The format will be as such. This is an example of what I will be posting and adding to different categories. Ranging from DVRs and home audio to apps and programs.

Did you know: The benefits of buying and bringing a smart phone with you internationally may be as important as packing a comfortable pair of shoes?

Common problem: People that travel a lot usually like to travel light. Sometimes they are the type of people who like to keep things simple like using a cell phone to only make phone calls. I know the word ignorant is taboo, but they are ignorant to how helpful a smart phone can be and that making calls may be the last thing they would be using it for.

How the smart phone solves it: Well, if you like to travel a lot you could potentially ditch a paper map, a guidebook, a music player, a camera, a phrasebook, itinerary paperwork, and possibly a laptop.

You could also call up your carrier and let them know you will be traveling internationally and activate your ability to use it as a phone, but Wifi access is spreading around the world. If you need to check your email or look up something off the net it is a much easier proposition to find internet connection than it used to be. There is usually a cafe or at least a visitor’s center that has internet access that you can pay for or use for free if you need to connect, but most of what I am going to write here makes the phone a standalone problem solver.

I feel that one of the most helpful things is having a map on a phone as opposed to a paper map that makes me look like a targeted tourist. Thank Google for finally allowing you to download their maps instead of always having to rely on an active internet connection.

There are helpful apps that can give you exchange rates, keep track of your itinerary (flight numbers to frequent flier numbers) and even translators. The translator app Talk to Me is the thing I personally want to try out the most. It translates in both type as well as speech and allows you to flip both ways. Have someone speak into your phone and it will translate it to English.

Now I don’t recommend that you ditch your flight/hotel paperwork, but you could leave your multiple club cards at home. If you know your member number you usually don’t have to carry them around. A piece of paper isn’t going to slow you down and if you do lose your phone you will be happy those pieces of paper are tucked away in your luggage. The point is that you won’t have to dig through your luggage to find that information if you have it on your phone.

Then you can download or transfer books and music to your phone. Ditch the guidebook and the stand alone music player and just keep it together in your phone. It may be a little cumbersome to have to scroll, zoom and pan, but it is entirely doable and not as inconvenient as you might think once you get accustomed to it.

If you aren’t a camera pro you could also use the phone to take pictures and ditch the camera as well. I wouldn’t do it because I like taking pictures and hide my camera away in a Lowepro sling, but if I didn’t want to be hunkered down with that extra bag and weight I could go light with a cellphone as my camera. I could also take video and all of it can be uploaded through wifi so if I lost the phone or got it stolen those videos and photos would already be backed up online.

These are just a few examples of what a smart phone can help you with to become a more efficient and fast-moving world traveler. If you knew all of that and still wanted to go old school that is fine, but I just thought if you didn’t know then you might want to ditch your dumb phone and go shopping for a smart one before your next big trip.

I really had to share this. One of my favorite movies and scenes with a Star Wars lightsaber wielding trick.

Tools:
Evernote: This is a must download on the phone and all your other computers. At first glance you might think this utility is just for note taking, but it’s usefulness goes beyond that. If you have ever tried using Chrome-to-phone because you want that connectivity, but found the execution useless then using Evernote would fix your problems. Getting links and information from device to device and saving information that can be accessed from your laptop, phone or desktop couldn’t be easier.

Talk To Me: I knew about this app before and forgot to add it to the last list. Although I haven’t been able to test it abroad I am hoping it is a useful tool when I go to China sometime next year. I would love to be able to take a picture of text and have it translated in this same app, but maybe sometime in the future. For you iPhone users I don’t know if there is something similar, but your Talk to Me is not the same app.

Skydroid QR

Skydroid: This one is for you golfers out there. It costs 2 dollars, but is a worth it and if you currently pay for Skycaddie you might be canceling your subscription after downloading. Finding the courses are as easy as typing in a search, downloading courses in under 1 second, and ridiculously easy to use.

