Todays Bit of Wisdom

"Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it"

Bill Cosby 

image by Salvatore Vuono

Todays Bit of Wisdom

 

"In order the succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure"

Bill Cosby

image by Salvatore Vuono

Todays Bit of Wisdom

"Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave"

Indira Gandi

image by Salvatore Vuono

Windows 8 , The Wait is Over!!!

Yes we are here. Tonight is the night Microsoft finally launches its New Operating System Windows 8 together with its Surface Tablet.

© Microsoft.com

Since the first introduction of Windows 8 and the Surface device I must say that I was impressed. Over the past 5 years I have grown to expect not too good products form Microsoft’s, but with the introduction of the Surface it was obvious that Microsoft were getting ready to fight back and fight back really hard. If you know Microsoft like I do, when they get serious, they really get serious. You should be happy about that, this is really good news for consumers. We now have really beautiful products from Apple, a wonderful and powerful mobile OS from Google called Android, and now Microsoft is putting its act together to ensure they can deliver better products to meet current expectations. This week has been really great.  I really hope this launch is successful in the long run for Microsoft and the tech industry as a whole.

How do you feel about today’s Windows 8 launch?

Ouch, Apple Just Priced themselves out of the Mini Tablet Market.

     

 

© Apple.com

     Yes its official Apples iPad Mini is going to cost $329. The magic number for me would have been a simple $300 if you really want to take away the market from players like Google's Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD.

     

     Apple has had a lot of success with the iPad and has been dominant in the tablet market but this is not going to do them any good. Millions of Units would be sold no mistake about that but it wont be long and consumers would soon realize that Android is a better alternative when you consider price. The only way apple can stop this mistake is if they introduce some truly unique feature that would keep the iPad mini a way better device than others. They have only succeded in bringing their tablets into a position where it is fair game to compare an apple tablet to other android options. If Apple's competitors were making poor quality products this would be a wise option but android has improved vastly on quality and are now legit alternatives.

   Apple you might have brought more harm to yourselves than good. The type of harm you would only realize years later. Mark my words years later. If you have run out of ideas for creating a wow factor entering another competitors space doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

Ladies and Gentilmen, The iPad Mini

Ladies and Gentilmen, 

The iPad Mini

The iPad Mini © Apple

Yes it is here and the Rumors were right the iPad Mini is born. The tech wars are getting even more heated up and I think the tablet space is shifting faster than you think. The iPad Mini might be the final blow that kills Apples Competitors or Apple itself !!!

I am really loving this.

Today's Bit of Wisdom

"Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude."

Dale Carnegie

image by Salvatore Vuono

Today's Bit of Wisdom

"Look deep into nature, and then you will truly understand everything better."

Albert Einstein

image by Salvatore Vuono

Google's New Chromebook for Everyone, It Starts at $249

            Yes, finally Google is getting it right with their Chromebook.

Google's Chromebook for everyone © Google

           The first time I heard of the chrome book I was filled with excitement. I have always been a supporter of this type of a product and if not for my financial situation (just being honest) I will definitely have been creating a similar product. I was happy that Google were taking a brave step with the Chromebook which would definitely yield lots of rewards but the price of $550 just made my heart sink. To think of moving out of your comfort zone and moving into the cloud and yet costing you more was just ridiculous. For me it just seemed to move against the whole concept of moving into the cloud and would help reduce costs or at least that was what I was made to believe by all these tech companies reducing prices to get people on the cloud.

       Google’s new Chromebook brings us closer to seeing that happen because it comes in at $249, which I find a huge improvement its previous $550 plus models.

Google’s SVP of Chrome and Apps, Sundar Pichai, announced this new Chromebook for everyone on Google’s official Blog. 

General Specs

Screen: 11.6-inch

Weight:  2.5 pounds

Processor: Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual (Based on ARM's Cortex A15)


I must say I like the direction in which Google is going with the Chromebook                                                                                         

How to disable hibernation in window 7 using the command prompt

This is a simple tutorial to enable you disable hibernation in your windows 7 pc. 

