Google Nexus 7

I got a notification that my Google Nexus 7 has been shipped as off the 13th of July which was pretty exciting since it was around 3:53 am and I don’t know why I was up at that time. I heard some people got notifications and some didn’t get it yet, but I got mine I stopped worrying, I thought they might pull an Apple and just cancel you for random reasons as usual. Now I can’t wait to get my hands on it, I got the 16GB version and with the hardware its packing, its going to be good.

Dropbox Expansion

I think I use Dropbox for almost everything, I store everything electronically that I can that is usefull like airline mileage cards, a copy of IDs, bookings in PDF, not including music, videos, and tv shows, and any other form of media that can be stored. A long time ago I go the Dropbox Pro plan which gave me 50 GB and then with the HTC One X they give you the an extra 24 GB, so I had a total of 74 GB. Then recently I got an update from Dropbox a few days ago that I got an upgrade to the account and its not 126 GB which is a pretty nice thing to see since its been a while since they updated their packages.

Then I setup a friend’s Samsung Galaxy SIII and I knew they had a package for Dropbox too and since he wasn’t using it I signed up through it and got a nice 48 GB bump to 174.75 GB. I do love Dropbox and now more space to abuse.

Asus Zenbook

I made the jump, it was out of stock for a while on Amazon and the other day it said In Stock so I hit the Add To Cart & then the Checkout button right away. It seems that the Zenbook has been an Amazon Exclusive because I couldn’t find it anywhere, and I specifically wanted these specifications. The only thing I’m going to do is do a clean install of Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate which I have without all the random junk installed for it to be even faster.

Specifications

• Intel Core i7-3517UM 1.7 GHz
• 4 GB SO-DIMM, 128 GB Solid-State Drive
• Backlit Keyboard
• 13.3-Inch IPS Full-HD LED Screen, Intel HD 4000 Graphics
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I will probably get my hands on it next week when both the Zenbook and Nexus 7 hit my mailbox.

There is no denying that I am a huge fan of Sonos, there products are in several places in my house, music on the go, different tunes to different rooms. The best part is that it is always working and the sound is beautiful. Recently I have needed to setup another unit, and the one that fit the best was the Sonos Play 3. I read some reviews on the quality of sound and for it’s size its packs a punch, and if you get two of them you can set them up for Stereo output so they are treated as one, not just grouping them together. Setting up a Sonos unit could not be any easier, take it out, plug it in, and then go to the Sonos Controller “Add A Sonos” then you click buttons on the unit and it is added to the system.

The Sonos system is the most flexible music medium out there, you can use any source from your iTunes, an HD filled with music, or an online resource like IHeartRadio, SiriusXM, Pandora, or Spotify. Multiple sources playing in different rooms at the same time all controlled through the software. The software got improved and simpler recently since it is probably the most confusing part but it isn’t too bad. But the software aside I was impressed with this unit.
Stream your entire music library, music services, and radio stationsControl wirelessly, easy to set up music playerStart with one music player, expand everywhereVersatile enough to put anywhere — horizontal or vertical3 driver HiFi speaker system

hey really try to pack good sounding parts into their hardware and the Sonos Play 3 is no different. It is a little bigger then I expected but I like the feel of it, the only major drawback for me was the price, its only $100 less then the Sonos Play 5 which is a powerhouse in comparison but still the sound is very rich for a unit of it’s size. Just don’t expect the bass to be that great at higher volumes, sort of falls short since it doesn’t have a dedicated sub-woofer like the Sonos Play 5.

Link: Sonos
Price: $300
Rating:

After seeking out his fellow Star Trek commanding officers in The Captains, William Shatner is back with another documentary, this time focused on the fans. From the trailer, William Shatner’s Get a Life! looks like an affectionate examination of Star Trek fandom and why the franchise has meant so much to so many.

For all the Star Trek Fans out there this is a must, I still have to watch Star Trek’s The Captains, just makes me feel good seeing Star Trek. Since Enterprise went offline it was the last Star Trek show since the movie from JJ Abrahsm in 2009, and there is just something that I love about Star Trek. William Shatner plans to explore it in this fun documentary, I love his sense of humor.

The RoboCop remake is still more than a year away, but the OmniCorp website has been revealed, and with it the megacorporations line of enforcement vehicles, including the not-so-trusty ED-209.

One more year and the Robocop remake will be out, I remember how much I loved the movie back in the 90s, I just hope the remake does it justice, and I really like that they went for the Omnicorp viral information first, you can see the original evil robot, I don’t know what to expect from this movie but I am excited.

The RC-2000 When Human Resources Meet Robotic Engineering – I like that, could this be the new Robocop?

Link: Omnicorp

I’m a Kuwaiti filmmaker currently getting my masters in filmmaking at Goldsmiths University in London. I’ve recently took part in the M&C Saatchi competition held for young filmmakers.

The competition is to have a 2 minute film completed and handed in in 48 hours. The challenge: each team was given a genre at the morning of the film race, a starting point and an end point. The tools: Motorola RAZR with no lights, tripod, etc. We decided to make a thriller parody and here is the result.

My hat goes off to Mohammed and his team, they did pretty damn good for what limited tools they and I hope they win, please support him by watching and liking the video. I am always happy that we have an increasing pool of talented people in Kuwait.

I loved Tron the movie, especially that the sound track was put together by Daft Punk, they couldn’t have found a better team to make the music for it. Tron revolves around lights, specific types of lights, and the way this timelapse is made looks like the lines drawn by Tron, a perfect fit.

