This week, Comcast can’t keep itself out of the news. First, Comcast announces that it is bringing the fastest Interwebs in the country to Jacksonville (WOOT!) and other cities in Florida. Then, the FCC and the Justice Department rain on Comcast’s parade and lets it know they are not going to let it merge with Time Warner Cable. In other news, a paranoid dad flew a drone to school with his daughter, and two guys took the iPhone/Android fight way too far.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

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THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Comcast Gigabit Pro

People in Jacksonville and some other towns in Florida are going to be pretty excited next month. In a story Jessica Palombo contributed to Deemable.com, Comcast is bringing the fastest fiber optic Internet service in the country to a few cities in Florida, including our own fair town. The service, which is called Gigabit Pro, will actually have 2 Gbps download and upload speeds ? more than twice the speed of Google Fiber.

However, Comcast would not give a price for the new service. The next fastest service from Comcast is Extreme 505, which runs up to 505 Mbps up and down, and costs over $400 a month with taxes and fees.

Comcast Drops Its Bid to Merge With Time Warner Cable

Speaking of Comcast, earlier this week it was looking pretty  looked bad for its merger with Time Warner Cable. According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department’s antitrust department was going to recommend blocking the merger. And, the FCC was not negotiating the terms of the deal with Comcast, which made it look even less likely that it was going to go through.

But now, ?people with knowledge of the matter? have told Bloomberg that Comcast is backing out of the merger. There was supposed to be a board meeting Thursday. And an official  announcement will probably come Friday.

As the Verge pointed out in an editorial, throughout this whole process, Comcast has never answered this simple question: Why not compete?

Verizon to offer custom pay TV packages, let customers choose monthly programming bundles

And while we?re on the subject of Internet and TV providers, in move that is one small step closer to a la carte cable TV, Verizon recently announced that they are rolling out a new pay TV service that will let customers choose from channel bundles that they change monthly.

These Verizon FiOS ?Custom TV? packages will start at 65 dollars a month for broadband service, 36 fixed basic cable channels, and two genre-based channel packs that customers can swap or unsubscribe from after a month. You can also add packs for an extra 10 dollars. Verizon has seven of these packs to choose from, including sports and children?s programming.

Verizon says they are going after customers who want something in between giant, fully loaded cable packages and cheaper basic packages offered by their competitors.

After “Drone Dad” follows his daughter to school, DJI Phantom 2 grounded

Tennessee father Chris Early?s daughter decided she wanted to walk to the school bus by herself so he did what any tech-inclined father would do: he followed her with a drone.

The drone was a model known as a DJI Phantom 2 which has a high def video camera mounted on it. Early followed his daughter with the drone. A local news station caught wind of this and the story went nationwide. Chris Early has been called ?overprotective?, ?the world?s most embarrassing father? and ‘drone dad’. As a result of all the attention he says he has grounded the drone for now.

One World Trade Center Elevator Shows 515 Years Of New York City

One World Trade Center has added an elevator that displays 515 years of New York City history in 50 seconds.

The New York Times covered this story, but I wrote an article about it for Deemable.com.

While they haven?t developed time travel, the engineers and designers behind the elevators that takes guests to the observatory at the very top of One World Trade Center in New York City have come pretty close. When you board the elevators, you will see a panoramic view of New York City rising out of the underground in the 1500s all the way up through time to the 102nd floor today.

The elevator uses nine 75-inch screens to create the illusion that it is a glass-walled elevator traveling through time.

Along the way, you’ll see the arrival of the Europeans, the Revolution and the rise of the skyscrapers. Inevitably, as time travels through the late-1900s, one of the Twin Towers enters your sight and just as quickly fades away as the 2000s begin. It is a touching, beautiful memorial to the history of the site. You can see The New York Times video of the elevator on our website at Deemable.com

YouTube celebrates 10 year anniversary

This week marks the 10 year anniversary of the first video being uploaded to YouTube.

On April 23 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim posted a 19 second clip of elephants at the zoo titled “Me at the zoo.”  In it, Karim discusses the elephants’ “really, really, really long trunks” and, well, that’s all. Pretty tame compared to what you can find on YouTube today.

About a year after this video was posted, Google acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion.

According to reports, YouTube will mark the anniversary with a month-long celebration starting next week.