• To do this you open the command prompt as administrator (search for the      command prompt in the start menu, right click it and click “Run as  Administrator”

Type command Prompt in Start menu

Right Click and Run as Administrator

• In the command prompt type  powercfg –h off

enter powercfg -h off

• Hit the enter Key

• Its Done!!!

All images copyright of yourlifeslessonsblog.blogspot.com and Daniel Richards

Some needed Motivation

It can be hard sometimes to keep focus on the things that are important especially when the consequences of inaction are not eminent. It is even worse when you give up after some setback. When you face similar situations of making mistakes and throwing opportunities away , do not lose hope, get up and try again.

Microsoft's New Surface Ad

Take a look at Microsoft's New Surface Advert



It Cool!

Cnet's Top 5 reasons not to upgrade to windows 8

I was watching Cnet TV today and saw this video "Top 5 reasons not to upgrade to Windows 8"
I found it interesting. Although i do not agree with much of what the presenter says it is a really interesting video.






What do you think?

Todays Bit of Wisdom

"for every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth"

Bo Bennett

image by Salvatore Vuono

Todays Bit of Wisdom

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none"

William Shakespeare

image by Salvatore Vuono

Windows 8 is Almost Here

Windows 8 is almost here. Microsoft is starting pre-orders for its new operating system

Windows 8 Metro UI

Things are getting exciting!

Apples Rumored iPad Mini Could Totally Destroy The Competition

The First Generation  iPad: Image © Evan Amos from Wikimedia

               Another Apple product is about to be born, the iPad mini. This tablet device is targeted at taking a piece of the growing mini-tablet market. This market created by Apples competitors allowed them to create a niche in the tablet market upon which they could grow. But there seems to be a lack of optimism in the stock market after seeing Apple stock fall in the past month. 

 

               This move by Apple might just break the back of its competitors. The iPad is priced at $499 and the price point for Google's flagship tablet the Nexus7 and the Kindle Fire are both priced around $200. Now the big question that Tablet manufacturers will be asking themselves is this, what will be the price of the iPad mini. If Apple prices their new tablet at $300 or $250, all hell will break loose. The orders will sky rocket. I see 10 million iPad minis being sold before the end of the year. This is really crucial for the direction of the tech industry, with windows getting ready to release its first tablet together their amazing new operating system Windows 8 which is also being priced around the $200 price mark. I don’t know about you but this is going to end up being a very revealing month for the tech industry, with reports of the PC market slowing down what is going to happen to Microsoft and android if Apple come up with a price point tempting enough to cause people to finally switch to Apple? That could cause Apple to see its share of the tablet market increase dramatically (a market in which it comfortably dominates and is regarded as the standard). 

             

         I think Apple will go for a price point of 300. We know Apple prefers low volume high margin, that has been their model for sometime under Steve Jobs, but Tim Cook is now calling the shots and he decided to create a smaller tablet that Steve never approved of. We can only keep guessing until Apples reveal day rumored to be 25^th October 2012

World Mental Health Day: Lets all give our support

Today is mental health day. And I have two extracts from Wikipedia and the WHO website for you.

 

           "World Mental Health Day (10 October) is a day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy. It was first celebrated in 1992 at the initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health, a global mental health organization with members and contacts in more than 150 countries. This day, each October thousands of supports come to celebrate this annual awareness program to bring attention to Mental Illness and its major effects on peoples' life worldwide." Source: Wikipedia

          "World Mental Health Day raises public awareness about mental health issues. The day promotes open discussion of mental disorders, and investments in prevention, promotion and treatment services. This year the theme for the day is “Depression: A Global Crisis”.

Depression affects more than 350 million people of all ages, in all communities, and is a significant contributor to the global burden of disease. Although there are known effective treatments for depression, access to treatment is a problem in most countries and in some countries fewer than 10% of those who need it receive such treatment."  Source: WHO

          I put this here today because I support the celebration of this day. It will shock you how much pain has been caused to millions of people suffering from one form of mental illness or another whether it is obvious of not because of the ignorance about mental illness. Most of these people do not seek medical  help because of the stigma attached to mental illness. I know I have been guilty of this and I have found myself treating others with mental illness like they were less than me. But I have grown up to know better, and I think that it is worth sharing this information with you, with the hope that you change your attitude towards people suffering from mental illness.

