January, 2021

• 26 January

  Anker Motion Boom Bluetooth speaker review: $100 portable powerhouse

  

  I’ve reviewed three $100 Anker Soundcore portable Bluetooth speakers in the last year or so and they’ve all been quite good for that price. The Motion Plus is arguably the best-sounding compact Bluetooth for speaker for $100 while the Rave Neo, which appears to have been replaced by the Trance Go, works well for outdoor …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  Verizon ends 2020 with growth in wireless, Fios internet users

  

  After an unpredictable year, Verizon on Tuesday announced its fourth-quarter earnings. The company reported earnings per share of $1.11 for the quarter, down from analyst estimates of $1.17, according to Yahoo Finance. On an adjusted basis, which excludes special items such as a $404 million payment to severance and a $119 million net loss “primarily related to the disposition of the HuffPost …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 mobile acquits itself well in the Origin PC Evo17

  

  Origin PC’s one of the first out of the gate in the race to ship gaming laptops with Nvidia’s latest mobile gaming graphics processor, the GeForce RTX 3080. Its slim 17-inch Evo17-S checks many of the boxes I expect from a gaming laptop, including a big screen, lots of fast SSD storage, a speedy eight-core Intel Core i7-10870H processor and the …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  Grab this height

  

  If you’re using your phone or tablet for Zoom meetings or other video calls, you’ve no doubt discovered the need for some kind of stand. You’ve probably also discovered that the camera usually ends up too low, shooting at an unflattering upward angle.  Similarly, if you’re streaming cooking videos in the kitchen or yoga videos on the floor mat, a stand …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  Last chance to save $50 on these Phiaton noise

  

  Noise-canceling headphones have become so plentiful — and so good — that there’s hardly any reason to buy audio gear  without active noise canceling built in anymore. But before you plunk down $550 on Apple’s AirPods Max, know that there are many more affordable (and arguably better) alternatives. Case in point: Phiaton’s snazzy 900 Legacy headphones usually cost $250 and …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  Waterfield Designs’ pricey AirPods Max case is in high demand

  

  When Apple released the AirPods Max, the company got a lot of grief about the headphones’ unusual protective covering. In addition to drawing its fair share of bra and purse comparisons, the Apple case was criticized for not fully protecting the headphones. I wasn’t as down on it as others, but I knew we’d soon see a bunch of third-party …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  TikTok vulnerability left users’ private information exposed

  

  A vulnerability identified in the popular video-sharing app TikTok exposed users to having personal information scraped from their profile, including their phone number and profile settings, security researchers at cybersecurity firm Check Point said Tuesday. That information could have been used to manipulate users’ account details and build a database of TikTok users for malicious activity, researchers said. The flaw …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  Spotify tries out audiobooks with help from some celebrity narrators

  

  Spotify on Monday began testing the appeal of audiobooks by adding nine classic public domain titles recorded by professional narrators and celebrities. If you open Spotify on your phone or computer, you’ll be able to find the titles under a section called Audiobooks: Hear the Classics. The books are available for free and premium users. Here’s a list of the titles …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  Firefox 85 hammers the final nail into the Adobe Flash coffin

  

  With Mozilla’s release of Firefox 85 on Tuesday, Adobe’s once ubiquitous Flash technology is really gone for good. The software had been widely used to expand gaming, video and animation on the web, though Adobe stopped supporting it at the end of 2020. Firefox was the last major browser to support Flash. Apple, whose late boss Steve Jobs helped sink Flash …

  Read More »
• 26 January

  No charger in the box? No problem: This one is on sale for just $6

  

  Last year, Apple “bravely” decided to stop including an AC adapter in the box with the new iPhone 12, and Samsung just followed suit with the Galaxy S21. I don’t know if I agree with the reasoning — cuts down on waste, allows for less packaging, everyone’s already got a dozen of these anyway, yada yada — but here we …

  Read More »