Back to School 2013: Part 1

I know, summer feels like it just started, but it’s time to send those darn kids back to school—LOL!

I took some time to compile ALL the hottest tech that both High School and College kids will want before going back to school this year. This year, it’s all about keeping all your devices charged no matter what happens, getting a killer laptop and the coolest backpack on the block to carry it in. Oh, and then keeping all that data backed up when that darn kid “somehow” drops their laptop and loses all their work!!

Stay charged anywhere and stay in touch!

The biggest challenge facing students is dead smartphone batteries! They’re using their phones all day long, but when parents want to get in touch, sorry Mom, dead battery.

To make sure that your children are always able to call no matter how many photos they’ve posted to Instagram that day, a portable backup charger is the key to making sure they don’t have an excuse and can charge their phone no matter where they are.

myCharge HUB

The MyCharge power packs are a great way to charge all of your devices on the go. The hub models actually have the charging cords for iPhone and Android devices built-in so you don’t have to worry about forgetting them. You can leave your cables and connectors behind—all you need is the Hub. Plus they’re light and small enough to just throw in a backpack. With the two built-in cables, plus the USB port you can use to connect to anything, you can actually charge up to 3 devices at a time!

The cost varies by the amount of charge time each model offers. There are a few different ones I’d recommend:

myCharge HUB9000, $106 on Amazon = 40 hours
myCharge HUB6000, $95 on Amazon = 27 hours
myCharge HUB3000, $77 on Amazon = 13 hours

Cocoon Backpacks

Central Park Sport Backpack – $63 on Amazon

These things are awesome. They have a padded laptop compartment that can fit up to a 17” laptop, plus they pack the supercool “GRID-IT” system inside. It’s an organizational system to keep all of your gear organized—pens, devices, cords, rulers, etc. Keeps everything safe and secure so stuff isn’t rolling all over your students pack. Even better is the stow away water resistant hood—that’s great if it starts to rain while you’re walking to class!

It also has a media pocket where you can store your media device, but still be able to listen to music. There’s a small hole for the headphones–pretty great to be able to jam out while hiking around campus.

Cocoon Slim Backpack – $79

The Slim is so great because it is compact. It can fit up to a 15” MacBook Pro, and fill it with a lot of other items and when it’s full it’s still only 3.5” deep. It also has the “GRID-IT” system in it to organize and keep all of your gear safe and secure in this little grid. The Slim Backpack is made of water resistant materials (including the zippers) to keep your gear dry while you are hiking or biking around campus. There’s even a compartment to fit an iPad.

Laptops Computers

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 Convertible Ultrabook – Price starts at $899.00

Convertible touchscreen laptop or tablet–the best of both worlds! Runs Windows 8. Flexible–folds into 4 separate display modes. Boots up quick and is lightweight. Great for presentations. Allows you to use both the keyboard and touch the screen. It is the best of all worlds! Perfect for a college student.

MacBook Air 13″ – $999.99 on Amazon

Yes, the MacBook Air is little bit more expensive than comparable Windows PCs. And yes, despite that fact, your child is still going to begging for one before they start high school or college this year. So get a good deal and take advantage of the Back-To-School sale on Amazon and snag the base-model 13″ Air for $100 off right now.

MacBook Airs are made of solid aluminum so they’ll stand up to the abuse students dish out, and the 13″ model sports an industry-leading 12+ hours of battery life. This is the laptop for the student who needs to power through an overnighter in the basement of the library cramming for an exam and then still take notes in class the next day, all without needed to find an outlet.

Speakers to Rock Your Dorm

SOL Republic Deck Speaker – $199.99 direct from SOL

This is the latest portable speaker from SOL Republic and Motorola. Great size to be able to throw in your backpack to take with you or to fit into that already cramped dorm room. Has a range of up to 300 feet. Heist mode allows you and your friends to pair as many as 5 devices at a time to it. It can only play one at a time, but if you hit play from another device it will automatically kick over to the next song! Has both an audio input and audio output so you don’t have to use a bluetooth device to use this.

Keep that data backed up!

You can’t give a teenager a computer and expect them to magically back up all their data on their own. They need to be reminded that when their laptop dies the night before a major paper is due (not IF, when, we’re talking about computers that get banged around in backpacks all day), a proper data backup will be their saving grace.

G-DRIVE mini – Starting at $129 on Amazon

Cloud storage is good for moving files around between the dorm and the computer lab, or making sure your child has the same files on their smartphone, tablet and laptop at all times. But to TRULY back up an entire computer, they’re going to need to back up every single file: not just their documents, but system data, their programs, etc. For that, they’ll need a suitable external drive that’s fast, too! The G-DRIVE mini may be more expensive than other drives that offer the same amount of storage, but no other drive offers a rugged, aluminum enclosure to protect that drive in your student’s backpack as well as both USB 3.0 ports and Firewire 800 ones to ensure the drive will operate at top speed on all Macs and PCs!

Even more gift ideas!

A great idea if you are looking for a gift for a graduate or just a little something to give for the first day of day of school is to give them an Apple iTunes Back to School card that they can use at the iTunes Store, the iBookstore, and the Mac App Store.

With Apple’s iPhone you have to hold down the home button for a few seconds to launch Siri, wait for her to wake up, and then talk. On the new Moto-X smartphone, the first device from the Google-Motorola partnership, Google Now is ALWAYS listening. You just say “OK Google Now” at any time, no need to press any buttons or anything, and it automatically starts following your commands! It works just the way you’d expect, even in the loud environment of a crowd! Check out the video above to see how it works.

