Category: Technology

Google Project Fi: Google Wants to Be Your Next Wireless Service Provider

Google just announced that they will be jumping into the cellular wireless service provider space joining the likes of AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, et al. with Google Fi. Promising to use new technology to provide a robust, multi-network, multi-device, experience for voice, texting, and data from 120 countries, Google has the potential (in my mind)…

April 22, 2015
HTC RE Camera Preview

Been using the HTC RE camera. As you can see it is small, easy to use, and check the pictures and video below to see the quality. The RE is, to us, “Blaze Cam”…..Blaze is our 13 week old 21 week old yellow Labrador puppy. I uploaded the MP4 file video from the RE directly to YouTube.…

April 21, 2015
Google Search Goes Mobile

As of today (April 21, 2015) when you do a Google search from your tablet, phablet, or smartphone you will see a list of web sites starting with those that are “mobile friendly”, meaning those web sites that, when viewed on a small screen, do not need to be enlarged or scrolled to be read…

April 21, 2015
Diversify Your Telephone, Cell Phone & Internet Services

Although a rare occurrence, yesterday we lost AT&T Wireless service to our cell phones. This made me think about diversity of communications in the home. Every time I go to pay our Comcast bill I am told that by adding telephone service (and more recently a home alarm system) I can “save money” over what…

April 11, 2015
Crowd Mics: Audience Participation via Voice, Text, and Polling

UPDATE: May 2019 I guess they are gone. Hmmmm, even great ideas don’t make it sometimes. 😦 In the old days, I gave a ton of speeches at conferences on video conferencing technology. At the end of my talk, during the Q&A session, two people stood in the audience with wireless microphones that they would…

April 5, 2015
Remote Working Paradise

I will be spending a lot of time in the next few months evaluating remote working locations in Tracy, CA. Thought I’d add this one to the list: Our backyard paradise as a remote working location. “Retirement” is good…..I just need a bit more time to get used to it. Probably won’t take long. Here…

March 30, 2015
COWORKING: An Open Collaborative Work Environment

I owned a COWORKING location in Tracy, CA for 5 years and 7 months, finally selling it for economic reasons on Dec 31, 2014 (see my blog about the lessons I learned about coworking in a small town). One day a few years ago, some folks from Emergent Research came into the office to interview…

March 26, 2015
Remote Working at Starbucks by Raley’s in Tracy, CA

I have been using the Starbucks by Raley’s for meetings since selling AltamontCowork. Since I am familiar with that location, I chose it to be the first of many in this new series researching remote work locations in Tracy, CA. Note: My original blog researching WiFi “hotspots” was way back in 2007. WiFi was new…

March 25, 2015
Beam: Robotic Video Conferencing

I started seeing robotic video conferencing devices appear around 2010. I wrote a few blogs on the HeadThere Giraffe, AnyBots, and VGo (see my blog entries here) and even watched an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” which featured Sheldon using a “nice virtual presence device” to meet the Woz. Despite the fast early start for…

March 22, 2015
Using MileIQ: The Smart Mileage Tracker

I saw an ad (I think on Facebook) for MileIQ. In that ad, MileIQ promised to make tracking personal miles vs business mile easy. Since I know a few people who travel by car for business, I thought I’d give it a try. What is MileIQ Figure 1: Trip Displayed in MileIQ MileIQ is an…

March 17, 2015