After some time enjoying my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, I have to say it is an awesome device. I absolutely love the direction Google is taking Android with Honeycomb and the various user interface changes. Having spent the last year or so using Android phones, the changes did take a little adjustment but once you understand the paradigm it works. It would be a lie if I said I was not enjoying the Tab a lot.
Now here’s the thing I am still hung up on – as awesome as the Tab is, and as much as I enjoy playing around with it, I fail to see where a tablet is a must have device. There is nothing that jumps out at me that says “THIS is why you need a tablet” and no real killer app that is a unique enough of an experience on the tablet to make me give up my laptop.
So far it has found a niche for me as a luxury, fun device. I use it to check email when lounging on the couch and surf the web occasionally. I read my Nook or Kindle books when my reader is not charged and play a few games on it as well. Pretty much anything I was already doing on my phone, but now on a bigger screen. That’s not to say it is bad – far from it. It’s just that everything I do on my tablet I can do on my phone, just without the awesome screen.
The difference for me between a tablet and a phone is that I personally consider a phone a must-have device. If you are out on the town what will you check to see show times or find directions? The phone. You sure ain’t going to carry around a 10-inch tablet without people thinking you are a bit odd.
I’d really like to use the Tab for more productive endeavors, but other than email and web I am still chained to the Macbook Pro for any serious work.
There are a couple of apps on the Tab though that do stand out above the rest in my opinion. – Gmail and TweetCaster HD (currently in beta). Both of these apps are optimized for the tablet screen and make excellent use of the the new user interface fragments introduced in the Android 3.0 software development kit.
Gmail on the Tab is an example of an excellent user experience. I’d even go as far to say it is a better Gmail experience than on the web or any other device. The layout, the flow of the interface, the simple design. It just works and is really well thought out.
TweetCaster HD has become my favorite Twitter app on the Tab. This of course is very subjective. You could ask five people with tablets which app is their favorite and you might get five different answers. But for me, TweetCaster HD is what I use on the Tab. The interface is very simple, it loads tweets quickly, and for any tweets that contain links it has a little preview box so you can get an idea if it is worth clicking through or not. A close second would be TweetComb which uses a different approach to the interface using multiple columns for tweets, mentions, lists etc. I used it for a bit but found I preferred TweetCaster HD.
One area I find the Tab shines is games. Not sure I’d personally ever want to play a hardcore arcade game on it due to the controls being weird, but for puzzle and strategy games it is great.
Plants vs Zombies (via Amazon’s app store) and Angry Birds have both eaten a lot of time and battery.
The game I been enjoying the hell out of the last few days is Grave Defense HD. It is your typical tower defense style game, with awesome graphics and sound, and a fun story. Some of the levels are pretty damn tough even on a low difficulty setting so it is addictive.
So do people need a tablet? Not really. Should they get one? If they have the means, then sure why not. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is awesome and it really raises the bar for Android tablets in the big battle with Apple which up until now have been getting smacked around pretty bad by the iPad and iPad 2.
Consider this a big escalation of the tablet wars. When it comes to hardware, the newest Android tablets are on par or exceed Apple’s offerings. But Apple has a huge leg up with not just quantity of tablet-specific apps, but the quality. Some of their iPad apps are polished to desktop-quality and unfortunately most Android apps are not there yet. It’s all about the apps. Give it time though.
What a great time to be a consumer and have so many great choices!
Cheers,
–Jon
For a few years now I have been fighting off the temptation to plunk down some cash for genetic testing from 23andMe, but every year they made it harder to resist.
I have seen the price come down time and time again. I almost pulled the trigger last year when it went down to $199 bucks. Then this year they finally got me – on DNA Day they had a special deal – the sample collection kit was FREE for the day with only money you pay is the shipping and a one year commitment to a subscription service that was 9 bucks a month.
So needless to say, the kit was ordered that day, I provided my spit that day and sent it back ASAP. According to their web site I have to wait 6 to 8 weeks for the results but I know some people who got it a lot sooner. So now I am just waiting for it with my curiosity burning away!
When I finally get the kit I will do a full review of the service along with plenty of pictures and screenshots.
Cheers,
–Jon
Spring is finally here even if by the colder than normal temperatures you wouldn’t know it. I started the year on a mission to completely change to a more healthy lifestyle.
So far so good. I eat a low carb diet (<30 grams of carbs) Sunday through Friday, and Saturday is my “cheat day” where I eat what I’d like and enjoy myself. For the most part Sunday through Friday I am eating no sugar products at all, staying away from starches and glutens and primarily eating a diet focused on healthy proteins and fats. Chicken, beef, turkey, eggs. For greens mostly spinach and broccoli. I also gave up on drinking calories – chocolate milk, mochas from Starbucks, etc. If I get thirsty now I reach for water or unsweetened iced tea or green tea. Here are some of the numbers so far:
Weight
January 1: 261.2
March 31: 212.4
Resting Heart Rate
January 1: 90bpm
March 31: 57bpm
BF (body fat percentage via bioelectrical impedance)
January 1: 34%
March 30: 20%
Fasting Blood Glucose levels
January 1: 110 (pre-type 2 no bueno)
March 31: 80 (healthy range)
VO2 Max (ml/kg/min)
January 12: 26
March 30: 48
Blood pressure is pretty consistently around 110/70 too both before and after.