Google Maps: has so much good stuff. Google Maps has voice navigation, live traffic, street view, yelp+phonebook in a sub app called Places that one-click dials or navigates. I wrote up a post just about Google places and how much I like that sub app. There is too much to write here about what Google Maps does so here is a link to Google Maps for mobile.

Best Social Apps:
My6Sense: a more intelligent friendfeed. After using this app for more than a month it really is a helpful way to see posts that you may have otherwise missed. It sifts through a lot of junk and provides articles that you will want to read. When I first downloaded My6Sense the focus was too narrow and as much as I like what it was recommending it was cutting too much of everything else out. I never saw any friend’s posts from Facebook. They have since changed that issue and now have a solid blend and also now get a solid recommendation from me.

Seesmic: Has indeed become my app of choice for keeping up on Twitter. Seesmic is an easy to use organized app for keeping track of your Twitter stream.

Utility:
PDAnet: I don’t know how I forgot this one in my last post. PDAnet allows you to tether your phone to a computer sharing your 3G connection on the run. What is nice is unlike the wireless hot spot apps you don’t need to root your phone.

Good Morning

GoodMorning: I LOVE this app. The alarm through the clock for HTC is fine, but it rocks waking up to whatever song loaded on my phone and a personal message overlaid followed by what is on my calendar for the day, the current temperature and then the forecast. It may sound funny, but on weekends sometimes I wait to hear what the forecast will be to decide if I should get out of bed right away or not. If it is says the current temperature is 52 degrees and rain I will be sleeping in for an hour.

Checkins:
GetGlue: I will admit I haven’t tried Foursquare yet. Where Get Glue differs is it isn’t a location-based check-in, but an activity check-in. It allows you to share your interests with friends on Facebook and Twitter if you want to or just with the Get Glue network.
You can also get recommendations from your friends or suggestions from other users that have liked something you have too. You earn stickers instead of badges and when you earn enough of them they will send them to you in the mail. Depending on what stickers I get I may slap them to my computer case or if it is a sports team like the SFGiants a made up button might be cool to add to a bag.

SCVNGR QR

Functionality:
Swiftkey: I used SlideIT Keyboard for quite a while, but recently switched to Swiftkey. I feel that using your finger to write instead of type is faster, but SlideIT was failing me. It would continually auto correct to the wrong word because it was convinced I was trying to input a different word even if I took the time to type it in letter by letter. They could fix this by giving a higher priority to learned words, but it doesn’t and buries your learned words and that is the exact opposite of Swiftkey.

AppBrain: Adding functionality to a crazy Android Market. Tons of apps, tons of worthless and worthwhile, how do you sort through it all? AppBrain. You can write and read reviews without downloading and you can sort apps in so many ways like: hot past 24 hours, hot this week, most downloaded all time, etc.

Games:
Angry Birds: I didn’t know if I should add this one because it is so popular. I will try to find something a little more obscure, but just as fun for my next post.
Emulators, NESoid: Take the time to add an emulator. Games you could play on the Nintendo Entertainment System were addictive and fun back in the day and still are now. There are emulators for all the old consoles and now you can reconnect with those old simple and addictive hour killers.

Images from AppBrain: Which I highly recommend in App form and website.

Camera Utility:
Retro Camera: I like this one the best, but it does have its limitations. The viewfinder is small, but it does a pretty good job recreating classic cameras that took classic shots.
Camera360: This utility has a lot of options. I honestly haven’t spent enough time fooling around with it, but with what I have tried I am pretty impressed with.

I just purchased Camera ZOOM FX for $4.74 and I have high hopes for it. The two listed above are free, but I am looking forward to seeing all that Camera ZOOM FX has to offer.

Shopping:
Google Shopper: Take a picture or scan a barcode. It will come up with reviews and information on the item and online prices + stores near your location and their prices compared to where you are now.

Entertainment (audio/video consumption):
Last.fm: Straight forward, Last.fm is a streaming music player that I prefer over Pandora
Stitcher: Like listening to podcasts? Stitcher Radio is the way to do it on the go.
SlingBox: Awesome. You know what Slingbox is. This is how you can watch and control your DVR from a phone.