Skycure Hack Can Use Wifi To Disable iOS Devices

A research firm called Skycure reported that it has developed a hack based around a bug in iOS that could allow it to disable all nearby iOS devices using a wifi router. The wifi router has to be configured in a specific way. It will then cause any device connected to it to keep crashing and rebooting in an endless loop. It can be combined with another hack that forces iOS devices to connect to that network. Essentially the only way to escape the endless cycle of rebooting would be to get out of range of the router.

Skycure has not publicly released technical specifications for the bug it used to create the hack to give Apple time to patch it.

Argument Over Which Smartphone Is Better Turns Deadly

Police in Tulsa, OK apprehended a man staggering around a parking lot late at night cut up and covered in blood. The man reported to them that he had been in a fight with his roommate over which smartphone was better – the iPhone or the new Samsung Galaxy. iPhone versus Android fights can get heated, but most stop short of physical conflict. The man reported that he and his roommate had been drinking and wound up stabbing each other with broken beer bottles. Both were admitted to the hospital and are expected to make a full recovery. No word on whether either man was arrested or whether either had his mind changed about his preferred choice of phone.

How many tabs does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Redditor Peanut Butter Shudder suggested an answer to Ray’s question. Last week during Shower Thoughts, Ray said he didn’t know how many tabs he had ever opened in his life. Peanut Butter Shudder mentioned Tab for a Cause on our reddit page (reddit.com/r/deemable) Tab for a Cause apparently tracks how many tabs you open and it has a bit of slacktivism built into it. If you install the browser extension, you’ll raise money for charities simply by browsing the internet. Heck, why not?

Who had the best segue?

Vote! Send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com or leave us a voicemail at 1-888-972-9868.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Photo credit: iPhone vs Android by nrkbeta.no is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.

Ray Hollister reviews the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer on Deemable Tech

This week Ray, Tom and Sean talk about how Hilary Clinton used her personal email address the entire time she worked at the State Department. They discussed the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, (which included the announcement of SamsungPay which is the implementation of LoopPay into the Samsung phones which Ray insisted two weeks ago would not happen!) They also talked about the death of Google+ and Google starting its own wireless carrier. Then, Ray shared his review of the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer. If you’re just here for the video, make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom.

#74 Ray Likes His Crow Breaded With A Light, Crispy Panko Crust

RUN DOWN

Samsung Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge

This week was the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Spain and Samsung used the opportunity to take the wraps off the next iteration of its flagship phone, the Samsung Galaxy S6? and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. That?s right, the S6 will come in two formats – a standard rectangular shape and a more curvy version with a display that wraps around the edge and which can display alerts by lighting up.

Regardless of what you think about Samsung?s latest gimmick, both phones are aimed squarely at the premium smartphone market. Samsung has ditched the removable plastic cases of previous Galaxy S?s for a phone that is completely encased in aluminum and Gorilla Glass, similar to the iPhone. The phone boasts an almost ridiculous Quad HD (2560 x 1440) Super AMOLED. Why would anyone need that kind of resolution on a 5.1 inch screen? Virtual Reality! You can strap your S6 into the latest version of Samsung?s Gear VR for a super-high-res virtual reality experience. Since the screen will be literally centimeters from your face, it has to look good.

Not all of Samsung?s longtime users are excited about the S6. The premium case materials means that the newest Galaxy phones no longer allow for a removable battery or an expandable SD memory card, two longstanding features of the Galaxy line.

Samsung Pay, formerly known as Loop Pay, with its magnetic card swiping technology, is built right into the phone.

Google announced that Google+, its one-time ambitious attempt to take on Facebook and Twitter, is going under the knife.

Google+ Divests

The Verge is reporting that the Google+ social network is getting split up into Streams, Photos and Hangouts. It is also getting a new lead: Bradley Horowitz, a long time VP, is taking over from David Besbris. Besbris had held his position less than a year after Vic Gundotra was let go with little fanfare.

Google+ was originally pitched to be Google?s answer to rivals like Facebook and Twitter. In 2012 it took the controversial step of forcibly assigning every Google user across all of its services a Google+ account. Despite this, Google+ never reached the critical mass of user activity needed to take on the big guys. Google has since backed away from their one-size-fits-all approach.

Google execs are now calling the social network side of the product ?Streams? and considering them to be separate from Photos, home of the ridiculous Auto-Awesome feature, and Hangouts, Google?s free and easy-to-use chat and videoconferencing system.

