Archive for July 8, 2014

Sony Annouces Xperia C3… A Smartphone For Selfies…. Cue The End Of The World

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 8, 2014 by itnerd

This whole selfie craze has gotten out of hand in my opinion. Exhibit A is this announcement from Sony of their new smartphone, the Xperia C3:

“Xperia C3 is a unique new smartphone from Sony, created to offer the ultimate social sharing experience with a new powerful ‘PROselfie cam’. It also presents a combination of the best of Sony, with leading digital imaging technology and brilliant specs and performance all for a mid-range price” says Calum MacDougall, Director of Xperia Marketing at Sony Mobile Communications.

“The rise of selfies shows no signs of abating – its usage has increased by 17,000% since 2012 with the word officially being added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. We’re excited to offer SONY’s first ‘PROselfie Smartphone’ and play a part in this global phenomenon.”

For those of you who care about the specs, here’s what this phone is packing:

  • 5.5-inch 720p display
  • 8MP camera on the back
  • 5MP camera on the front with an 80 degree field of view to optimize your selfie
  • Built in apps to optimize your selfie habits
  • A quad-core 1.2GHz processor
  • 8GB internal storage with 1GB RAM
  • Android 4.4 KitKat
  • LTE with dual SIM capability

The phone is scheduled to start shipping in China this August. No word on when the rest of the planet descends further into selfie hell gets this phone. Below is a video that highlights the phone and many of its key features:

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YouTube Shaming ISPs That Have Poor Performance

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 8, 2014 by itnerd

Netfilx was the first to praise or shame ISPs when it comes to the ability to watch video via their ISP Speed Index. Now YouTube has joined the party. But they’re clearly just going the shame route when it comes to letting the world know how ISPs perform when watching video.

Let’s say that you’re watching the latest cat video and it’s kind of jerky or blurry. You might see the words “Experiencing interruptions?” on the bottom left of the video with the words “find out why” on the right. When you click “find out why” it takes you to this page which dishes the dirt on why you can’t watch the latest cat video with any decent amount of quality. What YouTube is basically doing is pushing you to complain to your ISP under the logic that if the ISP hears enough complaints, they’ll do something to resolve the situation. It also likely will highlight ISPs that are not playing nice with certain types of traffic. That’s great in theory. I am not sure that in practice that this will work. But it is worth watching if for no other reason to see if ISPs who are the targets of these messages do something to improve their performance when it comes to YouTube video, or if they call up a lawyer or two to go after Google. 

 

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Review: Rogers NextBox 3.0

Posted in Products with tags on July 8, 2014 by itnerd

As part of my migration of phone and Internet services to Rogers, I got an almost free Rogers NextBox 3.0 as part of the deal. So, what’s a NextBox 3.0? It’s a set top box made by Cisco Systems (it’s model 9865HD) that not only allows you access to Rogers Cable TV, but it’s a 1 TB PVR. That’s roughly 120 hours of storage. My old Rogers PVR (which was a Cisco Systems 8642HD) had 160GB of storage which worked out to about 19 hours or HD recording so the extra space is welcome. Compared to other Rogers PVRs, such as the original NextBox that this one replaced, it physically has a smaller footprint so it eats up less space in your audio/visual shelf. It also boots way faster. My old PVR took about 20 minutes to boot. This one takes about 5 minutes. That’s something I really appreciate.

One of the key features that the NextBox 3.0 has going for it is the fact that it has 8 tuners in it. That means that you can record 8 programs at the same time. Now I can never conceive of ever doing that, but the fact that I can record two or three things at the same time will keep myself and my wife happy as we won’t have to argue over what gets recorded again. In terms of the user interface on the NextBox 3.0, there does not appear to be many changes made to the Programming Guide. But everything is much faster. Changing channels is faster and navigating through the Programming Guide is faster as well. My last PVR had apps that were installed on it. This one has similar apps. Specifically weather, an app for my Rogers Home Phone that has call logs and controls for voice mail among other things, a search app, an app that shows different mixes of shows such as sports for example, and an app that allows me to subscribe to additional channels. Speaking of apps, you can program this PVR remotely from your smartphone using the Rogers Anyplace TV Home Edition app for iOS and Android so that you don’t miss the latest episode of True Blood.