Last Friday I went the GDGT event held in San Francisco. More important than the technology (well at least to me) Veronica Belmont handed me a T-shirt and a smile. I shook Tom Merritt’s hand. I had a chat with Eileen Rivera while waiting for a drink at the bar and commenting about Sarah Lane having equal issues trying to get a drink.

With stars in my eyes I saw a lot of great tech, but the amount of companies trying to deliver internet video to televisions is was what struck me.

I have mentioned previously that I would love to kick overpriced cable to the curb and these guys are trying to figure out an affordable way to allow me to do just that.

First there was Logitech showing off their Revue unit that uses Google TV. According to this PCMag article it’s an overall good Revue (har har). I love the possibilities, but much like the first generation of Android phones I don’t like the lack of refinement. I am going to wait for updates or new models to see if they clean up some of their issues.

I pressed the Roku guy pretty good because I honestly didn’t see much of a reason to go with their product. He convinced me it is a straightforward device where there isn’t 1 billion buttons or menus and a need for a full qwerty keyboard. It can access most of the content that the competitors offer with the major players Netflix and Hulu Plus, but at a low $60 entrance price point. (bravo)

I was excited to see the Boxee Box and their new interface. I have seen some people who didn’t like the new UI, but it is much cleaner and easier to navigate for those new to the platform. I agree with this engadget review that until they add Netflix and Hulu Plus to fill out their content I won’t buy it. They have announced that both are headed to the Boxee Box by the end of the year.

DivX is now offering DivX TV which is an add-on UI kind of like Google TV or Sony’s Blu-ray connected player UI. I don’t know if they are going to make it in this already seemingly crowded market. Currently you can find DivX TV on LG Blu-ray players.

Lastly at the event there was Tivo. I kind of feel bad for Tivo because they could and should be the one heading this charge. They already have their boxes in many die-hard fans’ homes. If they added more than just Netflix and really integrated internet video into their UI I think they could have had a leg up in this emerging market. I have a Tivo box that has a lifetime membership on it and it burns video stored on the hard drive to a disc, but never get to use it anymore. Update my software and give me reason to take you off the spare bedroom TV.

Tivo has a name and a trusted UI. When I asked the rep what they were doing she said she was excited about their new remote and the fact that they now have Netflix streaming. It is just sad with all the innovation going on around them in this GDGT event that is all they have to offer. Come on Tivo I am rooting for you to look what is happening and start competing instead of sulking about losing the DVR market to the cable providers.

These were just the ones that were at the event. There are plenty of others out there that are rushing to get in early to grab the advertising or hardware pie for distributing user specific content that isn’t controlled by mega conglomerates.

It is easy to have a love affair over what Google has to offer; a whole damn lot to think and talk about. Heck Leo Laporte and his Twit network have a This Week in Google show.

First news is following the instant search they implemented in the Google engine they have now released instant preview. Ever since I saw Viewzi a few years back I wondered if a major search engine like Google will add this type of functionality. I really like that they have added it to the engine.

I personally am torn about what to open up to run my searches these days. I like Blekko, Dogpile, Google, Viewzi and am still trying to give Duck Duck Go a try. Each of them have a specific reason to use them I guess.
Blekko with their slashtag idea is a specific narrowed search and curated by actual humans that can decipher more intelligently what you would be looking for than Mr. Binary.
Dogpile is the opposite where I want to open up to even more results because it is a meta search engine that pulls results from a lot of the major search engines.
Viewzi is a way to search your pages in full preview prior to having to click away from your search results. It is just a much more visually appealing engine to use as well.
DuckDuckGo is a simple engine. It has some nice features like zero click information and privacy of your search results (basically it doesn’t track what you are searching for like Google does).

Every time there is new comScore data on the mobile phone market is released Android shows it plans to continue its meteoric rise. The new data can be found here Android is up another 6.5% and is now only 3.9% behind the iPhone. The real news out of the data is that smartphone sales have nearly doubled over the same period since last year. Watch out dumb phones the smarties are on a rapid rise.

