AT&T To Roll Out HD Voice in 2013

Posted on April 2, 2013 by

macrumors.com

Tired of poor audio quality on AT&T’s network? Well that could soon be a thing of the past as today AT&T’s VP Kris Rinne announced at the VentureBeat Mobile Summit, that the carrier plans on rolling out HD Voice coverage over their LTE network this year. HD Voice allows for high quality phone calls that often rival the sound quality of landline calls. No more would people automatically be able to tell that you were on a cell phone by the degraded audio quality and static that plagues cellular networks. Popular smartphones such as the iPhone 5 already support HD Voice, but carriers have been slow in implementing the service across their networks.

T-Mobile is way ahead of its competitors in its HD Voice roll out as the carrier already has nearly all of its network covered which allow consumers access to the highest quality cellular calls possible. Sprint and AT&T have both confirmed their HD Voice coverage will be fully operational by the end of 2013, while Verizon pledges to deliver the service by 2014.

Are you excited for HD Voice? Let me know in a comment!

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The Walking Dead… Survival Video Game?

Posted on January 4, 2013 by

So talk has been flying around the Internet as of late of a “Walking Dead” video game. It is said to be release later this year and will be created by Reality Games and published through Activision. The game will be based off of AMC’s hit television series, “The Walking Dead” and will be subtitled Survival Instinct. The hype surrounding this game skyrocket early last week when a supposed trailer was published on the Internet. It was later announced by the actual creators of the game that this trailer was not official and was in fact fan made using real leaked footage from the game. The “fake” trailer can be viewed here.

The game will serve as a prequel to the television series and will focus on the story of Daryl and Merle Dixon as they make their way across the Georgia country side.

Overall, the feel of the game based on this trailer does not necessarily thrill me. As a fan of the TV series, I feel like it deserves more attention from its creators. Hopefully when the game is actually released it will be more “robust” in both its graphics and gameplay departments. Here is one more fan teaser trailer for you guys just to give you a little bit more perspective on the game!

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An ‘iPhone Mini’ Could Launch Next Year

Posted on January 4, 2013 by
mobilemac.com

mobilemac.com

Apple has had a lot of success recently in the launching of the iPad Mini, a smaller less expensive version of the iPad. Could the iPhone be the next device to get a smaller more affordable sibling? Some analysts think so.

According to some of CNET’s sources, an iPhone Mini could launch as soon as June of this year with a price tag of $200 to $250. However the majority of analysts believe that Apple will not release a smaller iPhone until 2014, as a release this year would cut into iPhone 5 sales.  An iPhone Mini would likely have lower specs then the iPhone 5, but would be far more affordable for customers that are unwilling to spend over $600 on a smartphone. With heavy competition from Samsung’s upcoming smartphone the Galaxy S4, Apple is looking to increase their foot print in the smartphone market, the same as they did in the tablet market with the iPad Mini.

Would you buy an iPhone Mini? Let me know in a comment!

 

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Facebook Introduces Poke app

Posted on December 27, 2012 by

A few days ago Facebook released its 5th iOS app: Facebook Poke. The new app allows users to “poke” their friends with messages, pictures, and videos  that self-destruct after a certain period of time. Once the message is viewed for the amount of time set, it disappears and is not retrievable by either person.

This app clearly copies Snapchat, the original self-distructing picture messaging app that has become extremely popular in the past few months. Facebook is attempting to capture  the extremely lucrative market of young people that send hundreds of picture messages daily. In my opinion, Facebook is well positioned to compete with Snapchat. However Facebook has alot of catch up to do in order to make their new app as popular and as well liked as Snapchat.

How do you like Facebook Poke? Let me know in a comment!

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Netflix Goes Down on Christmas Eve

Posted on December 25, 2012 by
cnet.com

cnet.com

Its been a hectic last 24hours for everyone but especially for the movie streaming service Netflix, which experienced an outage on one of its busiest days of the year. Users trying to  watch movies on Christmas Eve began to have issues around 1pm pacific time when the site went down.

On Monday afternoon Netflix responded to customer complaints on Twitter with: ”We’re sorry for the Christmas Eve outage. Terrible timing! Engineers are working on it now.” The problem that caused the website to crash is as of now, unknown, but Netflix is promising to get to the bottom of it to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

As of about 9am Christmas morning Netflix was back up and running.

Were you affected by Netflix’s outage? Let me know in a comment!

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How to View and Send Videos On Snapchat

Posted on December 25, 2012 by
Image

elitedaily.com

As I reported on a few days ago here, Snapchat now allows users to send videos to each other. To send a video on iOS  simply follow these steps:

1. Launch Snapchat and sign in with your username and password.

2. Record a video by holding down the button that you’d normally press to take a picture.

3. Review your video and send it to your friends!

To view a video from your friends simply open it the same way you would open a photo.

Happy Snapchatting!

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Facebook Video Advertising in 2013

Posted on December 20, 2012 by

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If you are one of FaceBook’s 1 Billion users, than the chances are you have noticed the slow but steady increase of their advertising over the years. It began with subtle side banners that displayed content based on your specified interests. These were relatively harmless and seldom proved to convince anyone to buy a product. Soon enough this evolved to FaceBook allowing companies to have “promoted posts.” This simply meant that you could pay to put your post at the top of a certain percentage of FaceBook’s user’s newsfeed’s, for a price. The more you paid the more people your post would reach. Although I personally find it to be extremely obnoxious when I am forced to sift through useless posts from Sears about new tape dispensers. this too was relatively harmless.

The real problem is still yet to come. FaceBook is now planning to force us to watch video ads before we viewing the newsfeed. These ads will of course be based on what you have specified in your “interests” and “likes” tabs, and is meant to help bring in revenue to FaceBook to compensate for their slowly declining growth rate. FaceBook has realized that with over a billion costumers, their available market is slowly shrinking and they will be forced to find other ways to bring in the same profit margins, especially as a public company. Stock holders have to be appeased, but it seems as if this may be a step too far. What do you guys think about FaceBook advertising on your newfeed? Is a 15 second video too long for you to wait before viewing your newsfeed, or does this not really matter to you? Let me know in a comment!

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