Outlook.com adds Skype to Chatbox

     As an Outlook Insider I was told about an awesome new feature being added to the cool chatbox in Outlook.com. The team is making good on the promise of integrating Skype into their already great e-mail client.

The Allure of Self Publishing from a techie's perspective

Self Publishing

       Self publishing has been a big craze producing both good and bad books and creating some big time author's like J. R. Tolkien and +Mark Twain. But obviously it is not a get rich quick scheme. I have been doing a lot of homework on the topic and there are a lot of articles, books, and communities that can help you on your authorship. Self publishing has been a revolution and now is a journey. There are many paths with pitfalls and hedge robbers on the way. There are companies to beware of ie (Vanity or Subsidy presses like: Xlibris, Outskirts Press, and Tate Publishing) who may vocally say they are not but their track record shows it. The writing process is a lot like Pilgrims's Progress. There will be people to help you, hurt you, but depending on how well you fight your end can be glorious. So I am going to detail my experiences in this brutally vicious game called publishing. 

          I am 13 which makes self publishing easier than if I was 12 and harder because I am a "minor." I finished my book Operation Hammer November 29th just in time for NaNoWrimo! It barely eeked over 50,000 words which made me very happy because I got all types of free stuff like 5 free books from Createspace and some free memberships to different websites. After NaNoWrimo was over the help I was getting from it suddenly died because all of the active members left because NaNoWrimo. So I wandered from forum to forum giving advice taking advice and creating a base for my fledgling book. I made a website, I made a Facebook page, I made a Twitter page, Google +Animal Conflict Series, and a Goodreads page for the book. I published my book on Smashwords for $1.99. After my big social blitz I regularly checked on them and tried my best to get as many likes, followers, and +1's as possible. As a techie I knew it was important to branch out to everyone in every possible way so I did. I got an editor and formatter +Ashley Clarke to help make the book go by smoother and look  better. I did a cover for my print book with the massive help of +C. Sheehan. On January 20th 2013 I entered the ABNA (Amazon Breakout Novel Award) and published my book on Createspace and Kindle. Now I felt I was ready to take on the world. Oh how I was so wrong...
       
           Now it is the 3rd of February with 9 sales on Smashwords, 1 kindle sale, no print sales, and a whole lot of despair. I still fail to get into the premium Smashwords catalogue which means I am missing out on sales in iBooks, B&N, Kobo, Feedbook, Diesel, and Sony's stores. But hey my story is not a reflection of the entire market. I am not a very happy camper but with a big marketing rush and some money coming in I am going to publish on Lightning Press to get it into Ingram distributing to expand my  market reach and be able to do book signings etc. Now on for the perspective...

Perspective

     The indie author community has become vast with 1,000 of authors and a lot of them being 13 - 18 growing in every state making it almost like a movement. Tools like Createspace and Smashwords are easy to use even if you are not a Power User. Nowadays you can publish to almost every platform in about an hour e-book wise. That compared to what it used to be is very impressive. Still it has a long way to go in terms of paperback publishing. Independent bookstores are not the best to deal with and big bookstores require you to sign up with a service like Lightning Press and pay money to get your book in all the big places. So depending on how you play your cards you can come out either good or bad. Just my Humble Opinion

         

          

Lumosity (Web App review)

Overview    

      I know I stopped reviewing Windows 8 apps a while ago and I have good reason. I no longer own a Windows 8 device. My previous workhorse's motherboard died forcing me to get a windows 7 laptop as a stopgap until I get a Windows 8 tabtop. Anyway I know you have heard a lot about Lumosity which has recently gone mainstream after launching a massive ad campaign to get people to come to try their web app. So far I have been using it with some increase in focus but have been extremely frustrated to find high prices for a "paid package" that I needed to use the entire thing. So on to the review!

Functionality

      So I decided not to pony up for the more expensive paid version that is supposed to really make your brain fly because like most consumers I don't want to put money into a potential scammy program. The functionality is extremely limited in its capabilities. First off it does not show you a personalized report, it does not let you do 5 activities a day, it does not let you do anything after doing a training session until the next day, and it will not make the program to focus on what you want to focus on. For me this is overreaching too much. But what little they let you do or test their program did help me. I recently finished in the top three of a spelling bee with the aid of lumosity.com and 1 night of cramming. It was pretty awesome. I mean other than that is was pretty useless for anything. I mean I don't see my focus improving or anything else it advertises. Only a better memory. 

Design

     Well I don't talk about an app's (or web apps) design too much but today I felt like I should. It wasn't designed very professionally and clean, but felt cluttered. It felt like a cheaper cut rate app to me. The app logo design for Google Chrome feels out of place too. 

