Posts Tagged: google

moving on from the nexus 7

On 16 August 2012 by matthew With 0 Comments - google, tablets, technology

You would think that after all of the frus­tra­tion and hair pulling that came along with get­ting the Google (Asus) Nexus 7, I would in tablet utopia. Well…not so much. Three full weeks have passed since I first unboxed the the Nexus 7, and it has become abun­dantly clear that it is just not for me. What’s that old line when you’re break­ing up? — “It’s not you, it’s me.” That sen­ti­ment couldn’t be more appro­pri­ate. The Nexus 7 is an incred­i­bly com­pe­tent tablet. The screen is great. The hard­ware is solid. The updated Android oper­at­ing sys­tem works really well. Apps, for the most part, per­formed the way they should. So what’s the prob­lem?

It’s just too small.


Inter­est­ingly, a good num­ber of peo­ple love the Nexus 7 for that very rea­son — it’s small. Not tiny, but small. My wife has an iPad2, which I, at times, feel can be a bit unwieldy. How­ever, no mat­ter how con­ve­nient the Nexus 7’s size may be, the bot­tom line is that I just couldn’t warm up to using it. Again, every­thing looks great, but it’s kinda like look­ing at a tilt shift image. Things are clear, but almost miniature.

I don’t know. Maybe my eyes are just going bad, and I need a tablet like the Jit­ter­Bug phone.

photo credit: shamb­hub

So, there it is. I gave the Nexus 7 a try, but it just didn’t work out. Forunately, I have already found it a lov­ing home.

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see…what had happened was

On 3 August 2012 by matthew With 3 Comments - culture, google, tablets, technology

So…I woke up this morn­ing, and took some­thing out to the car. On a whim, I cir­cled the car one more time…you know, since it was day­light and all…and what do you know. There was a Nexus 7 tablet.

I’d like to think that the would-be thief suf­fered a round of guilt and brought the Nexus 7 back to its right­ful owner (oddly leav­ing it face down on in some leaves on the side­walk next to my car); but some­thing tells me that’s not what hap­pened. Now, my feel­ings move from vic­tim­iza­tion to embar­rass­ment. I appre­ci­ate those who expressed con­cern last night, espe­cially my son who searched the car for me and gave me a cou­ple of hugs. Thanks, in advance, to all of you for not rid­ing me too hard about this [hon­est] mis­take. At least I have the Nexus 7 in hand. If noth­ing else, I went through a lit­tle fire drill chang­ing all of my pass­words and updat­ing my online secu­rity settings.

Please excuse me while I go make some toast to go with that egg.

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my nexus 7 got jacked

On 2 August 2012 by matthew With 11 Comments - culture, google, tablets, technology

—> UPDATE <—

At some point this evening, between the Ver­i­zon Wire­less store and Qdoba, both in Rockville, MD, some­one stole my brand new Nexus 7. If you’ve been read­ing my blog in the last week or so, you know how much I went through just to get the damned thing. Now it’s gone. I didn’t even real­ize that the Nexus 7 was gone until I got home. I hold myself account­able because I left the tablet out of my back­pack on the back seat. (I am also kick­ing myself for not enabling the lock screen on the Nexus 7.) Clearly, I must have left the doors to the car unlocked, because the win­dows are in tact and there was no force­able entry.

Of course, once I dis­cov­ered that I had been jacked, I scram­bled to change every con­ceiv­able pass­word, dis­able Google Wal­let, and offered up a gen­er­ous heap­ing of curse words for the new owner of my Nexus 7. I also pushed the Plan B app to the Nexus 7 in the hopes that if some­one con­nects the device to a WiFi net­work, I will be able to see its where­abouts. If it’s on a wire­less net­work long enough, I can let the police know.

[deep breath]

I am really bummed about this; but I admit that part of me won­ders if it just wasn’t meant to be. Per­haps all the has­sles with ship­ping were an omen that I should have heeded.

Lar­ceny sucks!

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update: google follow-through

On 1 August 2012 by matthew With 0 Comments - google, tablets, technology

In life, it is impor­tant to give credit where credit is due — par­tic­u­larly when some­one makes good on cor­rect­ing a mistake.

Respon­sive­ness and thought­ful actions are how com­pa­nies build loyal cus­tomers. Good on Google for refund­ing my ship­ping fees. Now let’s see if UPS fol­lows Google’s lead, and refunds my $40 for the less-than-effective MyChoice service.

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the nexus 7 — a google now update

On 30 July 2012 by matthew With 4 Comments - google, tablets, technology

In my Nexus 7 ini­tial impres­sions piece, posted over the week­end, I was a bit crit­i­cal of Google Now. I made a point of car­ry­ing the Nexus 7 with me every day to see if Google Now would “learn” from my move­ments. I did not have an active WiFi sig­nal dur­ing the day at work, but the Nexus 7 does have GPS built in, so I assumed that it would keep track of my move­ments. Sadly, it didn’t do that. I made a point of con­nect­ing the Nexus 7 to my phone, via a 3G WiFi hotspot, when I trav­eled to Atlanta last Fri­day. While Google Now did rec­og­nize where I was, and offered a travel time map — that map was not con­nected with my des­ti­na­tion within Atlanta. It merely pro­vided the dri­ving time from Hartsfield/Jackson to down­town Atlanta.

Today, I made a point of keep­ing the 3G WiFi hotspot active through­out the day. I unlocked the Nexus 7 this after­noon and Google Now dis­played some cards that I hadn’t seen before.

As you can see, at the top of the Google Now screen is a card with an esti­mate of my com­mute time to home. What’s inter­est­ing about the traf­fic card is that it appears to know that I don’t take the Wash­ing­ton Belt­way home in the evenings because of traf­fic. I do travel the Belt­way in the morn­ings, so I will keep an eye on what the card dis­plays tomor­row morning.

Next up is the weather card. This cards is nor­mally at the first card in the stack.

Below the weather is where things got inter­est­ing. There is a card dis­play­ing trans­porta­tion (bus) sched­ules for the bus stop near my office. Below the trans­porta­tion card were sev­eral cards for busi­nesses near my office, includ­ing Whole Foods, LA Fit­ness, and a cou­ple of restau­rants. The cards dis­played oper­at­ing hours, and gave me the option to get more infor­ma­tion or check in.

One card that I swiped away before tak­ing the screen cap­tures was a place card for the movie the­ater I went to on Sat­ur­day. Inter­est­ingly, I searched for movie times with the Nexus 7, but did not take the tablet with me. While I am a lit­tle puz­zled about why my flight searches didn’t pro­duce a card, it’s pretty cool to see that Google Now is try­ing to inter­pret my searches and cre­ate, poten­tially, rel­e­vant cards.

I don’t know if keep­ing the WiFi con­nec­tion open was the key for the addi­tion of these new cards, but the appear­ance of these new cards is very encour­ag­ing. If improve­ment of cards dis­played on Google Now is con­tin­gent on hav­ing an Inter­net con­nec­tion, than I now more fully under­stand why Josh Topol­sky on The Verge stated that he felt that Google Now was much more use­ful on the Galaxy Nexus than on the Nexus 7. The Galaxy Nexus has a con­stant con­nec­tion, where as the Nexus 7 needs access to WiFi to update data on many, if not all, of the cards.) I plan to take the Metro (sub­way) and/or the bus to work a few days this week. I’d like to see if the trans­porta­tion card starts to add depar­ture times for the Metro sta­tion clos­est to my office.

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