Welcome to the Geek Choice Blog

Today I am focusing on the Playstation Vita which is the new handheld console of the Sony family. Looks like an original PSP with a touch screen to me. But is that all it really offers is a wonderful touch screen? So the cost of this will be $249 with wi-fi and $299 with 3G. 3G is going to be exclusive to AT&T it looks like so if want to use 3G you will have to hook up with their data plans like the iPad. So here are the main differences between the PSP and the new PS Vita:
• Advanced portable entertainment system
A high performance CPU / GPU combined with OLED enables rich, visually striking graphics never seen before on a portable entertainment system. PS Vita also adopts the Super Oval Design form factor, which fits comfortably in users’ hands.
• Revolutionary User Interface
A unique multi-touch pad on the rear, with the front touch display. Two cameras on it’s front and rear, as well as three motion sensors, gyroscope, accelerometer, and electronic compass.
• LiveArea™
Every game title for PS Vita will be provided with a space called “LiveArea™” where users can share the fun and excitement with other players.
• Location-based services
SCE will provide location-based services on PS Vita as part of the basic features utilizing PlayStation Network. The new application called “Near,” developed specifically for this service and the network, will be pre-installed in the system.
• Wi-Fi and 3G network connectivity
PS Vita is equipped with 3G in addition to Wi-Fi.
• Closely coordinated with PlayStation Suite
The newly developed and released game content for Android based portable devices can also be enjoyed on PS Vita.

Amazon yesterday announced a new service in which you can store all of your music in one place and then be able to stream it through your phone and other devices. Well once again the music industry is crying foul. Stating that Amazon needs to get streaming licensing agreements for people to access their own music that they most likely already bought from a source like iTunes. Apparently Amazon is in the works of obtaining such licenses but not before launching the Cloud service. Of course the first thing I read about this is from Sony music having issues with the fact this streaming deal hasn’t been put into place but they are in high hopes that this happens.
This is not the first time a company has been taken to court over this back in 2007 EMI sued MP3tunes, which was a company that offered a service similar to the Cloud. It is unclear whether customers who own the music are allowed to remotely access the storage services offered by cloud computing. I am against the whole litigation against companies that are offering a service to stream music you already own to your private devices. If the music companies want to get paid for stuff they didn’t invent, why they don’t start working on these technologies. I feel like this is a bit of double dipping. The customer pays for the song but yet can’t access it from their computers via their phone. Well the funny thing s if you have an iPod and put music on that, you still have the music on your PC and iPod. So should the music industry put a tax on companies who make MP3 devices, full knowing the music could go on an iPad, iPod and still be on someone’s computer? But since it is not being streamed over the internet it’s ok to do that? This is a convenience service that a company created and people will love it and it is free for the first 5GB but the starving music industry must need a bail out from the government with all the litigation they do. I hope that if this goes to court the judge rules in the favor of Amazon. I am always angry to read these types of things, we can all understand the music industries battle against piracy because that is illegal but this cloud computing seems like a gray area to me. By ruling in the favor of the music industry this could open problems for other cloud computing ideas everywhere.

New research is suggesting that at this moment 9% of United States internet users are using peer-to-peer or P2P networks, which is down substantially from 2007. The market research firm NPD Group, has stated that P2P has actually dropped from 16% to 9% in the last 3 years. This data comes from the 4th quarter of 2010, right after a federal judge shut down LimeWire. This shut down defiantly helped bring that number down, even though other P2P programs saw an increase in usage. The numbers also show that the average number of downloads per person also fell, from 35 per quarter in 07 to 18 per quarter by the finish of 2010. Warner music also did some data mining and found that 13% of consumers were pirates and noted that even the pirates spent some of their money on recorded music. Even though there has been a decent decline in the piracy sector, it is still far from eradicated. It will be truly difficult to gage whether or not we will see piracy decline even further. My money is on a slow and gradual decline but we will never truly be rid of piracy.

A few posts back I put down that when IE9 launched it had over 2 million downloads in the first 24 hours. Well Firefox was about to double the amount of downloads with the first 24 hours of its launch. A decent 4.7 million downloads in the first 24 hour span. That is still less than the 8 million copies that were downloaded of Firefox 3 in 2008 but obviously there were fewer browsers to choose from back in 2008. With a more informed customer base you have internet users spread out across Google Chrome, Safari, IE and of course Firefox. This new version brings more features to the already reliable browser, such as new security and privacy options, faster loads and JavaScript, support for a variety of new standards including WebM video and WebGL 3D graphics, and 3D acceleration that extends to even Windows XP. Maybe with these new enhanced features, Firefox can steal some people back from Google Chrome.

