Looxcie HD review

Wearable technology is growing rapidly as we move into a life full of smart devices. We are trying to simplify our lives and improve our performance with these products, but we are not willing to become cyborgs. This is why it is important for technology to also improve our human side. We can say a device is successful (in this aspect) when it can give us experiences that focus on what we can do, instead of what the gadget can do for us. The Looxcie HD Explore is one of these devices.

I had a chance to review the Looxcie 2 in the past, which brought great features and functionality but had its defects. It doubled as a bluetooth headset, making you more productive, but its camera and companion apps also allowed us to record and share video on the go. It was portable, sleek and simple, but many complained about the lack of HD video recording capabilities.

The Looxcie HD Explore moves into the portable video camera market by bringing us full HD videos while sacrificing bluetooth capabilities. It is not a replacement to the Looxcie 2, but an enticing option for another market… a competitor to wearable cameras like the smart card.

The Looxcie HD Explore is not only a better camera for sports and personal events, but it has also been designed to survive. While we won’t say it is a “rugged” device, it is night and day compared to the Looxcie 2. The Explore features a much more solid build quality, built with rubber, durable plastic and what looks like some form of metal.

Everything feels very sturdy and in place. I never felt like it was going to break on me or like I was being overly rough with it. The device does have a bit of ruggedness to it – Looxcie is calling it “weather-resistant”. A waterproof case is said to be coming, though, making this a great wearable camera for adventure-seekers.

Two buttons are placed on the top of the device, one for initiating/stopping a recording and one for creating Instant Clips (30-second videos meant for quick sharing). These buttons feel pretty solid, but I do wish they provided more feedback.

It’s hard to tell if one has really pressed the buttons, which usually results in one turning the camera around to see if the red light between the lens and the microphone is lit (it indicates the camera is recording). This results in all your videos starting with your face!

The power switch and the microUSB port are placed in the back, covered by a rubber layer that comes completely off. The battery covers the whole side and is made of a rubberized material. It fits very tight into place, and a small latch keeps the battery solidly in place. I am more than sure the battery will never come out when in use, which is always a plus.

Below the battery you can also find a microSD card slot. The fact that it is housed inside keeps it very safe… again, that’s very convenient for active users. The unit accepts cards as low as class 4 and with a capacity as high as 64 GB. No card is included and the device has no internal storage, so make sure to keep that in mind and have one ready.

I find the conjunction of the camera’s design and its new accessories very convenient. In a sense, the camera is a standalone block. If you want to wear it, it has to be put in its casing, which then gets installed in different accessories. The camera and its adapter get “docked” into accessories like the helmet mount, ball cap clip, handlebar mount and the windshield mount (some of these are included with the Looxcie HD Explore package).

Of course, the device comes with a microUSB port you can use for charging and transferring files. The Looxcie HD’s most important features are its smartphone controls, though. The Looxcie HD uses WiFi to connect to smartphones, unlike the Looxcie 2, which used bluetooth. This makes the connection much faster and reliable, even if it may use more battery.

One can simply connect to the camera via WiFi, but this will force you to stay out of your regular WiFi connection (which is no huge problem considering you probably won’t be using this at home). Don’t worry, the app allows you to keep your smartphone’s data connection while you use the WiFi with the camera, so you won’t be left stranded out there.

There is a bit of a delay when you start the camera. It seems like it stutters for a couple seconds before it starts recording. This can be noticed after the video is reviewed – the video will not start exactly where you thought it would. Also, it can be noticed when using the live view in the Looxcie app. It is definitely an issue, but one can simply anticipate it. All in all, I wouldn’t say it’s a deal breaker.

After looking at the test footage, we can see the video quality is still not quite up-to-par with the competition. The picture can be a bit grainy and the colors don’t pop as much (especially during low-light conditions), but we must also realize what separates the Looxcie HD from cameras like GoPro’s. It is meant to be a plastic card.

While the Looxcie 2 used multiple apps, the company has managed to put it all into a single app for the Looxcie HD. The app is rather simple and straight-forward. One can easily record, stream or buffer with the Looxcie HD. Also, you can even stream to your Facebook account and you don’t even need a Looxcie camera to do this. Your device’s cameras can be used to stream via the Looxcie app, so you can go ahead and use it even if you don’t have your Looxcie HD around (or if you don’t plan on buying one at all).

