Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Review

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

Image: Steve Kovach, Business Insider

Asus has a new Android powered tablet. Its being compared to the iPad by Business Insider. Dont be fooled by the photo, that is not a netbook, it is the Asus tablet connected to a docking station for the tablet.

Images of the tablet can be found here.

Good Stuff:

Excellent design and build quality

Beautiful, bright display

Tegra 3 processor offers insanely fast performance and incredible 3D graphics

You won’t find better battery life in a tablet

Bad Stuff:

Honeycomb still stinks

Still tough to find good apps for Honeycomb tablets

Laggy response time when typing and scrolling on the dock

Should You Buy It?

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime will cost you $499 for the 32 GB, Wi-Fi model. I wish there was a 16 GB option for $399, but no go. The laptop dock costs an extra $149.

Is it worth the price? I would’ve preferred Asus package the dock and tablet together at a discount. There’s a lot of potential here to create a new type of tablet/laptop hybrid, and bundling the two together would help get more people to adopt it.

full Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Review.

RIM More Open to Rivals

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

According to All Things Digital, RIM is launching a service that allows smartphone tracking for BlackBerrys and other smartphones like the iPhone. Its not clear to me why RIM would include the iPhone specifically when that service already exist via the Find My Phone App.

Research In Motion Ltd. is rolling out a new system that aims to help its corporate customers keep track of employees’ BlackBerrys as well as rival devices they use, including the iPhone.

Facebook FTC Settlement

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

According to people familiar with the talks, the settlement would require Facebook to obtain users’ consent before making “material retroactive changes” to its privacy policies.

In other words, Facebook would also have to make all new features “material retroactive changes” opt-in instead of opt-out.

via Facebook FTC Settlement.

eBay Acquires Hunch

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

Ebay is buying recommendation engine “Hunch” for 80 mil.

Key things to note:

Increasingly, that research aims to surface less-popular items to showcase the breadth of eBay’s inventory. For the past year, eBay has been testing a tool called Discover that serves up unexpected results through a sophisticated algorithm. Hunch’s technology will augment that initiative by mining shoppers’ actions outside eBay, including their activity on social networks. Adding this data will enable eBay to “move beyond standard item-to-item recommendations” by suggesting products based on “a broader variety of members’ online tastes and interests”, the company said.

Citigroup Says Amazon Phone Coming in 2012

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

Mark Mahaney’s of Citigroup’s research department, says Amazon could have its own phone next year.

“Based on our supply chain channel checks in Asia led by Kevin Chang, Citi’s Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we believe an Amazon Smartphone will be launched in 4Q12. Based on our supply chain check, we believe FIH is now jointly developing the phone with Amazon. However, we believe that Amazon will pay NRE (non-recurring engineering fees) to FIH but the device and multiple components will actually be manufactured by Hon Hai’s TMS business group (the same business group that makes Amazon’s E-reader and the 8.9” Amazon tablet). We believe the smartphone will adopt Texas Instrument’s OMAP 4 processor and is very likely to adopt QCOM’s dual mode 6-series standalone baseband given QCOM has been a long-time baseband supplier for Amazon’s E-reader.”

Mahaney and his team guess that Amazon’s phone may cost it $150 to $170 to build, and it’s conceivable that the company will sell it for something close to that price: “For a normal brand like HTC, they need to price the product at US$243 to make 30% gross margin. If Amazon is actually willing to lose some money on the device, the price gap could be even bigger.”

The full story by – Peter Kafka – Mobile – AllThingsD.

Facebook Buys A Company To Help It Master Mobile Applications

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

Strobe lets developers build a single HTML5 app, then make sure that app is packaged up right to be placed in various mobile stores, like Apple’s App store or the Android Market, as well as to the Web.

Stobe’s announcement.

Facebook Buys A Company To Help It Master Mobile Applications.

DiversiTech State of Black Tech Event

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

THE STATE OF BLACK TECH: Local Success Leads to National Impact

was held on Thursday, October 27, 2011 ~ Busboys and Poets, Hyattsville (MD)
5:30 pm – 8:00 pm (Been busy and did have a chance to post this then)

I attended this event and the facility was great. There was a large room (picture above) with a stage inside of a very nice restaurant. A lot of the discussion was around hurdles faced by minorities entering the tech field. However, there was also discussion around steps that could be taken to develop strategies to over come obstacles. Overall it was great to see an organized discussion around diversity in technology.

The panel was Moderated by Christine Johnson, DiversiTech Founder, panelists include Mike Howard of the Maryland Governor’s Venture Fund Authority, Dr. Chad Womack, Shireen Mitchell, Award Winning Web Pioneer, along with notable entrepreneur York Eggelston, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Semantic Labs, as well as other notable local technologists and social media engagers.

Additionally, Randall A. Olade, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of DC area startup, Kojami, will share his experience as a technology entrepreneur and participant of the famed Founder Institute.

Images from the event

Google+ Pages Now Open For Businesses

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

On or around November 7, 2011 Google announced that Google Plus for businesses, brands and places was now available.

Google+ Pages Now Open For Businesses, Brands, Places & More.

Google Ponders Pay-TV Business

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Kyle M Brown

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is considering entering the pay television business. Another is a series of steps closer to becoming an ISP?

Google has been thinking about a move into TV for many years, says Keval Desai, a former Google product director who is now a venture capitalist at InterWest Partners LLC.

“TV is built on a closed system, which is why traditional cable and satellite operators are the only place where consumers can get ESPN and other channels,” he said. As more TVs become connected to the Web, he said, “Internet companies like Google will be able to give you that same high-quality content,” possibly at lower prices.