Blogging the Aloha State and Beyond
This week, we followed the Hawaii News Now “Sunrise” morning crew out to the Waialae Country Club for the Sony Open. After some shenanigans with a hot dog, we served another mixed plate of tech news, featuring Honda’s new self-balancing motorcycle, Polaroid’s 3-D pen, and the LEGO Boost system.
This week’s “Geek Beat” segment was a mixed plate of tech news, including Amazon’s new brick-and-mortar “Go” concept store, Twitter’s live video offering, and the latest batch of new emoji… and I don’t care what the Unicode standard says, it’s a “shaka.”
It’s Computer Science Education Week! This international celebration of computers and technology and STEM education brings a lot of great events to schools around the world, and in Hawaii. The “Hour of Code” brought me and my coworkers out to an elementary school in Kaneohe.
Once again, we were able to join the bleary-eyed Hawaii News Now “Sunrise” morning crew on their annual pilgrimage to Honolulu’s retail hotspots for “Black Friday.” Our shopping picks included the best Android smartphone on the market, the newest portable drone, and battery packs… if you can get them shipped.
With many still reeling from the results of the U.S. presidential election, our friends at Hawaii News Now called an audible, setting aside the gadgets to tackle the intersection of tech and politics. After a quick mannequin challenge. There’s “fake news” on Facebook, real harassment on Twitter, and big question marks under a Trump administration.
Microsoft staked its claim to the high-end hardware market with the announcement of its new Surface Book and its giant Surface Studio, both big upgrades (including in price). The company is clearly positioning itself against Apple, which announced a new MacBook Pro that I crave, but that has left some Apple fans wanting.
With the World Drone Racing Championships taking place this weekend on the North Shore, it seemed like a good time to revisit drones. Kualoa Ranch will host pilots from 18 countries for a FPV UAV competition, while the rest of us shop for more stable airships to take great aerial photos and videos.
Google announced a number of new hardware releases, which we covered in the latest Geek Beat. There’s the new Pixel smartphone, a flagship device aimed at (and priced like) the iPhone, the Daydream View virtual reality headset, and the Google Home, Google’s entry into the smart home market in the wake of the surprise success of the Amazon Echo.
On the latest Geek Beat, we cover a couple of new apps from Google: Allo, a “smart messaging app,” and Trips, a travel guide that helps track your itinerary and even works offline. Finally,...
Relying entirely on news leaks and rumors, today’s Geek Beat covers what Apple was announcing as we spoke at its September 2016 keynote. We also touch on problems with Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy...
The latest Geek Beat segment is inspired by the World Conservation Congress, held in Hawaii and the U.S. for the first time in more than 60 years. In addition to the IUCN event, we...
On the latest Geek Beat, we cover the introduction of Instagram Stories (a shot across the bow of Snapchat), the expanding of Twitter Moments, and an update to Pokemon Go to help players find...
For this morning’s “Geek Beat” segment on the Hawaii News Now Sunrise morning news show, we tackled a trio of tech stories: The ability to applied for “Verified” status on Twitter: I’ve coveted the...
There was no way to avoid talking about Pokemon Go this morning, considering how massively popular the newly launched game has become in just a few days. But this morning’s Sunrise “Geek Beat” segment...
New rules for commercial drone use led off this week’s “Geek Beat” segment on the Hawaii News Now “Sunrise” morning show. We also touched on the growing popularity of first-person view (FPV) drone racing, including a recent...
Two big tech conferences kicked off this week: Apple’s World-Wide Developers Conference and E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. We shared the highlights on this morning’s “Geek Beat” segment on the Hawaii News Now Sunrise...
New alternative keyboards for iOS were the subject of this week’s “Geek Beat” segment for the Sunrise morning news show on Hawaii News Now. Smartphone keyboards are a pretty esoteric topic, nor particularly easy...
On this week’s “Geek Beat” (part of the “Sunrise” morning news show on Hawaii News Now), Burt Lum and I told Dan Cooke about apps that let you host your own show online. We...
It was a good week for car geeks, as Tesla unveiled its next and most affordable electric vehicle yet, the Tesla Model 3. It also racked up a ton of pre-orders, mostly from people...
Apple’s latest announcements, made at a low-key “Town Hall” hosted at its Cupertino campus, were the focus of this morning’s “Geek Beat” segment on Hawaii News Now’s “Sunrise” morning show. Burt and I talked...
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