdgt weekly 043 – 06.18.2009

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1065 days ago

The iPhone 3G S leads the discussion this week and Ryan starts by saying that “Apple hasn’t fixed some of the core problems that have plagued the iPhone since the beginning.”  There are some things that Ryan likes about it and his impressions are positive overall.  He does say that it isn’t worth an upgrade for 3G users. The Kindle DX get some middling opinions here as well.  It sounds like it is just a little big big and slightly too heavy to be a completely comfortable reading experience.  The guys also have some problems...

gdgt roundtable – Palm Pre

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1071 days ago

The Palm Pre launched last Saturday and it is one of the biggest things to happen in the smartphone market since the launch of the somewhat underwhelming Android platform with the G1. There is a lot of discussion with a lot of cheerleading going on.  It sounds like there are many things to like about the Pre.  WebOS looks to be a great, solid first entry into the smartphone OS market.  It is equated here to the iPhone 2.0 software in its maturity and that is saying a lot.  The actual hardware leaves a little to be desired with the puzzling sharp...

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    Episode 092 - PTW ahoy!
    Games, tech, and the usual, for the last time. Hello Podcast Thing Weekly.

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