One can also watch videos other users have made public, or check the footage you have in the cloud. Watching the video on your Looxcie HD’s microSD card is currently not possible, but the section is in the app and the feature should be coming in a future update. This would probably be my biggest gripe about the app, but according to the Looxcie team an update is coming “within a couple weeks”. Let’s hope the ability to watch content saved in the camera is included.

How One Company Built the 3-D Printer Market Layer by Layer

Upstart 3-D printer companies have captured the attention of makers, but a 30 year old company called 3D Systems is having a record year on Wall Street. The company just announced an 81 percent increase in sales of their 3-D printers, catapulting their market capitalization over $4 billion. Their Cube 3-D printer is the first of its kind for sale at a big box store like Staples. And while MakerBot might have snagged the sweet brand name “Replicator” from Star Trek, 3D Systems got the exclusive license to print personalized 3-D figurines of Starship Enterprise crew members coinciding with the new movie’s premiere.

This success is especially impressive since it seemed like science fiction on March 9, 1983, when Antoinette Hull got a late night phone call from her husband, Chuck, who was busy tinkering with a “3-D printer” prototype at his lab. After hundreds of failed experiments that looked like plastic spaghetti, he had finally gotten his machine to work. Dressed in her pajamas, she got in the car and drove to the lab where she saw the first 3-D print — a little plastic cup she carries in her purse thirty years later.

According 3D Systems’ current CEO, Avi Reichental, the fact that Hull was able to get his first rapid-prototyping machine up and running at all was impressive considering how limited and expensive the computers of the time were. Remember, at that point, the world was still a year away from the launch of the now-iconic Apple Macintosh, CAD tools were underpowered and out of reach financially, and standards that modern 3-D printing entrepreneurs take for granted, like a file format to communicate between computers and RFID tag, didn’t exist.

Undaunted, Hull got to work building out the technical and commercial infrastructure, all of which needed to be created from scratch. While 3D Systems has taken a lot of heat in the maker community for suing upstart Formlabs, Reichental points out that they invented and opensourced the .STL file format, providing a tool now used by the entire CAD/CAM industry.

Despite Hull’s passion for rapid prototyping, the path to commercial success was treacherous, and in the late 1990s, the company was on the brink of collapse. When Reichental was asked to join 3D Systems as CEO, he didn’t have a clear idea about how to fix the company, but the enormity of the opportunity and the potential for 3-D printing to change the world was too big to pass up.

The company stabilized under Reichental’s leadership, but the rise of low-cost 3-D printers transformed the organization. “Our democratization effort, the focus on the consumer, changed everything,” says Reichental. “We’ve pushed every part of our culture to develop more functional, more powerful, more affordable, but simpler to use products.”

Sharing an in-depth roadmap can be dangerous, since it can tip off more nimble startup competitors, so to help limit the danger, 3D Systems seems intent on acquiring every 3-D printing company in the market. Since 2011, 3D Systems has acquired 16 different companies that do everything from core R&D to fun app experiences  “A third of our acquisitions are not revenue generating,” says Reichental. “We’re buying technology building blocks that will allow us to offer new services in the IC card.”

Healthcare is an important growing segment of the business that touches a diverse range of product categories including hearing aids, surgical tools and dental products. While it may sound dry, medical applications account for 14 percent, or about $50 million dollars a year, of 3D Systems’ revenue, and it has huge growth potential. Invisalign uses 3D Systems printers to produce its custom orthodontic braces and generates half a billion dollars in annual revenue, making even a well-funded Kickstarter project seem a bit inconsequential.

And while medical applications can generate a lot of revenue, 3D Systems isn’t ignoring their entry level systems either. Their low cost systems are repackaged versions of pre-existing printers, but the company is spending a lot of resources to buff them with user-friendly software. The company is also attempting to establish a marketplace along the lines of Thingiverse. An acquisition called MyRobotNation made it possible for kids to access high-end printers and create a robot army with a simple web app and a credit card.