 These are a few links you can look at. Thanks.
Depression

Mental Health

Twitter considers video-hosting service according to Cnet.com

image © twitter.com

Twitter considers video-hosting service, report says according to Cnet.com

WELL WHY NOT TWITTER, seriously Twitter why did you take so long to get this done? It was obvious from the start that you were going to have to compete with the big Blue Bully on the block(Facebook). Everyone knew that sooner or later you would have to start hosting pictures yourself and then you would have to take the next logical step, host your own videos. People like consuming content on twitter and having video and pictures is a must.

         Stop asking questions and start getting the work done. We want to be able to post videos to twitter from the twitter app.

         I wonder, since twitter put a limit on the number of words you could post on twitter I think they would have a limit to the number of minutes for a video. I think that wouldn’t be a bad idea. That should serve as a way to differentiate twitter videos from those on other platforms.

Lets keep our fingers crossed and see what happens next.

Apple giving poor response to iPhone5 Purple haze on pictures

         

            I tell you Apple needs to deal with this problem of giving excuses for all that might be wrong with the iphone5. 

The iPhone5 : © Apple.com

           First lets get things straight, The iPhone5 is a great phone and it is better than most of the competition out there. But for a company like Apple it seems to fall below Apples standards and is certainly causing Apple some embarrassment that they are not known for. It used to be all the other manufacturers rather than Apple who always had to give excuses as to why their products couldn’t do things properly, things that were expected by users.

           Some users have reported a purple haze when taking photos but it is the response to this that is shocking for a company like Apple.

          I was reading an article to day on CNN.com that highlighted this issue. I wonder why Apple is giving excuses for this. It just doesn’t seem like the Apple I have come to know over the past 5 years.

         Seriously, Apple you have to get your act together this is not acceptable. I expected this from other manufacturers but we have come to expect that Apple will notice problems that will take users time to realize that they had, and giving excellent solutions to them but this is just sad.

Todays Bit of Wisdom

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn."

C.S. Lewis

image by Salvatore Vuono

Playing Age of Empires to deal with Stress

              

              So I will be playing some strategy games tonight to cool off a busy week and yet not so productive. That’s the worst part going through a week with every intention to conquer everything that comes you way yet failing to hit every target.

              Well I will be playing age of empires tonight. Nothing like a god strategy game for geek to take out the stress.

image from wikipedia

How do you deal with stress? I will love to hear.

Todays Bit of Wisdom

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace"

Jimi Hendrix

Apple Deserves Their Amazing Sales Despite Awful Maps and Scratched iPhone5s.

image © apple.com

image © apple.com

Recently, I wrote a couple of posts about Apple's recent failures in the quality of products that they design. I took some time to highlight how empty some of their statements can be. But as much as that is important it is good to note this one thing. The iphone5 will sell even more units than its current 5 million iPhone5s in it first three days.

Apple could have gotten its maps wrong and have fallen in quality of production with all those scratches, but Apple have invested enough into their brand and they will reap all the results due them., the sales figures tell the true story and that’s important.

For all those Apple haters out there, you might not like Apple but you cant stop someone from earning from his investment. Remember Apple had to climb a huge mountain called Microsoft and its partners and that took lots of dedication and hard-work, Apples current success didn’t happen overnight. They totally deserve to be the largest company in the world by market capitalization.

So if are one of those people who hate Apple because of the statements made by their fun-boys and Apple itself as a company, think again, they invested when times were hard, they laid a good foundation for their current success. So don’t hate Apple be inspired by them and learn from them, they fully deserve all the love and money they are getting.

