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Rants and Raves May 30, 2013
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Apple Decides to Kill Remaining Market for iPod Touch, a Rant in Two Parts

  Part 1. Dan’s Rant. I have long been a proponent and advocate of the iPod touch. Since it was first announced, I have owned and used each successive generation of the “iPhone without a phone” and currently have, and use, a 32GB current generation iPod touch. I love it. I love having tons of music [...]

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Rants and Raves May 21, 2013
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The iPhone Doldrums – I Think I’m Ready for Something Different

A bit less than two years ago, I excitedly drove to my nearby Verizon store to give up my Motorola Droid and jump ship over to an iPhone 4s. I was sure this would be a great match, and my days of smartphone-hopping were over. And they were, for quite a while. But over time [...]

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Rants and Raves May 15, 2013
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Brick and Mortar Stores Aren’t Enough, You Also Need Customer Service

This morning on the news, I heard a report of a retailer who has thus far been an online presence only. Now they are opening a brick and mortar store because they understand that customers like to see, touch and compare the actual products. Fortuitously, an experience I just had at Best Buy served as [...]

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Gaming, Rants and Raves April 30, 2013
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Pizza Hut Delivery Application Released on Xbox 360 … Really?

I recently saw an article from USA Today on a new “Create Your Pizza App” Xbox 360 app that lets users order food from Pizza Hut right from this game console. This free app includes the full Pizza Hut menu. The app caught my interest while the justification for the app was laughable to me. [...]

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Editorials, Health and Fitness, News, Rants and Raves April 25, 2013
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The Right and Wrong Way to Do Post-Disaster Fundraising

Saucony #BostonStrong Medallion

Much has been written about all of the amazing people who stepped up after the Boston Marathon bombings, as well as companies in the area that opened their doors for stranded runners and other impacted individuals. We have since seen both good and bad examples of those who claim to want to help. The obvious [...]

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Rants and Raves April 16, 2013
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EXCLUSIVE – The HTC First Facebook Phone Comes Up Last

I watched the Facebook Press Conference during which Facebook Home and the HTC First Android Phone with Facebook Home launched two weeks ago with a bit of amusement. I’m not a huge Facebook user, but my amusement really wasn’t just about my lack of being a Facebook fanatic at play; the idea of Facebook being [...]

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Rants and Raves April 4, 2013
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iTunes, the Cloud, and Forced New purchase Downloads

As more and more information storage moves into “the cloud” — that is to say, you aren’t necessarily storing all those movies, TV shows, books, and whatever else locally on your system, but pulling them in from the Internet at need instead, using other people’s storage instead of your own hardware — it’s interesting to [...]

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Rants and Raves March 22, 2013
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Google Reader and Google Keep, You Get What You Pay For

Google Reader and Google Keep are two different services, but when placed side by side they offer a cautionary tale for anyone using the web. There has been a good deal of chat among the Gear Diary team on our backchannel, and  Judie, Mike, Carly and I have been further discussing the demise of Reader [...]

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News, Quickies, Rants and Raves March 13, 2013
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SXSWi New York Times Talk on Gated Content

In which Doug attends a talk by New York Times reporter David Carr (above) on gated content at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) One of the talks that I had really been looking forward to at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)–as a contributor to an online site as I am–was David Carr’s talk, “Gates of [...]

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Rants and Raves February 23, 2013
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iPad mini Size vs Price – Which Drove Its Success?

The rumor mill is flying with word that a so-called ‘iPhone mini’ is on the way. Most suggestions have the new offering from Apple being mini in price but not necessarily mini in size. That’s too bad, since a smaller, lighter iPhone would actually make sense for someone like me who never leaves home without [...]

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Rants and Raves February 23, 2013
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Cablevision vs FiOS – Choosing Bundled Cable Options

We are finally getting close to moving into our new home, and of course my number one priority is getting the Internet up and running. There are two choices for our area, Cablevision or Verizon FiOS, and both are relatively similar. We had both at our old house, so we are fairly familiar with the [...]

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Rants and Raves February 21, 2013
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Amazon Kindle Paper White Commercial a Sign of the Times

  Amazon’s new Kindle Paper White commercial shows just how far we have come in a relatively short period of time. Allow me to offer a bit of personal background. A little over a decade ago, a debate raged within my religious movement regarding rabbis officiating at ceremonies celebrating same-sex couples. My position on it was clear, [...]

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Rants and Raves February 15, 2013
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Tesla Motors vs The New York Times

When something comes from a trusted news source, it carries a certain cachet; there’s an expectation of truth, integrity, and objectivity. The only time objectivity gets a pass is when something is entitled “opinion” or “editorial”, but reviews are always expected to be reasonably objective. So when The New York Times published John Broder’s scathing [...]

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Editorials, Rants and Raves January 27, 2013
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Cyberlink Ultra FAIL!

I’ve been working to recover from a major hard drive crash. Fortunately, I knew it was coming…those telltale crashes from nowhere and other glitchy warnings. I have what I thought was a pretty safe backup set up, and so I haven’t “lost” anything exactly. I got my backup drive up and running, but decided that [...]

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Rants and Raves January 22, 2013
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Attack of the CES Booth Bimbos

My apologies for the rather sexist title of this post. I tried to find something more “PC” but could not come up with anything that was even close in its accuracy when trying to describe the situation we ran into time and time again during CES 2013. As is so often the case at trade [...]

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