These pieces provide plenty of interesting touchpoints for newbies, but are still far from being fully integrated. For instance, there is no way to export a robot designed on the web to a personal 3-D printer, a weakness Reichental recognizes and is working on improving. “We’re systematically and passionately removing the friction between our technology and the 99 percent of the population that is mesmerized by the concept of 3-D printing,” says Reichental. “We’re trying to develop technology that turns complex machines into ‘coloring book simple’ apps and portals to create an end-to-end capability.”

Still, Reichental and his team are taking a long view towards the market and not ignoring any facet of it. “We’re beneficiaries of the convergence robotics, sensing, mobile, cloud computing, and AI,” he says. ”It’s one of the most exciting periods in human history — we’re on the verge of renaissance that will impact manufacturing, healthcare, and education.”

Playing host to a physical QWERTY keyboard similar to the BlackBerry Q10, the newly unveiled BlackBerry Q5 is aimed at the youth market, and acts as a replacement of sorts to the likes of the BlackBerry Curve 9320. With the handset coming in four varying hues, black, white, red and pink, the youth market is further targeted by heavy focus on the BBM messaging service that took BlackBerry to non-business market success in a previous life.

One area in which BlackBerry has saved pennies on the BlackBerry Q10, is in its build quality. Whereas the BlackBerry Q10 feels like a solid, well manufactured handset, the budget BlackBerry Q5 features a predominantly plastic construction.

Lining up at 10.8mm thick and 120g in weight, the BlackBerry Q5 looks and feels notably cheaper than its BB10 siblings, but this does not mean it is a poorly designed handset. Adopting a familiar form, the QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen display share the space on the handset’s face well, with a spattering of open, unused space around the handset’s lower and side edges the only signs of a reduced effort in the device’s aesthetic.

Friendly Living this Sunday at the Wilton Go Green Festival

If bicycling is more your sport, join Sound Cyclists on guided rides of varying lengths and ability levels. Advanced registration is not required, but participants should dress appropriately and bring their bikes and helmets. (See the box, below, for more information.) Later in the day, riders should venture over to the silent auction for a chance to take home a new bike courtesy of Outdoor Sports. While you're there, why not bid on a summer membership at the Wilton Y, tickets to the Westport County Playhouse, a Gift Card to Bon Appetit or Cactus Rose, or a variety of specialty gift baskets?

The festival officially opens at 11:00am with live music, a wide array of creative children's crafts using recycled materials, fabulous "green" shopping, and more than 80 exhibitors eager to share best practices on energy conservation, building, transportation, recycling and waste management, and responsible stewardship of our air, land, water, wildlife and other natural resources.

At noon in the library courtyard, the Wilton Tree Committee will recognize the 2013 Steward of the Year at its annual ceremony. First Selectman Bill Brennen will open the ceremony, which will honor Young's Nursery for its long history of service, volunteerism and generous donations of plant material to many Wilton High School graduations, the Wilton Library and the town as a whole. Mr. Brennan will also attend the Neighbor to Neighbor Ribbon Cutting during which Wilton will be awarded a new plastic card charging station as a result of the many Home Energy Solutions Audits and other upgrades undertaken by residents.

The festival will sprawl between Town Green and the Wilton Library presenting everything from the latest electric and hybrid cars to a huge, interactive Earth Balloon sponsored by Deloitte and 17-foot tall Farmer created by student artists at Wilton High School. Live music will fill the air while organic and locally grown foods promise to satisfy hungry eco-enthusiasts. Back by popular demand, Skinny Pines Pizza will bring their mobile wood-fired brick oven and create deliciously original pies reflecting our local landscape using seasonally sourced ingredients. This year, the pizza gourmet is unveiling a special Wilton Go Green pesto pie created especially for the festival.

Wilton's own Green Leaf Organic Cafe will be on hand to quench your yearning for something sweet with a delicious sampling of their decadent and savory desserts and pastries. In addition to their traditional French bakery goods, this European-style cafe --known for their freshly baked breads and organic soups -- will offer turkey, veggie and ham sandwiches as well as salmon, chicken Caesar, and fruit and nut salads.