In related news that broke in most publications on the 3rd, Europe is clutching to Symbian. If you missed that news: Symbian gets a 22 million Euro boost and the Symbian blog. I love how it says in there that Symbian is a platform technology that is vital to the growth of Euro-centric mobile software development.

Another piece of Google news that Michael Arrington of Techrunch has called a slapfest between Google and Facebook. I will share this article from search engine land with you because it wraps up the back and forth and points out a discrepancy over Facebook’s said exporting policy. Pretty amusing petty and oh-so-fun to talk about stuff.

Lastly on an even more oh-so-fun to talk about Google related stuff was the invasion of Costa Rica by Nicaragua and then blamed Google. Like Nicaragua didn’t know what the border was and did a search on Google maps to confirm or disprove which land was actually theirs. More like they wanted some Costa Rican land and after doing a search had an A-ha we can blame this on an American company moment. “Not our fault, we just took the land that Google provided for us.” sigh… really?

So what would we do without Google? Well at least for this week+; Apple wouldn’t have a real competitor for best smartphone, Facebook would continue on its merry way of pillaging information unnoticed, Nicaragua would have to declare war to invade and claim land they wish was theirs, and search would probably be just fine with all the great alternatives out there.

http://www.csectioncomics.com/

If you aren’t familiar with this story I won’t go into more detail than this is a story about copyright infringement, one amazingly bad editor named Judith Griggs, and the power of social media. Get up to speed with this article from Time.

I really like the comic at the top of this post, but that isn’t why I am sharing it. I am sharing it because I found it re-posted all over the web. I assume it is under fair use or a creative common license, but I normally wouldn’t take the time to find out for myself. Finding out is not always an easy thing to do and honestly quite a pain, but I have learned that it is a necessary process.

I am by no means trying to defend Judith Griggs because what she was doing was actually incredibly ignorant. In fact I don’t know how she couldn’t know that just because it is on the internet does not mean she could just copy and paste whatever she wanted. In one of her emails Griggs writes, that she has “been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws, It was ‘my bad’.”

To update the story Griggs finally responded to all the criticism that was finding its way onto Cooks Source’s Facebook profile “Hi Folks! Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry — my bad! You did find a way to get your ‘pound of flesh…’ we used to have 110 “friends,” we now have 1,870… wow!” …Best to all, Judith“

I love when things like this happen because it creates awareness of issues that people should know more about. Just like Facebook and privacy concerns I think a story like this can drive interest in copyright protection for online content. I found this informative article in my search for more information from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A lot of this awareness wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for social media. On Thursday this story moved fast and it grew quickly through the social media channels. I can add one more reason to the list of social media’s importance. Although I don’t champion social media because of hype, but because I feel it is becoming an efficient communication tool that creates awareness to issues like this one.

Also for photos like the cartoon I was talking about above this article was great. When using the cartoon for this post I used to go by the if I saw it in enough other places I felt I was safe to use it too as long as I attributed it to the original author.

I have felt that you must have at least one image per blog post and I usually try to find 3 if I can. This will make writing this blog slightly more difficult, but at least recently I have been trying to take my own photographs. I guess that trend will not only have to continue, but increase.

I could go on and on about Judith Griggs. About how she was actually employed as an editor for 30 years and practicing journalism the way she was. About her reply comment and her thinking that now having more friends on Facebook was a good thing. This post wasn’t so much about looking into Griggs’ shortcomings, but people’s use of online content both in written and photo forms.

All in all I hope you learned something from Judith Griggs blunder like I did.

Upon finding out that Sprint WiMax and Verizon LTE aren’t technically 4G I proceeded to do what most people do when they read a once unbeknownst fact online. Look it up on Wikipedia (I also did a Google search to confirm what I found there) Here is what a couple hours of reading and searching found.

