For those still using Google Reader the cut off date is within a few weeks, Google will be pulling the plug. And Feedly has really stepped up, not just as an RSS Feeder but to do it even better then how Google did it. They are replacing what Google does for RSS Feeds, and they have created an open API so RSS Readers can connect to the Feedly cloud.

The Partners:

• Reeder
• Press
• Nextgen Reader
• Newsify
• gReader

Feedly is fast, and thats what I love about it, and they plan to make it even faster based on their recent expansions. They added more servers to make it even smoother, support for Windows 8 and Windows Phone, and other developments. The best part of the development is their ecosystem, there are a lot excellent Apps out there, but right now I’m loving the Feedly app on Android and online. But you can still use the Apps above to work with Feedly, and I think thats fantastic on their part. I have been on the Feedly forums and they have been intensely listening to users and adding features as fast as possible. If anything, Google Reader showed us that sometimes, someone besides Google does it better.

Simply put Sony annialated Microsoft on their launch, seriously, so many good things and they made fun of the XBox One’s DRM Crap. 80% of all games are launched on both machines, will the exclusive games push you to one or the other?

The Main Points of the PS4:

• $399
• Buy or Sell
• Don’t Need to be Online
• No kinect thats on all the time
• Region Free
• Indie Developers Liking
• Alot of Games at launch

The only reason I would buy the XBox One is for Halo, because even XBox live on XBox One is region locked, bad move on Microsoft. Even if they have the greatest exclusive games people will flock to PS4 because they made it a gaming machine. I think they forgot the main aspect of their success which is gaming, now they are looking at locking people in but I don’t think that would work. I was always buying XBox Games before if I had to to choose between the two, now it seems like I will be moving over to Sony’s camp. The first round of the big console wars has been lost by Microsoft, now lets see what they do when the device launches.

With the release of the Samsung S4 & HTC One, everyone was running to get their hands on it, true 4G Android Devices which honestly make the iPhone 5 look like crap and its going to have to do a lot more then just another hardware design to beat these two machines. HTC have been having a hard time getting things right with Android after Samsung took the lead as the best, but I honestly think they have a great device on their hands with the HTC One. The Samsung Galaxy S4 was a smart move by Samsung, the S3 was so successful that they just improved on it slightly in regards to the design and packed it with the best possible hardware they could put together.

There were a lot of comparison and technical reviews, but I wanted a real use review of both machines to see which fit better and for what use. I wanted to really try both phones and after almost a month of having them both I can honestly say there isn’t just one conclusion, it just depends what you want because they are both really good.

Wifi

It’s very important for a device to have a strong wifi signal capability, it has to capture it and use it. And out of all the Android brands out there, I can say that Samsung has that down, they pretty much have everyone beat. And sadly the worst out of the bunch is HTC, I had the problem with the HTC One X and with the HTC One it’s signal always weaker then the S4 and sometimes it can’t see the Access Points.

Screen

The Samsung S4 screen is huge, both screens are crisp and excellent touch interface. Honestly they are both excellent. If you want the bigger screen then the Samsung S4 is the way to go, but its a matter of preference. Both of them have amazing brightness and you can easily see them during day time.

Design

Honestly hands down the HTC One wins in this department, if Apple wants to copy anyone for their next phone then it would be the HTC One. The Samsung S4 is 80% the same as the S3 just bigger screen and an aluminum frame which I liked. The one benefit to the Samsung S4 is that it feels lighter then the HTC One, but still it looks better then the S4. One aspect that I like about the S4 is the ability to add the a MicroSD Card, that is a huge win for the S4 in my case. You don’t need that much space on your phones these days but having the ability to is a huge plus.