Want to take whip up delicious, healthy food at home? Grow your own vegetables, herbs and berries with a backyard garden. Wilton High School teacher Jim Hunter and students will offer a wide variety of young vegetable plants from their impressive organic garden to help you get started. (The WHS Recycling Club can show you what to do with those plastic pots once your new plants are happily in the garden.) And don't miss cooking demonstrations with Jonathan Mathias of A Dash of Salt Catering and fellow chefs at 11:30am, noon, 12:30pm and 1:00pm.

Renovating your kitchen, adding on, or building on new home? Get the answers you need to ensure your project takes full advantage of green building and remodeling practices at the building and energy exhibitors' area where you'll find pros from Next Step Living, Rings End and BPC Builders talking about clean energy options you'll want to include.

The light-weight tablet measuring 197.4 and 128.5 millimeters and weighing only 320g, is made up of plastic sporting a big black bezel on its front though which the screen is visible, giving the impression of a digital photo-frame. The top sports the Acer branding in the middle and right side has 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera.

The camera, though usable for making video calls, does not produce effective results when it comes to clicking the pictures or taking IC card. The back of the tablet is done up with black coloured plastic. The back, apart from the Acer branding, is equipped with a small speaker grill and certification labels.

A Micro-USB port is located at the bottom with a slot for a micro-SD card that is covered with an insert, while the 3.5 mm headset jack sits at the top of the device. The volume rocker and the power/sleep button, also done in black plastic material, have been placed at the right side of the tablet.

As far as the display is concerned, the tablet sports a 7-inch (diagonal) WSVGA capacitive multi-touch screen having a resolution of 1024×600 pixels have a density of about 170 ppi. Though the screen is quite bright but is reflective at the same time there hampering the visibility under sunlight. Even as the text do not appear to be very sharp, the screen is good enough to read the e-books and magazines. The tablet provides a excellent touch sensitivity to its users.

The current offering from Acer runs on Google’s Android 4.1.2 or Jelly Bean. As compared to the Ice Cream Sandwich version that is usually available for the lower priced devices, Jelly Bean is a much more polished thereby enabling a smooth work. The menu responds quickly and reliably and jerks while scrolling through long lists are rare. Apps also open agreeably fast although more sophisticated apps like games need a bit longer to load. Though internet browsing migh be bit slow as opening websites take slightly longer.

Prepaid Profitability Soars

Prepaid cards can be tied to financial services such as remittance and bill payments, but that may mean competing with stores offering the same services. Does carrying such cards make sense for every convenience store operator?

No one questions their soaring popularity. Maynard, Mass.-based Mercator Advisory Group, for instance, has estimated that by 2016 the amount of money added to prepaid plastic card will soar to nearly $685 billion, a 50% increase over 2011. Still, the decision of whether or not to get into financial services must go deeper than that.

“It’s one of those things, if you don’t do it you get left behind,” said Tom Pirko, president of BEVMARK LLC, a retail consultancy based in Buellton, Calif. “The premise that underlies the convenience store business is the ability to get people in and out of the stores quickly and to offer them the things that make their lives easier. Prepaid cards are in essence convenience items. So, as a convenience store operator, would you rather handle these items and enhance your convenience factor or have the sales go to Walmart?”

Ben Jackson, senior analyst for Mercator, suggested that retailers must decide whether or not financial services are part of their mission and, if so, to bolster it with prepaid cards.

“If a c-store operator has a lot of financial services business coming in by acting as a bill payment center and they are just selling prepaid cards off of a J-hook, then they’re not going to want to promote cards too much because it’s a strategic conflict,” Jackson noted. “But if their longer-term strategy is to build card-based services then they really need to make an effort create an environment where employees are well trained and customers are educated about the many uses of the cards and how to load money on them quickly to maintain the convenience element.”

Those operators might find it profitable to join a reload network, such as Western Union, Green Dot or MoneyGram, Jackson said. “When they become the anchor point for that card relationship they can drive more foot traffic and potentially increase sales of those cards.”