The news broke in Geneva on Oct 21st. When the ITU-R (International Telecommunications Union – Radiocommunication Sector) set the standards that a technology has to meet in order to earn their approval as a true 4G technology.

The entry in Wikipedia actually does a good job explaining things if you are a computer programmer or at least understand the lingo, which I don’t. It amazes me that someone or a group of people take the time to amass a Wikipedia article with such technical detail.

In terms that I understand that I will now bestow upon you now. ITU-R was dragging their feet in defining the standards for 4G and when they finally did, 100mb/s roaming and 1Gb/s stationary/local connectivity, the current WiMax and soon to be launched LTE networks didn’t meet those standards. WiMax and LTE are faster than current 3G standards, but are more like 3.9G or pre-4G.

After having already labeled and advertised their upgraded networks as being 4G they weren’t going to retract their 4G badges and T-Mobile will now actually add one.

How fast these technologies are and how they are delivered is where it gets a little wonky. There are now 3 competing technologies, hardware limitations, theoretical maximum and actual delivery speed of data. According to Wikipedia the theoretical limit of connectivity for WiMax is 128 mb/s and LTE at 100mb/s .

From what I can gather there is also a limitation on the hardware that a carrier uses to deliver the coverage. This article states that the WiMax towers can only handle up to 70 mb/s and furthermore Sprint caps the max rate to 10mb/s per user. Which actually delivers an average of around 3 mb/s.

With WiMax around 3 mb/s and HSPA+ somewhere around 5 mb/s on average these current technologies fall well short of the ITU-R’s standards. Even LTE’s which boasted 60 mb/s in limited testing is promising around 5-12 mb/s in a fully inhabited network.

There are technologies on the horizon (which do meet ITU-R’s 4G standards) LTE-Advanced and WiMax 2 that will arrive sometime in around 2012 and the networks could just keep calling it 4G service or because they are making an upgrade to the technology it will probably be 4G+ or 4G2. Until then companies will continue to call their networks 4G, which also now includes T-Mobile’s HSPA+.

In all honesty I agree with T-Mobile and the other carriers on this one. It doesn’t really matter if the ITU-R officially recognizes them with a standard that they just set. What only really matters is that they provide significantly faster speeds than the current 3G networks.

So, now when some wise guy says that your 4G branded phone technically isn’t 4G you will actually know what he is talking about.

Photo Credit: http://s444.photobucket.com/home/Benokur

It has been simply amazing how successful Zynga has been and it is hard to wrap my mind around “Farmville” being a game that can lead a company passed a legitimate gaming giant that owns franchises like “Sim City” and “John Madden Football”

This is big news people. Some flash games built on the back of a social network is officially a juggernaut with clout. How did we get this way?

Like so many others I grew up hearing “E.A. sports, it’s in the game.” I played countless hours in Sim City 2000, Need for Speed, and Battlefield 1942. These games were fun, complex and challenging.

The gaming giants like E.A. might be falling behind times. Their business model of high-priced hardware and $60 boxed software that take 10 years to develop are becoming a niche market.

Compared that to Zynga games that are free, you barely have to try, a game expansion comes out every other week and they hook themselves into your urge to complete tasks, even if they are simple tasks.

I understand how Zynga games can be addictive because I do play Mafia Wars (level 800+) but I can’t say I think their flash games are really fun, the games aren’t complex in the least bit, and they are only challenging to your patience as you have a clocked time to wait through in order to make your next move.

I think they are so popular because anyone can come home from a day of information overload and just pound his or her way through mindless remedial tasks and if you don’t have the patience to wait to finish that task you can pay your way to make that completion easier.

Simple has been missing from modern gaming. The days of two button controllers and side scrolling graphics are nowhere to be found. If you couldn’t complete the game you could always enter a cheat code into game genie or throw in up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, B, A, select, start.

A lot of people don’t have the time and money to invest in expensive gaming equipment. If they aren’t familiar with how to play they generally don’t want to learn a complex system of button pressing and burn hours to complete a game that they might think is made and marketed for school boys.

