Review of the Motorola Droid
I have owned my Droid since March of this year, so about 3 months now. In these three months I have come to the conclusion that I made the right decision to stay away from the Iphone. For one thing, Verzion's service is much more reliable than AT&T's, I have had a 3G connection in the middle of nowhere, can't get that with AT&T. Something else that I want to mention is that although it might be more bulky than the Iphone, the screen size and resolution is slightly better, plus you have the option to use the qwerty keyboard, which I only use once in a while.
Functionality wise the Droid has everything I need, great applications, speed, memory space, and great call quality. I enjoy the screen resolution on the Droid, it is clear and as long as there isn't a glare on he screen it works great. The glare issue is fixed for the most part as long as you turn on the backlight, which drains the battery more but I charge it every night so that is not an issue. Speaking of the battery life, since I got the multimedia dock I have had no issues with the battery life. I plug it in every night, use it as a clock and an alarm and undock it before I leave for the day.
Price wise it is fairly expensive to keep this phone, $29.95 a month for the data plan, along with the rest of my plan makes it just slightly better than the Iphone, but as stated before, Verizon has a much better coverage at least where I live. It is great to have unlimited data usage wherever I go in the US. As for is it for everyone, of course not. If all you need is a phone that makes calls and text messages this is not the phone for you. If you are looking to use internet like a browser, email, and a GPS, this is the phone for you!
Overall I want to say that I have had a few issues with my phone freezing here and there, restart of the phone usually fixes the issue. Another issue I have run across is the wireless being very touchy, it seems that it needs a fairly strong signal to keep connected, and once in a while I would have to restart the wireless to have it find a network I was trying to connect to. The wireless isn't a big deal, as long as you are in the US and have the data plan access, but it is nice to use it like in Canada which I lived in for about four months, used it for two months in there. It is also useful for heavy downloading, when the wireless is faster than the connection you are getting with Verizon.
Take Control of your FaceBook Privacy
It is no secret that FaceBook has been in the spotlight for its lack of privacy. The Internet is buzzing with news articles about jumping ship and boycotting FaceBook all together. Who wouldn't want to close up their account, considering how much personally identifiable information is being exposed by default all over the internet. FaceBook even goes as far as sharing your information to 3rd party sites like Yelp and Pandora if you haven't opted out of the "Instant Personalization" feature.
Another problem with FaceBook privacy settings is the complex nature of the control system. With over 7 pages of settings to manually comb through, different features to opt out of, and the Armada of applications on FaceBook, it's a miracle it's as easy as it is! The good news is that, according to a Wired news article, FaceBook is working on simplifying privacy controls (http://bit.ly/bV1YFT)! However this attempt may be a little too late, considering the amount of bad publicity just this past week.
In the meantime, there is an excellent tool that will help you lock your account down, and fine tune the amount of information broadcasting from your FaceBook account. The fine folks at http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/ have released a snazzy tool that will remove all the guesswork about which settings may still need changing. Instructions on the use of the Reclaim Privacy tool can be found on their website, and a screen-cast walk-through for users with Internet Explorer 8 (created by yours truly) can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmxB3oMgqMM
-Steve for TTC
Twitter angers Bieber fans. Aw, what a shame
Well, it seems as though the folks at Twitter have lost the Bieber Fever. What took them so long is beyond me. But that's another story...
Regular tweeters no doubt noticed that Bieber was a virtual mainstay in the "Trending Topics" list found on the right side of the page for the past few months, but he has recently fallen off. Did Twitter simply begin ignoring tweets with his name? Well, actually...kind of. In reality, they simply changed the algorithm that is used to determine what is currently "trending", but this had a relatively strong impact on the Trending Topics (TTs) and even the tweeters themselves.
Twitter is all about what is happening right now, but apparently their previous algorithm didn't properly reflect that. Instead, it used past information, together with current info, to pull up the most common overall topics. Now, history means nothing, as only current popular topics are listed as trending. Twitter says that this should help people discover the "most breaking" news from across the world.
It still doesn't really make sense to me, though. I've been monitoring the TTs over the past couple days, and they've pretty much stayed the same. "Jick Nonas" has been numero uno for at least the past 36 hours or so, and "Ronnie James", "Jieber", "Twieber" (have I mentioned that I hate Bieber fans?.....), "#stoptalkingabout", and "#tellmegoodbye" have all also been in the top 10 for the past day or so. Are you trying to tell me that people weren't tweeting about anything in the world of sports, movies, politics, or any of the other things that are usually so common? These six topics were really THAT popular this weekend? I doubt it. To test things out, I decided to click on a few of the top TTs and see how many new tweets would come in as I waited for a few minutes. I then did a simple search for some topics that were not trending, but I knew were popular. Amazingly (or not), the topics I searched for were consistently getting many more tweets than the actual trending topics. Now if that doesn't go against Twitters' "what's happening right now?" stance, I don't know what does. Today is Monday, and it is widely known that #musicmonday or #mm is always a top TT on Mondays. But not today. Perhaps never again. Despite getting more tweets over the past half-hour or so than even the supposed #1 TT, Jick Nonas, they do not even crack the top 10 list. Weird.
What I do love about this change, though, is that now that Justin Bieber isn't showing up as a TT anymore, people aren't tweeting about him! At least, not as far as I can tell by searching for his name. Granted, he is still getting more tweets than the current TTs, but not by much. They used to come in around 40, 50, 60, even up to 100 tweets every 30 seconds. As of the new TT requirements, it's down to about 20.
Now if we could only get things like "Jick Nonas", "Twieber", and "Jieber" off the list. I mean seriously, there were 2...yes, a whopping TWO...tweets for "Twieber" over the past minute and a half. I really don't think that counts as "trending". More like "trailing".
I think Twitter is holding back some important info regarding the change in the Trending Topics, and I would love to know what it is, because what they've said so far doesn't at all line up with what's going on. If and when anything else gets released, I'll be sure to write about it. In the meantime, I suggest all of you start tweeting your own names. I mean, it clearly only takes a few to make the list now, right? I think I'll tweet my name about a dozen times and see what happens. Who knows, I could become famous. 
-Mike
Using Dropbox for ITunes Syncing
I wrote a while back about the service DropBox. DropBox lets you easily and automatically synchronize files between computers, and to a secure account on the internet.
By placing any files in a special folder on your computer, the "My DropBox" folder, those files are accessible by other computers tied to the account, as well as online at www.dropbox.com.
One unconventional use is the possibility to use DropBox to synchronize one media library between multiple PCs using ITunes.
By setting each computer's ITunes preferences to store the music library within the 'My DropBox' folder, this one centralized location will make it so you don't have to worry about additions or subtractions between computers, as they would all be reading the same synchronized files. And since the files are actually stored on the machines, and a copy of all changes is pushed to the other machines, you don't have to worry about sorting out the changes on your own.
Depending on the amount of music you own, it may be possible to do this with a free account (between 2-8GB, depending on how many friends you have referred to the service) there are paid upgrade options for 50GB and 100GB.
If you find yourself looking for a very simple way to sync music over many PCs, DropBox may be the answer you are looking for. If you are still not convinced, check out the power of DropBox on your own... as it is free to sign up. Get DropBox: Here
-Steve R., for TTC
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