How to Auto-Awesome your photos manually – AndroidCentral.

While Google has not officially announced the death of ?Streams? as a product, some experts are predicting it could be on the chopping block soon.

Google Wireless

According to Mashable, Google?s latest crazy plan is to become a wireless carrier.

Google revealed this week at Mobile World Congress that it plans to get into the wireless carrier business, offering mobile voice and data service to customers. Google says that it will do this on a small scale, buying wholesale access from Sprint and T-Mobile?s networks and selling them to customers. Google says it wants to ?push the needle? when it comes to features offered to mobile customers, for instance allowing users to seamlessly transition between wifi and cellular connections.

Google was careful to emphasize that it does not intend to compete with AT&T and Verizon and that they have been informed of its plans.

BIG STORY

Hillary Clinton used a personal email account the entire time she was US Secretary of State

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html

Clinton apparently set up an email account one week prior to President Obama’s inauguration, and she did not use an official @state.gov email address.

For comparison, according to NBC News, Former secretary of State Condelezza Rice did not use personal email while she was in office, but she rarely used email at all. Clinton aides have also said that, Colin Powell did regularly use a personal e-mail account while Secretary of State.

A Powell aide confirmed that information, saying, “General Powell used a personal email account during his tenure as Secretary of State. He was not aware of any restrictions nor does he recall being made aware of any over the four years he served at State.”

According to the Washington Post, “Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to have operated in violation of what the White House said Tuesday was ?very specific guidance? that members of the Obama administration use government e-mail accounts to carry out official business.”

Hillary Clinton said on Twitter :

I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.

? Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 5, 2015

REVIEWS

BACtrack MobileBreathalyzer Review

Last year Ray received the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer, which, unsurprisingly, tracks your BAC or your blood alcohol content. In other words, it’s a mobile Breathalyzer.

It is a really great product. (Disclaimer, BACtrack did provide a sample unit for review.) The BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer connects with your Smartphone via Bluetooth.

It’s pretty comfortable to hold in your hand, and it is very easy to use. You just turn it on, open the BACtrack app and pair it with your phone via bluetooth and follow the on screen instructions.

It keeps track of your blood alcohol level over time while you are drinking, and it calculates how long it will take for you to be sober. In addition to a number calculation of your BAC, it give you an idea of where you should be feeling. It will say things like “You are experiencing slight alcohol intoxication.”

The strangest feature of the device is that it let’s you post your blood alcohol level on social media. I personally never use that feature, but I can definitely see it going horribly, horribly wrong. I can only imagine the legal implications but it could possibly have too. But, it would help to explain all of those wacky drunk pictures.

If you are a frequent drinker, this breathalyzer has a great feature that will let you track when and where you drank. You can choose what you share otherwise it always stays private.

The BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer cost $99 now. It was $149 when I reviewed it. I feel like it was worth $149, but I think that $99 is the perfect price point for the features it has.

Now, there are other breathalyzers that BACtrack makes that are cheaper. They have a model that uses a different sensor that only costs $49, and they have keychain models that do not connect to your smartphone that are $29.

Personally, I like the model that uses the same technology that the police use to check blood alcohol level, because if I am trusting something to check if I am below the legal limit or not, I want to be absolutely certain it is right!

That being said, this is in no way an endorsement to drive while intoxicated. It’s never safe to drink under the influence of alcohol, and you can be arrested for DUI even if you’re under the legal limit.

The thing that surprised me most about using the backtrack mobile breathalyzer was that I am apparently a cheap date. I was drunk long before the device said I was a legally drunk. Or, at least I felt like I was drunk.

It was crazy to me that at .02, I felt that I could not drive a car, but I was still legal to drive.

Check out the video of the review below:

UNCUT!

Alright, this week is your last week to jump ship. If you don’t like hearing tech news, you need to unsubscribe from this show now. Otherwise, you’re gonna be stuck listening to us talk about the latest tech news and listen to us review apps and gadgets! After this week, we won’t remind you any more. You can always just go subscribe to Ask Deemable Tech if you want to hear us answer tech questions though. We’ll always be there for you.

If you do like hearing about the latest happenings in the tech world, and haven’t subscribed to Deemable Tech yet, get on it! And make sure to share us on the forums, Facebook, Twitter ? all over the interwebs.

And help us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. reddit.com/r/Deemable or Deemable.com/reddit either way, it will take you to the same place.