Patent Pools, Good for Technology Patents

      It is not strange int his murky world of technology to hear of patent law suits. A recent ans really nasty fight over patents was between Samsung and Apple. I am sure you all remember it like it happened a second ago. Yes patents are important to the survival of every tech company but you must be honest with me that. The details of the Samsung v Apple trial showed how silly and rotten the patent system has gotten. In midst of this it is really nice to here of companies getting involved in patent pools

Wikipedia definition

“In patent law, a patent pool is a consortium of at least two companies agreeing to cross-license patents relating to a particular technology. The creation of a patent pool can save patentees and licensees time and money, and, in case of blocking patents, it may also be the only reasonable method for making the invention available to the public.” from Wikipedia

I was reading Cnet news this morning and I saw this

“A group of wireless-industry companies -- including AT&T, Clearwire, and HP -- have agreed to a patent pool that could mean fewer lawsuits over the use of LTE technology, Via Licensing Corporation announced today. ” from Cnet News

This kind of stuff makes me happy. Finally some truly positive news in the world of technology patents.

Should Microsoft create its own PC?

Well today I have another question that I will like to answer here on my blog

Q: Should Microsoft create its own PC?

A: Why not?

Its really simple, Microsoft for years has suffered from the image that PC's aren’t reliable due to various PC manufacturers and their varying standards. Giving the Windows operating system a very bad look. On the other hand its main rival Apple, has had the luxury of putting the right hardware on their operating system. This strategy in the long run has turned out to be a good deal for Apple. The only down side is that apples desktop operating system is still not widely available. Apple has gained a lot of market share due to the fact that they are able to control the quality of their product as a whole ie software and hardware.

Microsoft's strategy helped them to gain market share much quicker than apple. Microsoft is now suffering because it cant do that much in terms of quality control. Creating their own phones is definitely a good strategy if you ask me. It gives Microsoft the chance to set standard from which other manufacturers can follow. It also give people who like windows but don’t want crappy hardware to get the best of both worlds. If Microsoft can succeed in creating the perfect hardware and software mix users will have confidence in Microsoft which will translate into sales and its resulting profit.

So YES, it is not a bad idea at all.

Apple Deserves Negative Media Over Maps Inaccuracy

               I am sure most of you are fully aware about the Apple iPhone5 debacle. Its been going on for some days now, from the day the iPhone5 started going on sale. Apple has had some embarrassing moments with their new maps app. It is so un-Apple like. It has turned out to be the kind of app that Apple will be happy to kick out of their app store. Amidst all this noise about Apple's new flop, a question that some tech enthusiasts have asked is if Apple deserve be treated the way they have by the media for this embarrassing mistake.

image from http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com

Well to be fair a lot of tech journalist have seized the opportunity write and Apple hasn’t gone free like they have done in the past. But to answer the question, YES, I think they thoroughly deserve the treatment they are getting.

When you happen to be the largest company in the world by market capitalization and when you have more than $70 billion in cold cash to do all the R&D you need, you and only you are to blame when you bring out a product that isn’t even ready for a beta release onto the market and call it the most powerful maps app in the world. They really got caught up in their own marketing and they managed to convince themselves that they had the Midas touch. When you openly talk about how better you are than your competition and call them out by name you better ensure you have the results to continue to back that claim. If Apple were the kind of company that went about their business without talking about their competitors in the open and blowing their own horn with such arrogance, most people will sympathize with them. But you can agree with me that for the past decade we have continued to here so much about how everything Apple product is perfect. Its one thing if we were getting this only from Apple fan boys, but Apple its self kept on going on and on about how perfect they were.

Apple, if you are listening, get this in your heads. You are not that f*****g good.

You have really done a great job in the past decade of taking things that others have done and taking it in a direction where it really became relevant, but just cool it down and take your time, be humble and continue to make great products. One more thing, Apple stop talking about how good you are and let your products do the talking.

PS: I do not hate Apple. I admire them, I really do. Their hard work has inspired the way I approach life and I wish they could continue doing well. But when I see something I don’t like I am going to talk about it.

Todays Bit of Wisdom

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."

