I’m thrilled to announce that I was just honored as one of the Top 10 Blacks in Technology here at South by Southwest.
The real honor, though, is to have been included in this amazing list of people who are being acknowledged alongside me tonight. My thanks go out to Get BiT for this recognition. Read More
I made a huge mistake this morning on the TODAY show and I said that Siri is on the New iPad. Unfortunately, it isn’t—the feature I was thinking of is the new voice dictation software that allows you to talk to your iPad and have it enter any text you speak. I was also thinking about how Apples iOS 5.1 version adds Japanese language support and that’s why I said “Konichiwa” :-)
Unfortunately, Matt Lauer and the crew has a strict one-strike-and-you’re-out policy, and Matt jokingly “fired” me from the TODAY show! Check out the clip below. UPDATE: Mario fights back!!! Not ready to give up his job quite yet, Mario is taking to Twitter and fighting back! Check out the latest updates on the TODAY show blog, allDAY.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
This morning I sat down with Al Roker, Matt Lauer, Ann Curry and Natalie Morales to talk about the new iPad on the TODAY show. In general I gotta say, I thought I did a great job. I went over all the features and explained why the new iPad is such a big deal.
Unfortunately, I also made a huge mistake. I said that Siri is on the new iPad. It isn’t—the feature I was thinking of voice dictation, which transcribes your voice and enters it as text. Usually the TODAY show is pretty cool, but Matt wasn’t too happy about the mistake and “fired” me from the show. But don’t worry, I’m fighting back everyone!! ;)
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I know this video is getting overshadowed by Matt “firing” me from the TODAY show, but I did a great segment this morning that wasn’t iPad related!
Matt and I were able to talk about ways to get organized an save money. Here’s some of the products and apps I mention, or you can just hit the video below.
– Neat Receipts. Helps you scan your receipts from your smartphone or computer to digitize and organize them.
– ShopSavvy. This is one of my all-time favorite apps, because it lets you scan barcodes in-store and see if you can find that item at a lower price somewhere else.
– GroceryIQ. This is a great website as well as an app that helps you keep track of your grocery spending but also syncs to your wife’s or family’s grocery shopping lists and automatically crosses items off their lists that you pick up!
– BillShrink.com. Bill shrink helps you lower your bills by comparing credit card interest rates, wireless bills, cable service, and help you pick the best plan to save the most money for your usage!
– Mint.com. Manage all of your your finances in one place! Put your mortgage info, banking and savings, credit cards. Set budgets that automatically monitor your spending, and then check your budget from your phone.
– GasBuddy.com. Gas Buddy uses thousands of reports from all over the country to help you find the cheapest gas.
– eRideShare.com. This website helps you find people to carpool with. How cool is that!
– Relay Rides. This is a unique service that let’s you lend your car to total strangers and get paid for it! Make up to $3000 a year renting your own car!
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Video conferencing is cool, but it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. I appeared on the TODAY show yesterday to give some quick tips about how to select the best equipment to be able to video chat with your friends and family in HD quality.
Here’s some of the software I talked about:
– Skype: Software that enables free video calls over the internet
– Video conferencing (3 or more people): Oovoo or Logitech’s Sightspeed.
And here are the video cameras I’m recommending:
– HD Video Camera: The Logitech C910 let’s you chat in high-def 720p, records higher-def 1080p video, has stereo mics for great sound, and costs $84.99. You can pick one up at Logitech.com
– Take it with you: The FREETALK Everyman Webcam is Skype-certified and you can take it with you anywhere. It’s on sale for $49.98 at ebuynow.
– Get it all: The faceVsion TouchCam N1 has a wide-angle lens that helps you crowd more people around the camera. You can pick one up for $89 directly from faceVsion.
Don’t forget about Facetime!
– All Apple products, including the iPad 2 and iPhone 4, include front-facing video cameras that let you quickly and easily video chat with friends and family using Apple’s amazing Facetime software.
Hangout on Google+
Google’s new social network, Google+, has a great feature called “hangouts” that lets you video chat for free up to 10 people. Think about using it for everything from wedding planning to a special family event. It’s perfect when you just need to connect to family members in different geographic locations!
And if you want to record and share videos, you can use one of my favorite new services, Socialcam. It’s a great and easy way to record videos on your mobile device and then share them instantly with your friends and family as well. Plus, you can follow me on Socialcam!
Every January, the entire tech industry meets up for one week in Las Vegas at an event called the International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES for short. Virtually every major or minor player in the tech game brings all of their latest technology to show off to over 150,000 people representing the press, industry analysts, buyers, retailers, and companies. This year marked my 9th consecutive visit to CES to wander the 1.861 million square foot show floor (that’s almost 33 football fields side-by-side!), where I got to see a ton of technology, from smart televisions to even smarter cars, tens of thousands of mobile devices and accessories, headphones, wireless everything, toys, tech demos, and just tons and tons of stuff in between.
While the experience of going to CES is unquestionably overwhelming, a few clear tech trends did emerge and I’m here to bring them to you today.
One clear tech trend is that we’re putting a bigger strain on the batteries of our devices than ever. While battery life has been increasing in recent years, our demands from our devices is quickly outpacing even the latest in battery tech. I personally used my iPhones (that’s right, I’ve got two and it still was barely enough!) nearly 24-7 during CES filming videos for Socialcam, taking pictures and notes on hot new products, sending email and responding to texts.
Some might point out that I don’t have the largest Twitter following amongst tech geeks, but with just shy of 10,000 followers today and growing by more than 500 a month, my Twitter base is strong. More importantly, they’re engaged. Numbers are good, but they’re only one metric of your success on the platform. Others would be: how many retweets do your posts get? Replies? And which of those are from top influencers and not, say, from Joe down the street with 45 followers?
I’d argue that numbers should your last concern when it comes to Twitter. Sure, they look good and visitors to your Twitter page are of course looking at those numbers to determine how “big” you are. But when it comes down to what’s most important, which is the value you’re getting out of twitter and the value you’re delivering to your followers, it doesn’t matter if you have 100,000 followers if you’re not engaging with them.
I don’t know it all, but I do have some tips I can share about how I use Twitter and where I consistently find the most value. Continue reading this post on AT&T’s Networking Exchange Blog to see my 5 tips.
The latest online banking scam is called “Gameover” and it’s an email that’s been making its way around in recent weeks.
The FBI even put out a warning to let people know what to watch out for. This recent scam doesn’t surprise me at all. It only takes these scanners to get .05% of people on email for it to be worth their time. And think how much easier it is today. I mean, I hardly ever go into a bank anymore. With online banking I can do almost everything, from checking my balance, transferring funds to paying my bills. And with hot new apps from banks like Chase, PNC and USAA I can even scan my checks with my phone and deposit them straight into my account.
But with all of these great new features rolling out across bank websites and apps, the security issue is becoming more important than ever. Read more over at @HLNtv.
Apple has always been a strong partner in education, and has been offering students and institutions discounts on its hardware for decades. At today’s announcement at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Apple announced how it will be taking its commitment to education a step further with several major advances in how textbooks are both produced, purchased, and read.
The bottom line is that traditional textbooks present several major problems for students, from high prices to heavy backpacks. You remember the back pain and the lack of value the book had when the semester was over? Digital publishing, however, has taken too long to spark the e-learning expectations in education. Yes, I know e-reading devices like Amazon’s Kindle have been around but paper textbooks are still the definitive resource for students. Read more at @HLNtv.