WGST's "The Sully Show" for 9/25/15 - Blue Week and the New iPhones

Have a listen as Rick and "Sully" talk "Blue Week" and the new iPhones:

It's Prostate Cancer Awareness Month and high school football in Georgia is going "Blue" for the week.
Georgia Prostate Cancer Coalition (GPCC) is involved in “Blue Week” because it builds Prostate Cancer Awareness. This is what all 421 high school football teams will be doing the week of September 21st thru September 25th. All presented by Northside Hospital.
 

All football players will have blue ribbon decals on their helmets

All coaches will have blue wristbands

All referees will have blue penalty flags

Blue ribbons will be stenciled on the fields

Public Service  Announcements will be mentioned during half time
and...

-  Does Rick have the new iPhone 6s?

Yes!

Like every other "S" year, the new 6S and 6S Plus look the same as 2014's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models -- until you start touching them. But the changes underneath are plentiful: new front and rear cameras, upgraded processors and RAM, always-on Siri, and -- most importantly -- a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" screen similar to the Force Touch screen on Apple Watch, giving you contextual options depending how hard you press the display.

Things to consider:

1. There is a new color now, called rose gold (it basically looks like a blush pink, same as the new Apple Watch color option that the company announced). But as far as looks go, this extra shade is the extent of the changes you'll be able to visually detect between this year's and last year's phones.

2. A new form of pressure-sensitive navigation called 3D Touch, and a faster processor all combine to keep the next-generation phone looking competitive enough to counter other top-tier handsets as we approach the year-end holiday rush.

3. The  iPhone 6S duo has achieved more inner strength. This time it uses a different grade of aluminum for its chassis, one that also has applications in the aerospace industry. They call it Series 7,000, and it's the same aluminum alloy Apple puts into its Apple Watch Sport. The company clearly hopes this reinforced material will help deflect against future "Bendgate" backlashes, where some customers complained that their 5.5-inch iPhone 6S phones "bent" after being sat on.

4. Improved thumb-print reader

5.   A 12-megapixel camera is a huge jump for Apple, which has been holding onto its 8-megapixel sensors in its iPhone for years. Autofocus will pick up the pace, according to Apple, and color accuracy is a point of pride.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera now brings the iPhone 6S on par with a lot of today's competing handsets. Of course, it includes the company's proprietary voice chat feature, FaceTime video. Here's something wildly different, though. Instead of including a dedicated flash for the front-facing camera, which only a few phones do, Apple is using the home screen to light up instead. This is meant to increase the brightness of those selfies even in low-light situations.

My Appearance on WGST's "The Sully Show" 3/13/15 - Tennis and the Tech News of the Week

Rick is in Indian Wells, CA this week as the BNP Paribas Open starts it's tennis run. This is the biggest tennis tournament in the world outside of the majors. It is also the most tech-friendly tournament on the ATP Tour.  - They have their own app, tons of video screens around the grounds, 14 scoreboards alone on Stadium Court.  They even stream the action from 2 of the practice courts.

Have a listen:

listen to ‘The Sully Show March 13, 2015’ on audioBoom

 

Rick has been at the best of the pre tournament events.

1. The Wilson event with world No. 3, Simona Halep.  New Wilson racquets in the Burn and the Blade. New Wilson tennis shoes and partnering with Sony on smart technology for the racquet.  Rick did the tennis obstacle course Wilson has called the #BURNChallenge.

2.  Rick was one of the media participants in the "Tennis With the Stars" event at the Omni Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa.  He played with ATP World Tour top-10 players Kei Nishikori and David Ferrer .   How was it?   -  *Spoiler... Rick won

3. Apple Watch Announcement  Apple had an event on Monday to formally introduce the Apple Watch.. Is the Apple watch viable?
 

And now it’s all here and ready to debut on April 24. (Preorders start April 10.) But do you want to pay $17,000 for it?

OK, you don't have to pay that much, but that's the top price of the premium gold option, called the Apple Watch Edition. If you're looking for something on the scale of hundreds of dollars instead of thousands, the company is offering the Apple Watch Sport (starting at $349) and the flagship Apple Watch (starting at $549). All of these watches come in two sizes, 38 mm or 42 mm; have different case colors to choose from; and have swappable bands. Depending on the band you choose, the standard Apple Watch can easily reach $1,000.

