Blog Layout

Crave giveaway: Sony HT

Congratulations to Mark K. of Ashburn, Virginia, for winning a Piper DIY computer kit for kids last week, and to Jaque R. of Phoenix for winning five films on Blu-ray the week before that. This week’s winner gets a Sony HT-XT1, a slim pedestal sound bar you place under your TV to boost the sound …

Read More »

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 ad offers clues about upcoming phone

Thanks to a new teaser ad posted by Samsung Mobile Korea, people curious about Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 phone get a chance to play Sherlock Holmes. The fast-moving clip (embedded below) offers clues to features that the new phone will apparently offer. Your job is to try to decipher them. We’ll play Watson and lend a hand. Posted to YouTube …

Read More »

Like Ahnold, Amazon’s Echo Dot will be back

Worry not, Amazon customers! The Dot will return. Amazon’s Echo Dot device sold out earlier this month, sparking rumors that the product had been discontinued. I checked with Amazon, which quickly confirmed that news of the Dot’s demise were greatly exaggerated. The $90 Dot, a hockey-puck shaped speaker that houses Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, was introduced in March along with …

Read More »

Apple’s arrogance likely quashed its streaming TV service

Apple’s long-rumored streaming TV service failed to materialize due to its brash negotiating tactics, according to The Wall Street Journal. Potential deals between the tech giant and major networks including CBS, Disney and Fox went south because Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of software and services, came across as arrogant during negotiations, the newspaper reported Thursday. Many thought the …

Read More »

Samsung, Oppo shine in a weak phone market

As smartphone shipments sputter and stall, an upstart is shooting forward from the back of the pack. China’s Oppo saw shipments of its phones more than double — the precise gain: 137 percent — in the second quarter of 2016, compared with the same period a year earlier. That was good enough to put Oppo into fourth place, according to …

Read More »