Cheap Tech Valentine's Day Gifts!

If you’re shopping for a partner this Valentine’s Day, it can be hard to find a gift that pushes the envelope and pulls at heartstrings. After all, nothing says, “I love you,” quite like an acne treatment kit. Right? No, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Lucky for you, here is a list of a bunch of random tech gifts that are both affordable and cute for Valentine's Day!

1. A Modern Mixtape


Give your special someone the gift of great music this holiday. This mixtape USB stick by SUCK UK is everything you loved about creating old-school mixtapes on cassette, but with the memory and convenience of a USB. What better way to give a gift than downloading music illegally on the internet, before giving these to your classy girl, if she even listens to music on her computer? Then again, if she has the MacBook with no USB type A ports, you might be out of luck ;)

2. High-Tech Jewelry


Ditch the expected gold necklace this Valentine’s Day and instead gift your partner a ring with some brains. Ringly smart rings sync to your mobile phone through Bluetooth and communicate notifications through vibrations and a discreet light on the side of the ring. Smart watches can be in the hundreds of dollars, so I find that this makes a very balanced middle ground for the people wanting separate vibrations for notifications, but not wanting a $300 smartwatch! Praise to being cheapskates!

4. Your Time


Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder must have been a masochist, because anyone who’s been in a long-distance relationship knows they require a crap load of effort and work! If miles and time separate you and your partner, dual timepieces help to ease at least one of those pain points by displaying both your and your partner’s time zone. Because video-chat requests that mistakenly come in the middle of the night don’t lead to the best conversations.

5. A Secret Message


Surprise your sweetheart with a secret message only you two know. QR code jewelry is a fun, creative way to show your special someone just how special he or she is. With QR codes, the millions of possibilities mean that you could send any message, or any link to any picture! Maybe you could even send her a link to your Facebook status that shows you've changed it to single!

6. A Cheesy Mug


If you’re looking for a simple, fun and light-hearted gift this Valentine’s Day, embrace the retro cheesy quote mug with a modern tech twist. After all, aren’t we all just HTML trying to find our CSS?

7. A Pen That’s Mightier Than...Other Pens

Kick your partner’s writing up a notch with one of Livescribe’s classy smartpens. The Sky automatically and wirelessly records and transfers your notes and audio to your Evernote account, while The Echo connects to your computer with a USB and transfers your interactive notes for easy use and safekeeping. Ain't that just dainty?!

8. Love Is In The Airwaves


Set the mood with your sweetheart using these portable, wireless Bluetooth speakers by Braven. Not only are they sleek and stylish and deliver 12-plus hours of play time, but they’re waterproof and have external USB charging for smartphones and other devices. So now you can cuddle together and play those lovely tunes that set the mood just right ;)

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Amazon Prime = Money Manipulation!

          Amazon Prime was always designed to lure members into spending more. New research suggests just how much more members are spending.
          Those who sign up for the retailer's free-shipping Prime program spend an average of $1,500 per year buying stuff on Amazon, according to a new report from Chicago-based market research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
          Amazon customers who aren't Prime members spend an average of $625 per year, CIRP found. Prime is creating loyal Amazon customers that increasingly look to Amazon before they go anywhere else. People aren't even going to the retail outlets. They're starting at Amazon. The researchers estimated that 40 million people in the U.S. have Prime memberships. Netflix, by comparison, said last week that it has 39 million subscribers in the U.S.
           Amazon doesn't release Prime membership figures, but the company said the day after Christmas that "more than 10 million new members worldwide tried Prime for the first time" during the holiday season.

           If CIRP's study is on target, it's no wonder that Amazon continues to pump so much money into Prime. The Prime program, which began in 2005, is now much more than free shipping. Among other perks, Prime members receive access to a catalog of streaming music, unlimited photo storage, and exclusive access to and discounts on some products. And the membership program appears to have no end in sight, and margins are more profitable since ever, since Amazon raised the price of membership last year by 25 percent, from $79. So even if Amazon loses a few dollars here and there from shipping, overall, they will make their money in the long run from the increased spending of its members.

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Long-Live the Minis!