Want to order a Moto X in one of hundreds of different color combinations? Click here for more info.

Check out the video above for my exclusive first look and hands-on with the new Google-Motorola collaboratively designed smartphone, the Moto X. For more info about how you can order a custom-designed Moto X in one of hundreds of different color combinations, click here.

On this weeks’ Top 3, I discuss Geraldo Rivera’s recent tweet, the Anthony Weiner scandal, and how the images we take and share via text or social media live forever. You gotta be careful!

(On mobile or having trouble seeing the video above? Try this link)

I also discuss the Yidio app for iPhone which is a one-stop shop to find out where a movie or TV show is streaming online. Rather than having to search Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney, the CW, and HBO all one-by-one, you can perform one search with Yidio and see also your different viewing options.

The hot new Sony W-series MP3 player I show off is waterproof, and has the MP3 player built-into the headphones so its perfect for anyone who’s active but hates having to carry around a separate MP3 player or their phone just to listen to music while active. Check it out online here.

Netflix shows were recently nominated for 14 Emmy awards, having spent $100 million on one of their premiere new shows, House of Cards. In total over the next 3 years, they will be spending more than $300 million on original programming.

On CNN, I talk to Wired’s Peter Rubin and Frank Sesno about how this new original programming on Netflix is affecting (and changing!) the business of television.

Earlier this week Geraldo Rivera Tweeted a near nude selfie stating that ’70 is the new 50’

Did he have a point? Yes, years ago a man who was 70 was thought to have one foot in the grave, but Geraldo looks pretty good for a guy who is 70.

Did he have to drop the towel so low to prove that? NO—that is TMI.

He has now provided the following explanation for his Tweet, stating, ”There I was, 2:30 in the morning on Sunday morning. You know, I do the show Saturday night, I did a great show on black-on-black crime and race relations and the Trayvon Martin fallout and federal charges … and I get home and there’s no one to talk to, everyone’s asleep. And you just sit around, I had a drink and, you know, I had taken that picture Saturday morning and I was looking at it, just going through and I said, ‘You know, I gotta tweet this thing. I look pretty good for a 70-year-old.’ And I think because I’m so old people will cut me some slack—they won’t take it too seriously. And I don’t know, I just pushed the trigger. And once you push the trigger, it’s just there for life.”

MY TIPS:

I think a great learning lesson with this and any other form of social media is don’t drink and text, facebook, or whatever your SM choice is. It’s the same warning from when we were younger—don’t drink and dial. You do not make clear-headed decisions when you drink and these days it’s not like a phone call that disappears when you hang up. These days all of these drunk or late night choices are up for grabs—on your permanent record, so to speak. Read More

Flipboard just announced that they’re taking their newest feature from version 2.0, the ability for anyone to create, curate and maintain magazines inside the app, and they’re bringing it to the web. Now, anyone with a recent web browser (IE9, Safari, Chrome and Firefox are all supported) can read Flipboard magazines straight from their browser. This is exciting news for me, since I’ve got four magazines I’m currently curating on Flipboard, including one with almost 22,000 subscribers!

But anyone can curate any kind of magazine they want on Flipboard, and with an easy-to-use widget you can add news stories to your magazines straight from your browser as well. But for the best Flipboard experience, I’d still recommend checking out the app, which is available for both Apple and Android devices.

Check out my magazines below, and be sure to subscribe to them on the web! Read More

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When the kids head back to school this fall, you want to be ready. And I don’t just mean that they’ve got cool new backpacks and killer sneakers to show off to their friends, I mean that you and your family are leveraging all the latest technology to make the next school year a safer and more organized one.

While it might feel like summer has just begun, that doesn’t mean it’s too soon to start getting ready. Here are three awesome pieces of tech your family needs to have set-up and be ready to use before this fall rolls around.

1. Shared Calendars

Once school starts, everyone’s schedules go nuts. You’re trying to figure out which parent is picking up which child, while balancing soccer practice and art class at the same time. As parents, you’re also trying to manage a chore regimen, schedule doctor’s appointments, make sure the pet gets to the vet on time, and you’re expected to do all of that efficiently without double booking anyone’s time.

Setting up an online shared calendar with your family is the perfect solution. That way the kids can log in and see their own schedules, so they’ll know when they’ve forgotten to clean the upstairs bathroom. For mom and dad, the transportation regimen is easily accessible so no child is left behind.

Plus, by taking advantage of the ability to access and update calendars from smartphones, everyone will always have the most up-to-date version of the family schedule no matter where they are. Read More

Social media has played a part in the George Zimmerman case almost since the beginning. Judge Debra Nelson ruled before the start of the trial that Trayvon Martin’s texts and social media statements, which included references to fights at school and marijuana, wouldn’t be allowed in opening statements.

Zimmerman’s defense team, meanwhile, has taken to social media to make his case. His attorneys have a Twitter account, @GZLegalCase, with updates straight from the Mark O’Mara Law Group about Zimmerman’s defense.

Through a related website, gzlegalcase.com, the attorneys are also blogging, fundraising for the defense and sharing documents and press releases related to the case.

Martin’s supporters are no strangers to social media, either. One Twitter hashtag that’s popped up is #J4TM, which stands for “Justice for Trayvon Martin.” Martin’s supporters are organizing Twitter parties and other gatherings around that hashtag to show their “unity, support, faith and love.”

Many tweets related to the defense use the hashtag #GeorgeZimmerman, while many of those specifically discussing Trayvon Martin use #Trayvon. Read More