This week Ray, Tom and Sean discuss the train wreck that was Amazon’s Prime Day, the loss of Nintendo’s Saturo Iwata and New Horizon’s historic visit to Pluto.

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New Horizons flies by Pluto

Space has been in the news this week. The spacecraft New Horizons, which launched in 2006, ventured closer to the dwarf planet Pluto than any other man-made object has ever been, 7,800 miles from the surface of Pluto. And the best part is, it took pictures! New Horizons has already sent back a handful of high resolution images of Pluto and its moons and more are expected to follow. New Horizons? journey is not over yet, as it is scheduled to continue on out into the largely unexplored Kuiper Belt.

#PrimeDayFail

Amazon held their much-hyped Prime Day event this week to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

Described as a summertime Black Friday for customers with Amazon Prime accounts, the company promised great deals on hot items all throughout the day on Wednesday. And depending on who you are and what you were looking to buy, this was true.

It was certainly a success for Amazon, who reported that sales were up 80 percent on Prime Day. They also most likely saw a jump in Amazon Prime subscriptions, since you had to be a member to get the deals.

The overwhelming reaction on social media, though, was ?meh.? Disgruntled shoppers quickly took to Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #primedayfail to voice their complaints about what they saw as Amazon?s failure to deliver on all of their hype. Reactions ranged from disappoint with the selection of sale items (some described it as being like a bad garage sale full of weird stuff), underwhelming prices, and frustration over limited quantities for items they actually wanted.

Gizmodo’s List of Prime Day Fails

Nintendo President & CEO Saturo Iwata

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata passed Saturday July 11th at the age of 55 after an almost year-long struggle with cancer.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Iwata-san, early in his career he helped develop or worked on the Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing and Kirby series.

Iwata was promoted to president of Nintendo in 2003 and became CEO of Nintendo of America in 2013. Iwata took over Nintendo when it was struggling from poor sales of the GameCube, and brought the highly successful Wii and Nintendo DS to market. He was uniquely the first Nintendo president that was not related to the Yamauchi family since its founding.

Iwata was a very charismatic business leader that reached out to the community. He started an interview series on the Nintendo website called “Iwata Asks” where he discussed games with the developers and gave gamers a behind-the-scene view of the process.

He famously said at the Game Developers Conference in 2005, “On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”

There have been tons of memorials to Iwata on the Internet since his passing, one of my favorites was Mashable’s “5 games you can play to honor late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata”

Hacking Team Gets Hacked

Secretive cybersecurity firm Hacking Team has long courted controversy for selling advanced cyber surveillance tools to governments with a less-than-spotless record on human rights. Well, two weeks ago they were hacked. Massively. An unknown hacker going by the pseudonym of Phineas Fisher broke into the company?s systems and dumped over 400 GB of the company?s data, including invoices, code for software, and software exploits it had paid for known as ?zero day exploits?, and posted it using the company?s own Twitter feed. Most controversially, the documents show that Hacking Team was doing business with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and the UAE, many of whom have been criticized by international human rights organizations for their aggressive surveillance of citizens, activists and journalists both domestically and overseas. Even Sudan, with whom Hacking Team had denied connections, was shown to be a recent client. These countries didn?t just use Hacking Team?s software, they often called upon Hacking Team?s specialized services to go after specific ?high value targets?, including journalists.

At this time Hacking Team has officially requested that its clients immediately cease use of all of its tools and software. This is slightly odd as leaked documents show that the company claims to have the ability to shut its own software down remotely.

The Hacking Team dump has also had some consequences for the larger software industry. The company had purchased a number of what are called ?zero-day exploits?, which are unpatched, undiscovered software vulnerabilities that can be used by hackers to infiltrate software or systems. Three major zero-day exploits were discovered for Flash, which Adobe had not known about and has been scrambling to patch. The fact that this company had access to loopholes in such a major, widespread piece of software is reason for concern.

Also, it is just one more reason that everyone should stop using Flash.

Firefox Axes Flash

Speaking of Flash. Computerworld is reporting that partly as a result of these new and really bad vulnerabilities, Mozilla Firefox has taken the unusual step of blocking Flash until it is completely patched. Alex Stamos, the chief of security for Facebook, has called on Adobe to announce an end-of-life date for Flash.

Deemable Tech – Episode 22 – Turkey and Pie Hangover

On today’s episode Ray, Tom and Sean (for the first time on the microphone) talk about their Thanksgiving festivities and Black Friday/Black Thursday experiences. We also tell you how to transfer business cards wirelessly with the phone you already have, how to upload an audio file to YouTube, how to transfer a big file to someone else, and whether you should be keeping track of your business’ widgets in Excel or Access.

Make sure to subscribe to the show in iTunes by clicking here, or subscribe to the show in another podcast reader by clicking here. Also, make sure to leave us a review in iTunes. The more reviews we have the higher we’ll be listed in iTunes and the more listeners will see our show!

Need tech help? Got a problem or tech question about your computer, phone or tablet? Give us a call and leave us a voice mail at 904-372-DEEM (3336), or send us an email to questions at deemable dot com. We’ll take the best questions and answer them on the show.

