News

Amazon Just Launched a Way to Make Custom Alexa Skills (& It’s Super Easy to Use)

This morning, Amazon made Alexa Blueprints available. Alexa Blueprints is a website-based way of creating your own custom Alexa skills with custom questions and responses. From simple things like asking a specific question and having a pre-programmed answer repeated back to you, to templates (aka blueprints, get it?) that allow you to tell bedtime stories, play trivia games, help a houseguest find the remote or other items, etc. Each of these are super easy to make and are fill-in-the-blank templates for the most part. Now, because of this, they’re obviously not that advanced, but I could see how they could […]

Amazon Just Launched a Way to Make Custom Alexa Skills (& It’s Super Easy to Use) Read More »

Boosted Board Just Launched 4 New Electric Skateboards & They’re Better and Cheaper

Okay so today you might have seen the news already, but Boosted Board–who makes boosted boards the super popular, quite expensive, electric skateboards that people like Casey Neistat and other YouTubers ride–finally came out with an entirely new line of not one, but four boards. They sent one to Mr. Neistat, and he did a quick hands-on video with the help of another YouTuber named Marques Brownlee (MKBHD). Spoiler alert: he loves the new cheaper and smaller board that Boosted Board sent him. The thing is, he only talks about the lowest end model of Boosted Board’s lineup that was

Boosted Board Just Launched 4 New Electric Skateboards & They’re Better and Cheaper Read More »

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K Hands-On, Specs, Price, & Availability (Video)

Finally! Blackmagic Design released the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K that every Blackmagic user has been asking them for at every NAB Show since the original Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera was released back in 2013. If you’re not familiar with Blackmagic Design, you should be. Who is Blackmagic Design? I started using their Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6K (long name, even larger camera) when it came out in March of 2016 and was in love with it. Even to the point where I was bringing this giant camera with me to trade shows to use it to film all of my footage

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K Hands-On, Specs, Price, & Availability (Video) Read More »

Samsung’s “The Wall” TV & Their New 8K Upscaling TV (Video)

Here we go with another quick and dirty CES video for you guys. Samsung announced a couple of TVs that were interesting. The first, called The Wall, because it is the size of the average wall in an American household apparently, is a massive 146″ flat TV. It’s so big, that you can even make it display a wall with shelves and a decent sized TV on it if you wanted. It honestly wouldn’t fit in my NYC apt, but I think if you wanted to convert a one bedroom apt into a 2 bedroom you could probably use this

Samsung’s “The Wall” TV & Their New 8K Upscaling TV (Video) Read More »

Samsung Notebook 7 Spin, Notebook 9, and Notebook 9 Pen (Video)

Samsung showed off three new laptops today at CES. The Notebook 7 Spin, the Notebook 9, and the Notebook 9 Pen. Here’s what they’re all about. The first is the Notebook 7 Spin. It’s a 2-in-1 format with a 360 degree FHD 13.3″ screen. It’s Active Pen enabled but the pen is sold separately, has an 8th gen Intel i5 processor, 8GBs of RAM, and 256GBs of storage. It has a dedicated fingerprint scanner for Windows Hello and has a far-field mic for the Voice note application for meetings or lectures (and even supposedly removes keyboard sounds when you’re running

Samsung Notebook 7 Spin, Notebook 9, and Notebook 9 Pen (Video) Read More »

Razer Project Linda: Turn Your Razer Phone Into a Laptop (Video)

I’m here at CES and wanted to try and get some videos out for you guys of some of the stuff I’m being shown. This is a tech convention though, so please excuse the quick and dirty nature of these. First up, let’s talk about Razer. Razer, as is Razer fashion, had a new Project to unveil at CES. This time it’s called Project Linda and is a laptop dock for your Razer phone. Project Linda is based on the Razer Stealth design with the same length and width but is slightly thicker by a hair and definitely lighter (thanks to

Razer Project Linda: Turn Your Razer Phone Into a Laptop (Video) Read More »

Everything Announced By Google Today in an Bulleted, Easy-to-Read List

Another major tech event, another bulleted list for you guys so you don’t need to watch the full keynote. This time, we have Google and their Oct 4th event, the sequel event to where Google Home was announced along with the Pixel and Pixel XL. We already know a sequel to the Pixels are expected so here’s the specs for those as well as what else they announced today. Google Home Mini Smaller, mostly fabric disc version of the Google Home Tap to control 360 degree sound Coral Chalk and Charcoal colors $49 in the US, Available for Pre-Order Today

Everything Announced By Google Today in an Bulleted, Easy-to-Read List Read More »

Did Google Just Circumvent Apple’s iOS 11 New Anti Ad-Tracking?