Everything in the news this week was pretty shocking.

This Weeks Run Down

Apparently the FAA thinks it is 1967

This Sunday, the FAA finally released its proposal for regulations on unmanned commercial aircraft, a.k.a. drones. The proposed requirements, are surprisingly ? or unsurprisingly, depending on who you ask ? arcane and draconian.

The drones must be under 55 pounds or 25 kilograms. They can only be operated in daylight, and within the operator’s line of sight! They have to fly under 500 feet, no faster than 100 mph (Which those two aren’t unreasonable) But, they also can NEVER fly over anyone except for the people flying the drone.

This pretty much shoots down any plans that Amazon had for Prime Air since delivering packages with a drone, kinda requires the drone to be out of sight for it to be useful. And it would almost certainly have to fly over some people to get to my porch.

Some drone startups aren’t too concerned though. Drones could possibly be used for some commercial purposes, like a farmer surveying his field from the sky.

Lenovo got caught with its hand in the cookie jar

The Next Web is reporting that Lenovo has been installing adware on laptops. The adware, called Superfish, inserts third-party ads into your Google Searches and other websites, even those running with secure encryption, just like the kind of malware that doesn’t intentionally come with your new computer.

Once users started complaining about the ads Lenovo was quick to roll back the program and to post directions on its website about how to uninstall it.

Lenovo said,

Superfish was previously included on some consumer notebook products shipped in a short window between September and December to help customers potentially discover interesting products while shopping.  However, user feedback was not positive.

Unfortunately security researchers have discovered that simply uninstalling the software is not enough. Superfish also include a ?root certificate’ that allows any program that gains access to it to perform what are known as ?man in the middle’ attacks, potentially compromising the security of sensitive user information like banking passwords.

Lenovo initially denied the security vulnerability, but is now saying that it will release new software that will completely remove Superfish and any security certificates related to it.

In the meantime, laptops with Superfish installed are currently available from stores such as Best Buy. Caveat emptor.

After the story broke, a developer put together a website that lets Lenovo laptop owners find out if they are affected by the program, and Lenovo’s current instructions include how to uninstall the basic Superfish program.

LoopPay sold out to Samsung.

In an announcement Wednesday, LoopPay, the company that makes the electronic wallet/phone case for the iPhone, let everyone know that they have been bought by Samsung. They will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics America, Inc.

They haven’t said anything about incorporating the LoopPay Digital wallet platform into Samsung devices. However, it seems to support the rumors that the next Galaxy phone will probably have LoopPay built into it.

Ray recently reviewed the LoopPay CardCase on a previous episode of Deemable Tech.

Apple iCar?

Wired is reporting that according to a lawsuit filed by electric-car battery manufacturer A123 Systems, Apple has been poaching engineers for its own large-scale car battery division. The lawsuit alleges that an A123 engineer has been helping Apple woo senior-level engineers over to their company. This is adding fuel to rumors that Apple is working on its own electric car.

Other things hinting at this: Apple has over 600 employees that used to work in the automotive industry, including 46 that were formerly with Tesla. Tesla CEO Elon Musk told Bloomberg earlier this month that Apple has been offering $250,000 signing bonuses to entice Tesla employees to leave.

Also, a mysterious van registered to Apple has been spotted driving around San Francisco with an array of equipment including cameras mounted on top. People are speculating that this could be for a self-driving car or a street-mapping system.

In another interview with Bloomberg, former GM CEO Dan Akerson said Apple should stay away from making cars. Akerson said “They’d better think carefully if they want to get into the hard-core manufacturing. We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into car. They have no idea what they’re getting into if they get into that.?

Sounds a lot like Steve Balmer’s advice to Apple many years ago about getting into making phones.

Cable Companies Behaving Badly

A Time Warner Cable customer reported to Ars Technica today that she received a letter from the company in which her first name had been changed to, well, a word we can’t say on this podcast. It starts with a ‘c.’

The letter read, ?Dear C*#! Martinez? and then went tried to convince the customer not to cancel her cable.

The other major US cable company, Comcast, has been in the news several times in the past few months for similar cases. Comcast customers have reported receiving notices from the company in which their names were changed to things like  “dummy,” “whore” and “super bitch.” Comcast and Time Warner Cable announced last year that they plan to merge, pending Federal approval. However, both companies are notorious for their poor customer service and stories like these will not help their case.

