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Founder of TheManly-Man.com

Windows Phone 8 Highlights

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Windows Phone 8 was officially unveiled today. Many people, myself included, are really looking forward to see what Microsoft has up it’s sleeve in this battle for the best mobile UI. Does Windows Phone 8 have enough to gain momentum against the entrenched Android and iOS platforms? This is by no means an exhaustive review, but just preliminary highlights.

I saw the entire keynote and a few things jumped out at me”

Data Sense
Though a little late to the party, this is a welcome addition to the mobile UI. It does exactly what you might think it does. It keeps track of your data usage for you so you know whether or not you can afford to give that thumbs up or no. However, it goes a step further by intelligently  compressing websites, as well as autmatically flagging and using existing wifi data connections. This is estimated to save about 45% of the data that could have been used according to Joe Belfiore.

Kids Corner
This allows the Windows Phone 8 owner to compartmentalize his or her phone so that only the apps they choose are accessible to the kids. They brought Jessica Alba out to demonstrate the usefulness. That said, I thought Dieter Bohn and Chris Ziegler made a good point over at The Verge when they said this might still be useful for people who don’t necessarily have kids when lending the phone to a friend.
Rooms

This is really the natural next step of the people hub on Windows Phone. Rooms is basically a more private group where you can share location, calendar events, etc… with your closest buddies. What I found interesting was that you can include people who are not necessarily Windows Phone users in this group and they can still receive updates. I’m not clear on what features won’t work across android or iOS devices though.

Skydrive

Skydrive was really interesting to watch in action because of two main points. First, they give you 7 Gigs to play with which is about 2 Gigs more than normal with these cloud services now-a-days. Second, it works in a similar fashion to when playing a game on a windows device. If on Xbox, you can pick up on your windows phone and vice-versa. The same with your work documents. You can continue working on presentations, and Word documents across the Windows Phone, PC, or Microsoft Tablet.

Wallet
This app allows you to pay via NFC, and store your credit information. It also spots local deals which can really come in handy for someone like me who is always on the go and can’t necessarily plan around a good deal on groupon. I really can’t wait to try this out for an extended period of time.

[ via theverge]

New Iron Man 3 Trailer Sneak Peak

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My main man Tony Starks is back in the house. There is a new sneak peak of a trailer online that you can see below. It’s only 17 seconds but there are a few interesting tidbits. There is a part where Tony seems to  be fighting more robots, but I suspect they are his own suits that he will be fighting. There’s a guy with a gun and a crumby haircut which we assume to be the bad guy, but I think he won’t be too important. He’s probably the right-hand man of the real bad guy. But these are just my guesses. Have a look and come to your own conclusions.

[via slashgear]

UPDATE!

Here is the full trailer. Movie comes out in April.

 

What Your Android Phone Needs is…Quantum Encryption!

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I had the chance to spend time with Chief Extraction Architect Steve Chao about the new technology that Detron is developing. He’s working on high-level encryption for the masses. This stuff is not connect the dots to open a file. We’re talking serious encryption that apparently is extremely difficult to break. It’s called QDK or Quantum Direct Key. It’s so secure that the claim is it hasn’t been broken yet…AT ALL. If you’d like to give it a try you can find the Code Challenge here.

I loved speaking with Steve, and what I got was that he is extremely passionate about the technology and extremely confident in it to boot. He explained that the encryption works with two keys. One public and one private. The private key is generated by some machine (Key Management Center) that is in some deserted place Mars somewhere in the boonies, and is never online. No one knows where it is while the other key is generated by the phone itself. Mr. Chao divulged in the interview below that a random number is used as a key and is generated by “thermal noise on the chip“ which is then used to open up an encrypted file. However, that number was encrypted as well so you would need to decrypt one key to decrypt the real key to decrypt the file! This sounds pretty tough to get around to me and should stop lower skilled baddies from even trying.

This technology will be fitted to the Defense phone that Detron is developing. It has a 4.3″ Sharp qHD screen, an aluminum frame, and a dual-core ARMv7 Cortex A9 1GHz CPU with 1Ghz of RAM. There will be a 16G and 32G option. With that said, I want one, and I want one NOW! The possibilities for secure transactions of all sorts via the cell phone or whatever medium file transfers exist is seemingly endless. I would definitely feel more secure using this technology while making online purchases, or reviewing sensitive documents online. This has huge implications for in-app purchases or apps like Square which allow credit card transactions via the cell phone or tablet. Once we get more time to review the phone we’ll have that up for you. In the mean-time check out the interview with Steve Chao below:

Emerging Technologies in the Gaming Space

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The NY Games Conference held by Digital Media Wire took place earlier in September, and I had a chance to chat with a few folks and look at emerging technologies at the conference.

Three items really stood out to me and I’ll talk about them briefly here. I’ve also included some video of my conversations with them.

Image Metrics (3D Technology Company):

I spoke with Robert Gehorsam who is the CEO of the company. They have a few products, some of which they couldn’t show us yet, because they were unreleased, that were really fascinating. I was extremely impressed with the performance of the technology that he showed me and you can take a look at the video below. In a nutshell, what sets the company apart is the fact that they can drive 3D renders of either avatars, or a 3D version of yourself extremely acurately, with almost any camera, on a mobile device.They’ve done work on such films as the Wolfman and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Spartacus Game:

I also caught up with David Katz, VP of Starz Digital Media as he talks about the gaming initiatives the company has undertaken surrounding their popular shows. Of course Starz has some compelling content, and to keep customers engaged, they’ve turned to some interesting sources such as gaming. Check out the conversation below.

How to Speak Jamaican:

I just had to talk with Gary Carr, the creator of “I Know Jamaican”. You can check out my thoughts here.