Any downsides? Well, my old PVR had more connections such as an S-Video connection that are simply absent on the NextBox 3.0. That may not be a big deal if you connect it via HDMI (which is what I would recommend). But if you have some old school TV hardware, you’re going to be stuck with RCA jacks and the signal quality (or lack thereof) that they provide. There is also the omission of the AC outlet that was on my previous PVR. That was handy to power other audio/video equipment. But chances are unless you’re some sort of audio/video geek, none of that will matter to you.

The NextBox 3.0 is $500 to buy and $25.07  a month to rent from Rogers. Though if you’re renting an older Rogers PVR, you might be able to swap it out for a NextBox 3.0. Check out Rogers.com, your local Rogers retailer as well as Future Shop and Best Buy to get your hands on one.

 

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Teachers Ill Equipped To Teach Kids About Online Safety: AVG

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 8, 2014 by itnerd

If you rely on teachers to teach your kids about online safety, you might want to rethink that according to research provided by security company AVG.

The research, in which almost 1,800 teachers globally were interviewed, indicated a need to provide teachers with more support and training for educating children on the subject of online safety. Two thirds (64 per cent) of respondents agreed that schools should provide better training on using the Internet as an educational tool, and 77 per cent stated Internet safety should be a dedicated part of the education syllabus.

This highlights the concerning gap between the knowledge and capabilities of teachers and the expectations of parents. Though more than nine out of ten (92 per cent) teachers of a wide range of subjects confirmed they use Internet content in class and 69 per cent discuss online safety on an occasional or frequent basis, only one in four have actually had formal training to teach online safety skills (28 per cent)

This says that teachers need to be better prepared to deal with online safety. In the age of cyberbullying and other online threats, this training in my mind is not optional. Now that also means that parents have to step up and fill the gap. AVG can help with that as they have an interactive book called Magda & Mo which can help to provide you with useful tools to help develop your child’s understanding of how to make the right choices online, and give you as a parent practical guidance on this important topic.

AVG used an online survey to interview 1760 teachers of a variety of subjects with children between the aged of 3-18 to identify levels of training on security awareness in the following places:

  • Australia
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • Czech Republic
  • France
  • Germany
  • New Zealand
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

See where your country ranks and how concerned you should be.

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Hey IT Nerd! What’s Up With This Spectrum Auction?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 8, 2014 by itnerd

I got this question in my inbox late last night:

Hello IT Nerd. Why would the government go through the trouble of setting up a second spectrum auction that is heavily slanted towards the struggling wireless carriers in Canada? Will this attempt work? 

Thanks very much. 

Thanks for the question. The reason is simple. Efforts by the Canadian Government to lower cell phone prices in Canada have quite simply failed miserably. This is their last roll of the dice to do something that they’ve been promising for years before they have to go to the electorate in the second half of 2015. If they don’t solve this now, one of the opposition parties will call them on it.

Now will this roll of the dice work? I seriously doubt it. The problem is that they’re going about it wrong. This might sound familiar to frequent readers of this blog, but what the Canadian Government needs to do is convince a big telco like Vodafone, O2, Orange, or Deutsche Telekom (aka: T-Mobile) to come in and set up shop in Canada. That’s best done by changing the foreign ownership rules and offering incentives so that it makes sense from a dollars and cents perspective to set up shop. If that happens, the big three will drop prices so fast, you’ll suffer whiplash. That’s because a big foreign telco will actually force the big three to be competitive. I seriously doubt a fourth carrier that’s made in Canada so to speak can do the same thing.

Of course, I’m willing to be proven wrong. We’ll just have to wait until 2015 to see if I am or not.

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