John F. Kennedy

image by Salvatore Vuono

Todays Bit of Wisdom

"those who stand for nothing fall for anything"

Alexander Hamilton 

image by Salvatore Vuono

Instagram hasmore daily users than Twitter

Image © Mashable.com

Yes its true. I didn't make up the table you are seeing right now. I am one of those people who like Twitter much more than Facebook. I also trust Twitter more than any another social networking platform. I used to be a little worried about Twitters position on the social media landscape, but now I am really really worried. It seems a little too early to say this but twitter better get their act together or they could slowly drift into the world of MySpace. Instagram now has more daily users than Twitter.

These figures from Comscore don't look good for twitter which has been around longer than Instagram. they should be ahead in the mobile apps section of social networking. This might explain Dick Costolo's recent appearances on TV shows like the Charlie Rose talk show. I hope they have something up their sleeves.

My thoughts on the iPhone5 so far

Ok, so the famous and most sought after smart phone is now out. I know this blog post about the iPhone should have come earlier but I think now that the dust is settling we can all see why in my last post about the iPhone I was so critical about this Californian Tech giant(Apple). It was obvious that people were not going to be wowed by apples new offering, the iPhone5. Don’t get me wrong it would be successful considering Apple's huge following but it will definitely not be the best thing that they have ever made although they boldly proclaimed the iPhone 5 was the biggest thing to happen to the iPhone since the iPhone.

© Apple.Inc

That proclamation sounded quite silly considering the fact that the improvement they were bringing to the iphone5 were things that we had already seen in other phones i.e. Android phones.

Front View of the iPhone5:  © Apple.Inc

It seems like every day we hear new complaints about the iPhone5, something that was unheard off when it came to Apple. It just seemed like apple will never go wrong but it is becoming apparent that there is something going wrong with Apple looking at the current trend of releasing apps that are not ready for launch (maps) and having defects and scratches on the device.

I am hoping they haven’t let their recent success get into their heads, because if that is the case it will be very unfortunate. With competitors like Samsung and Nokia breathing down their necks in-terms of style and quality Apple better wake-up or they will be the next RIM (I have nothing against RIM I just wish them the best).

The way Apple handles their current problems will determine whether their new yet to be launched iPad mini, will take off well (personally I think it would, Apple has an ever growing loyal following ). Let’s wait and see what this tech giant will do.

Google takes Street View under the Sea

Google adds underwater panoramic pictures to its famous Google maps Google street view. I had to talk about it. When Google maps first came out, I was excited. The fact that I could travel to any place was just cool. Then street views came, that was even more exciting, I could find myself in any street in the world(well not every). But this just beats everything I was expecting from the service.

It is a lovely tool to have(ie. going under water) but I am not sure how many times I am going to use it although it gives the chance to spend more time under water than I can normally do.

Looking at all the efforts Google puts into maps I wonder, how does Google profit from map, what is the real ROI for Google Maps.

Windows 8 Coming Soon, Get Ready

Intel CEO slams Paul Otellini windows 8, says it is not ready but releasing it before it is fully baked is the right move since Microsoft can make improvements after it ships Well to be honest nothing really is ready before it is launched. Every tech companies products are launched even if it could still be improved. Microsoft is no different and you can bare witness if you are an iPhone user that Apples new maps app is just not ready for release. A lot of Apple users are unhappy but I tell you all this would be forgotten when the next iteration of the maps app is introduced.

Windows 8's Metro UI

Personally I think there is a lot Microsoft could do to improve their upcoming operating system(Windows 8), I feel the same as Intel's CEO. There are some bugs and interface issues that have to be solved before it is released, but I can definitely say one thing, Microsoft is definitely heading in the right direction and making all the good decisions at this stage. Windows 8 has every right to compete with whatever tablet or desktop operating system is out there especially apples OS's. I really cant wait to see what the PC market would look like when Microsoft is releases Windows 8 and their line of Surface Tablets.

I am confident that although reception might not be that fast compared to apple Adoption will rapidly increase after the first few weeks when people realize that Microsoft has a viable alternative to its competitors.