I find myself a little angry that I contribute to Zynga’s rapid rise of simple little flash games that can take on the manufacturer of my boyhood gaming memories. It’s like a little plastic army men company being more successful than the one producing my beloved G.I. Joes.

Say it ain’t so.

Anyone else find this news as bizarre as I do? Do I not give Zynga enough credit? Do you think the gaming giants like E.A. can be successful in the social gaming market or does Zynga have an Apple Co. like grip on the market? Are more Zynga social gaming companies going to pop up and erode the traditional gaming companies audience even more (according to businessweek article “Electronic Arts, Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello has cut more than 2,500 jobs since 2008 to reduce costs and stem three years of losses”?

Keeping that in mind I am going to make this a series in which I keep updating this list as I find new apps that may replace or be more helpful than ones that I have highlighted here.
Next time I update I will add in the QR codes and a few pictures.

Tools:
Evernote: This is a must download on the phone and all your other computers. At first glance you might think this utility is just for note taking, but it’s usefulness goes beyond that. If you have ever tried using Chrome-to-phone because you want that connectivity, but found the execution useless then using Evernote would fix your problems. Getting links and information from device to device and saving information that can be accessed from your laptop, phone or desktop couldn’t be easier.

Google Maps: So much good stuff. It has voice navigation, live traffic, street view, yelp+phonebook in a sub app called Places that one-click dials or navigates. I wrote up a post just about Google places and how much I like that sub app. There is too much to write here about what Google Maps does so here is a link to Google Maps for mobile.

Best Social Apps:
My6Sense: a more intelligent friendfeed. After using this app for more than a month it really is a helpful way to see posts that you may have otherwise missed. It sifts through a lot of junk and provides articles that you will want to read. When I first downloaded My6Sense the focus was too narrow and as much as I like what it was recommending it was cutting too much of everything else out. I never saw any friend’s posts from Facebook. They have since changed that issue and now have a solid blend and also now get a solid recommendation from me.

I have used Tweetdeck Beta, Seesmic, and the Twitter app. As much as I love and use Tweetdeck on my desktop I keep finding myself skipping the logo placed on my phone. I instead find myself opening the all applications drawer in search of the Twitter app.
I think Seesmic might have been the winner here, but I just don’t use Twitter on my phone often enough to keep the stream moving along. I launch Seesmic Android and see tons of tweets from days passed before I get my fresh content loaded. If you are the type that turns on the app and runs it all day long then I would recommend Seesmic, but if not I would suggest just using the Twitter app.

Utility:
GoodMorning: I LOVE this app. The alarm through the clock for HTC is fine, but it rocks waking up to whatever song loaded on my phone and a personal message overlaid followed by what is on my calendar for the day, the current temperature and then the forecast. It may sound funny, but on weekends sometimes I wait to hear what the forecast will be to decide if I should get out of bed right away or not. If it is says the current temperature is 52 degrees and rain I will be sleeping in for an hour.

Checkins:
GetGlue: I will admit I haven’t tried Foursquare yet. Where Get Glue differs is it isn’t a location-based check-in, but an activity check-in. It allows you to share your interests with friends on Facebook and Twitter if you want to or just with the Get Glue network.
You can also get recommendations from your friends or suggestions from other users that have liked something you have too. You earn stickers instead of badges and when you earn enough of them they will send them to you in the mail. Depending on what stickers I get I may slap them to my computer case or if it is a sports team like the SFGiants a made up button might be cool to add to a bag.

WeReward: This location-based app does what it says. It rewards in coupons or discounts. Well at least it does when you can get it to work. If they can ever get the program stable or if another app adds this ability to their check-ins then I will let you know. I have dabbled with Brightkite and Facebook check-ins, but I often don’t see the point of no incentive check-ins.

