Tag: Technology

Is Social Media Over?

“Social media is over,” said James Franco at a recent nonprofit benefit. The actor and write received much attention for live tweets sent out during his co-hosting duties at the Oscars. However, after just a few months of being on Twitter, he’s said that he’s looking to spend less time on the service.

Is Franco right? Will social media be another online fad to be eventually forgotten like our Geocities home pages and AOL chat rooms? With over 600 million Facebook members and 155 million tweets posted every day, it’s not hard to look at the statistics and balk at James Franco’s prediction. However, as a Geek Squad Agent who helps the public with their technology every day, I see a more fundamental proof that social media is here to stay: the simple human need to share our experiences. Continue reading “Is Social Media Over?”

Tech Tips for Home DIY Projects

WTAM 1100 – Geek Squad Tech Tips for April 18th, 2011

Spring is slowly making its way here, and the warmer weather often brings with it the desire to start on those home improvement projects you’ve been thinking about over the Winter.

I spoke to Bill Wills from the Wills & Snyder radio show on Cleveland’s WTAM 1100 this morning about how you can use technology like how-to videos and smartphone apps to help with those DIY projects.

Tax Time Tech Tips

WTAM 1100 – Geek Squad Tech Tips for April 11th, 2011

Tax Day is almost here in the US, which means millions of Americans are getting together a year’s worth of receipts, forms and statements to file their annual return. Online tax filing options are more common than ever, with the IRS saying that more than 100 million Americans (nearly two-thirds of the taxpayers) are e-filing their returns this year.

I spoke to Bill Wills from the Wills & Snyder radio show on Cleveland’s WTAM 1100 this morning about how you can make next year’s tax filing easier by digitizing your receipts and other paperwork using services like Shoeboxed or Evernote, and keeping track of your finances using Mint.com.

Connecting Your Laptop to Your HDTV

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One of the more common questions we see at Twelpforce are laptop owners wondering how they can connect their computers to their HDTVs. I created this overview of how to determine which connections you have available to you, along with what cables you’ll need to get your computer display onto that big screen television in the living room.

Amazon Takes Their Music to the Cloud

Amazon updated their MP3 download offerings this week with the introduction of their Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player service. The service provides 5GB of free online storage through their existing S3 cloud storage, but if you purchase an MP3 album from Amazon’s digital download store, you’ll get 20GB of space for 12 months free. Any music you purchase and have automatically saved to your Cloud Drive won’t count towards your space limit.

You aren’t limited to Amazon music, however, as you can upload your existing library with the downloadable import tool. Your complete collection can then be played through the Cloud Player website or the Android app that’s now available. No word on when or if there will be an Apple iOS app in the future.

It’s an interesting play in a world of digital downloads, and certainly one that will help draw users of iTunes and other online music stores to Amazon. On the other hand, it’s not quite the death of streaming services like Napster or Rdio.

If you find yourself buying more than one album per month, the pure streaming option these services provide may end up being cheaper, at least if you always have access to the Internet. Even in situations where your access may be limited or intermittent, such as with your smartphone, these services are now offering offline caches that allow you to store and play music while your device loses its signal.

Still, there will always be though who value owning their music outright versus streaming, even if that ownership consists of what is essentially a license to play a file downloaded from an online store.