Above is the Samsung Galaxy S4 Shot & Below is the HTC One Shot

Camera

HTC has the Ultrapixel which is sort like a supercharged 4MP which performs better then most camera phones with higher Megapixels. The HTC has the machine gun shot which shoots multiple shots and you can choose the best or keep them all which is a great feature. The Galaxy S4 has an amazingly crisp camera, they improved on their best selling Galaxy S3. And they included all the features of the Galaxy Camera with all the different settings and mode. The HTC One has the low light shots done perfectly, this is one thing that HTC has had down. Between the two I preferred the S4 camera, but it’s just barely better. And hands down both better then Apple iPhone 5.

Above is the Samsung Galaxy S4 Shot & Below is the HTC One Shot

Battery

This takes a bit longer to figure out but both Android devices lasted a full day of abuse. Nonstop wifi use, making phone calls and sending messages, they could both take it. And I know over time I will get the Mophie battery case for the either phone, and its a matter of time the case comes out for the S4 since its selling like crazy as expected.

Interface & Feel

To be very honest you can go with either of them, this really comes down to preferences. I prefer the HTC One Sense Skin feel over the Samsung Touch Skin, since its less intrusive in this case. I always prefer getting phones from Google because its a clean installation and I can do as I please, but in this case I had to choose, and the HTC One was cleaner and crispier. I just get annoyed with Samsung trying to make things more watery with the TouchWiz Skin. Now for the Sound hands down the HTC One has amazing sound, by far much better then the S4 and it can easily blast music in a room, you wouldn’t think its a phone speaker.

What I don’t like about the Samsung S4

I really hate the keyboard, had to get the Swift Keyboard so my fingers don’t feel like they are stretching across the screen. It really made me feel like I was learning how to type for the first time. The speaker is loud but not crisp, I wish they put it up front. The air gestures aren’t really that useful, I only like the finger hover when in the gallery for a preview but the rest makes you look crazy when your staring at the screen trying to make things move, if you have an S4 you know exactly what I’m talking about.

What I don’t like about the HTC One

I hate the Blink Feed, wish there was a way to get rid of it since its taking a piece of the screen that I could use and you only have a limit of 4 screens. The Weak wifi signal is a breaker for me, I have to have good wifi on my phone.

Which One

Choosing between them is tough but I had two deciding factors which were the Wifi Signal and Camera, which in this case the S4 was the better choice even though I really like the HTC One design. I picked up the Samsung S4 LTE from Al Babtain and got the HTC One from a friend. Honestly Babtain did a great job of making the phone available all over Kuwait and quickly, the HTC One was like hunting an endangered species.

Recently my desktop has had a few hiccups but being almost 3 years old it has taken a beating. A lot of things I do myself and around the house revolves around the Lian Li machine which was repurposed from a Windows Home Server to a Heavy Weight Single Desktop use. With the launch of the new Intel Haswell Processors and a few interesting pieces of hardware I had laying around I decided to put this new machine together and also add some more gaming capability to it.

Hardware

• Thermaltake Urban S41
• Thermaltake 1500W
• Samsung 840 SSD 500 GB SATAIII
• Intel Core i7-4770
• Gigabyte Z87 LGA 1150 Dual LAN ATX
• Corsair 16 GB DDR3 1600Mhz Vengence
• Gigabyte AMD Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB GDDR5
• Digistar BlueRay Drive (Slot Loading)
• OCZ 128 GB SSD SataIII
• WD 3TB SataIII

For the software I want to dual boot both Windows 8 & Windows 7, honestly Windows 7 is amazing and does the job and extremely stable. I have one Windows 8 laptop with a touch screen, and for Windows 8 to work smoothly it has to be a Touch Screen integrated into it. So dual boot option looks like its something I’m contemplation at this point, but the first install is going to be Windows 7 at least. Then the Windows 8 install on the other SSD and W8 can handle the dual boot option on start up, but lets see how it develops.

