I found this commercial completely stupid about using a BlackBerry to write a thousand emails a day. First off, nobody writes a thousand individual emails a day even from a computer. And if you used a BlackBerry Bold to do it, your fingers would be sore. This commercial is as foolish as those who said they would always use a typewriter and never write on a computer.

I use SwiftKey as my primary keyboard because it predicts the next word before I hit a letter many times. Therefore when it doesn’t, it does by the first letter. My wife was very resistant to trying something new, but really liked the speed of SwiftKey once she tried it. My father doesn’t like to purchase anything that he doesn’t have to, but enjoyed the SwiftKey X keyboard so much he bought it also after the free trial.

A thousand emails still doesn’t make sense, but I believe that it could be accomplished much easier with the SwiftKey keyboard than with physical keys.

This stopped me reading my other articles today. I have had haptic touch on every Android phone I have owned. At least they finally got speech to text. Lol

CNET: How to add favicons to your Google search results http://goo.gl/mag/iUElT

Ever since I was little, I have loved the Braves. I was quite the little tomboy when it came to baseball. I collected baseball cards and asked for baseball stuff for every birthday. My dad used to take all of his daughters on “dates” and every time that it was my turn to pick the date, I always wanted to go to a Braves’ games. Now that I am older, I still love going to the Braves ‘ games, but if I can’t go, I at least want to be able to watch the game on tv. I went to directstartv.com to find out which channels all of the games would be on. I was able to find a schedule for the full season of the Braves’ games. I am so excited about baseball season starting. I love the games, I love tailgating, and I especially love warm weather. When the Braves season starts, it feels like the start of summer to me. I am really looking forward to going to as many games as I can this year.

When it comes to computers, I would prefer to buy them from Best Buy because I appreciate their variety, the prices are great, and they are local in case I have an immediate problem. With the fragile nature of hard drives and LED displays, I do not like to risk ordering a computer online through EBay. I would consider CompUSA, but I am learty of them for they sell so many items that are refurbished. I believe refurbished items sometimes are better than new if they have major parts replaced. I also worked for a computer store once and many times it is difficult to get an error to duplicate itself for someone else. Therefore some refurbished items may get repackaged and never fixed the problem because they couldn’t find it.

I like to purchase my printers from Staples because many times they have a buy back program in effect to buy your old printer. This works out well as they give you more money for an old printer than you could get selling through EBay or Craigslist. I have purchased printers through EBay before, but these days prices on EBay for a lot of equipment are not much better than in stores.

These days nobody wants another computer and would rather get a tablet. I purchased my Motorola Xoom tablet from Verizon during the Black Friday sale after this past Thanksgiving. It cost $199 with adding a 2 year contract for a data plan. This worked out perfectly for me as I needed Internet access with my tablet for presentations. I would not have purchased a tablet from Verizon because they charged more for theirs than Best Buy because of the modem.

I have noticed in my most recent tablet purchase for my wife, that prices for the newest tablets like the Asus Transformer Prime are higher on EBay and Amazon than Best Buy. This happens when you have a high demand for a product with limited quantities. We will pick our up 5 days after purchasing it from Best Buy. And the keyboard dock cost $149 from Best Buy and it is over $162 everywhere else plus shipping cost. We will use the reward certificates from the purchase towards the keyboard dock purchase at Best Buy next month.

I love getting the latest smart phone from Verizon. I was extremely disappointed with the Samsung Droid Charge I purchased last June. The phone did not work very well and I was locked into a 2 year contract with it. Through Craigslist I found individuals selling their HTC Thunderbolts and I bought 3 of them for myself and family members. I turned around and sold the Droid Charge for more than I paid for 2 Thunderbolts. And by purchasing used phones from Craigslist, you do not have to extend your contract. For the hottest, latest phone, you will probably pay a premium for it through Craigslist. But if you wait a few months, you will get the phone at a reasonable price. Just make sure you call your provider before purchase to verify the phone was not reported as lost or stolen and make sure it is not on someone else account.

From time to time you will need to purchase a cable or a battery for a phone and they are all pretty much the same. I like going to Family Dollar for inexpensive auxiliary and HDMI cables. All other cables and battery can be purchased from a variety of sellers on EBay. I purchase micro USB cables for under $3 with shipping included from EBay. I had purchased some from a seller in Hong Kong only to be disappointed with a crappy product where the cable came loose. You can get that bad type of cable from a MetroPCS store. I have not had a problem with US sellers for cell phone accessories. Many times the products I order from EBay are better than the stock cables. I would never purchase another cable from Best Buy or RadioShack.

There you have where I purchase most of my technology stuff. I am sure I left something out, but I am willing to revise this if there is a question.

I purchased my Motorola Xoom tablet on Black Friday from Verizon and knew I wanted to protect the screen. Verizon did not have any screen protectors in stock, so I went across the street to Best Buy where the Zagg protectors were on sale for $10. I was pretty happy with my purchases that weekend. Then I started using it all…

I love my Motorola Xoom tablet even though it is last to get updated to Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0.4. The screen has embarrassed me when meeting for a sales appointment and it looked messy with fingerprint smudges and dust. Then I was frustrated further when it was difficult to view outside. I didn’t like the orange peel effect of the Zagg screen protector the last time I tried it and have avoided buying it for any other devices.