For those c-stores that develop a strategy around financial service, it can be a strong profit driver. “But for those who say, ‘You know what, it’s another product like anything else that I sell,’ it’s going to be very ordinary and never realize its full potential.”

The market being served by a given location will dictate how operators should proceed. “If I’m operating a c-store at a travel center on a main highway, then I probably have less of a need to sell financial services,” Jackson said. “But if I’m operating in a neighborhood where there are lots of customers from diverse economic backgrounds, then it becomes more important for me to become a financial services provider because I really am providing convenience of a different kind at that point.”

Knowing the customer is key. “This category is often thought of as a service for the underbanked, or code for lower-income consumers. But that isn’t always the case,” Jackson said “Sometimes it’s people who think, ‘I need to pay a bill right now because for whatever reason I didn’t get a notification.’ Or, ‘I was traveling and the electricity is going to be shut off if I don’t pay it right away.’ Or, ‘I need to send money to somebody right away.’ It becomes very much a convenience model that extends beyond just goods and into services.”

Amer Hawatmeh, president of St. George Oil in St. Louis, which operates four Coast to Coast convenience stores, said his success with prepaid cards and financial services overall depends on the community and its demographics.

“I find that those work really well in stores near colleges and universities in addition to urban areas,” he said.
Allowing customers the chance to reload card balances quickly and easily gives them the opportunity to carry a debit card. “These days you really can’t do anything without a number,” said Hawatmeh. “The old saying was, cash is king. Well, cash is no longer even existent in this country with younger customers anymore. Everything is mobile. Even plastic is an antiquated concept to some college kids these days. They’re looking to pay with their phones.”

Nor are the cards especially profitable anymore, Hawatmeh pointed out. “In the old days, when it was a newer idea, we could charge for the service and get a premium for it. Now everybody is doing it, so it’s not as much of a destination,” he said. “But again, my old philosophy is to try to be all things to all people. We’ve got to keep people walking in the door. Any time you say ‘no’ to a customer you risk losing his loyalty for all your other destinations.”

The profit margin generated by prepaid financial services is also shrinking as the technology continues to develop. “Nowadays you can get a phone app and pay your bills right on the phone,” Hawatmeh said. “You have to adjust your pricing accordingly to avoid losing these customers altogether.”

“They should also be bringing ideas about how to market that card and encourage people to come back and do the reloads in his stores,” Jackson said.
Marketing will play a role in how successful this category is as well.

“The first thing chains need to do is train their clerks, so that when somebody brings that card up to the register the clerk knows exactly what that is,” Jackson said. “I know there is a lot of turnover at c-stores, and I know that is a challenging aspect to these types of programs, but they need to let people know, ‘This is what this card does. It’s not a chip card, it’s a reloadable card.’”

The second thing retailers should do is devote space and signage to the products. “Tell customers, ‘Here is what this card is and here’s how you can reload it,’” Jackson said. Depending on the size and scope of the store, they should be working with the provider to do media buys or otherwise trumpet their addition.

Hands-On, Photos, First Impressions

The comments we kept hearing made here and there to the product demo team were somewhat lacking in energy, in effervescence, in excitement. It was almost as if were were at the iPhone 4S presentation, being shown that infamous "upgrade" of the iPhone 4. The thing is that specialist tech journos are demanding people, inevitably hoping that each time a replacement for a top-selling smartphone like the Galaxy S3 comes along it'll make a clean break with its predecessor and trigger a brand new "wow" effect. But that element of surprise was nowhere to be see last night. In comparison, Sony and HTC have been far more daring with the design of their latest high-end mobiles.

The S4 that's due to land in the UK and Europe runs on a 1.9 GHz quad-core Qualcomm S600 processor rather than Samsung's own Exynos 5 octa-core processor. From what we saw in our brief hands-on, the handset seemed smooth and responsive, although that's no smart card. Everything ran perfectly smoothly—from games and web browsing to flicking though menus.

The Galaxy S4 will be available with 16, 32 or 64 GB of onboard storage, which can be boosted by up to 64 GB via the microSD card slot. There are photo/video cameras with backlit sensors on the front and back of the S4, with 2 Megapixels for the front-facing webcam and 13 Megapixels for the main rear-facing camera, which films 1080p Full HD video and has an LED flash.

