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Tag Archives: Peter Rojas

gdgt weekly 065

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1259 days ago

It’s a rather dry episode this week. Friend of the show, Michael Gartenberg is on, and quite frankly, the show suffers a bit for it. While he has some nice insight into the topics of the week, the atmosphere of the episode is quite different, and the fun flies out the window. The recent declaration of the death of the CrunchPad is the center of attention and there are a few theories about what happened in the development process expressed here. Michael feels like it was a product without a market, but Ryan feels like it had a bit more promise. The...

gdgt weekly 064

by Jon Cole in Tech1273 days ago

Ryan starts off Chrome OS talk by announcing that one of the gdgt’s engineers compiled the developer code preview, placed it into a VMware virtual machine, and made it available on their site.  Beyond that, Ryan is mostly unexcited about the OS considering its not much more than a browser.  In his characteristic optimism, Peter notes that this is Google really throwing its weight behind their own OS, which is exciting enough to begin with. Sony seems to be interested in making a digital distribution storefront similar to iTunes and both of the...

gdgt weekly 063

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1278 days ago

The Palm Pixi is now available and the verdict is mixed. WebOS has not taken off in the way that Palm would have hoped, and the guys argue that the only real chance they have is if they expand to other carriers. The Blackberry Storm 2 also receives middling opinions, but the addition of more under-screen button contacts makes the clickscreen work marginally better. Samsung’s foray into the smartphone OS market with Bada also sparks a discussion. It was a big for media center device announcements. Boxee is getting into the dedicated hardware...

gdgt weekly 062

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1289 days ago

The recent news that Best Buy is looking to team-up with CinemaNow to deliver digital content is the first topic up this week. If  they can get the hardware partnerships in place, this could be a formidable entry into a burgeoning market. Apple has the same sort of idea and is rumored to be looking into creating an alternative to cable through iTunes. The guys feel like this is an up-hill battle for them with the wariness of content providers. Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader received a very warm reception upon its unavailing, but they are...

gdgt weekly 061

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1296 days ago

Any other week, the announcement of Netflix coming to PS3 would be big news, but it has been overshadowed by the inundation of activity in the mobile world. Palm has announced that the Pixi will be launching next month for $99. While this is a reasonable price, it is going to be a hard sell against the $99 iPhone 3G, and the guys say as much. Motorola’s DROID, available from Verizon on November 6th for $199, has made huge waves in the mobile world. With its high-res display, Android 2.0 OS and Google’s recently deployed turn-by-turn...

gdgt weekly 060

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1300 days ago

Tired of hearing about Windows 7 yet? The opinions are the same here as they have been everywhere– it’s good. The guys get into the Apple updates and the iMacs seem to be the biggest win. Ryan laments that he would like to pick one up, but he just can’t make the move to a desktop. The Barnes and Nobel Nook ebook reader has caught everyone off-guard. Ryan brings up a good point here about how amazing it is that a company like B&N, with no history with technology, can bring such a strong product to the market. The Nook seems...

gdgt weekly 059

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1310 days ago

The Danger/Sidekick data loss situation has been the biggest story of the week. Danger holds all of Sidekick user’s data in the cloud and something went horribly wrong and they lost all of that data. This has called the idea of keeping all data in the cloud into question for many people. According to Danger, there still may be hope for user to retain their data if their phone has not been turned off or ran out of battery. Barnes & Nobles is on the verge of announcing their competitor to Amazon’s Kindle and it is rumored to have a...

gdgt weekly 058

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1317 days ago

Windows Mobile 6.5, now known as Windows Phone is the first topic up this week and the guys don’t have too many good things to say about it. It is more of a stop-gap measure for Microsoft and we won’t see a true smartphone OS competitor from Microsoft until version 7. Ryan does give some credit for this being a move towards a more consumer-centric update. Amazon has dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $259 and introduced an international GSM version for $279. The extra $20 gives you the ability to download books outside of the State...

gdgt weekly 056

by Jonathan Downin in Tech1338 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 Tech1343 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 Tech1352 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 Tech1360 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 Tech1363 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 Tech1374 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 Tech1377 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...

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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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