Final Score//: 2.9 out of 5

The History of the Ultrabook.

          Overview

     Did you ever think that the day would come when a laptop weighed under 4lbs and would have enough power to run Photoshop? Did you think that this class of laptop could measure under an inch and in some cases 15 millimeters? Welcome to the age of the ultra book "made by Intel." But was it actually made by Intel? Or was it made by Apple? Keep on reading for more on this topic. 

     Early Concepts

     Since the term was not used until 2011 by Intel we are forced to look hard and low for netbook like systems. I did find 1 by Sony called the VAIO X505. It was 2.2 lbs and had a Centrino 1GHZ processor. For today that is not industry leading, but at the time it was revolutionary. 

This was brought to America in 2003 and got many awards and was highly rated. Still we do not see mass adoption of this brand of computing for a while until Asus essentially created the netbook category with their first Eee machine. I will not accept those as true ultrabooks because they were not powerful and were based on the Intel Atom structure which still today has not proven itself.

     Modern Era - The Fight against Apple

     Truthfully the story stops at the Sony VAIO until 2011 at a fate filled CES Consumer Electronics Show when Intel announced the "ultra book" class. Intel set aside $300 million dollars for OEM's who wanted to release ultrabook to market. You probably have seen the ads by Intel for various skinny laptops and with Windows 8 pending the market is a bit dead right now. But what was the real initiative for the sudden push by Intel? Couldn't OEM's do this by their own? No, truthfully the ultra book race was made as an attempt to fight against the Apple juggernaut that would truthfully take a joint effort to stop.  In an attempt to make an attempt at quality control Intel released a list of specifications for OEM's to follow to get the deemed "ultrabook" status. Acer was the first to make's it own ultrabook the S3 which really was a first generation device in many ways. Asus came next with the Zenbook UX31E which was actually a pretty good device for a first time try. HP came out with the Envy line which has been in my opinion the best of them all, but some lack in certain aspects. Lenovo has jumped in with the Ideapad U300s which so far have had the best keyboard to rule them all. Toshiba had the cheapest first gen ultrabook at $799, but of course it was not the best and lacked in many areas. Dell released one the XPS 13 which had a weird rounded look. Samsung was the last OEM with the Series 5 products which were good in their respect with nice specs. The entire initiave is powered by Intel core i3, i5, and i7 ULV (ultra low voltage) CPU's with most of them featuring Intel HD3000 or HD4000 integrated graphics.

Windows 8 Changes the Game

    

      So CES finished not too long ago with some cool concepts by Intel and a lot of product releases by OEM's. What was most interesting was what Intel had to say. First they made some new regulations like you have to have "all day battery life" and every ultrabook has to have a touch screen for Windows 8. All of this screams good to the consumer and boo ho for the big companies. Also they showed off this thing they called Project North (pictured above) which has 1) A detachable tablet powered by an ULV Haswell processor and 2) A bezel that comes out of nowhere when you are in tablet mode for better touch screen capabilities. A concept like this they said will cost... $799 - $899. Considering that ultrabooks that were smaller, had no touch screens, and no Haswell (Haswell has superior gaming performance without discrete graphics and superior battery life due to lower TDP) this means Apple will get a BIG run for their money. This is what Intel has been wanting as we have seen them moving more into the Wintel partnership and abandoning Apple. It will be noted that this particular product will never make it mainstream but something similar might from a different company. So what does this really mean for the consumer? Windows 8 will be "forced upon you" in the point that laptops will have Windows 8 on them and you will be forced to learn the OS. Personally I love the OS but then a lot of people like Windows 7. Heck, I know people still loving XP! So this means you will have shiny new fast thin ultrabooks that will leave the first and second generation ultrabooks in the dust. For Apple who really look like they are having their worst year ever. I mean their stock price dropped over $200 and iPhone5 sales have been low. It looks like the people may have spoken and possibly for the Penguin fans it could be the year of the Linux desktop!

The History of the Smartphone

     The smartphone has slowly evolved from clunky interfaces, fat, slow pen enabled phones to slick, fast, slim super phones powered by apps. Originally the smartphone was created to act as a PC and have the portability of a phone. Originally the smartphone was a niche product and picked up by very few until today where the smartphone today has become a status symbol. Many think that Apple was the main innovator of the modern smartphone and has the only viable product. Truthfully Nokia, Samsung, and RIM are the major innovators in this realm and two out of the three are in financial trouble. Come with me on a ride through history of where the first smartphone was born up to today where the market has truly been cultivated.