Apple has implemented yet another feature in iOS 11 to disrupt advertising. This time, they have added a feature that stops third-party cookies from being stored on your device for more than 24 hours. What this means as a user is that those ads that are following you around about the shoes you looked at but didn’t buy will stop following you after those 24 hours. What it means for advertisers, is a whole lot of money being lost on their retargeting campaigns (often the most successful type of campaigns for a lot of eCommerce companies) and on being able

Did Google Just Circumvent Apple’s iOS 11 New Anti Ad-Tracking? Read More »

Why the FaceID Fail on Stage Wasn’t a FaceID Fail at All

I’m pretty sure everyone watching gringed slightly when Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said the words, “Now, unlocking it is as easy as looking at it and swiping up,” followed by a pause and, “…you know, let’s try that again…” and still nothing. For all the talk right before this live demo of how Face ID would be seamless and work instantly, is amazing, etc., it sure wasn’t in that moment. Federighi gets a tad visibly shaken at this point and goes to a backup device that ends up working just fine. The. Internet. Died. Some going

Why the FaceID Fail on Stage Wasn’t a FaceID Fail at All Read More »

Everything Announced at the Apple Event in an Easy-to-Skim, Bulleted List

A famous internet poet once said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that”. And Apple events are no exception. Most of us just want the specs, the names, the hard facts (and validation of all the leaks that already presented us with all that info), AMIRITE? Well, in an effort to save you guys some time today, I poured some coffee, loaded up Microsoft Edge (one of two browsers allowed to watch the Apple Live Stream for some odd reason, and the only reason I’ve opened it in a very long time), and settled in. Here are all the bullet points for

Everything Announced at the Apple Event in an Easy-to-Skim, Bulleted List Read More »

LG V30 First Look: The Creator’s Phone?

With last year’s G5 being aimed a bit more at the mid-market and going with the concept of mods the V20 launched about 6 months later became the go to LG phone for the higher-end audience last year. LG might have returned to making the G6 a flagship device earlier this year (and it’s a great phone in it’s own right, check out my review for that if you’re interested), but a lot of the V20 users from last year have been waiting for the V series successor instead. Well, that day has finally come and it could have been

LG V30 First Look: The Creator’s Phone? Read More »

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Hands-On (Video)

The Galaxy Note 8 was announced today, the latest in the high-end Note lineup of phones from Samsung and Samsung was kind enough to give me a little time with the device before launch so here’s a quick hands-on video of the phone in all its glory. First up, it’s easy to tell this device fits squarely into the same family as the new S8 and S8 Plus. We have the same, now unmistakable Infinity Edge display, slimmed aspect ratio, glass backing, and just overall design language. The screen is a 6.3″ Quad HD+ AMOLED display which makes the screen

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Hands-On (Video) Read More »

Google Announces Android Oreo During The Eclipse

During the Eclipse today, Google invited some people to the 14th Street Park in Chelsea to watch and mentioned “music, drinks and a surprise or two” in the invite. Turns out that surprise was a lot of Oreos. Which I was super excited about, of course, but turns out they were there for another reason. Introducing the newest version of Android: Android Oreo (and yes my first thought what does that Nabisco/Google deal look like? But I digress). Android Oreo Features The newest version of Android that has been floating around in beta for a while now being called Android

Google Announces Android Oreo During The Eclipse Read More »

iPhone 8 Model Hands-On & Feature Predictions

I don’t usually do rumors. But the iPhone 8 or X or whatever it’s going to be called has now just shown up in way too many places to be ignored. So I managed to get my hands on the dummy model of the leaked images etc. to see it for myself. As with any leak, take it with a grain of salt–just maybe slightly less salt considering how widespread this is, but still, served salted. If it is true though, there’s a few predictions we can make about the feature-set of the new phone. These aren’t facts, they’re just

iPhone 8 Model Hands-On & Feature Predictions Read More »

Samsung Finally Announces the T5 SSD, Their Fastest External SSD To Date

If you’re someone who works with video and need to be mobile, as well, you’ve no doubt heard of Samsung’s T series of SSD external hard-drives. A big favorite among content creators, the Samsung T3 is probably one of the fastest portable SSDs you could get. Transferring footage from your computer to it or vice versa would happen at a crazy 450mb/s. At that speed, I could essentially use it as a scratch drive and edit my 4.6K footage directly on it without having to transfer it off and I wouldn’t expect a single stutter. Turns out, the rumored successor

Samsung Finally Announces the T5 SSD, Their Fastest External SSD To Date Read More »