Razer just announced a more 14inch Blade, we always picture gaming machines as heavy bricks attached to a big screen, thats as portable as it will get. But Razor has a different idea, they wanted a Gaming machine as powerful as desktop yet as mobile as a Mac Book Air, I like where these guys are going, they have the vigor that Alienware and Voodoo once had. I really feel the guys behind the Razer are true gamers and want a portable gaming machine, not something that weighs a ton and has to be plugged in to play.

“We tried to distill the very best reference points of the MacBook Air for our gaming laptop,” says Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, pointing out that the 0.66-inch thin model is thinner than the thickest point of Apple’s machine. Despite the thinness, it uses the same graphics card and an unspecified fourth-generation Intel processor at 37W TDP, with a matte 1600 x 900 screen and a multi-touch trackpad.

The company claims it will run Crysis 3 at 45 frames per second on average. It carries 8GB of RAM and a baseline of 128GB in solid-state storage, expandable to 256GB or 512GB, and you’ll find three USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI port on the sides. It promises six hours of battery life, which is far more life than one could expect from a larger gaming laptop, though that number might be a bit overzealous compared to real-world usage, but still not bad. The 14-inch Blade will start at a hefty $1,799, with pre-orders beginning June 3rd at midnight.

• Future 4th gen Intel Core processor (formerly codename Haswell)
• RAM 8GB onboard memory (DDR3L-1600MHz)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M (2GB GDDR5 VRAM, Optimus Technology)
• 14.0″ HD+ 16:9 Ratio, 1600×900, with LED backlight
• 256GB SATA III SSD

Price: Starting @ $1,799
Link: Razer

The signs are always there with Google, whenever the links to a product slowly start dropping from the main page you know that they aren’t a fan of it or giving it that much importance. Google Wave went because it didn’t work as a product, Google Buzz ruffled too many feathers even though I liked it, and then Google Reader was suddenly coming to an end. July 1st is the cut off date for Google Reader, I know these days a lot of people aren’t reading blogs as much but we still visit a lot of websites and my online dependency was on Google Reader to keep things organized. The announcement honestly shocked me so looking for an alternative was a scary idea, I got so comfortable with Google Reader I didn’t know if I would find an alternative. After doing a little research I went with Feedly and I’m very happy I did.

I tried Feedly a few years back and Google Reader at the time was more comprehensive and useful as an RSS Reader, but within those years they stopped the development of Google Reader, and Feedly is miles ahead. The integration is seamless, a very smooth and clean interface and I honestly like looking at it. It works on both Android & iOS, and its web based which is very simple, and moving onto there is extremely simple, just sign in.

What I Love About:

• Its Fast, really loads fast
• Multiple Layout Options, so you can see it anyway you want
• You can mark things read in different ways which works great
• Integrated with Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and most major social networking sites
• Works on desktop, iOS, & Android

Link: Feedly

A years late but never too late, Flickr has finally gotten a real make over, now it feels like Flickr loves pictures again. A lot of people have left Flickr, when it was the go to place for pictures in 2006/7/8 it fell back on the support for mobile use and totally disappeared with the rise of Instagram. Yahoo knows how to mess things up, I still hate using my yahoo ID to login, I’m trying to figure out a way to use my Google+ Sign In for that.

The phone App is very smooth, with uploads and edits/filters when uploading from your phone. Viewing pictures is smooth with a nice flow between contacts, people, and searching pictures. Its a vast difference then what it used to be to this current form and I’m really liking it, to the point that I have started using it again. You can easily comment and follow up on your activity on your phone, its great, for photographers this is much better for their pictures, Instagram has larger following but they were ahead of the game. Still if you liked Flickr before and hated that they went stagnant then you will love the much needed update of Flickr.

