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“You took someone else’s Kindle Fire and got a brand new one out of it.”
Hey everyone, welcome to episode 18 of Yet Another Tech Show! Ant Pruitt here. We’re down one panelist this week as Mike Rothman is on vacay. So you only get the three of us this time around. Thank you all for your continued support of YATS. We enjoy the interactions with everyone on our social network platforms and each week in our live chatroom while we’re recording. Keep spreading the word and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes.
On to the show. . . .
My good friend Dennis Thompson donated his Kindle Fire tablet to me. I was so excited to get this device. Not for the Amazon ecosystem, but for the hardware capabilities. Recently the XDA developer forums published a JellyBean ROM for the Kindle Fire. After getting through a few challenges, my Kindle Fire was rooted and ROMed with Android 4.1. Now that it’s ROMed, I have curiosity about tablet apps, tablet keyboards, and other features. Larry was curious about getting speech to text dictation integration with an eReader.
Is it time to wake up each day and wear your favorite computer? Mat discussed the potential advancements in tech from Google’s project glass to other heads up displays found in the wild. What do you think of this potential? Today we have fitness apps that are tracking and sensing some bodily functions such as your pulse and pedometry. Even heart monitors are worn. The medical field can have a lot of advancement with wearable computers. Where does this fall for consumers?
What is Twitter? Is it a media company or a technology company? I personally think it’s a mess. But Mat points out he thinks it’s more of a platform than anything. Twitter has dealt with growth and changes over the recent years which affected the users as well as the development community. In my stream, Twitter is seen as a media company. Similar to being a virtual billboard. So many users promoting themselves or services. Yes, I may be guilty of this. Larry desires to have the tweets archived historically. Twitter has restrictions, but Gina Trapani’s ThinkUP project offers some sort of limitation. Check out ThinkUp here.
Larry discussed the issues of having just a decent internet connection that allows international connectivity. It’s truly lacking. Several factors range from Cuban government, technology, as well as funding. We pitched ideas on what we think could be done without penalty from the Cuban or US government. Even the idea of 4G is mentioned. Currently, the fast cell phone connection is 2G, although most of the cell phone users, according to Larry, aren’t on a available data plan. It’s not worth it. Larry wrote more about this here. Great read.
Well that’s YATS 18, folks! We thank you for your continued support. Keep spreading the word and joining us in our chatroom. Follow us in the social media on Google+, Twitter and Facebook. If you want to donate to our show, leave a note with your donation and we’ll read it on the air announcing you as a sponsor. Thanks, YATSsquadron!