So many friends and I are always going back and forth about what phone is better the iPhone or the Android. The debate usually starts up when one of our phones has a major glitch or issue. Well today I get to put another small on the iPhone. Did anyone who had an iPhone have to get up for work on Sunday and happen to use the iPhone as your alarm clock? Well if you did you might have been extremely late to work. You may ask why if you don’t answer yes to that question. Well a glitch in the iPhone caused many of the phones to spring back instead of spring ahead. So if you were looking to get up for let’s say 8AM you got up at 10AM. Oh the wonders of the iPhone! I personally have a Droid X and I woke up and checked my phone and then checked my PC and cable box and wouldn’t you know it, all of the times were correct. Now this was said to happen in US iPhones and isn’t the first time this issues has come up. Also it didn’t matter which carrier you used for the iPhone both AT&T and Verizon had this issue, so if it is not the carrier then it is the phone. This being a known glitch it has happened before outside of the US. In England this happened back in November 2010 the alarms failed to switch from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time and this also happened in Australia during their daylights savings time. So the question begs to be asked, will Apple fix this glitch before the next daylight savings time??? A+ Apple…. A+!

Now me personally I was never a huge reader and then things like digital books and comics came out and me being a tech person it was perfect. If I wanted to read I could get the book from my own home and not clutter my place up with books. There was a time when digital books were reasonably priced and people were happy to pay. Well rumblings are starting grow with the fact that 7 top publishing companies have agreed on the agency price model. This model will allow their books to be in the Apples iBookstore and with the iPad 2 launching most publishers would feel out in the cold if they couldn’t present their books on the Apple platform. This agency model if you are unaware gives 70% profit to the publisher while the rest goes to the retailer. This does also allow for the publisher to set the price and not the retailer and in some case in Europe there are investigations on whether or not this is actually constituted as price fixing and the work of an illegal cartel.

So there is a very big deal that goes along with what was said above. The pricing is somewhat unfair to the consumer. I have pulled some information that might be shocking to you readers. Here is a breakdown of a few books via digital purchase or from buying from your local bookstore.

Title: The Kite Runner
Digital: $12.99
Paper back: $7.81

Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Digital $12.99
Paperback $9.40

So no paper, no glue, shipping or bindings needed and yet the digital is more expensive? That sounds like extreme greed to me and when people see this type of greed going on other people step in and start pirating these products. We have seen it with music and movies and now books might be the next thing to be pirated. It something to keep an eye on, will this work or will it be a bigger issue coming down the pike with how the publishing companies are pricing these books. Only time will tell if greed will win out on this, I think it most likely will only due to convenience and the owners of Kindles and iPad’s will pay more for the convenience of downloading a book which doesn’t take up space and you have to typically go to a store to get.

Western Digital has just announced that they have put a major deal in place to acquire a top competitor in their field. Hitachi Global Storage technologies are now being acquired by Western Digital.

This is not the first time a major competitor has been bought out. Back in 2005 Seagate purchased Maxtor for just about $2 billion. The deal for Hitachi is broken down to #3.5 billion in cash and $730 million in Western Digital common stock. It is unclear how this deal with work on whether or not Western Digital will keep the Hitachi brand name or use some of the more unique designs Hitachi has been developing and label it a Western Digital product. This is a very interesting situation as now it has come down to a two dog race in Western Digital and Seagate. There is still some competition the wings like Samsung but we all know that the two main hard drive companies are WD and Seagate.

I am trying to add a bit more to my blog by adding funny titles like this. I hope you enjoy it! This blog is really about how many iPad 2’s are going to be shipped in the spring of this year and whether or not that will even be enough to meet the demand.
Apple is said that they will be shipping 12 million iPad 2’s this spring alone. Apple will also be able to get 6.5 million out before April. Most insiders think that around 21.5 million to 24 million will ship in the last half of 2011.
This is something watch to see how fast they actually sell out. It seems that Apple have been deliberately conservative to avoid any type of over stock on the product. In my perspective the iPad 2 will sell out and be difficult to find. With most new tech toys it is usually really hard to get it after the first day usually. Let’s hope Apple steps up to the plate and answers if we have any issues with supply of the iPad 2.

It has been reported that the Apple is holdings it’s always anticipated event on March 2nd of this year. Many sources have stated that the company will be unveiling the first look at the iPad 2. The thoughts on the iPad 2 are simple, it will be thinner than the iPad 1, and it will have an improved display and will also have a front facing camera for face to face video chat. It is also said that the 2 will be running on a Qualcomm multimode chip with GSM and CDMA based network support around the entire world.

This show will be a very big deal for Apple. With competition finally hitting the tablet market we will be seeing Apple trying to show off how great the iPad can really be. Every other tablet is running the Honeycomb version of Google’s Android mobile OS. And with nearly 25 million iPads sold since its inception last spring will the iPad 2 be able to reach the same plateau with all of this new competition? As I always say, time will tell.

Some people have been awaiting the arrival of the Motorola Xoom, a possible alternative to the iPad. Well it looks like those people who wanted the Xoom so bad will have to wait for one little thing. Well maybe it’s actually a big thing. It will ship on February 24th with NO flash support. If you look above at the Verizon sheet for the Xoom in very small print you will see * Adobe Flash expected Spring 2011. So you won’t have to wait very long to get flash support but shouldn’t the Xoom had been prepared for this? This was supposed to slay the iPad and be its first real competition. Yet it won’t have flash at launch. So maybe the only positive thing to come of this is that people using the Xoom won’t have to worry about annoying flash ads popping up while surfing the web.