Conception

     

      The first batch of smartphones were not very small or light, but rather large and bulky. The IBM Simon pictured above was created in 1994. The earliest concept was introduced by a man named Theodore George "Ted" Paraskevos who birthed the early smartphone. Still we follow a very thin line of scattered concepts by various people until we get to the date 1992. The "Angler" by IBM was announced at the now discontinued COMDEX trade show. Two years later the Simon was released to the public in 1994. Of course the Simon phone would never compare to today's smartphones or even some feature phones, but at the time it was in a class of its own. It could send and receive faxes, e-mails, and pages thanks to a stylus guided touch screen. Of course it did not have a fancy 720p HD screen or a Clearback AMOLED screen like most flagship smartphones today, but at the time the monochrome back lit LCD was revolutionary enough. It had a fold out keyboard and was powered by the Datalight ROM-DOS a.k.a Microsoft mobile Disk operating system. It wasn't wildly successful compared to current smartphones with a modest 50,000 units sold at killer prices on contract: $899. It weighed 1 lb 2 ounces which would be clearly unacceptable today for modern standards. Other things like an address book, calendar, world time clock, alarm clock, some predictive touch keyboards, and a few games. Via an upgrade you could even run 3rd party apps! The bummer was only 1 3rd party app was ever developed called Dispatchlt which ran for $300. Of course the price would be so outdated today and now would be at the most $8.00. This may not have been wildly popular, but it was a revolution that has set the standard for the modern smartphone. Next came along Finnish phone giant Nokia with the Nokia 9000 as part of the communicator line. Compared to the Simon the 9000 was more powerful and lighter at 14 ounces. Thus began the evolvement and creation of the smartphone line. Still the majority of the populous did not want these phones because they could do even more tasks with their PDAs. Finally the first phone to be marketed as a smartphone was the Ericsson R3880.
 

     The True Early Years

     Now with a phone on a real smartphone OS the market expanded to include other competing OS like WebOS and Windows CE/Mobile. I can't truly cover every single smartphone, but I can cover the OS that have come over the years and their biggest phones. 

Blackberry

• Originally created in 1999 for the Blackberry pager. 
• Soon took off as a big player in the smartphone race when at once was the "smartphone to get." 
• Now is struggling in 3rd place with 9% market share.
• Biggest market is now Enterprise and government due to unique protected calling feature. 

     

Windows Mobile

• Originally made in 1990 to run on "pocket pcs' a.k.a Windows CE
• Windows Mobile 6 was released around the time of the Iphone 3GS 
• was later replaced by Windows Phone 7 with a new store and a totally new look
• At its highest point in 2007 it had a commanding 42% marketshare

Windows Phone 7+

• Announced in Spain at Mobile World Congress in 2010
• Was meant to replace Windows Mobile 6 but was not compatible with existing phones
• has a measly 3.5% marketshare according to IDC
• has Office apps unlike any other platform which are going to be updated with Office 15

 

iOS 

• announced in 2007 as Iphone OS
• was not released with any 3rd party apps
• homescreen is called Springboard
• 1 a year the OS is updated via OTA update
• 12.4% of all mobile users (smartphones and feature phones) have an Iphone.

Android

• Android OS is a linux based Open Source OS headed by Google
• First Android phone was sold in October 2008 
• Android Inc was originally founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin and was bought by Google in 2005
• Android is the largest mobile OS with 48% marketshare and over 400 million devices
• One biggest problem for Android phones is the update system with over 55% of users still on gingerbread. 

Web OS

• Also based on a linux kernel developed by Palm
• Originally launched in January 2009 on 3 phones by HP the Veer, Pre, and Pixi.
• April, 2010 HP bought webOS for 1.2 billion dollars
• Was originally launched with 18 apps in the store which grew to 10,000
• Current marketshare is 0.6% 

          

What is to happen?

       Well we have seen smartphones evolve from clunky phones referred to as bag phones with limited functions to insanely thin and light phones with high resolution cameras and speedy ARM based processors that can handle games desktops in the 90's couldn't. Nokia recently came out with the Lumia 920 and 820 which features wireless charging from Qi which debuted in the Samsung Droid Charge. The advent of the portrait keyboard is slowly dying as virtual keyboards get better and more advanced. For now the future is unknown, but inevitably things will be thinner, lighter, and more powerful. We just have to wait and see.