Time Warner Cable stated that the name change was due to the actions of a third-party vendor. It apologized to Mrs. Martinez and offered her a free year of cable.

—-

Have a comment for the show? Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Photo credit: “Blog OMG!” by Mike Licht is used under CC BY 2.0.

This week, Ray, Tom and Sean did things a little different. They packed up all the equipment they could find, and took the show on the road to Bold Bean Coffee Roasters! Apparently, Ray was so nervous, he changed the Deemable Tech tagline to “Tech help worth talking to!” But, it wasn’t long and they had the crowd warmed up, and everybody had a great time. If you weren’t able to make it, take a listen to the podcast.

Links mentioned in this episode

• Snopes.com
• UrbanLegends.About.com
• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children – Active Amber Alerts
• Nokia PC Suite
• Watchdog Task Manager Lite
• MotionX Sleep
• Alarm Clock Plus
• FxGuru: Movie FX Director
• Apps Gone Free
• AppGratis

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!

Download Episode 31 – Deemable Tech Live at Bold Bean Coffee Roasters

I’ve been proud Android smartphone user for a couple of years now. I’m a big fan and I’ll stack a top-of-the-line Android phone up against an iPhone any day of the week, but I have to admit that Apple does a much, much better job of publicizing their phones’ features.

I recently purchased the Samsung Galaxy SIII, widely considered to be the best Android phone on the market today (and I mean exactly at the time I’m writing this – because tomorrow, who knows!). But what makes this phone so special? Pick it up and start playing with it and your first impressions will likely be, ?It’s so fast! It’s so thin! It’s so shiny!? But like me, you probably won’t have a clue about all the cool things it can do initially*. The GS3 is much more than just a pretty face: it’s stuffed with innovative features. You just have to know where to find them.

I’ve been doing a little research into my new smartphone and have been completely blown away by some of the features I’ve discovered. Here are some of the coolest hidden things that your Samsung Galaxy SIII can do:

The Best Part of Waking Up is Your Samsung Galaxy SIII

Set your alarm mode to ‘briefing’ to wake up feeling like Tony Stark!

Remember that scene from Iron Man where the girl at Tony Stark’s house is woken up by a computerized voice greeting her and reading the surf and weather report? Yeah, the GS3 can totally do that. It will also read you the top news headline and tell you about any events on today’s calendar.

Oh, and if all that’s too much for you at 6:45 AM in the morning you can just shout ?SNOOZE!? at it and it will leave you alone for another ten minutes.

You can find all these features under the options for the pre-installed Clock app. Just create an alarm and set it to ?briefing’ mode.

Talk To Me, Baby

Samsung’s S-Voice is absolutely nothing like Siri, really!

The GS3 comes pre-installed with something called S-Voice, which is apparently Samsung’s latest effort to get sued by Apple for blatantly ripping off Siri. S-Voice has some cool features, but in practice it just doesn’t work that well and seems kind of gimmicky. But you don’t need it anyway. The GS3 runs Ice Cream Sandwich, and its voice recognition capabilities are already phenomenal.

Talk to the one thing that really understands you… your phone!

Tired of typing out your text messages? Why not just speak them instead? Click the microphone icon on the on-screen keyboard and just start talking. The phone’s voice recognition is impressively fast and accurate. Many of the pre-installed apps also understand voice commands: you can answer or reject an incoming call by just saying ?Answer? or ?Reject?, you can take photos by saying ?Capture? or ?Cheese? and you can even use voice commands to adjust the volume on the music player.

To activate these features and learn more about them, go to the main Settings for the phone, then select ?Language and Input? and click on ?Voice cmd for apps.? You can also set the phone for ?Driving Mode? where incoming calls and new notifications will be read out to you by your phone.

Lock Screen Love

Ooh, looks like I’ve got mail!

Besides the oh-so-pretty ripple effect that follows your finger when you slide-to-unlock, the GS3’s lock screen offers quick access to all kinds of features. Note the four icons at the bottom: they are customizable, and dragging your finger up from any of them (say, for example, the camera) will load that app immediately. You can also drag the notification bar down to check out alerts without having to unlock your phone. Text messages float in the lock screen, and appointment reminders will replace it until you tell them to go away. You can also configure your lock screen to show the weather or a stock ticker.

All of this can be configured from Settings > Security > Lock screen options.