Large phones have been the sh*t lately. Even girls with no pockets have started chartering along these behemoth devices. Hail the large displays. They have been the holy grail of our generation, and they are going nowhere, though they seem to have settled at 5.5 inches. Samsung has supported the phablet revolution since 2011 with their Note series lineup, but it wasn’t until 2.5 years ago that Apple jumped on board as well with their iPhone 6 Plus, and currently their iPhone 6s Plus. Each are rocking a 5.5” display, but are slightly unyielding to me due to the fact that they have super fat bezels compared to phones like the slim 5.5” LG G4.
          However, the air has started to circulate and change in temperature! Out with the new, back in with the old, as they say! Small phones are making a comeback! Sony, for some time, has had their 4.0” Sony Xperia Z Compact line, a very small phone lineup, as the name implies. Samsung has also taken part in the mini phone lineups, with the Samsung Galaxy SIII and S5 Minis. However, Apple has joined this movement as well, now, with the rumors of its upcoming iPhone 5SE.
             In my mind, using any tiny phone would be completely distasteful and nasty! Never mind using a tiny iPhone! Just NO!!!!!!!! But I do understand that some people want tiny phones. Some people, such as the tech-god Linus Sebastian, are doomed with tiny, minuscule hands, and must bend to that will to be able to live their sad, pitiful, daily lives out with minimal joint and hand pain. It is just the fact of life. God does not bless all. But why do I think the idea of an even smaller iPhone is a suicidal mess? Well, for one, it will be a repeat epidemic of the iPhone 5C, a cheap plastic iPhone that did pack good specs, but overall, for $50-$100 more, people were better off choosing the newest, latest and greatest model, the iPhone 5s, with its complementary fingerprint scanner and metal body that didn’t chip out from one tiny drop. However, it's not just the plastic I have problem with. As screen size grows, battery size increases at an exponential rate. This is due to the fact that a motherboard and camera module, as well as other bits such as volume rockers, charger ports, 3.5mm jacks, lock buttons, and silence switches take up space! But they only take up a finite amount of space in every device, leaving the rest to the battery. But if these components take up 10cm^2 of space, and we double the size of the iPhone, we suddenly have more space available for batteries, since the logic boards still only take up 10cm^2!
           So where a super tiny iPhone will go wrong is not just plastics, but also battery life, as these phones will just be too thin and too tiny to last long on such anorexic batteries!

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HTC To Return!

           For the most part, there has been a clear trend in the mobile space market share. Apple has continued to climb in market share with its iPhone, Samsung has slowly been slipping, and Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei and Xioami have taken rise to eat up the lost market share of the other phone companies. One of these companies sacrificing its customers has, for a long time, been HTC.

          HTC has come a long way in the history of the mobile phone, almost always on the bleeding edge! In 2007, HTC bought the mobile-device company Dopod International. Using this company, by the time 2009 rolled around, HTC was asked by Google to manufacture the first smartphone to run Android in the world, introducing the HTC Dream. By 2010, HTC introduced the first phone with a 1GHz processor, making even iPhone users drool over the speed, and in the same year, released the US's first 4G phone. By 2011, HTC was flying with the HTC Sensation, the first mobile phone in the world to feature an 8MP camera/1080p video recording, as well as a powerful first-of-its-kind dual core processor. In other words, another bleeding-edge phone. However, it was after this that HTC started to slip up, and Samsung and Google's new Nexus 4 (a more budge-friendly android phone), as well as the iPhone, started to eat away at HTC's market share.
         While many speculate why HTC was losing market share, I speculate that it was due to the fact that their phones were all constructed of plastic in contrast to the new iPhone 4 featuring glass and metal construction, but also, the battery life of HTC phones were unfortunately lower than many phones, as HTC was cramming very powerful hardware, such as 1080p cameras, higher-resolution displays (displays that suck nowadays but were great back then), 4G, and the fastest processors available, but the batteries were remaining relatively the same size. Thus, competitors such as Apple and Samsung's Galaxy series phones, such as the S3 and S4, beat it at its longevity game.
         HTC noticed their slipping situation, and decided to make a radical approach to their game. In 2013, HTC released the phone they believed would be the ONE to save them from turning broke; the HTC One. While this phone stopped their downfall for approximately 1 year, and won multiple awards from almost every tech news company as being the "Best phone of 2013" for its amazing solid-metal build quality, great cameras, and its extraordinary front-facing BoomSound speakers, unfortunately, it ultimately had little effect on the overall scheme of HTC's failure.
          Since 2013, all HTC has released has been exact clones of its HTC One (dubbed the One M8 and the One M9), with minimal changes to the aesthetics and poor cameras. They also released the HTC One A9, a complete ripoff on the iPhone's design.