I had seen recently a phone with an anti-glare screen protector on it. The person said his wife bought it from Amazon.com. Amazon was the first place I looked for a new anti-glare screen protector. I was even happier when I found that there are many different manufacturers and many are fingerprint resistant as well. I have purchased one for both my Motorola Xoom tablet and Samsung Galaxy Nexus for less than $10 each with shipping included.

Why aren’t these types of screen protectors sold at more places? Why doesn’t Zagg make a better product?

Since we bought our house 3 years ago, we have not been to Blockbuster much at all. I rented a few movies from Redbox at Walmart before we started our Netflix account a couple of years ago. Two weeks ago the Blockbuster by the University of Central Florida closed and next week the next closest one is closing. They sell their movies cheap and cheaper the last weekend.

How cheap is cheaper? They were selling for $4.99, but the last weekend sell all the used movies for $0.99, including Blu Ray movies. My wife and I purchased 20 movies each. Most of them were Blu Ray, some with cases, some were with only sleeves. All discs looked near perfect. I turned around and sold a few online for much more.

Thankfully I was able to find some deals for resale purposes. Unfortunately there are many people that will be forced to find another job. Many of these people are younger and working at Blockbuster is not much more than a starting job. Nonetheless automation and technology have taken over entertainment as you can now view movies on any smartphone or tablet with an Internet connection. The days of seeing a movie store on every street are gone. What’s next?

I read an article in my Google Current Weather app that was discussing Light Flow specially for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Light Flow allows you to change the color of the notification based on which app received a notice.

And those who believe that the more apps you have, the faster your battery life disappears. So I decided I didn’t need to  waste  my battery and I un-installed Light Flow.

The funny thing is that the notification light still appears in different colors even though Light Flow is the not installed.

One of the worst problems with Swiftkey’s voice to text is you have to hold their logo or touch it then touch voice input. Therefore it is an extra step over stock and other keyboards. Swiftkey also comes with it’s own voice recognition which is very accurate. Unfortunately on the tablet it recognizes what you say, but it does not input it where you would like. Thankfully with the tablet you can select voice input near the notification area in the bottom right to be able to use the pre-installed Google Voice for input.

Voice input is a bigger deal with Ice Cream Sandwich devices due to the significant improvement as it enters the words while you type. The accuracy is greatly improved. It even underlines words that it is unsure it got correctly and allows you choices of what it thinks you said. I believe it gets smarter understanding what you say by you correcting it. The voice to text is such a significant improvement, I will not install Swiftkey X on my Galaxy Nexus because it would force me to use their voice to text.

Today I saw an article about Swiftkey 3 Beta that is designed for Ice Cream Sandwich phones. The ‘X’ version did not allow me to switch ways to input very easily. The new Swiftkey 3 Beta did not change much for the keyboard. It does however allow you to drag your notification bar down and choose a different input method included the Google Voice typing that I love so much. I still do not like that I have to do 2 steps to get access to it. I will try it for a bit because I do miss being able to swipe from right to left to erase whole words. The Ice Cream Sandwich stock keyboard is much improved as you can enter a letter or two and it will predict what you are typing. You can also hit just one key to use voice to text with the stock keyboard. I love that so much, I don’t think the Swiftkey will have a chance.

All of the time Google introduces something new that we can use everyday moving forward. Google Docs started off with a word processor and spreadsheets compared to Microsoft’s Word and Excel. Microsoft Office is no longer needed with Google’s contact management inside Gmail and Google Calendar. The newest features of Microsoft Office include being able to share documents with other users at your company and allow them to change the document at the same time as when you are working on it. That ability is already included in Google Docs.

I was excited to see that Google Docs included Presentations. This meant I could use my phone or tablet for presentations with clients. So I started uploading saved PowerPoint presentations to my Google Docs account. I did encounter some issues with Presentations in Google Docs. Once you know your limitations, you know what you have to work around. Thankfully there are not many, so this will be short.

When uploading PowerPoint presentations, you may be tempted to allow them to be “converted” to Google Docs Presentations. If your presentations do not include special graphics like from a Excel document, then you should be fine.Unfortunately most of my presentations include charts and graphs. The conversion process is not ideal for this reason.

Recommendation: When uploading PowerPoint presentations to Google Docs, do not convert them. You will still be able to use the presentations on your phone or tablet as they were originally set up and do not need any additional apps to make them work. The only downside is they do not take the full screen as a Google Docs Presentation. The difference will not be a big deal to you.

Other issue I had was when I wanted to include a link inside a presentation to another Google Doc file, the app does not allow you to go back to the last page that you were on in the presentation by hitting the back button. If you have a link to a website, the browser window will pop up and show you the website quickly and when you hit the back button it will return the the page you were on in the presentation.

I don’t believe those problems are so bad that it would prevent someone from being able to use Presentations in Google Docs. Especially the use of a link inside a presentation is not typically done. With the use of the internet, most of use expect to be able to use it all the time for everything. So we are spoiled. Overall, Google Docs is top notch to perform most office document tasks. So what next?

I received a file in my Hotmail account the other day. Hotmail asked me if I would like to download or view online. I decided to see what happens when I select view online. Would you believe it opened in a Microsoft Office Word Online page. It appears that Microsoft wants to get back in the game. They have a long way to go but this will be a crucial component as Microsoft will introduce Windows 8 later this year to compete with Apple and Android.