Link: Flickr

The new XBox One is here, Microsoft is referring to it as the new “Entertainment System”, people don’t realize that at the core of all this is gaming, we want to play games as well as have other features, gaming is the main feature, everything else is secondary. So Microsoft has to do a lot to live up to, but one thing I like is XBox Live and your Gold Account is going to carry over to the XBox One which is great, the functionality of XBox One is going to be the same with a mix of XBox 360 & Windows 8 so if your familiar with them you will be fine. They are trying to introduce more functionality with TV, Skype, and Internet Explorer, its ok but not key for me. I want to see if they will be releasing another Halo, now that would be Epic, even though I haven’t finished Halo 4 yet, I still have the rest of 2013 to do that. One surprise for me is that they have finally introduced a slot-loading BluRay player, I still buy BluRays but only of movies that I love, so I’m not sure how many people have BluRays when they have the option of streaming, still its a good option.

As far as installation, when you first insert a disc into the Xbox One, it’ll install the game to the hard drive — you won’t have to use the disc again. As for internet connectivity they haven’t given a clear picture, so I’m not sure if it has to have internet connectivity to keep playing the games, that wouldn’t be a wise decision if you have to have constant internet connectivity. I like the idea that you load the disc once and then you don’t have to use it to play the game. The controller is an update that I really like, they put a lot of thought into it and everyone keeps saying how great it is, so that is something I want to try. They new Kenict is a bit like the CIA’s dream it can hear and see you while the console is off, you can use gestures and voice commands to switch the XBox One on and go through its menus.

Annoyances:

• TV Features – Useless to anyone outside the US, and its not a settop box, I want a gaming machine
• Again not backwards compatible – I only have about 20 Games that I cherish, so what to do with them now?
• No Used Games, So I don’t know how thats going to work for rental companies now! Sometimes I want to try a game but don’t want to buy it, so whats the solution?
• New Kenict which is watching you all the time, not a feature I like, will probably point the Kinect to the TV, don’t like being watched!
• Gamers will have to connect the console regularly, possibly at least once a day, and game discs will be restricted to your Xbox profile if you use them on a second console

Both consoles promise to track your motions, power on instantly, and seamlessly update themselves in the background, among many other common features. Lets see how that works out, how many people have power up their XBox 360 or Playstation after a month of not touching to play a new game and end up having to perform a systems update for an hour or more so that you can play that new game. Honestly what I loved about the XBox was XBox Live, I could always play with friends across the globe, this time around I don’t know what they have planned.

Overall I’m honestly excited about the new console but they have to clarify a few points about the 2nd hand market and online connectivity. I’m the graphics will be phenomenal, and I want to see what games they have lined up, not sure what they are going to price it at, but I’m hoping it won’t pass the $400 mark.

Link: TheVerge

This might be a little too late, but still its the move that they needed to do for a while. If you have a Blackberry you can feel relative again, you won’t be alone anymore, thats if people join BBM again after joining the WhatsApp bandwagon. I like BBM and still until the end of its days, the hardware got a bit annoying and kept restarting with 15 min restarts. With the launch of the Q10 everyone seems interested in it again and they gave it a chance with the Z10 but Blackberry just doesn’t work with the Touch Screen alone, it needs the keyboard too thats why the Q10 looks interesting. BBM was always more organized and better then the all the other chat Apps in the beginning and maybe this move will bring them back, the one failure of Blackberry is the lack of Apps but we will see what happens when BBM is released, will people migrate back to BBM?

Link: Gizmodo

For the last couple of months I have been operating sort of blind with Instagram, mentioning people in posts doesn’t work anymore. I can only mention those who have commented or people’s names I remember when I’m replying to comments. Whenever I post a pic I have to remember people’s name id’s to get the right mention, even searching for them is a guessing game. I have reported the problem to Instagram, uninstalled the App and reinstalled it, signed out and back in, and still the problem is the same. I have tried it online and from an Android and Apple device, but the problem has persisted.

Even searching for people’s name doesn’t work, it goes for the general names first which you might end up with a hundred people instead of the person your are following or trying to mention. If feels like I’m back in the 90s again and I’m memorizing people’s phone numbers but now its the Instagram IDs. Has anyone else experienced this and had the issue resolved?