Sci-Fi meets extrapolation meets imagination meets entertainment meets crowd-sourced blog is how I like to view PhutureNews. This site/blog is all about predicting the future but not in the boring “in the future, we think…” style, but rather as headlines and stories with future date stamps. Although they just launched, they have some rather interesting ‘stories’ like “Steve Jobs rising out of the iCryo”, “China wins the 2046 World Cup”, and or the more realistic “Self driving cars mandatory in California”.

Two suggestions for PhutureNews: first, please go buy the FutureNews.com (or dot whatever domain) and rename the site! The “ph” doesn’t quite work. And second, you absolutely need RSS feeds. Other than that, keep writing cool and interesting stories.

I’m sure you’ve heard about SOPA and PIPA by now, not to mention seeing the online protests in the form of blacked out websites, the most notable being Wikipedia. Here’s a cool infographic explaining what the bills are about and what their (unintended?) consequences are:




Brought to you by Lumin Interactive and Condor Consulting

Are you the type of person that looks forward to plane trips so you can get your hands on Skymall Magazine? Do you get excited when gadget blog newsletters hit your email box? Did you make a cylon pumpkin with working eyes you soldered together using Larson Scanner plans for Halloween?

If so, you might want to check out Smarthome’s open position for New Product Category Specialist. The Geeks have toured Smarthome’s HQ and it looks like a cool place to work.

Smarthome is also looking to fill an iOS Developer position so brush up on your Cocoa and XCode and and head over to Smarthome’s Career site.

While we’re talking about cool jobs, LEGOLAND Discovery Center Atlanta recently began searching for its Master Model Builder. The attraction will host several rounds of auditions to select the most qualified builder to become a full-time employee.

This unconventional job provides an opportunity to turn a beloved childhood pastime into a dream career, and LEGOLAND Discovery Center Atlanta looks forward to incorporating such talent and enthusiasm into its family-focused and interactive experience. If this sounds like the gig for you, head over to LEGOLAND Discovery Center Atlanta on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ldcatlanta and filling out the online application.

During the holiday season, many tech-oriented shoppers will be scrutinizing the market for the best valued tablet. While most analysts point to the iPad as the pinnacle of current tablet design and functionality, consumers have one big beef with the product: its price. The iPad 2 starts at a whopping $499, a price that most consumers simply can’t afford in this economy. So let’s set aside the iPad 2 and consider some of the more economical tablet options for the holiday shopping season. Of course there are the other most talked about tablets to consider, Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Now that both tablets have been released, analysts expect the competition between the two to be fierce since they come in at similar price points and offer comparable features. But which of these tablets would work best for you, dear consumer?

Amazon’s Kindle Fire

Amazon and tech bloggers did a good job of building up the hype behind the Kindle Fire prior to it’s release in mid November. Even before its formal release, millions of people had pre-ordered the tablet without ever personally seeing it work in real time, and for good reason—the tablet starts at $199.

Amazon was true to their word about the Kindle being a new kind of tablet. Shoppers should note that the Kindle Fire is unlike an iPad in a number of ways. For one, its specs are much more limited than those on the Apple tablet: the Kindle Fire has a 1GHz dual core processor with 512MB of RAM, and 8GB for storage of music, movies, etc. It’s the perfect tablet for consuming mass quantities of digital media—the tablet it built around the user’s ability to download songs, films, or books on Amazon—without too much effort. Silk, Amazon’s newly minted browser for the Kindle Fire, helps users surf the web without taking too much of a toll on the tablet’s functionality. And you’ll need Silk for all the tasks you put to the Kindle Fire. For instance, if you purchase Amazon Prime, you get access to unlimited streaming of the latest television shows, movies, and music for duration of your subscription. You’ll be able to toggle between watching the latest blockbuster, reading your favorite fantasy novel, and listening to a blues album with just a few simple taps. And rest assured, the interface on the Kindle Fire is very simple to understand.

On the downside, the Kindle Fire has been criticized as being too limited for tablet. True, you can’t do all the things on it that you can do on an iPad, but what do you expect in a $199 tablet? Maintenance on the Kindle Fire is another issue, as there isn’t a physical store where you can have your tablet serviced. Theoretically you’d have to ship the tablet to Amazon if you need it fixed. The device has also been cited as being a little bulky and aesthetically rougher than the iPad.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet

If you’re not sold by the Kindle Fire but you still want to save money on your tablet purchase, definitely consider the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. At $249 it’s a slightly more expensive machine, but you get more for your money. For starters, the specs are better than the Kindle’s; it has the same processor, but boasts 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space. What’s more, the Nook Tablet has a slot for portable memory cards up the 32GB in size, something lacking on the Kindle Fire.

On the hardware and functionality side of things, the Nook Tablet certainly has loads to offer. It features two screens, a large LCD screen for displaying content and a much smaller touch screen to interface with the tablet. This setup stands in contrast to the Kindle Fire’s all-in-one touch screen interface, but fans of the Nook Tablet don’t seem fazed by the difference in design.

The Nook Tablet similarly gobbles up eBooks, video content and music files with the same voracity as the Kindle Fire, but the dual screen feature may entice consumers looking for a more dynamic device. The Nook Tablet will also have the advantage in customer service, since people can go to their local Barnes and Noble store whenever they have a question about their tablet. Some analysts even speculate that the stores will install a type of Apple Genius Bar for Nook Tablet customers, built solely to accommodate their concerns.
While the Nook Tablet has plenty of enjoyable features, consumers won’t be able to tell much difference between it and the Kindle Fire after a quick comparison. It certainly stands alone as its own tablet, but the $50 price differential may sway more consumers to Amazon.

