After dropping my iPhone this weekend (and being rewarded with a shattered glass screen on both sides of the device) it’s nice to know there’s renewed interest in marketing mobile devices that are designed to withstand a lot of damage. They’re generally termed “rugged” devices, and NEC’s new Terrain is one of the toughest out there.

More specifically, the Terrain is geared toward anyone looking for an indestructible device they can take in the field (literally or metaphorically). It features a large QWERTY keyboard with big buttons: big enough that you could use them with gloves, for example, a Gorilla Glass screen, and a bulky rubberized design that trades sleekness for sturdiness.

It’s also designed to work with AT&T’s enhanced push-to-talk. There are any number of reason businesses might be interested in push-to-talk, but chief among them is speed: like the walkie-talkies push to talk evokes, the speed of communication is about as fast as possible. It’s certainly more reliable and consistent than SMS, and can even be used over wireless for better consistency. You can read more about the new Push-to-Talk from AT&T here, to see how PTT can work for your business.

The Terrain isn’t just a rugged phone: it has a lot of the features we expect from a new device, like 4G LTE service and a MicroSD card to expand on the 8GB of storage.

It’s only $99 with a 2 year agreement from AT&T. For more information, visit the AT&T website.

Earlier this week Apple made a whole bunch of announcement at their keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference (or WWDC). Most of the event was geared toward developers, so the focus was on software, but Tim Cook and company also revealed some hardware to get consumers excited. There’s a refresh of MacBook Air that’s already available in stores, plus promises of updates to the Mac Pro desktop, as well as the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme.

New MacBook Air
The big news here is that the MacBook Air has a new processor, called the Intel Haswell, that promises both superior performance and better battery life. Apple promises both the 11″ and 13″ models will now have “all day battery life.” What this means in practice is that the 11″ MacBook should get 9 hours of battery life, while the 13″ will get 12 hours. It remains to be seen just how well that works in practice, but even if battery life isn’t quite as-advertised, it will still be significant improvement over current models (compare 9 hour for the 11″ to the previous model’s 5 hours). The new processor will also load programs and graphics faster. The best part may be that the new MacBook Air is already shipping, starting at $999 for the 11″and $1,099 for the 13″ model.

 

New Mac Pro
This was really more of a preview of the new Mac Pro than an announcement. We still don’t have all the nitty-gritty on technical stats, though we can expect to see them this fall as part of Apple’s usual hardware-centric event. The Mac Pro is Apple’s high-end desktop, beloved by video editors, graphic designers and other power users, and it hasn’t seen an update in quite a while (at least by Apple product cycle standards). The Mac Pro has been shrunken down and redesigned, and even though it is a traditional “tower” in the sense of the desktop computer, it looks more like an external harddrive from a few years ago, or even a very space-age bucket. What we do know is that the design is a new way of dealing with the tremendous heat put out by desktop machines, a very real engineering issue, especially for very powerful computers. The Mac Pro promises to be just that, with an Intel Xeon CPU and dual GPUs, plus dual Thunderbolt 2.0, 802.11ac wireless, dual Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 1.4, and support for 4K displays. It’s a serious upgrade from the current Mac Pro, but we’ll have to wait to get pricing till later in the year.

 

AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule
The AirPort has a brand new look: tall and rectangular, at 4 inches by 6 inches. Apple says it has been completely redesigned, but what’s probably more important to power users is the 802.11ac Wi-Fi. 802.11ac Wi-Fi is also available in the new Time Capsule models, which will still sport 2TB or 3TB of storage space depending on the model you purchase. The 2TB Time Capsule will be $299 and the 3TB will be $399, while the new AirPort Extreme will cost $199. Both are already available from Apple.

 

 

We’ll be talking more in-depth about Apple’s announcements today, but for now here are the highlights from the keynote at the World wide Developer Conference:

New iOS7:
Apple announced a new operating system, iOS7, with a complete design overhaul. All of Apple’s apps, including Photos, Safari, weather, calendar and Game Center, have all been redesigned with a sleeker, more modern feel, including a new font choice (Helvetica) and completely updated color palette.

iOS7 also offers keychain storage through iCloud (which will communicate with OSX Mavericks), AirDrop, smarter multitasking, easier access to device settings, and the ability to update apps in the background. iTunes will now offer radio, a la Pandora or Spotify. Plus Siri’s got a new voice and some new search tricks. Activation Lock, a new security feature, will build on the ability to remotely erase your iPhone. Basically, if someone steals and wipes your iPhone, or you wipe it after it has been stolen, whoever has your phone will be unable to unlock the phone and activate it with new service unless they also know your Apple ID and password.

iOS7 was made available to developers today. Everyone else will have to wait until the fall, when it will presumably ship on new devices.

New MacBook Air
The new MacBook Air starts shipping now. Apple promises all-day battery life, improved CPU responsiveness from updated Haswell processors and much more affordable flash memory prices. 11″ models start at $999 with 128GB of flash storage, 13″ models at $1099 with 128GB of flash storage.