Apple claims that the watches will have about 18 hours of battery life, and they'll charge using a special MagSafe cable. As Apple previewed in September, users will navigate through the menus of the watch using a special knob that both physically turns and is touch-sensitive.
You can reply to a text message, browse Instagram, and remotely opened a garage door. The watch lets you know when you've been doing too much sitting, can track heart rate, and is also Apple Pay–enabled, so you can buy many different things.

4. Social Media Reviews Drive E-commerce

E-commerce is a booming market, and its growth is closely tied to social media engagement. This engagement from users is often in the form of posting to their networks about positive or negative experiences, or by posting reviews to ecommerce sites. An infographic from Bazaarvoice highlights how reviews can impact sales and return on social media investment.

The infographic is based on sample data collected from the Bazaarvoice network, and it analyzed 57 million reviews and more than 35 billion product pageviews.

One of the most effective tools for increasing feedback across your site, is to syndicate customer content. Featuring user-generated content across the site, encouraged others to leave reviews, which also improved product coverage compared to native content alone.

For example, featuring reviews next to consumer electronics resulted in a 324 percent increase in review volume, and a 26 percent increase in product coverage. In hardware, it caused a 259 percent increase in review volume, and an 18 percent increase in product coverage.

As the volume of reviews increase, so does the profile of the site. During early stages of growth, conversation in the reviews serves to drive traffic. Once there are more than eight reviews, sites begin to see growth in organic search traffic. When more than 100 reviews have been collected, businesses can see trends in feedback, such as sentiment or product suggestions.

And as the number of reviews ticks even higher, businesses start to see increases in the conversion rate. Just one review can increase the conversion rate by 10 percent. At 100 reviews the conversion rate can be boosted by up to 37 percent, and by the time there are 200 reviews, the rate can be boosted as much as 44 percent.

5.  "March Madness" apps

- Thuuz Sports - Provides your personalized guide to navigate through all these sports and insure that you never miss a great game or match. Make sure you have your alerts turned on so that you get the full impact of the service!

We only send you one alert per game, and only if it's truly exciting from your perspective, so you'll never be overwhelmed with notifications.

With your preferences set appropriately, you can govern which sports to follow, which teams to get heightened excitement alerts for, and how often to get alerted within a given league, from the "I don't want to miss any great game" fanatic to the "only if its the best of the best" casual fan.

- NCAA March Madness Live -
 

NCAA March Madness Live to present all 67 games across digital platforms
Completely redesigned for this year’s NCAA Tournament, the NCAA March Madness Live app – developed in partnership with the NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports – will feature a sleeker design, improved navigation, an all-new GameCenter experience, a new “run” game and new sections focused on providing fans with more content than ever before.

From Selection Sunday to the cutting of the nets in Indianapolis, fans will be able to watch all of the action via March Madness Live accessible from www.ncaa.com/marchmadness, www.CBSSports.com, www.bleacherreport.com, CBS Sports App, Bleacher Report’s Team Stream, the App Store, the Amazon App Store, Windows Store and Google Play on Thursday, March 12.

As part of the industry-wide TV Everywhere initiative, pay-tv subscribers will have unlimited live streaming coverage and on-the-go access to the tournament across all screens, including online, mobile and tablets, throughout the entire championship. Fans will have access to all games airing live on TNT, TBS and truTV by logging in with their TV service provider information, and all games broadcast on CBS with no registration required.

NCAA March Madness Live will offer a temporary preview period giving users access to live game streaming before login is required.  Additionally, fans can watch games via live streaming on TNT, TBS and truTV’s digital platforms, as well as participating TV provider websites.

New for the 2015 NCAA March Madness Live:

• “Teams” Section – The new teams section allows fans to follow their favorite team throughout the tournament with stats, video content, a season recap/snapshot, team roster and information outlining upcoming tournament match-ups.

• “Featured” Section – For the first time, fans will be able to view content that captures the storylines, classic tournament moments, match-up analysis, top plays, press conference coverage, featured video content and more.