HTC comes back to their true love

      Well HTC has been in the Windows Phone bag from the beginning. One of the most popular was the HTC HD2 which could run Android and Windows Mobile side by side. Now HTC still makes the bulk of the Windows Phone and has 1 on every platform and considerably the only Windows Phones on Sprint and Verizon. Still they have not really based all of their hopes on Windows Phone like Nokia did which means they have also expanded their growing Android phones with things like 720p 3D screens, 3D cameras, 16mp cameras, the HTC One series Image chip, and the cool kickstand found on a lot of their phones. Now HTC has gone out and released two out of the three phones they promised The Verge for Windows Phone on three of the major four networks which is rarely done and is reserved for high quality phones like the Samsung Galaxy 3 or the Iphone. So lets look at these carrier trotting phones with looks that are shockingly similar to Nokia and Sony counterparts. 

HTC 8X

     

      So far we have seen the Samsung Ativ S and the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 been released for Windows Phone 8. As far as flagship phones go the Lumia 920 so far has been the most popular and the 8X is trying to change that. A lot of Nokia fans are already complaining about the similar look of the two phones. I admit they look pretty identical, but the HTC logo and the speaker and beats logo make them look a bit different. As far as specs wise there is not that much that differs mainly due to Windows Phone 8. RAM is 1 GB, has the same 1.5GHz dual core Snapdragon S4 processor, an 8 mp rear camera with LED flash, and the 3 WP 8 required soft keys. Other than the cool colors and the basics like LTE and NFC the similarities stop there. Sadly this flagship phone does not have the same 32 GB storage instead opting for 16 GB of storage. The camera is a lot like the HTC One series high end camera even with the Image chip that makes taking 1080p videos or 8 mp shots fluid and beautiful without the camera bump like the One X and S. What is very surprising is how they are touting a usually overlooked spec feature the front facing camera. I have never heard of a 2.1 mp front facing 1080p camera on a phone before that has a f2.0 aperture for taking wide shots and can reportedly fit 5 people into a shot comfortably. Next is the beats audio. So far HTC has withheld their classic beats branding for Windows Phone and left it to their high end Android phones. Truthfully beats headphones look better than they sound. Any audiophile will tell you that beats are just a bunch of hype and all that they do is turn up the bass not add any clarity or richness. What we have not seen in other beats enabled phones like the HTC One X or the highly popular HTC Rezound is the 2.5 watt amp. Now that means the sound will be loud and adding the beats audio will be great for some electric dub step. The next is the rear camera. It does not have the same high power flash or Carl Zeiss Optics and the fancy pureview floating camera of the Lumia 920, but it has a capable dual LED flash and an 8 mp camera with 1080p recording. Also they added the Image chip which can really process images in a second and beautifully too. Other than that not much else different than any other Windows Phone device.
UPDATE: Thanks to a WP dedicated website (sorry I forgot which one) we have seen what the HTC 8X can do in terms of audio. They played the wildly popular song Someone like you by Adele and not only did the song sound clear and beautiful it was louder than the surrounding noise and the reviewer trying to talk over it! This can really be good news for people who love to listen to music.

HTC 8S 

      
      Well of course we have all seen the HTC One series which has a top line, middle line, and bottom line device. They are X, S, and V. In the Windows Phone 8 case it is unknown, X, and S. How do we know? Well according to the Verge it was from high to low: Zenith, Accord, and Rio. The 8S is code named Rio and the 8X is code name Accord. Anyway that is off topic. The 8S has a different look with specs near Android low end to middle end specs. A dual core 1.0 GHz processor which is more than capable to run Windows Phone is at the core of the machine courtesy of Qualcomm powering a 4 inch 840 x 480 screen with gorilla glass. We have a 5 mp rear camera with AF and LED flash with 720p recording without the Image chip like in the 8X. If you have not already noticed we have beats audio, but there is no 2.5 watt amp which will probably deliver less than optimal sound. It is pretty light at 113 grams battery included which makes it great for small people (no offense). Overall it is a smaller, less powerful variant of the 8X much like the Lumia 920/820 combo. But we have 1 big design difference: the chin. Yes, we have a very odd looking chin on the bottom of the device which differs in color depending on what color you decide to get. I think it provides some very nice flair to it and differs from the usual boring hum drum designs of other smartphones. Even the Iphone 5 has a 2 tone back which is better than the norm. The catch is it oddly shares the design of the Sony Xperia U with the chin and squarish design.
 
I will be glad to overlook this little niggle with design because the 8S has  rounded edges. Still Sony (in a bit of financial troubles) could try to sue HTC over it so we better watch out.

I think that these phones can really help the Windows Phone 8 warhead along with Nokia's and Samsung's offerings.

  One of the best ultrabooks on the market.