The Galaxy S4 lets users launch all kinds of functions without even touching the screen. You can, for example, preview a photo album without necessarily having to physically open it—just place your finger a few millimetres above the screen and the phone responds accordingly. That works for e-mails too. You can then flick through web pages or a photo album by making a swipe motion (left to right) with your finger just above the surface of the display. Great! But what's the point? Well, it means you can keep using your phone even when your hands are dirty (in the kitchen or garden, for example) or wet.

Similarly, the Smart Scroll function offers hands-free scrolling. You can therefore scroll up or down a web page by tilting the phone backwards or forwards, or by simply moving your eyes. In our tests, the phone-tilting option seemed to work pretty well but the head/eye tracking mode proved rather less reliable.

Samsung has also added all kinds of new features to the camera. For starters, Dual Camera lets you simultaneously shoot the scene and the photographer, who's face gets stuck onto the final photo as a little thumbnail (there are several layouts to choose from). There are loads of photo filers to play around with and a new burst mode that captures several shots before stitching the various poses together into a single picture. It seems pretty cool, but we need more time to play around with these functions to see just how practical and/or effective they are to use.

Dennis Baker, who programs the festival's short films and manages its data and internal technology, joined as a volunteer in 2003 after retiring from his job teaching auto shop at Silverado High School in Mission Viejo. His work for the festival extends year-round. When he's not busy planning the next shorts program, Baker updates the database of contact phone numbers and emails and maintains records of past programs.

"I can list the films we showed in the film festival eight years ago, and the ones we didn't," Baker said Tuesday morning while taking a momentary breather at the festival's Newport Beach headquarters.

He and other volunteers operate in a tight cluster of second-floor offices in a nondescript building near UC Irvine. Inside, posters of "Milk," "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and other recent hits line the walls; plastic bins, DVDs and paperwork are crammed in between desks and TV screens. Often, workers squeeze past each other in the narrow hall.

If the paste starts going a little brown then don’t stress because apparently that’s totally fine and it just means the flour is cooking. Okay now REMOVE FROM HEAT. My mother wrote this in all caps on the recipe card and so it must be important. I don’t know what happens if you keep it on the heat but I don’t think I wanna find out.

3. Next, add the milk and get whisking. Don’t stop whisking. Are you using full cream milk? Mum says that reduced fat milk won’t work in this sauce, she seriously told me this at least six times while we were out buying the ingredients and so I think we should all listen. As you're whisking periodically check that there are no lumps hiding out in the grove of the saucepan. [I just made up a little IC card about checking for lumps, to the tune of TLC's “No Scrubs” and it's definitely making this bechamel process more enjoyable. You can have that idea, take it.

4. When the milk looks fully blended into the sauce and lump free, return it to the heat and keep whisking continuously until the bechamel boils and thickens. Anticipate that this part of the process will take forever, or at least 10 minutes. Pro tip: Don’t give the whisking job to someone with a limited attention span. [My mother keeps yelling “DON’T STOP! KEEP WHISKING!” at my girlfriend every time she loses focus and forgets to whisk which is approximately every 30 seconds and it would be hilarious if my girlfriend didn't look so terrified]. Keep whisking!

Reading Community Players serves up a delightful treat

The Brewster sisters are back and up to their gentile version of murder in Reading Community Players current production of the always delightful classic comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The play may have been around since 1939, but the characters and dialogue are still very funny and refreshingly family-friendly – are rare treat in today’s entertainment world.

Peopled with some of the most iconic characters in theater, “Arsenic and Old Lace” is the story of a unique family, the Brewsters, who have family traditions that include plastic card. Most character actors would “kill” to play Abby or Martha Brewster and their brother Teddy, who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt.

Landing these coveted roles are local veteran actors Diann Stewart as Abby and Ruth Martelli as Martha and Randy Miller as Teddy. The three are a joy to watch as they bring these beloved characters to life. Stewart and Martelli are perfect as the sweet spinsters whose special elderberry wine (laced with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch” of cyanide) has resulted in the demise of numerous lonely old gentleman. There is sibling synchronicity with these two. Put them on stage together and you are guaranteed to laugh.