• GameCenter – The epicenter of NCAA March Madness Live has been reengineered to give fans more ways to watch live games on smartphones - allowing video viewing in both portrait and landscape orientations.  In addition, companion content on smartphones and tablets, such as team and player stats and social content from the Coke Zero NCAA March Madness Social Arena, is more dynamic and more discoverable than ever before.

• Capital One NCAA Tournament Run – A new game available at ncaa.com/tournamentrun that allows fans to stay competitive in the tournament after a busted bracket. To play, users must answer questions about each game match-up throughout the tournament to accumulate points and create the longest “run.”

• Capital One NCAA March Madness Bracket Challenge – This year, the official bracket game of March Madness – available via desktop, smartphones and tablets – is upgrading with new game features and more tools to help fans make their bracket picks.  In addition, this is the only bracket game to integrate access to the live video stream of every match-up during the tournament.

My Appearance on WGST's "The Sully Show" 9/12/14 Talking the Apple Announcements

The Big Apple announcement took place this week.

Rick and Sully talk about that.

An iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Pay and Apple Watch

Have a listen:

listen to ‘The Sully Show September 12, 2014’ on Audioboo

1. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

The new iPhones, meanwhile, will have 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays, larger than its current four-inch screen. Apple said it expects the new phones—to be called iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus—to go on sale on Sept. 19.

"Today, we are launching the biggest advancement in the history of iPhone," Mr. Cook said.

Apple said it plans to sell the larger 5.5-inch model starting at $299 with a two-year carrier contract, higher than the $199 price for its current high-end iPhone 5S. The company said the 4.7-inch iPhone will start at $199 with a contract. The company said the new phones come with many hardware improvements, including a sharper display, better battery life and improved camera performance.

2.  Apple Pay

Apple Inc. on Tuesday introduced a digital-payments service tied to its iPhone 6 handsets and new Apple Watch that will allow consumers to make purchases using just their phones or watches, marking the company's first big push into brick-and-mortar payments.

Apple said it hopes to speed up the checkout process, make credit-card payments more secure and ultimately, to replace physical wallets. The company said it is using a technology known as near-field communication, or NFC, that works by transmitting a radio signal...

3.  Apple Watch

Apple Watch, represents the company's first new product in more than four years. Apple said the watch will start at $349 and be available in early 2015.

Apple said the Apple Watch would have a strong focus on health. It highlighted an app called Fitness that it made to track statistics for different exercises, like bicycling or running. An accelerometer tracks the movements, and a heart rate sensor helps measure the intensity of the workouts.

The wearable computer has a rectangular screen for a face with a flexible display and comes in two sizes. It has a crown on the side that acts as a digital dial, which can be turned to zoom in; tapping the crown returns to the main menu. The watch can be attached to six strap styles, including stainless steel and leather.

Similar to a smartphone, the smartwatch can run a variety of apps. Tapping on the home screen zooms in on a “neighborhood” of apps. From there, the user can tap on the app. Apple demonstrated apps for a calendar, map navigation and a music player.
 


4. Health Tracking

The iPhone 5’s A7 chip was already a key technological step in allowing anyone to track their daily step count with just the phone. But the Apple Watch will include some key, proprietary apps and sensors for tracking fitness too.

The Activity app monitors a wearer’s movements throughout the dray, while the Workout app will track workouts, and they appear to incorporate simple colored rings to judge how well a wearer has done throughout the day – simple, graphical judgments are hard to get across on wearable trackers but this could be one way Apple manages to go further than early movers like Fitbit, Jawbone or Samsung’s Gear Fit. The company claims that “some of the world’s most respected health and fitness experts helped developed Apple Watch.”

5. iOS 8

The iPhone 6's new operating system, iOS 8, will give you predictive typing and App Store parental control, among other features.

6. U2's free album on iTunes

Critics giving not so favorable reviews.

Apple, its C.E.O., Tim Cook, announced that the new U2 album, “Songs of Innocence,” was being added automatically to everyone’s iTunes library. That’s right, even if you didn’t ask for the new U2, it showed up in your iTunes music library. Or did it?

On the new album:
As a free sample, it’s fine: it has its moments among the longers, enough of them to suggest U2 aren’t a spent force. But what Songs of Innocence isn’t is the grand return the band obviously crave. Perhaps that’s to come.