It’s exactly what it says – no more, no less. You can have common phrases translated into the Jamaican dialect called patois. Really cool!

VJay: The Video Mixer App for the iPad

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If your into mixing music and videos, here’s a nice little app that you might be interested in. It’s called VJay – which is appropriate, but still sounds funny. It’s set up in pretty much the exact same way two turntables would be set up in a DJ App, except there are two videos instead. The makers, algoriddim, know what their doing as they’ve been around the bend a time or two. They created the DJay app for iPhone, and iPad and their up to their usual schennanegans with this latest app.

I got the chance to play with it for a little while and there is quite a bit you can do with this puppy. Apparently it’s the first of it’s kind giving its users the ability to mix music videos rather than just .mp3s. A few of the cool things you can do are of course fading the music as well as the images together as you move from one video to the other. There are different graphic options for fading from one video to the other like “Cube”, “Swap”, “Grid”, and few more. Changing those options determine how the fade will work. Block for example transitions like a turning cube.

Not only can you que up videos, you can also que up different songs as well. So that’s four separate things going on at the same time potentially. Two different tracks with two different videos, unless of course the videos have their own audio. You can loop a portion of the audio at 2 or 4 beats and you can also choose different cool effects that effect the video in real-time. Some of those effects are “strobe”, “twirl”, “crush” and “fisheye”. Strobe causes the video to pulsate with light instantly giving you migraine. Twirl is a mini tornado in the middle of the video. Crush pixelates the video so that you look like you are playing a video game straight from the 80s and fisheye is a bouncing ball under the video.

You can record your best moments for playback at a later date, and the video toggles to full screen when you want it to. It’s quite a bit of functionality and if you want it, it’ll cost you $10 bucks. You can create really cool music videos if you put in the time and energy, however, I instantly thought of one really cool use case scenario. I saw this cool band call “Kung Fu Masters” and they play jazz while kung fu movie clips and anime play in the background. You can check them here, but I think this app would totally be cool for you creative types out there who think up cool stuff like that. If your looking for a great tool, I recommend it. You can download the VJay app right here.

Watch An NBA 2K13 Live Stream of the Miami Heat vs OKC

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Now this is interesting – If you can’t wait for the Basketball season to start, and you are looking for some exciting NBA action, then check the NBA 2K13 live stream of a Full NBA Game being played out in the NBA 2K13 Game. Also, the match-up is the Miami Heat vs. OKC!  The quarters are 5 minutes worth of game-play. The game will happen today at 5:00pm EST, or 2PM PST. This is not a replay. It will be played live by two 2K Sports community managers “Ronnie2K” and “LD2K”. Not clear on who will be controlling which team. Now to the important stuff – You can watch the live stream here: http://twitch.tv/2K.

Case-Mate, Fergie, And Common Party in Style

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Wednesday, the 12th, Tim Cook announced the new iPhone 5. There was a lot of fervor around that bit of news which everyone and their mother knew was coming since the first spy-shot was leaked. However, the real party didn’t begin until Case-Mate, the company behind many of the more stylish iPhone and iPad cases, brought down the house with a performance by Common at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square 42nd Street New York.

Case-Mate does have an upcoming line of cases for the new iPhone 5 and you can have an advanced preview right here. Case-Mate is know for their more outlandish and style conscious cases. They have brilliant colors and interesting concepts and themes. Their unveiling was perfectly timed to fashion week as well here in the city.

At the party, there were elegant models around showing off the cases before Fergie and Common took to the stage. All were dressed really, really well and it really felt like we were at a very exclusive party scene. The look was from Cesar Galindo’s Spring 2013 CZAR collection. I also met some stunning ladies including Dr. Catrise Austin as well as Ms. Melyssa Ford. You can find my quickie interviews with them below. I’ve included an exclusive freestyle from Common during the performance below as well. Fergie MC’d the event, but didn’t sing – leaving the bulk of the entertainment to Common.

All in all, the night was a blast, and if you are getting an iPhone 5 or are in need of a case, I would definitely recommend Case-Mate as they really do seem to be the real deal. The event itself shows they are passionate about fashion and it shows in their designs.


How To Speak Jamaican App for iPad

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Ran into Gary Carr at the NY Games Conference last week. He is the creator of the “I Know Jamaican” iPad app. Now before you say its fake, check it out for yourself. Gary tells me he took pains to make sure the lingo was as authentic as possible. The way it works is by tapping on canned common phrases which you can then translate to “Jamaican.” Jamaican in this sense actually being “Patois” which is the dialect of Jamaicans. There is actually no such thing as speaking Jamaican. I give it my seal of approval having heard it myself. Goan Rude Boi!

You can get the full app here. There is also a dumbed-down free app as well in case you want to try it out. You can see the video below:

All New NBA 2K13 Trailer Featuring Biggie Smalls and Puff Daddy!

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Looks like 2K is outdoing themselves with the music for this game. They’re pulling out all the stops with this one. Check out the trailer below featuring the cut by Momentous which is based off of the song “Victory” by Puff Daddy and the Family. Biggie Smalls is rapping over the beat while the featured NBA Ballers are breaking ankles. Arguably one of the best trailers yet for NBA 2K13 don’t you think?

New Judge Dredd TV Spot

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Though the story line seems pretty similar to what I consider to be the best action movie of this year hands down – The Raid:Redemption, I am still looking forward to watching the Dredd 3D reboot when it comes out on the 21st. I’ve been following it for a while now, and I just love the story line and character.

Our main character, Dredd, is evaluating the rookie – played by Olivia Thirlby, when of course, something happens during training where they have to venture into the hood of hoods and handle business. Check the new TV Spot below: