PS3, e-readers and laptops: What we want for Black Friday
Tis the season for gadgets, and while Turkey day is Thursday, gadget gurus know Friday is the annual free-for-all for the Christmas season. What are some of the big presents under the tree this year? We ask Christina Warren from Mashable, and our own Iyaz Akhtar.
Guests:
Snow Leopard launches: Should you take the plunge?
It's launch day for Snow Leopard... and like we talked about yesterday, the $30 upgrade seems right. What's really worth noting? We bring in Christina Warren from Mashable, and Dave Altavilla from HotHardware to talk specifics. Who should upgrade, who should wait, and how to get the most from the cheapest OS upgrade we've seen in a while.
Guests:
Bing gains search share: Notable progress?
Microsoft is no stranger to wasting money on new products, but it looks like the combination of unique features and marketing muscle actually might have done something to prop up Bing. When the service launched, most tech pundits were extremely skeptical, since it's about the 5th major search launch for the company. Last month, Bing added 1% marketshare, which might not seem like much to most people, but compared to Google's monolithic 77% share of the market, any gain is somewhat impressive. Does it mean that the search engine is successful? Who's using what, and which parts of Bing do people avoid? We ask Christina Warren from DownloadSquad, and Jason Hiner from TechRepublic.
Guests:
iPhone 3GS launch day: Journos weigh in
We round out our day of coverage on the iPhone 3GS with two more journos' take on the device. First, Christina Warren from TUAW.com tells us that the reduced crowds might have actually played in Apple's favor, since they haven't seen as many emails and comments about activation issues. Marco Chiappetta from HotHardware headed down to his local store, and saw much of the same subdued environment echoed across the country. Christina is poised to pick up the phone once her upgrade pricing kicks in, but Marco still can't live without that physical keyboard.
What's your take? Are you going to take the plunge? Head to our new YouTube YourVoice page, and let us know what you think of the device, or leave a comment here.
Guests:
Internet outage hits Google, how to deal with the problem?
Waves of reality are rippling throughout the Internet. Whenever the monolithic Google is unavailable for a period of time, users feel like they're returned to a late 90's dark age where the rainbow logoed search giant hasn't yet achieved complete dominance... and they're not sure how to deal without the provided services. We talk to Josh Lowensohn of CNET, and Christina Warren of Download Squad about their Google-less backup plans. Josh points out the problem with this outage wasn't just the lack of access to Google, but any sites who had Google Analytics installed failed to properly load, causing a greater network effect of issues. Christina shared with us some of her backup plans for general outages, but also wondered if it wasn't smart for people with mission critical business operations to go it alone, or forge some sort of backup in case Google's big bad servers become unavailable.
Speaking of outages, one service notorious for downtime had some unplanned problems of its own yesterday. Twitter changed a setting which had users in an uproar, followed by some planned maintenance during the day, and then unplanned problems at night. We talk about the situation, and why despite the problems, Twitter seems to be doing just fine.
Are you a Twitter Qwitter? When will you give up on the service? Also, do you have backup plans in case of a Google outage? How do you deal with smaller outages, like local problems?
Twitter: Why is it popular, and where is it going?
It's no secret that Twitter is popular. A quick look at the race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN confirms the fact that Twitter has broken out from its geek status into something larger. But why? And more to the point, why do writers and journalists feel the love for all things Twitter? We ask web veterans Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marshallk), from ReadWriteWeb, and Christina Warren (@film_girl) from Download Squad. While no one can be certain, Marshall thinks it has something to do with Twitter's robust structure, which lets any developer with virtually any idea piggyback on top of the service and add their own unique twist. While the company is busy keeping the service growing through all the incoming users, outside developers are the ones adding all the new features. Christina feels similarly, but also thinks that once people get past the intial shock of using something that amounts to opt-in stalking, the users are prone to actually enjoy sharing events in each others lives.
What do you think? Why is Twitter so popular, and will people still gravitate toward it even with bigger players in the space like Facebook and MySpace?