Amazon announced a new benefit for Kindle owners that have an Amazon Prime membership called the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library.

Those eligible can choose from thousands of books to borrow up to a book a month with no due dates and no additional cost as a value-add to the Amazon Prime membership.

The Amazon Prime membership remains $79 a year, which gives you free two-day shipping on millions of products, plus unlimited instant streaming of almost 13,000 movies and TV shows.

The latest Google project to be discontinuing and shutting down is the Google Sidewiki. Google Sidewiki was a browser sidebar that enabled people to contribute and read helpful information alongside any web page available as a feature in Google Toolbar.

According to the announcement, Google Sidewiki will be shut down and all content deleted on December 5, 2011 and included a link so contributors can export their Sidewiki entries.

According to Wireless Week, HTC shipped the most smartphones in the US in Q3 2011 with 5.7 million smartphones shipped. Samsung shipped 4.9 million and Apple shipped 4.6 million providing Android a number one and two spot in US shipments. RIM continues the free slide dropping to under 10% share of shipments.

With the Apple 4S release at the beginning of this quarter, Apple should reach the #1 spot again for new shipments during Q4 2011. With that said, the aggregated mobile OS view will remain in the favor of Android supported by multiple manufacturers.

Additionally, according to Information Week, Android has surpassed the iPhone in App downloads holding 44% of App downloads while Apple clings to a 31% download share.

In my Top Daily-Use Products post, I listed Dropbox and it would still make the list if I revised that list, and that’s not even including the premium version; the free version is that good. Tech deal-of-the-day site, AppSumo is running a giveaway where 10 lucky winners will get a lifetime 50GB account, which normally run $9.99/mo.

It takes 10 seconds to enter – just hit this link. Good luck!

BTW, I totally recommend you sign up for a free account regardless of whether you enter the contest.

PS> Another cool syncing service to check out is SugarSync.

Here’s my list of favorite, must-have, daily use Web and tech products (mainly software) inspired by Michael Arrington and his annual list over at Techcrunch. For some reason, this year, he hasn’t published a list (yet?). [Here's his list from Jan 1, 2010.]

There are 19 products on this list most of which I feel are the best web services available today. And while I absolutely use many more times that number of online web services and other software on a regular basis, I took a cue from Mr. Arrington’s list, and this is the top must-have services and products that I couldn’t live without and that I use practically every day, and in most cases in both my personal and work life.

Gmail. Hands-down, the best e-mail webmail account and client out there. I gave up using Thunderbird — excellent product as it is — years ago and now use Gmail exclusively. Throw in its excellent array of powerful (yet optional) add-ons in Gmail Labs and its ability to suck in mail from other accounts and you have a winner. Gmail may be the best example of a perfectly executed Web 2.0 service.

POBox

PObox just forwards my mail wherever I’d like (in this example from john@pobox.com to john@gmail.com). It also does spam checking and filtering using a slew of methods and controls, further simplifying my life. I can also have multiple email aliases (ex: johnsmith@pobox.com). The basic service is more than worth the $20/year of never having to send out an e-mail that says “Hey, please note my new email address.”

Dropbox

Of course, you can also access those files via the Web as well. Upgrade to paying accounts to get 50 or even 100GB of storage.

Evernote

Things you can drop into an Evernote folder include photos, web pages, scanned documents and raw notes. Evernote indexes them all, and in particular does a nice job of scanning text in images. And of course, you can share notebooks (folders) as well.

Evernote is another great example of a well-done Web 2.0 service.

Toodledo

1Password

Agile Web Solutions’ 1Password solves that problem nicely by letting you keep them in sync with Dropbox. It also does a better job of ‘remembering’ passwords that some websites try to stymie the browser from doing so, and will also perform a 1-click and fill-in login.

Available now for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad an Android platforms. And by the way, their support is fantastic.

Backblaze

I went with Backblaze as it’s unlimited, continuous backups for $5/mo, encryption of my data and a non-intrusive application.

Skype

Facebook

Delicious

Twitter

One of the most important things that Twitter ever did was to create a very open API that allowed hundreds of developers to create clients and tools that far exceed Twitter’s web interface. For example, I use TweetDeck and HootSuite far more than I ever use Twitter.com.

WordPress

Google Reader

Google Docs

Google

And this was just the start of their slew of free online services.

Firefox and Chrome. These are the top 2 web browsers for just about anything and let’s face it – you use web browsers every day as well, quite possibly more than you use any other application.

I used to be a hardcore Mozilla Firefox purist, but Google Chrome has really caught up in the extensions department and just does a fantastic job of rendering JavaScript-heavy pages (like Gmail for example) and flawlessly moving tabs around. I still use Firefox for Web development though, and I can’t wait for version 4 to see how much they’ve improved the speed.

DVR/Digital Video Recorders. Remember when we didn’t have these? Yeah, life was tough then. I feel helpless when I can’t pause, rewind or cue up a previously recorded program – every time I go to a hotel room comes to mind. My drug of choice – DISH Network’s receivers with built-in DVRs rock. Tivos rock too.

Livescribe

And don’t worry, they’ve also got a web service online that let’s you get to your notes via the Web and/or share them with friends/colleagues.

That’s it for now. Tell what you think are the best online services in the comments. See you next year!