Overall I am pleased with the metrics. Still have a LONG way to go and the pace of weight loss has been slowing down as of late. The next 25-30 pounds will be tough, but I am optimistic I can and will do it.
Hardest part is getting yourself into the mindset that not only is it the right thing to do but that you can actually do it. Once you get to that point mentally the rest falls into place. And once you see results, it becomes quite easy to stick to the routine.
Cheers,
–Jon
Over the last 7-8 months I have become a pretty hardcore Android fan. From the statistics I am most definitely not the only one. Not many platforms can claim 3,130% growth in a year!
I absolutely love the OS, the open nature of the platform, and the plethora of apps that have been coming out for it in recent months. As the platform has matured and gained market share (and along with it development resources and investment dollars) the quality and usefulness of applications has really improved as well.
One of my new favorite apps is doubleTwist. doubleTwist is a free media player for Android that I’d rank as one of the better ones. There is also a desktop version I use on my Mac that is basically an iTunes replacement that is currently free, though if you like it you can donate to the developers.
An optional but VERY cool addon app that they sell for Android called AirSync expands the functionality of doubleTwist to allow wireless syncing over wifi. It is currently on the Android market for $4.99 and is a real gem. I absolutely recommend it as it is really useful and at $4.99 it is hard to beat the value. Never hurts to support an excellent developer who does great work either 🙂
Installing the client on my Mac was painless and I have it set to use the same location as iTunes for the library. So if I buy a song on iTunes or on Amazon it is available to either application seamlessly.
Once I installed the doubleTwist player and AirSync on my HTC G2, the first thing it does is gives me a passcode. This passcode is entered into the doubleTwist application on my Mac to pair up them up so that they may sync over my WiFi network.
So far, so good. All very easy. Next I created a simple test playlist, AirSync Test. For my test I selected only the AirSync Test playlist, and pressed sync and boom. Over a fast WiFi connection it synced my four test songs in a couple of seconds. The playlist and songs were now identical on both my Android phone and my Mac laptop.
You can also set this to be automatic as well so that anytime your computer is running doubleTwist and your phone connects to the same WiFi subnet they will check in with each other and will sync up automatically. Unless you have a lot of space on your device you will probably want to specify specific playlists for it to sync otherwise by default it will try to sync it ALL.
One thing to note – while doubleTwist can play files encoded in both MP3 and Apple’s AAC, it won’t play the .m4p files from iTunes, only the .m4a files. The .m4p file extension is for songs still protected with Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management and can only be played within iTunes or Apple approved devices such as the iPod or iPhone. Thankfully, all music purchased on iTunes since March 2009 no longer has this restriction giving us the ability to play our music on other devices such as our Android phones.
I have been getting a lot of use out of this lately syncing tunes onto my phone for the car. Many new cars these days like my 2011 Honda Civic EXL come with a USB connector for use with media players.
At this point I simply connect the G2 to the cable on my phone, click the “turn on USB storage” button when prompted, then click the Aux button on the car’s stereo. Now I can play songs through the car’s stereo directly from my Android phone, navigate tracks, set volume etc via the steering wheel controls.
The only thing I have not quite figured out when using my Android phone with the car stereo is making track names show up on the display like they do when I use the iPod with the car. I am not sure if it is an issue with how files are set up on the phone’s USB storage or if it is something proprietary it happens to do with the iPod.
This is one of those projects I plan to research when I get some free time.
Cheers,
–Jon
It’s that time of year again – the first of the year when we all start out focused on our New Year’s resolutions usually only get derailed before January is through.
I am just as guilty as the next person of these lapses and unfortunately once I fall off the wagon it is hard for me to get back on if at all. Big difference this year though is that my life (or the quality there of) really depends on my follow-through this time.
This year I am trying yet again focused on a goal of not just losing weight, but becoming a much healthier, fit person. The number above (261.2) is my current weight as of today, January 1st 2011. I was kind of shocked when I weighed myself because as recently as this fall when I was making an effort to be more active and watching what I eat I was down to 230 or so. So I really let it go bad the past few months.
During in my senior year of high school back in 1992 I was at 180 pounds and much more fit due to playing ice hockey in multiple leagues, roller hockey, etc. I did not have a good diet but did have an eighteen year-old’s metabolism.
Now I am 37 but feel like I am 57. I have not been nearly as active as I would like to be or should be. I do not like the way I look and I am tired of feeling tired all the time.
So for this year the goal is to get down to my senior year weight of 180 or so along with a target of 12% or less BMI (I won’t mention what it is now because it is REALLY bad) and ultimately develop a healthier lifestyle that I will stick with.
Wish me luck! I will be posting more details on methods and progress as the year goes on.
Cheers,
–Jon