Functionality:
Swiftkey: I used SlideIT Keyboard for quite a while, but recently switched to Swiftkey. I feel that using your finger to write instead of type is faster, but SlideIT was failing me. It would continually auto correct to the wrong word because it was convinced I was trying to input a different word even if I took the time to type it in letter by letter. They could fix this by giving a higher priority to learned words, but it doesn’t and buries your learned words and that is the exact opposite of Swiftkey.
Swiftkey learns from what you have typed previously and recommends your next word. It guesses pretty accurately what you are trying to type within the first few letters entered. I am on the waitlist for the next Beta testing for Swype or I am going to wait for the official app to come out and I will let you know if it can beat out this reigning champ.

AppBrain: Adding functionality to a crazy Android Market. Tons of apps, tons of worthless and worthwhile, how do you sort through it all? AppBrain. You can write and read reviews without downloading and you can sort apps in so many ways like: hot past 24 hours, hot this week, most downloaded all time, etc.

Games:
For now I will just link you over to my post about must have Android games
An update is Angry Birds full version is now available.

Camera Utility:
Retro Camera: I like this one the best, but it does have its limitations. The viewfinder is small, but it does a pretty good job recreating classic cameras that took classic shots.
Camera360: This utility has a lot of options. I honestly haven’t spent enough time fooling around with it, but with what I have tried I am pretty impressed with.

Shopping:
Google Shopper: Take a picture or scan a barcode. It will come up with reviews and information on the item and online prices + stores near your location and their prices compared to where you are now.

Entertainment (audio/video consumption):
Last.fm: Straight forward, Last.fm is a streaming music player that I prefer over Pandora
Stitcher: Like listening to podcasts? Stitcher Radio is the way to do it on the go.
SlingBox: Awesome. You know what Slingbox is. This is how you can watch and control your DVR from a phone.

Sure optical discs are not completely dead yet, but their usefulness is accelerating faster than expected to way-of-the-floppy.

I know there are a lot of you that are still burning music or pictures CDs to share with friends, but things like Pogoplug, Facebook, and dirt cheap USB drives are becoming solid alternatives that save time and money.

I just wrote a post about Netflix’s new UI on their gaming systems as a glimpse to the future of how well they can deliver content. Who wants to buy Blu-ray discs for $30 and store them on their shelves if they can get 1080p with Dolby Digital 5.1 streaming instead? I only buy a blu-ray now if I really like a movie and want to show my support by purchasing it.

If they offered an online version that they stored on their own servers that I could download or stream to a paired home player and/or phone then I would spend that $30 there instead in a heartbeat.

The same goes for music and computer programs that I would normally buy in physical form. Eliminate the plastic and paper that is found in a store-bought box and just give me access to what I want in a form that is convenient.

As our wireless infrastructure becomes more robust the need for physical storage, especially on bulky items, is becoming obsolete. In most cases streaming is probably the way to go, but if I have a slow connection or no connection at all I would need to be able to download it to the device of my choice.

That is the last hurdle to jump and the solutions are already being built. Fiber optic connectivity for homes and 4G coverage for mobile devices will cut the transmit times to ones that are more desirable than downloading and burning discs.

My dream is to buy a movie, some music, a game or program from an online store and can either stream it to or download it to products that I have purchased without syncing to a paired account. That would have to include a home theater product, my home computer, a laptop, a portable device, a phone, and my car.

Apple is really close with Apple TV, their computers, their laptop line, their iPods/iPads, their iPhones, and many cars now have iPod docks/wireless syncing.

The problems with Apple’s solution is what if your device of choice for home is a gaming system like the Xbox or the PS3 and not Apple TV? What if your laptop or home computer isn’t a Mac? Most business computers and gaming rigs are Windows based machines. What if you have a netbook, Zune, Android, etc? It can’t be connected to that ecosystem and even if it can, it is often convoluted and usually under-performing.

I just wish Apple allowed you a choice of something other than an Apple product that works well in their ecosystem and dropped having to sync libraries.

The fact that Apple is so close to a disc-less solution, that there is now 4G coverage and that more homes are getting fiber optic connections shows you that we will be to burying those optical discs sooner than expected. Picture of Apple’s slim USB stick is here

What do you think? Let me know with a comment.