I am still amazed at what Roku offers

Every so often I take a quick look to see what I might be missing in my channel list. The Roku 3 that I have as an accessory in our TV room, is slowly becoming the primary device we use to access TV shows and movies. With the Sling TV app you also have the ability to stream live TV without having to have cable. Cutting the cord becomes that much easier with adding some of these features. The one bill I hate paying every month is the Comcast bill with triple play constant over $200 a month. So the question is can I create a budget from streaming Internet services that is less than what we are paying for the cable services.

From my calculations I can drop the cost down to about $130 to $150 per month. Compared to the cost of around $300 for the same basic options. So what am I going to lose? I think the two main things I will miss will be football in local news. However, if I stick up a high definition TV until I can probably pick most of that up over the air for free. 

So am I ready to make the big leap? As much as I would like to, I don't think I'm there quite yet. It may happen soon though!

Here's one for Ken

A couple of our guys are really into drones but Ken is the craziest. 

So Ken, this one is for you!

Google I/O: Google Photos

Built on these three key concepts:

• Home for your Photos and Videos - a safe and private place to store all of your photos and videos that is avaialble on any device
• Help you organize and access this media - the concept is to make an app that helps you organize and access your media so that you spend more time making more memories not on organizing old ones.
• Make it easy to share this media - sharing should be easy and simple. Receiving this information should be easy to access and use it on the other end.

Google Photos is available now from your iOS, Android or Web enabled platform. It provides free unlimited photo and video storage of compressed images up to 16 GB for photos and videos at 1080p. A lot of time was spent showing the automatic organization capabilities based upon time, facial recognition, and geolocation.

One of the demos showed the ability to pull out a baseball photo array by just typing in the work baseball. They continued on to demonstrate how you can easily select the group of photos and share them simply by holding down on the first image and dragging to the last image to select, and create a share link that you can send off to a friend or family member that they can have access to those photos. The recipient of that shared link had total access to those images and can do whatever they wanted with them on their own device.

One of things to remember is that all of photos that were being accessed or online and came up instantly as though they were on the device that you are working with. Was very quick and made a compelling reason to consider Google Photos as a great place to store all your photos and videos.

I am anxious to see how well and if this service will work with Adobe's LightRoom and if this will be a viable service to use as a secondary source for storing all of your images.

Google I/O: Now on Tap

Another new feature coming up in the soon to be release Android "M" operating system is "Now on Tap".  This will be a feature adding more context aware responses from your mobile device. So in their demo of the product, the question "what is his name?" was asked while a song was playing on the device and "Now on Tap" was able to put it together that the question was in reference to the currently playing media. It then displayed the information about the artist and provided a list of links referencing the artist. This shows that the new updated feature was able to provide a quick answer to question that wasn't specific so it had to be more intuitive about what you were probably asking for.

A second demo showed them looking at an email discussing going to a movie with the movie title listed in the message. By tapping and holding down the Home Button, the system knew that it was being asked a question, searched the message and then found the movie title in the message and brought information about the movie. What went on behind the scenes and what they are really demonstrating is Google's progress in "Natural Language Processing". Google's search is getting better able to determine what it is looking at, or better, what you are looking at, and interpreting all of the things that you might be asking from the presented information. It makes these functions more interactive, and again, more intuitive.

In another example showing "Now on Tap" responding with an actiion, They showed a message from their spouse asking about going out to dinner and a second message stating that they did not get the dry-cleaning. Pressing and holding down the Home Button again, "Now on Tap" presented two cards as a response. The first showed the name of the restaurant and buttons for navigating, calling, Yelp and Open Table so that you could make reservations, see how good the restaurant is, call them for a reservation or get directions on how to get there. The second card provided the ability to add a reminder to "Get the dry-cleaning".

In the fourth example, the context of the screen information was a discussion about Hugh Laurie. By just highlighting his name, "Now on Tap" was able to, without any other interaction, quickly lookup his name and provide more information about Hugh Laurie.

So what what Google was presenting is how responsive the system will be in providing information on the fly from the context of what you are viewing. If this works the way they were showing it, at the speed and responsiveness that they showed, this will truly be a very impressive new feature of the Android operating system.

Lenovo has a smartwatch, too!

