Month: March 2018

In order to vastly upgrade the quality of the Dr. Bill.TV Netcast (and my other Netcasts as well!) I have a NEW Canon EOS Rebel SL2 DSLR! Here’s a review from our friend, Sean Cannell from Think Media TV, of the SL2! Thanks, Sean, for the recommendation… I love the SL2!

‘Bout time!

Dropbox to add native G Suite integration in new partnership with Google

TechCrunch – By: Ron Miller – “It’s been an eventful week for Dropbox coming off its announcement last Friday that it was finally going public, but that doesn’t mean the business stops. The company announced plans to partner with Google today to bring native G Suite integration to Dropbox storage.

The fact is that more than 50 percent of Dropbox users have a G Suite account — which includes GMail along with Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides. To this point, there hasn’t been a way to store these files in Dropbox. That has required a Google Drive account, but customer requirements can sometimes make for strange bedfellows and Dropbox and Google have been working together to bring this integration to fruition because it’s something both companies’ customers have been asking for, Quentin Clark, SVP of Engineering, Product and Design at Dropbox explained.

‘Dropbox is increasingly building out its content collaboration functionality with the freedom to use whatever tools [customers] want to use on whatever platform that they want to use. This partnership is another step on that journey,’ Clark told TechCrunch.

Clark points out that Dropbox has been in the process of building out these partnership deals for the last couple of years with partnerships with Microsoft, Autodesk and Adobe already on the books. This fills in a major content type that had been previously (conspicuously) missing.

He said that the two companies are in the process of working out the details of how the integration is going to work, but he expects the integration to be completed by the end of the year. When it’s done users should be able store, open and start G Suite documents in Dropbox. ‘The way that integration looks and feels, that’s the stuff we are finding our way together,’ he said.

Clark, who has had past stints at Microsoft and SAP, says that he has learned over time that it’s incumbent upon vendors like Dropbox to focus on the needs of the users over the needs of the company. That’s why two companies that sell online storage services are willing to work together. ‘It is enabling best of breed and recognizing that you are going to hire your product to do a certain job and may be hiring other products to do other jobs, and you have to be at peace with that,’ he said.

While the timing may seem to be close enough to the IPO announcement that it is related, the fact is the partnership has been in the works for some time. Perhaps the company wanted to put it out there to enhance their enterprise street cred prior to the IPO, but if that were the case, they weren’t saying during the legally required quiet period prior to going public.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Google has teamed up with another company to provide third-party storage. In fact, Diane Greene, who is head of Google Cloud, announced a partnership to make Box a third-party storage partner for Google content at the 2016 Boxworks customer conference.”

These “product wars” are getting silly!

Amazon to stop sales of all Nest products as battle with Google intensifies

AppleInsider – By: – “Citing sources familiar with the matter, Business Insider reports Amazon informed Nest in a conference call late last year that it would not sell the firm’s newest products, which includes devices like the Nest Cam IQ and forthcoming Hello video-enabled doorbell.

Amazon said the decision came ‘from the top’ and had nothing to do with Nest’s product quality, leading some Nest employees to speculate it was Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who made the call, the report said.

In response, Nest has resolved to discontinue dealings with Amazon, meaning currently available items like the Nest Security Camera and third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat will disappear from Amazon’s digital shelves once existing stock runs dry. A source said Nest wants to present customers its entire lineup or nothing at all, the report said.

The move comes as Amazon looks to leverage its prominent market position to push into the connected home space. Riding on a wave of success from its Alexa virtual assistant ecosystem, the e-commerce titan recently purchased connected doorbell and security device manufacturer Ring.

Ring’s Video Doorbell and outdoor Floodlight Cam both compete against products from Nest, though Amazon’s decision does not smack of anticompetitive behavior. The online retailer currently sells a number of similar devices from various manufacturers.

It is Amazon’s ongoing battle with Google that might be to blame. Google this month announced plans to absorb Nest into its Google Home division, a strategy it says will ‘supercharge’ Nest’s mission to create a more ‘thoughtful’ home.

‘By working together, we’ll continue to combine hardware, software and services to create a home that’s safer, friendlier to the environment, smarter and even helps you save money — built with Google’s artificial intelligence and the Assistant at the core,’ Google SVP of Hardware Rick Osterloh said in a blog post.

Amazon’s Alexa and Echo series of speakers is challenged by Google Assistant and Google Home, which multiplied last year with the release of Google Home Mini and Google Home Max.

In line with its recent decision to ban new Nest products from its site, Amazon does not carry Google’s Home line, Chromecast hardware or Pixel smartphone. Likewise, Google in December blocked YouTube compatibility with Amazon’s FireTV platform and Echo Show device.

Amazon is in a precarious position as it both courts and competes with major tech companies. The firm had a similar tiff with Apple.

In 2015, Amazon yanked Apple TV from availability, saying the device was removed because it did not ‘interact well’ with Amazon Prime Video. At the time, the company refused to develop a Prime Video channel for Apple TV, assumedly due to Apple’s mandated 30 percent cut of content sales.

Most recently, however, Amazon reinstated sales of Apple TV in December and released a Prime Video app for tvOS.

Today’s report suggests the same thawing of relations could happen with Google, as Amazon plans to reboot Chromecast sales in the near future. Whether the olive branch is enough to get YouTube working on FireTV — and ultimately Nest products back on Amazon shelves — remains to be seen.”

This is a “maybe”… but it would be a smart upgrade.

Apple is reportedly planning to release a cheaper MacBook Air later this year

The Verge – By: Andrew Liptak – “Apple hasn’t done much with its ultra-thin MacBook Air in recent years, opting to slim down some of its other offerings instead. But the computer is reasonably popular, and according to Apple analyst KGI Securities (via 9to5Mac), the company is reportedly planning to release a cheaper model at some point in the second quarter of 2018.

According to 9to5Mac, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects that Apple will release a 13-inch MacBook Air ‘with a lower price tag,’ later this year, and that the lower price could help boost Apple’s laptop sales.

While the line celebrates its tenth year in 2018, the line has largely only received incremental updates, the last of which came last summer, when Apple updated it with a faster 1.8GHz Intel processor. Apple currently sells the MacBook Air for $999.

The report also says that Apple will likely refresh its AirPods, and that the HomePod has been met with ‘mediocre’ demand.”