Miller seems to have been born to play Teddy with his charging up the stairs that he believes to be San Juan Hill and carrying bodies to the basement where he is “digging the Panama Canal.” More guaranteed laughter.

Kevin Schanely plays their charming nephew Mortimer, who is the only normal one of the Brewsters, although he is a theater critic who may have been responsible for the demise for some plays with his scathing reviews. Schanely, a Pottstown resident, has returned to RCP after a 17-year hiatus and his return is triumphant, delivering a perfectly nuanced performance in the role made famous by Cary Grant in the film of the same name.

Adding a bit of romance to the show is Julia Hager as Mortimer’s girlfriend, Elaine. The two have a nice chemistry and their normalcy balances out the otherwise over-the-top characters.

Rounding out the family circle is Jonathan Brewster, another brother with a sinister bent, who has returned after a long absence to hide out from the law. Benjamin Ruth takes on this delightfully dark role and makes the most of it.

Samsung calls the Galaxy S 4 a “life companion” and part of the reason is a new S Health application. It’s software that tracks your exercise, weight, health goals and nutritional habits. Samsung will also be selling accessories to supplement the S Health app: Look for an optional heart rate monitor and pedometer band. The software is nice, but I think there are more robust third-party options available.

WatchOn, powered by Peel, is also included. With it you can control a television set or set top box — the phone has an IR blaster — and the content guide is quite good. It’s easy to find out what’s on television through the phone and immediately see the content.

On select Samsung televisions, the software also allows you to watch the television programming on the phone itself; handy if you have to leave the viewing area while others are watching. Don’t go too far though: The content is streamed over your local Wi-Fi network.

If it’s not yet clear that the Galaxy S 4 is feature packed, let me assure you: I’ve only briefly touched upon most of the major features. You’ll likely find more if you take your own look at the phone. So is this a problem to the casual phone user? Perhaps, but Samsung has an improved Easy Mode for these folks.

Easy Mode is what it sounds like: A simpler interface with larger buttons that show the most likely used apps and features. In fact, some of the advanced functions aren’t even accessible in Easy Mode. At first, I didn’t like that chip card, but I’ve come around to appreciate it. Why? It gives new smartphone users a way to “graduate” to the full-featured Samsung experience without them having to buy a new Samsung phone. Many of the advanced features have useful pop-up descriptions as well; all of the camera modes have them, for example. You can always tell the phone to stop showing these once you’ve learned the functionality.

I’d like to see a little more innovation in the hardware design, but it’s a design that actually works well, so it’s difficult to complain about. Samsung does have an innovative cover accessory though. It’s called the S View Cover and I love it. It protects the display but has a cut-out window that shows information from the phone; you can even take a phone call without opening it.

Even though the Galaxy S 4 looks much like the model it replaces, this phone is a big step up thanks to the innovative software features and functions that Samsung has integrated. No phone is perfect for everyone, of course. I think most people, however, would be happy to have this device in their pocket.

A smarter way to run Florida’s correctional system

There are many reasons the Legislature should embrace “Smart Justice” legislation, including significant benefits to public safety. But as the House and Senate get down to the nitty-gritty of adopting a final budget, there is an even more compelling reason: money. A lot of smart card.

The Florida Department of Corrections is working hard to eliminate a budget deficit that swelled to more than $95 million earlier this year. The Legislature and taxpayers have an obvious desire to reduce DOC spending without jeopardizing public safety. One area ripe for savings seems obvious to the Florida Smart Justice Alliance: recidivism. Simply put, the state of Florida is spending entirely too much money incarcerating the same people over and over again, without doing enough to make sure that once they get out, they stay out.

How much is too much? Florida taxpayers are spending more than a quarter-billion dollars a year to incarcerate more than 14,000 “new” inmates who had been in prison at least once before. Overall, almost half of the state’s prison population is made up of repeat offenders, at a yearly cost of $799.5 million.

This is a big part of Florida’s corrections problem: We aren’t correcting inmates. In most cases we are just incarcerating them. We can’t afford to do that anymore without providing treatment for underlying issues (so often, substance-abuse or mental-health issues) and educational/vocational services to help them live law-abiding lives once they are released.