Lenovo showed off a new smartwatch with a private screen that Lenovo says will give you a 20x increased perspective on the image being viewed. Because you have to hold the watch up to your eye to see it, it is naturally something that will normally only be done by the wearer. Termed "Magic View" Lenovo states that it solves the inherent problem found in smartwatches with their tiny screens.

Android Central say that the demo device was running an Android-based OS that was different to both Wear and Google's main mobile operating system. The second display is using optical reflection to achieve its display size and can be used for viewing larger images such as maps.

While your first thought might be of how silly it will look holding your wrist to your eye to get this increased view size, my biggest concern as I have stated in earlier articles are the idiots that will try to do this while they are driving. This road that we are going down with our mobile devices and our lack of control of when we use them is scaring me to death. I don't know what the answer is, but we need to come up with something.

Google I/O: Some of the new features that coming in the Android "M" operating system

In the keynote address, one of the things that was discussed was the new Android "M" opertating system and the six key feature updates that Google thinks we should be focused on. Their main direction with this upgrade was to "polish" the interface. 

First: App Permissions - they have simplified the range of items that are being addressed (location, camera, microphone, contacts, phone, SMS, calendar and sensor). They are also changing when you have to decide whether to grant the App permission to use a feature. It will now be addressed at the time of first access and not during the intial installation. They are also going to give us the ability to go into settings and access the App and add or subtract permissions as you see fit. You also will be able to look at a feature and see what Apps have access to it and add or subtract for there as well. Google expects the new App persmissions will help get the App up and running faster.

Second: This is more of a programming feature but Google is giving access to a new feature called Chrome Custom Tabs so that programmers will be able to take advantage of the Chrome browser capabilities without having to build in their own web browser in their app. This will decrease programming time and increase the security that is inherent in the Chrome browser.

Third: They are giving the App developer/program to provide a more complete linking experience. You won't need to continue to pick which App you want to use everytime you click on a link. They claim that this will give the enduser a more seamless experience.

Fourth: Android Pay - So it sounds like they are going to replace Google Pay with something called Android Pay. Their claim it that it is focused on three things: Simplicity, Security and Choice. So what does this mean? The process is as follows: unlock your phone and place it near the NFC terminal. That is all. A virtual card is created so your real card is not used with the terminal. Google is working closely with banks and retailers to achieve a more comprehensive solution. 

Fifth: Fingerprint - They are planning on increasing the use of fingerprint recognition with Android Pay as well as other Apps.

Sixth: Power Mangement - with the new "M" they are building in a smarter standby function to minimize power useage with up to 2x the battery useage. They are also promoting the new USB 3.0 format that will to decrease charge times by a fact of 5x. The "M" operating system will also give you the abiltiy to choose what the charging cable is doing for you, like, Charge or File Transfers etc... Ok.

Also highlighted were some editing feature changes as well as smarter data sharing. The smarter data sharing is based on your device being able to learn what Apps you use to share most often and to make them avaialble when you request sharing. Not a significant change but a nice one.

Lenovo to offer a media sharing device for $49

As direct competitiion to Chromecast, Roku Streaming Sticks and Amazon Firestick, this device offers a slightly wider choice of options for streaming from multimedia from your devices. It will have a bigger footprint than its competition, but still will plug into you TV's HDMI port to display the stream. It syncs up to your wireless network through either 2.5 or 5GHz networks. The device works with the same Google Cast standard that the Chromecast uses, it will also support Windoew 8.1 and iOS devices through Miracast and DLNA giving it more versatility.

It will display 1080O video to your TV and receive streams from up to 20 meters (65 feet). Just another interesting alternative out there to think about for connecting up your tablets, phones or pc's to your TV wirelessly. Expect deleveries to beging in August.

Amazon is now providing same day delivery in 14 Metropolitan Areas

Another great service for members of Amazon Prime (membership cost $99/year) now provides same day delivery in fourteen metropolitan areas across the US.  See this link to see if your area is included. Prime members in the the selected areas can now receive free same day service on qualifying orders over $35.00.

Just four key points:

• Order must be $35 or more in total
• You must be in a covered area
• The items that you in you order must all be qualified (look for the Prime FREE Same Day logo)
• You must order by noon (delivery by 9PM seven days a week)

Orders under $35 have a charge of $5.99 if you want them the same day. If you order after noon the item will come the next day for free.

Look out local brick and morter stores!