          But while these haven't been successful devices, HTC is planning a turnaround this year, in 2016! They will release, or at least continue developing, HTC Vive, their amazing VR platform that is years ahead of Oculus. They are also planning for their new HTC One M10, which I'm currently hoping brings their One series back. They are also looking to make their third ever tablet, something the company has not been very successful at pushing thus far. However, most importantly for HTC's future is that Google is considering signing a contract with HTC to make two of the 2016 Nexus phones. The Nexus lineup is the lineup of phones that Google uses to release and showcase all of its newest Android features on, and typically sell well in the tech community, though not in high bulk like Apple or Samsung branded devices. However, the fact that a huge agreement for two new phones could be a huge turnaround for sinking HTC, and just the rejuvenation in their dying brand that they need!

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Sources: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/path-of-the-one-the-headline-hits-and-flagship-flops-from-htc-1236414/2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC

Saying goodbye to the 3.5mm jack? :(

         Apple is going to ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack on the iPhone. It's controversial. The 3.5mm jack does take up space internally, though. Space that, with new elements like the Taptic Engine added—and bezel potentially being removed at some point—is at a severe premium.
         It's also old. Over a century old. It's evolved to handle basic controls like play/pause and skip, and to support not only headphones but mics, scientific instruments, credit card readers and more. All without requiring accessory makers license the Lightning connector from Apple. But it's something extraneous. And if there's any pattern to be drawn from Apple's history of design, it's that anything extraneous is always in danger. If nothing else, Apple is relentlessly fearless when it comes to the future.
Do we need a 3.5mm jack for another century? Another decade? Another year? Lightning EarPods in the box and 3.5mm to Lightning adapters, with and without passthrough, could handle wired. Bluetooth—or something better—EarPods could handle wireless.
          We've been through similar transitions before. When Apple switched from the decade-old 30-pin Dock connector to Lightning in 2012, it caused a year or so of pain for those who had legacy 30-pin Dock cables and accessories. That was partly because of the high price of the adapters, partly because Apple failed to get the adapters into stores at launch. Three years later, though, and all that remains is a better connector, that takes up way less space than its traditional counterparts. Palm had 2.5mm headset jacks on some of their devices, requiring a 3.5mm adapter to work with conventional headphones. HTC ditched the headphone jack entirely on the Windows Mobile-powered Touch Pro and the Android-powered G1. The company's multifunction audio adapter, though, left much to be desired.
          Apple has the resources to explore and prototype anything. They also have the luxury of saying "no" to those experiments and prototypes repeatedly until the time is right to say "yes". They tested big screen phones for years before shipping the iPhones 6, and NFC before shipping Apple Pay.
It would shock me if Apple hadn't explored and prototyped iPhones without 3.5mm headset jacks—if they weren't bound by preconceptions of what might be lost but open to the possibilities of what might be gained. What wouldn't shock me is if Apple, at some point in the future, shipped one. Because that's always and only what it's ever about—the future.

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Drone Regulations: Lame, but Necessary

Drones are one of the hottest things in tech right now, but as well as being fun to play with they can be a menace to airports and a hindrance to firefighters. The rules around drone use are still being formed, but here's what you need to know.

1. Restrictions on flying
Every drone pilot must adhere to a few basic rules. Most important is the requirement to keep the drone below 400 feet, otherwise it can stray into controlled airspace and collide with a plane or helicopter. Don't fly a drone within 5 miles of any airport unless you have permission from air traffic control. National parks are also off-limits, as are sports stadiums on game days. Your drone must remain within sight at all times, and you must always give way to manned aviation if it comes close. More details are at the "Know Before You Fly" website and the and the FAA's drone website.

2. Making money
Flying a drone might give you all sorts of business ideas, but the FAA has a general restriction against using drones for commercial purposes. Businesses can apply for a "section 333" exemption, which more than a thousand operators have received, but you might need a lawyer to help you go this route. An alternative is to hire one of a growing number of licensed drone operators to perform whatever work you have in mind.

3. Consumer flight
Individuals face far fewer restrictions than businesses. Beyond the basic safety restrictions listed above, there aren't many rules yet for consumers. To get the most out of your drone, consider joining a local flying club, where you can meet other drone owners and deepen your knowledge of flying.

4. Registration
The FAA requires you to register a name and address in return for a number that you display on your drone. The scheme is intended to be simple, and as such it probably won't be very effective at stopping illegal flights. It will be mandatory, however, so keep an eye on the FAA website for details.

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