PTJ 89 News: Heads or Tails
Merely having its own tablet and TV set-top box is clearly not enough to keep up with Google and Apple: Amazon is said to be working on its own line of smartphones now as well. According to the Boy Genius Report site and a few other sources, the flagship Amazon touchscreen phone will run a [...]
(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: Maps and Legends
Even though it sometimes feels like they feel like it’s been around since the Web was invented, the Google Maps service has been available to the public for less than a decade. The Web version of Google Maps went live in 2005 and within months, had incorporated now-familiar features like satellite imagery and directions. The standalone [...]
PTJ 88 News: Frick and Frak
Just about a year ago here on Pop Tech Jam, we were chattering about the tests the United States Navy was doing with laser weapons and this week, the Navy has announced its engineers are putting the finishing touches on a laser weapon prototype that will be the first to be deployed to a ship. [...]
Long Drawn Sunday Night
Spring finally seems to have arrived in the northern hemisphere and along with daffodils and gentle breezes, many popular TV shows are either returning for their new weird little cable seasons — or coming into the last leg of their network airings before summer vacation. (You know, when all the good stuff happens and maybe [...]
PTJ 87 News: Checks and Balances
Another year, another pile of April Fools’ Day Jokes from tech companies. As usual, general wackiness ensued and even the CERN site played along as it announced a move to Comic Sans as its typeface for official communications. Try as they may, however, nobody is ever going to top the ThinkGeek site for April Fools’ [...]
(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: What’s Going On?
News and gossip have been binding people together for centuries and the rise of the Internet has only made it more convenient to keep up with what everybody else is talking about. From social media to search engines, it’s easy to see what’s setting the world abuzz on any given day. For example, Twitter users [...]
The Pop Tech Jam Players Present: The Empire Striketh Back
El Kaiser and J.D. may be on spring break this week, but The Pop Tech Jam Players are back in action with selections from Ian Doescher’s recently released William Shakepeare’s The Empire Striketh Back. Like his previous work, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars®, Mr. Doescher retells a familiar tale in iambic pentameter — the same verse style used by a [...]
PTJ 86: The Big Bang And That XP Thang
Newsweek magazine makes a splashy return on paper with a cover story claiming to have found the father of Bitcoin. In his Tech Term of the Week, El Kaiser explains doxxing and why Internet denizens are so ticked off at the weekly news magazine. The computer mouse has been with us for half a century [...]
PTJ 86 News: Robot Fish & Chips with Guinness
Your eyes are not enough for Google. This week, the Big G announced Android Wear, a version of the mobile operating system for smartwatches and other gadgets strapped to other parts of the body. The first Android Wear watches and monitors will arrive later this year but there’s a developer’s preview out now for anybody [...]
Point. Click. Repeat.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the humble computer mouse. The late, great Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute built the first prototype in 1964 and later got a patent for the device in 1970. With the arrival Apple’s Macintosh computer in 1984, the mouse has had a long reign over desktop computer [...]