One last lock screen feature I want to mention is cheating a little bit since I’m mostly talking about stock, pre-installed apps here, but this is too cool to pass over: download the free app ?Tiny Flashlight + LED? from the Play Market. It turns your phone’s LED camera flash into a very bright flashlight at the touch of a button, which is nice, but not revolutionary. But if you go into the settings (by touching the circle at the upper right of the app, then the tool icon) you’ll discover that you can set it to turn on for 20 seconds just by shaking the phone when you’re on the lock screen. So if your power goes out and all of a sudden you’re in the dark you just pull out your phone and give it a shake and you’re back in business. Nice.

Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture

The first thing that any new GS3 owner should do with their phone is to go to the main settings menu and select ?Motion’. Every smartphone owner knows about simple touch gestures like flicking up and down a list to scroll quickly or pinch-to-zoom (although the calendar app adds a cool use for this – zooming in and out of calendar, from days to weeks to months), but Samsung and Google have added an impressive number of intuitive motions to the gesture control alphabet.

A few of my favorites: swipe left on a contact to text them, swipe right to call them. Want to capture what’s on your screen? Swipe your entire hand across it. Ever had a text message conversation get to the point where you realize that it’s simpler to just pick up the phone and call the person? While on the text message screen, pick up the phone and hold it to your ear and the GS3 will make the call. Brilliant!

Shaking also happens to be the default ?refresh’ motion for many things. From the Bluetooth screen or the Wi-Fi screen try shaking your phone to look for nearby networks and devices.

There are too many motion-activated abilities on this phone to list here, but that’s okay. Clicking on any of them in the settings menu will allow you to enter a tutorial mode where you can try the gesture out for yourself. You’ll be panning, tilting and shaking in no time flat.

Pics Or It Didn’t Happen

If you’ve seen the TV commercials for the Samsung Galaxy S3, you know that it is supposed to allow you to watch a video and do other things with the phone, such as text. This actually works as advertised – clicking the box in the lower right hand corner of a video will put it in a small window and then you’re free to navigate the phone as usual while the video plays. Why you’d want to do this is another question entirely. For my money, there are several video and camera features on the phone that are far more useful.

The camera offers the ability to take a bunch of shots and then stitch them together into a panorama. It works pretty seamlessly. After you’re done, you can hold the screen and move the phone back and forth to sweep across the scene. There is also a burst mode for taking a bunch of shots back to back. But one of my favorite features, which I mentioned before, is being able to stabilize the camera with both hands and tell it to take a picture by saying ?shoot? or ?capture.?

Flicking a toggle on the camera screen switches over to video mode. A cool feature in video mode is that you can snap still shots while you are recording! You can also pinch-to-zoom to zoom in the camera.

It’s the Little Things

There’s so much more. You probably figured you could assign your contacts custom ringtones, but did you know you can also assign them custom vibration patterns? Love of your life calling? How about giving them the ?heartbeat’ vibration? Hair stylist? You can drum out a custom pattern: ?Shave-and-a-haircut, two bits.?

The Samsung Galaxy SIII does a great job of making the basic jobs of smartphones fast, easy and hassle-free. You don’t have to know about any of these features to really enjoy using it. But this phone is packed with clever little surprises that can make your life that much easier, so it’s worth exploring!

* To be fair, Samsung does discuss some of these ?hidden’ features in the phone’s thick manual. But who actually reads those things??

Deemable Tech – Episode 12 – Fly Me 2 d Moon

The News Feed:

1. The world lost a reluctant hero, Neil Armstrong.
2. Samsung’s worst scenario happened; Apple won. Samsung was found guilty of wilful infringement of Apple’s patents.

Debunkable:

• Neil Armstrong was misquoted, or was he?
• Good luck Mr. Gorsky!

Links we mentioned on today’s show:

• http://www.markpilarski.com/deal-me-in/getting-ignored-by-a-touch-screen.html
• The official NASA transcripts from the Apollo 11 mission.
• lingo2word.com/translatetxt.php
• transl8it.com/
• Text Talk: the Top Text Message Abbreviations, 2012

Bumper Music

• Frank Sinatra – Fly Me To The Moon (8-bit) by Bryan Lopez
• The Clash – I Fought The Law (8-bit NES Version)

This week Ray Hollister, Tom Braun, Kevin Clark, and Aaron Edelson held the first ever  Presidential app debate, argued about Apple and Samsung arguing about patents on rectangles and sliders, and Deemable Tech got its 200th Facebook Fan!!