Kuwait is probably one of the most active country on Social Media out of the whole Arab Region, we are always online posting the new thing or our experiences or whatever pops into our mind. I think Kuwait is one of the main countries that capitalizes on Social Media in terms of businesses. There are some business that sell only through Facebook, and they communicated through twitter as well, and now its Instagram. Its like watching the Migration pattern of a herd, really everyone is online. You know you can tell when Instagram for Android came along every body just migrated to Instagram, you iPhone people had it a while back but only when the Android version came along that everyone started using it so much.

First it was Facebook then Twitter came along, and now after Instagram is the big hit Twitter feels like an empty Wasteland. But since the 24 hour disappearing act that Instagram pulled it seems people were going through withdrawal, phones were being thrown at walls, they had to communicate like normal people again which scared them, some people were even back on Twitter for a bit, they felt cut off, no pictures to help them know what is going on, that burger that was so good, or what your friend is doing just that minute. But still I can’t blame people its a lot of fun, for a while Twitter felt like a huge hall with only a few people in it, you can hear the echo when you shout, people reply to you these days. I for one do enjoy Twitter and Instagram, still not on Facebook and don’t I will be getting on there, I dislike Zuckerberg too much, don’t know why but I just don’t trust him.

It’s really funny seeing people wait, these days you can see there fingers sliding upwards across their screen and I know 1000% that they are looking at Instagram and liking one picture after another. At the end of the day most of this social media is helping things in Kuwait and other areas as well, people finding things out quicker, information passed along more concisely but don’t lose touch of the normal world, pick up the phone and call, go see someone, it isn’t always about being online, disconnecting every once in a while is good.

Thanks to @ZainKuwait for setting up a very fun event, I haven’t been to much of any events because of timing and work, but because a lot of people I knew were going and people called up (Dude from 7ajiDude) I decided that I would pass by for a bit before having to take off. They really tied everyone together on this one, and they held it at a very nice venue, @ Al Hamra on the 55th floor, The Sky Lobby, so you get to meet friends and new people with a beautiful view. Every body from every type of social media was there from Bloggers, Tweeters, YouTubers, and Instagrammers, pretty much anyone and everyone that had to do with Social Media.

The amount of people I saw and wanted to catch up with was insane, I met up with the Android crew and we held up the back corner by Pick Yo while the events started. Literally I think everyone was there, I kept flying between people saying hello and catching up. There was a lot of Apple and Android banter going on but it was relatively friendly, lol. They were giving away prizes to people who were answering questions right and one of them ones who did was Jacqui, she original gadget queen.

The best part for me was catching up with a lot of people I have seen in a while all in one time, but it was a bit too short a time to catch up with everyone. The event setting was great, and I loved the seating, they really did a great job of setting the whole thing up. The catering was nothing short of fantastic, all by local businesses and very well done, there were literally many to list a few: Gelato Italiano, Rice Pudding Factory, Neqsa, Kiwi Bakery, Pick-Yo Frozen Yoghurt, The Pantry, Gathering, Al Foz Kitchen, Chocolateness, and Vinox Chocolatier. Those are just the few that I could remember and I was only there for an hour.

(Pictures Were Supplied By The Great Qortuba)

The best and first photo sharing site that came out was Flickr, everyone got on it and it really was a community of it’s own. Innovative and ahead of it’s game, everyone wanted a piece of it and they were courted by the Giants, surprisingly Yahoo got it at the end, I was hoping for Google at the time as they let services develop on their own to a degree, but when Yahoo got them I thought at least thats probably better then Microsoft, but it seems time has proven me very wrong.

I have linked below the excellent Gizmodo article on this matter and this describes it perfectly:

This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.

Link: Gizmodo

Flickr had so much going for it and it was community driven the first thing that yahoo did that annoyed the hell out of me was that you had to log in with your Yahoo ID to get into Flickr, why couldn’t they just keep it on their own. When Flickr was new it kept on giving us more and more features, and I was hoping when its backed by a big guy like Yahoo they would have the ability to develop cool tools faster ways to use the cool site. They were at the forefront of the mobile photography revolution, now everyone snaps pictures with their phones thanks to Apple’s high quality camera’s in the iPhones, you could see the trend from back then, but Flickr couldn’t take a major advantage of this because of Yahoo. Yahoo paid the founders a good chunk of change but for the company (Flickr) to get any funding from Yahoo they had to achieve milestones and those milestones had nothing to do with developing Flickr and more to do with it integrating into Flickr (Yahoo Login Crap). I couldn’t believe that they still don’t have a decent iOS or Android App for Flickr, they could have easily dominated Instagram, they had the community base going with excellent photographers, Flickr had and still has the social networking tools built into it that can bring it back around but now it feels like Flickr is trying to do what it does best but Yahoo is going down and taking all it’s companies with it. It hasn’t really changed much in the last few years, personally I still love it but I want more out of it. Damn you Yahoo!

Same story with Delicious, Yahoo bought them out and years later they were killed off, a simple cool site that Yahoo smothered.

Since jumping on to Twitter I started using the URL Shortening Services of BITLY just because it gives you some stats and easily integrates into twitter. That was pretty simple and straight forward, as of a few weeks ago they went ahead and refreshed their whole site with the same functionality but displayed in a better way. Now you can really track what is going on with your links and when they are getting clicking with the information being provided to you graphically as well as numerically.

The picture above displays the number of times your links were linked and the stats for the past 7 days. And you can keep going back for all the links you have used before, that is pretty useful to know what is going on with the links. Then below is something totally different then what I’m used to, the total number of clicks on links for the past month, which ones were direct links, and which ones were referrals. Then you have clicker based on location which is pretty cool. Overall I always liked Bitly because it was useful and now I love it even more for presenting this treasure of information in such a simple way.

Link: Bitly