Category: web services

  • Looking for the best Google Reader replacement, don’t forget the plumbing

    Google is shutting down Google Reader, its RSS feed collector, in July. Google’s bare bones reader web site was never the greatest way to actually read your RSS feeds, automatically updated collections of all your blog post subscriptions. There were plenty of alternatives for that function — I was using Reeder on my iPad and…

  • iPad, Nexus, Kindle Fire – which tablet should I buy?

    What a crazy time to be shopping for a tablet computer. There are so many, many choices. Which tablet should you buy? I have some advice — and please give me your intelligent feedback in the comments section below — on the biggest sellers, all of which I have personally used: Apple’s iPad line, Google’s…

  • Online storage prices come down slowly — Apple still the max

    Drastic price cutting has hit the online storage space, or so you may read. But, unfortunately, most of the price cutting is for big time corporate users not us little guys. Well, that’s not completely true. There have been some serious price cuts on online storage for us ordinary users since I last wrote about…

  • Great Google Voice apps for Android and freedom from cell phone plan tyranny

    Are you a big user of Google Voice like I am? Here’s my best advice about apps and some cool tips to use Google Voice with an Android phone. You can also use these apps to make calls from an Android tablet. One of the most important reasons I switched from an iPhone to Android…

  • Instapaper isn’t Instaworth it anymore – switching to Pocket

    I think I was one of the earliest fans of Marco Arment’s ingenious Instapaper service. I even wrote up a rave review back in March, 2009. This is the original thing that let you save long web articles to read later in your browser or on your phone or ereader. The amazing feature that first…

  • The great Google storage price hike of 2012

    (I wrote an updated discussion of online storage prices on December 18, 2012) The other day, I finally saw a unicorn crossing my lawn — no, not quite. Another almost as mythical a creature appeared on my computer, however: the Google Drive. It’s a long-rumored online storage space for any kind of digital files that…

  • Teenage wasteland? Defending the iPhone, dissing the Droid

    (As promised, here’s my teenage daughter’s rebuttal to my iPhone 4S whining. Added bonus: she threw in a rant against her brother’s Droid 4) iPhone world Listen to your favorite new song by that British boy band you and your friends have become recently obsessed with stream out of your pocket. Fumble around in your…

  • A Day in the Life: iPhone versus Nexus

    (People are wondering should I get the iPhone 4S or is the Galaxy Nexus better. Am I a man or am I a muppet, smartphone style. Everyone’s got their own needs and wants from their gadgets. Turns out, mine are best met by the Galaxy Nexus phone. The iPhone 4S? Tried it for a few…

  • Phone to Desktop Computing, Nexus style

    I got a little excited by some recent experiments of folks hooking their Galaxy Nexus phones to desktop computer set-ups: big monitor, speakers, full keyboard and track pad. Pretty sure that within a few years, we’ll have just one computing device in a phone form factor that can hook up to different size screens and…

  • Using iTunes Match to get rid of DRM-protected music

    Want to finally get rid of those low quality, DRM infested music tracks you bought from iTunes back before DRM free tracks arrived? Now you can. When the iTunes Store first opened for business back in 2003, all the music tracks were locked up with a digital rights management (or DRM) scheme called “Fairplay” to…