All that and more on this episode of Deemable Tech.

Deemable Tech – Episode 9 – The Presidential App Debate and Apple Patented the Rectangle

Today’s News Stories:

1. 0:45 – Presidential Apps
2. 9:09 – Mars Curiosity Rover Landing and the Seven Minutes of Terror
3. 13:37 – Apple vs Samsung
   

Links we mentioned on today’s show:

• With Mitt on the iTunes App Store
• Obama for America on the iTunes App Store
• Mitt’s VP on the iTunes App Store
• Mitt’s VP – Android Apps on Google Play
• Gary Johnson 2012 on the Android Play Store
• Hackintosh Instructions, Hackintosh How To Guides @ Hackintosh.com
• How to Create a Portable Hackintosh on a USB Thumb Drive
• Install OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on Your Hackintosh
• Building a Hackintosh Apple Can’t Sue You For
• No Root Screenshot It – Paid app, ROOT permissions are not required
• Screenshot – Free app, but requires ROOT on your device
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• The EPA e-cycling website
• How secure is Dropbox?

Bumper Music

• Mars, the Bringer of War [8-bit]
• 8 Bit Star Trek:The Next Generation Theme

?Man is an idiot. He doesn’t know how to do anything without copying, without imitating, without plagiarizing, without aping. It might even have been that man invented generation by coitus after seeing the grasshopper copulate.?

– Augusto Roa Bastos.

My middle school Latin teacher once told me that “if you’re not cheating, then you’re not trying.” While it was obviously meant to be a joke that I never took seriously, it’s the only thing I can remember from his class. However, in the world of trademarks, patents, and intellectual property rights, there is only the slightest bit of room for humor – and Apple is clearly not in the laughing mood.

On Friday afternoon, Apple filed a 38-page lawsuit against Samsung, specifically targeting Samsung’s Galaxy line which, according to Apple, has “slavishly” copied the “look and feel” of the iPad and iPhone. Apple alleges that Samsung not only copied the look and feel of its devices, but also copied the applications and the packaging that the devices are housed in. The Wall Street Journal adds, “Apple is also embroiled in legal battles with companies such as HTC Corp., Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Nokia Corp. and Eastman Kodak Co. over products such as smartphones and software, some of whom it has sued and some of whom it has been sued by.”

While the South Korean company plans on defending itself against the lawsuit, the relationship between the two heavyweight consumer electronics companies may be impacted in the future as several Apple products contain computer chips manufactured by Samsung, including parts of the A4 and A5 processors which are found in iOS devices and Apple TV products.

It would be an extremely rare case for Apple to win something in court based on their argument that Samsung copied the “look and feel” of their devices, if anything, Apple is just trying to take a stand and make sure that it doesn’t lose its competitive advantage over its rivals who are taking business away. Let’s face it though; all electronics companies imitate the latest innovative product to hit the market (that’s just a part of what makes our economy a free market) and Apple just happens to be leading the way.

Photo by Vlad Savov via Engadget

I wake up to the buzzing of my cell phone alarm, check one of my widgets for weather updates, check for new e-mails and text messages, stick my earphones in for some tunes and start my day. This all seems perfectly normal, some might even go as far as to say that it is being responsible, but there’s a catch; I am a cell phone addict.

Addiction is defined as being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming. The continual use of devices as easily accessible as mobile cell phones creates chemical responses that are similar to that of compulsive gambling. Apple iPhones, Blackberrys, Samsungs, HTCs, LGs… and the list goes on, but they all have one common link – they consume parts of our life. My cell phone has become an extension of myself, an extension of myself that I am afraid to lose sight of and am constantly reaching for.

Do you remember how simple life was without being bombarbed by constant text messages, social networking updates, e-mails, and phone calls? While advanced technological improvements have drastically made life easier and more efficient for the most part, the same technological advancements can be the cause of increased stress, anxiety, and in the most extreme cases – death.

So where do we draw the line between healthy cell phone usage and addictive cell phone dependence? If you are using your phone to avoid social interaction, to compulsively check things, to message someone sitting within arms reach, or you begin to feel empty without its presence, then it may be time to begin detoxing from the cell phone monkey.

Personally, I quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey in August of 2010… but I don’t think I can let go of my cell phone as easily.

Photo by Elizabeth Downie via Blogspot