Today’s Questions:

• How do you transfer a contact from your phone to someone else’s phone by SMS?
• How can you send a file to someone if it’s too big to email it?
• Why does YouTube say the video I uploaded is too big?
• Do I need to close my iPad apps or can I leave them all running?
• How do I transfer all of my files from my old computer to my new computer?
• Should I use Excel or Access to keep track of data?
• Is it cheaper to buy a modem, or is it cheaper to rent a modem from my internet provider?
• Can I block someone on Gmail like I can on Facebook?

Links we mentioned on today’s show:

• Share Contacts for Android phones.
• Abbyy’s Business Card Reader available for Android (9.99) and iPhone (4.99).
• Yolu Card on Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 (Free)
• Dropbox
• Google Drive
• Outlook.com
• How to upload audio to YouTube using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie
• YouTube.com/my_videos_upload
• Windows Easy Transfer software
• How to migrate your data from an old computer to a new one
• Gmail
• Viber
• OnDemand.WJCT.org/DT

Well, Black Friday is coming early this year, but Rebecca Tyler (Teri Hatcher) isn’t going to let that stop her from getting her family the best doorbuster deals this holiday season. She’s a little fired up about it, too. After the video, tell us in the comments below, did you go out shopping on Thanksgiving? What did you get?

Deemable Tech – Episode 21 – Happy Early Black Friday!…and something about turkey.

On today’s episode Ray gets a little confused about which holiday is coming up this week, you’ll find out where to get the best deals for Black Friday, which deals you shouldn’t waste your time on, and whether the cashiers are trying to sneak off with your cash back. You’ll also find out what the difference is between a Nook and a Kindle, how to scan business cards into your cell phone, and how to save your files from the dust bunnies.

Make sure to subscribe to the show in iTunes by clicking here, or subscribe to the show in another podcast reader by clicking here. Also, make sure to leave us a review in iTunes. The more reviews we have the higher we’ll be listed in iTunes and the more listeners will see our show!

Need tech help? Got a problem or tech question about your computer, phone or tablet? Give us a call and leave us a voice mail at 904-372-DEEM (3336), or send us an email to questions at deemable dot com. We’ll take the best questions and answer them on the show.

Today’s Questions:

• Is the Nook worth getting at $39? What’s the difference between the Nook and the Kindle?
• How can I save my important files that I don’t need to keep on my computer? How can I archive files in a way that I don’t lose them over the years? What’s the best way to backup my computer so I don’t lose my data?
• Which is safer, wireless or wired Internet?
• Is there a good, cheap business card scanner app or gadget that actually works?
• What do I do if I’ve forgotten the passcode on my iPhone? Is there a way to unlock an iPhone that I forgot the passcode?
• What’s the best way to transfer a large file?

Debunkable

• Are cashiers sneaking off with your cash back?

Links we mentioned on today’s show:

• BlackFriday.com
• A hilariously biased comparison of the Kindle and the Nook on bn.com
• The Amazon Kindle
• CrashPlan
• Carbonite
• Lifehacker – You’re Backing Up Your Data The Wrong Way
• Neat Desk Scanner, Neat Desk Organizer $399.95 
• Dymo CardScan Personal $159.99
• Abbyy’s Business Card Reader available for Android (9.99) and iPhone (4.99).
• Yolu Card on Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 (Free)
• Lifehacker – What to Do If You’ve Forgotten Your iPhone’s Passcode

Black Friday Deal Breakdown*:

Walmart: Opens Thursday at 10pm

1 Hour Guaranteed in stock:

iPad 2 16GB $399 with $75 Walmart gift card guaranteed in stock until 11pm Thursday.

Best Buy: Opens Friday at 12am
Toshiba 40″ 1080P 60Hz refresh rate LCD HDTV $179.99 (reg $419.99)

Sears: Opens Thursday at 8pm
Nook Simple Touch $39.99 (Reg $99.99)

Target: Opens Thursday at 9pm

Nook Simple Touch $49.00
Nook Color $99.00 (normally $139.99)

External Hard Drives

• Walmart- Toshiba 1 TB portable hard drive for $59
• Staples- Seagate 2 TB $79.99
• Best Buy- Seagate Back-up Plus 3 TB with USB 3.0 $99.99

SD Cards

8 GB SD cards

• Walmart for $4.97
• Staples for $4.99
• Radio Shack for $5.99

16 GB SD cards

• Walmart for $7.88
• Radio Shack and Staples for $7.99
• Office Depot and Office Max for $8.99

USB Flash Drives

16 GB USB flash drive

• Best Buy for $5.99
• Staples for $6.00
• Walmart for $6.97

32 GB USB flash drive

• Office Max for $9.99
• Radio Shack for $9.99
• Best Buy for $12.99

64 GB USB flash drive

• Office Max $24.99
• Best Buy for $27.99
• Office Depot $29.99

*Disclaimer: The prices listed here are in no way controlled by Deemable Tech or any of its employees. The prices are subject to change at the discretion of the respective companies. Deemable Tech has no control over the prices, or if or when they change. This information is provided only as a convenience. Prices listed here can not and should not be used for price matching or advertising comparisons. These prices were gathered from the store’s websites and from BlackFriday.com.