Read More

Collaboration and workflow when you or your coworkers are highly mobile can be tough: accessing documents and keeping them in a usable, standardized format still presents a challenge, especially when you start to have multiple users and multiple devices. The good news is that lots of big organizations have recognized the problem and going for solutions. AT&T recently announced their cloud-based document sharing system, AT&T Mobile Workplace, in an effort to address these exact accessibility and usability issues.

The basic idea behind Mobile Workplace is that anyone in your organization should be able able to access the same document anywhere and from any device. But it’s especially important to keep documents synced and current for the entire company so that no one is working from an old version or overwriting anyone else’s changes. Mobile Workplace’s cloud-based solution takes care of that, both as a desktop client and a mobile app.

Maybe the best feature though is actually just document editing, which can still be laborious or downright impossible on a mobile device. Mobile Workplace makes editing possible and streamlines the process. Plus once documents are synched, they can be edited offline and synched later once an internet connection is available – perfect for flights without WiFi or train rides.

Pricing starts at $6/month/user for the Basic package. There are also enhanced and premium services available depending on which features are right for your business; to learn more about AT&T Mobile Workplace visit the AT&T Small Business site.

A recent article on Quartz by Christopher Mims about Kickstarter brings up an interesting point about the present (and future) nature of Kickstarter projects: Kickstarter recently rejected a smartwatch project that was very similar to the Pebble, perhaps the most famous Kickstarter project ever. The Pebble, an iPhone-compatible smartwatch, raised over $10 million on the site, meaning that Kickstarter as a business made a good chunk of money too. In rejecting the Pebble analogue (called Boddie) Kickstarter is committing to a certain set of company values that aren’t money — at least in the short-term.

Boddie’s rejection can most easily be attributed to new standard for products: Kickstarter is no longer accepting gadget campaigns that only have a rendering as proof of concept. That makes sense, given how many fully-funded gadget projects failed to deliver to backers in a timely manner, or in some cases, failed to deliver at all. It was a source of a lot of online outrage and probably the first truly bad publicity to which the site has ever been subjected.

Read More

If you’re in the market for both a phone and a tablet, AT&T is offering a special bundle deal to help you save. When you buy the new Samsung Galaxy S4 you can also get the new Galaxy Tab 2 for only $199, $300 less than the non-contract price. Both devices require a 2 year activation agreement.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the upgraded version of the best-selling Samsung S3 phone, which really made consumers take notice of Android and was the first real competitor to the iPhone market. In fact, the S3 is the best-selling Android phone ever, and even outsold the iPhone during Q3 of 2012. So Samsung hasn’t made any huge changes with this device, just tweaks and improvements. The 5 inch screen is noticeably bigger and brighter than the S4, with intense colors and strong blacks. There are also improvements to the camera and faster and more powerful processor. If you’re a fan of the Galaxy S3, this is the smartphone for you.

The Galaxy Tab 2 is Samsung’s comparison to the S4 (think iPhone + iPad). There’s an inherent advantage in having consistency between two devices, especially if you’re interested in ease of use and efficiency, and it makes sense Samsung would like to get customers on their devices for as much of their mobile computing as possible. This 10″ tablet offers more screen real estate for almost no footprint: the device only weighs 1.3 pounds. For business use, that makes the Tab 2 a viable alternative to carrying a laptop on days where email or a presentation is the task at hand.

For more on the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Tab 2 bundle deal, or to buy, check out AT&T’s website.

We need your help! We’re asking our readers to take a quick survey for us so we can find out more about who you are. It’s only 10 questions and it’s multiple choice, so it won’t take you long. And when you finish the survey, you’ll automatically be entered to win a Sony Vaio T Series Touch Ultrabook. It’s a 13″ powerhouse of a laptop with touchscreen tech and Windows 8 built right in – a great all-purpose machine for business or personal use.

Want to win? Just go here and take a minute to answer our survey. We promise it’s fast and totally confidential.

It looks lik the “phablet” trend is here to stay, if the release of the new high-end LG Optimus G Pro is any indication. Designed to be a cross between a phone and a tablet (yes, that’s where phablet comes from), these phones offer extra screen real estate while still taking care of texts and calls.

The new LG Optimus G Pro boasts a 5.5 inch screen with 1080p resolution, perhaps the most important spec for anyone interested in a phablet as an on-the-go device. That puts the device itself at 3 inches wide, which is big, but still manageable in the hand.

This is essentially a phablet version of the well-reviewed Optimus G phone (the Pro is what designates the larger phablet size). That means the Pro still sport some of LG’s customized features for Android, like no-lag photos and QSlide apps, which are essentially quick-access widgets for notes, video and calendaring, including Mario favorite Evernote.

The phone and Android experience are solid, but it’s all about the screen. For anyone that plays a lot of games, watches or records a lot of video, or just feels like the keyboard on a normal smartphone is too small for their fingers, the LG Optimus G Pro’s size and speed are a great combo.

AT&T is offering the Optimus G Pro for $199 with a 2 year agreement. For more info, check out their website.