Nerd Stalker

Travel interrupts our naturally scheduled programming and is an easy scapegoat for not maintaining a healthy lifestyle as well as being out of touch with our friends, families and jobs. Gear up for 2014 with these 10 apps and gadgets to help make your travel experiences exciting and productive. We talk with Melissa Thompson, frequent coast-to-coast traveller and CEO of online counseling service - TalkSession, about her top tech ways of make traveling easier for 2014.

We were lucky to attend the keynote at the 2014 Apps World North America conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. This event features talks in Development of Apps, Droid Apps, Games Development, Mobile Payments and Retail, Mobile Marketing, HTML5 and API Strategies, TV and Mulitscreen and Enterprise. Also, over 200 exhibitors had booths to display their services. The keynote was an interview of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak by Wired's Mat Honan. Listen to see what Steve has to say about innovation, security, and opportunities for app developers.

Nerd Stalker interview Dennis List of Dutch startup Rocki, forgive the video quality we were at the mercy of hotel lobby wifi.

 

 

Rocki has created a very clever small and lightweight device that can jump on wireless networks and execute instructions via the web to play audio to any speaker it's connected to. Want to connect speakers all over your compound? Just connect more Rocki's and your all set. With Rocki you can have more than one phone controlling the music and create a music queue together, think dj battle. The silicon like cover comes in seven different colors and (as of this post) the device is sold for the very less than Sonos price of $49 (plus version) or $89 (play plus version). The device can fit in the palm of your hand and is extremely light.

 

 

Some future plans for Rocki are to solidify some partnerships with as many music providers as possible, think Spotify and the others. Also they say they will eventually release an open API for you developers out there. We love that Rocki has effectively commoditized wireless home theatre systems for the middle class.

Nerd Stalker interview with Dan Shapiro inventor of Robot Turtles. Robot Turtles is a board game you play with your favorite 3-8 year old kids. It sneakily teaches the fundamentals of programming.

Robot Turtles launched on Kickstarter, where it became the bestselling board game of all time. Which is pretty darn amazing. The Kickstarter campaign is over. 1,500 copies went up on the Make Magazine store and they sold out in 8 hours. Now there are a few copies at http://buy.robotturtles.com. For you Robot Turtle aficionados make sure to get the e-book here.

We must admit that we secretly bought Robot Turtles under a private name so as to experience the whole fulfillment process like a general consumer would. We received it prior to the holidays despite the hot demand for the game. I sprung Robot Turtles on my six year old daughter who was thrilled with the game. In no time she ran through the basics then I quickly had to make the game more elaborate then event more elaborate. Credit to the RT team the game grows with your kid, we were initially very skeptical and not too optimistic as we have heard claims of games like this before that just never worked, this one does.Watch the interview above for the full story however we are continuing to enjoy and play the game, we recommend the game and give it two thumbs up.

 

Picks of the Week:

Biometric headset increases game difficulty for angry players bit.ly/1eooxpr (Stuart Robards | Gizmag)

Amazon Wants to Ship Your Package Before You Buy It on.wsj.com/1cSXD55 via @PSFK (Greg Besinger / WSJD)

Amazon Considering Online Pay-TV Service http://on.wsj.com/1dSIvcm (Sharma, Ramachandra and Clark | WSJ D)

13 Things You Can Actually Buy With #Bitcoin feedly.com/k/1kH6MYq (Kevin Smithg / Complex Tech)

Man Interrogated By FBI For Wearing Prescription Google Glass At The Movies http://read.bi/1cT56RC (Jim Edwards | Business Insider)

Twitter Gets Serious About Social Shopping bit.ly/1cP6THl (Jennifer Elias / Fast Company Labs)

Speed Round:

"70,000 healthcare.gov records hacked" claim turns out to be Google results http://bit.ly/1cSV7Mj (Rob Beschizza | Boing Boing)

Motorola lowers price of bamboo Moto X, more natural finishes coming January 21st bit.ly/1dtZKQ5 viA (Chris Welsh / TheVerge)

LogMeIn discontinues its free remote desktop service http://t.co/auPa97pGm5 (Brad Linder | Lilliputing)

VLC for iOS gets a new UI, Dropbox, Google Drive support, and more bit.ly/1f237PD (Janko Roettgers / GigaOmTech)

Tips of the Week:

GluePrintTurn any mockup into a floating guide, and visually align pixels with ease. http://glueprintapp.com/

Using GIF Brewery: Tip of the Week: Deal With It: the art and science of creating GIFs buff.ly/1dSI6qrI (T.C. Sottek and Thomas Houston / TheVerge)