Statistics and common sense tell us that when a previous felon is caught again, he has probably committed more than just the single crime that led to this most recent arrest. If the offender has a substance abuse issue, it’s likely there are numerous crime victims whose homes or cars were broken into to help fuel his drug habit. Why would we allow that to happen? We know these inmates have addictions, and we had them captured in our prisons for years – yet in most cases we did nothing to help them address their addictions.

This isn’t about being soft on crime, to somehow excuse their criminal actions because of alcohol, drug or mental health problems. It’s about being smart on justice by using our resources to help break the cycle of crime, arrest, imprisonment, release?.?.?.?and crime again.

An excellent example of the need for a focused direction on treatment and education is House Judiciary Committee Chair Dennis Baxley’s bill (HB 7121) and its companion by Sen. Thad Altman (SB 1032), which would ensure that Florida-born inmates are able to receive a state-issued ID card or other form of identification when they leave prison.



This seemingly small item is a crucial step in an ex-inmate’s effort to secure housing, a job or even a medical prescription refill. Since lack of a job can be one of the top problems for an ex-inmate, helping them in this regard will be of tremendous benefit for society. This can be done without a significant expenditure, and in exchange Florida could realize substantial savings.

Everyone wants a safer society. Florida’s overall crime and recidivism rates have been declining as a result of the state’s deserved reputation for “get tough” criminal justice policies, effective law enforcement and a change in Department of Corrections policies regarding technical violations of probation. We now have an opportunity to lower these rates even further and realize dramatic cost savings, if we institute smart, intelligent policies that do not undercut the requirement that all prisoners serve at least 85 percent of their sentences.

With Florida spending $255 million annually on reoffenders, we must consider a different approach. We must recognize that by providing treatment for more felons who have underlying issues, we can improve public safety and save considerable tax dollars. Intelligent alternatives can lead to the desired outcomes that taxpayers expect of our policymakers.

 From the perspective of a modern retailer, data is pushing pricing and promotion strategies in two directions -- toward both national and personal pricing. Data insights, retailer infrastructure and consumer tools are developing quickly but unevenly. This gives innovative retailers an opportunity to shape the pricing and promotion practices of the future, all the while technologists are keen to develop new tools to disrupt those plans.

Yet, on the front end, consumers expect an omni-channel retail experience. In a recent survey by Empathica, more than half of smart phone users admit to using their mobile devices to do research product prices. When this research happens real-time in stores, it is commonly referred to as "Showrooming." And as such, these consumers are currently better informed than the retailers in many aspects.

 Retailers, now aware of the information gap between them and their customers, are not ignoring this trend. New data tools enable retailers to price and promote more frequently. Amazon trashed the traditional retailer model of re-pricing once a week and instead re-prices products several times per day, making thousands of small pricing adjustments for peak traffic lunch hours. Channel-wide, the breadth of products with frequent price changes exploded in 2012. During the last holiday season, we at Dynamite Data detected up to a three-fold increase in the relative quantity of price changes over 2011 across major retailers.

An increase in price changes is a significant benchmark for an increase in market efficiency, ultimately driving more real-time price competition among retailers. Although retailers are known for relying on complex and inflexible legacy systems, many are actively improving their infrastructure for the new super "showrooming" era. The ultimate goal for most merchants is to at least have the capability to dynamically price and promote at least once per day while synchronizing price across the IC card.

 Being able to react faster to market forces is just one option available to retailers looking to personalize commerce. Another is to create a value-add layer between the retailer and the consumer, simultaneously increasing pricing opacity while also strengthening the brand proposition. This might be achieved with the introduction of house brands, price segmentation or even personal pricing.

For instance, retailers such as Microcenter price their products regionally to reflect the local competitive dynamics. This price segmentation strategy is fair to the consumer and the retailer, but only possible with the type of data infrastructure that supports multiple price points on an individual item. Lowes, another franchise retailer, is also known for regionally pricing end-of-life products. For example, last summer I was able to save almost $1,000 on a refrigerator by buying it from a store a few miles away.