Events:

1/31-2/2 3D Printer World Expo http://www.3dprinterworldexpo.com/

AppsWorld Feb 5-6 http://www.apps-world.net/northamerica/index.php

3/9-13 - OFC 2014 Conference http://www.ofcconference.org/

Macworld / iWorld 2014 March 27-29 Moscone North SF http://www.macworldiworld.com/

SF New Tech @ MacWorld/iWorld “6 about to break” http://is.gd/XlauLA

DEMO April 3, 2014 Mission Bay Conf. Center, San Francisco http://www.demo.com

Hey makers, there's another event to satisfy your palettes. The 3D Printer World Expo is coming January 31 through February 1 in Burbank, California. So much happening in the 3D printing world - cells, houses, and Jello. We interview Joe Micallef, Education Director for the first 3D Printer World, on what to expect at the 3D Printer World Expo.

Traveling to the US and want to avoid high roaming rates. Ready SIM recently announced the release of new Data Only plans designed for travelers to the U.S. or anyone in America that needs short-term data access for their unlocked smartphone, tablet or hotspot. Available on a self-activating SIM Card, the Data Only plan allows people to use a nation-wide 4G data network without signing a contract or providing any personal information. Wow! We talk with Emir Aboulhosn, CEO of Ready Sim about this new plan.

Car-Sharing Just Makes Sense for Airports - right? bit.ly/1cLO7SZ

Node Summit Recap

Followup: Man searches landfill for $7.9m bitcoin fortune

Windows 8 isn’t saving the PC market as sales continue to tank http://t.co/s1HyCVRggn

Salesforce adds second $1 million hackathon winner bit.ly/18WLpLz via @SFBusinessTimes

Google launches compute cloud (and slashes prices) to rival Amazon Web Services http://t.co/HXwv2BToc6

Nerd Stalker’s Speed Round

The New Audi A3 Will Have The Fastest Internet Of Any Car | via @SAI sco.lt/8UWqav

Turns Out People Don’t Really Like Being Called “Techies” http://t.co/6Fr3pLjHLD

Bio-Sensing Necklace Will Let Wearer Test Their Own Blood And Fluids feedly.com/e/iDUUsFv_ via @PSFK

Zappos Turns Baggage Claim Carousel Into Wheel of Fortune http://t.co/X4WcqWWpVu

Nerd Stalker Tip of the Week

Yule Log 2.0 - Happy Holidays http://t.co/vYEQlEd7HJ

Pebble watch https://getpebble.com/

Events

12/9 - Future of Money & Technology at Japantown’s Hotel Kabuki

12/11 and 12/20 - SF New Tech

This week’s Nerd Stalker Show Picks:

DNA Testing Startup 23andMe Hits A Snag As FDA Shuts Down Sales Of Home Testing Kit | TechCrunch http://tcrn.ch/1c9rWYx

Jury grants photographer $1.2M over Getty and AFP’s use of Twitter pics bit.ly/1aPMtQw via @GigaOMTech

Google admits that Youtube/Google Plus integration increased ASCII porn, spam and trolling - Boing Boing http://bit.ly/1aZJ5mj

Rings Turn Sign Language Into Spoken Word To Help The Deaf Communicate bit.ly/I4uE6g via @PSFK

Woof to Wash: Bark-activated washing machine lets service dogs do the dirty work http://bit.ly/1aZKOIt

Restaurant on Google Glasser: Man-child stinking up the joint feedly.com/e/3OsqKnpg via @CNET

Nerd Stalker’s Speed Round:

H-P Will Replace Verizon in Hosting HealthCare.gov Website (Wall Street Journal) http://bit.ly/1aZKedD

Get Rewarded for Being Social with Your Purchases This Season | Nerd Stalker bit.ly/196q7aH

CyanogenMod Installer Application Removed from Play Store | CyanogenMod http://bit.ly/1aZKsBC

A Pre-Paid Sim Card Solves Your Traveling and Security Headaches | Nerd Stalker bit.ly/1aLr9vI

Nerd Stalker Tip of the Week:

Knock to unlock your device. http://t.co/diGoV9vGGv

Google Adds Hands-Free Voice Search to Chrome (Just Say "OK Google") lifehacker.com/google-adds-ha… via @lifehacker

Events:

12/3-4 - NodeSummit http://nodesummit.com/

12/9 - Future of Money & Technology at Japantown’s Hotel Kabuki http://futureofmoney.com/moneyconference/

12/11 - SF New Tech