Gadgetory

this week on the scene that tech review Microsoft moves office into the cloud Twitter made easy in a handy how-to video turns the tablet into a TV remote and the Samsung trender is behind the times it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Brian Tong and welcome to the scene that tech review when we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech and offer some unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start off with the good given the popularity of Google Docs and the growth of cloud computing in general it was only a matter of time before Microsoft got in the game this week the folks behind outlook excel and word launched office 365 the online version of their business productivity suite here's Jason Parker to walk you through the new service office 365 is officially launched bringing familiar web-based apps and Microsoft services to professionals and small businesses but does it offer the tools that your business needs i'm jason parker from cnet and this is a first look at microsoft office 365 office 365 combines familiar Microsoft Office Web Apps with web enabled tools so businesses can email creating shared documents hold online meetings and much more as a subscription service microsoft is offering a few tiered packages aimed at businesses of different sizes with varying productivity needs powered by microsoft exchange online businesses can now have access to email calendars and contacts from virtually anywhere on almost any device the Microsoft Outlook Web App has a similar look and feel to outlook for desktops and can be connected with office 2010 or office 2007 so you have the same email inbox everywhere microsoft also includes its forefront online protection for exchange which scans continually for viruses and spam to keep your business secure along with email you'll be able to share calendars and quickly schedule meetings with access to your colleagues availability simply go to the calendar app view your co-workers calendar then set up a meeting time now your calendar will show the meeting on whatever device you log in with when it's time to create documents Microsoft Office Web Apps act as a companion to the desktop versions of Word Excel PowerPoint and OneNote powered by Microsoft SharePoint though you won't have the laundry list of options found in the desktop versions the web apps offer enough features to create and edit while keeping the same formatting on your desktop and on the web you can write and make style decisions in a document in word edit spreadsheets in Excel create or edit a PowerPoint presentation while away from the office and collaborate and share notebooks in OneNote office 365 keeps your organization's work in one place by letting you create team website here you'll be able to keep shared documents for collaboration post messages for employees or create new team sites for specific projects even with access to office 365 from anywhere sometimes you need to contact someone directly even if it's over the web powered by Microsoft Lync online you can have a quick chat over a secure I am client hold online meetings with audio and video or share your desktop to show an employee exactly what you mean even people outside of your company can be given access so you can meet up with clients online when you're ready to share your wares with the world you can use office 365 to create and maintain a public-facing web site the service gives you several layouts and you can pick from hundreds of themes to match your type of business you can make further changes to style and text or even more side variations you can also add custom CSS code if you want to create a style sheet of your own office 365 for small businesses under 25 employees costs six dollars per user per month larger businesses can choose from for enterprise plans for anywhere from ten dollars per user to twenty-seven dollars per user per month for more options and advanced tools overall office 365 is a solid solution for collaboration and access anywhere tools for businesses with familiar web apps access from almost any device and tools to produce team sites and a public-facing web site office 365 just might be the solution to our business needs I'm Jason Prager for cnet and this has been a first look for office 365 thanks for watching now while office 365 aims to help small business employees collaborate more efficiently online Apple's iCloud service aims help all of your personal I devices work together more easily in this week's top 5 brian cooley my main man is counting down the reasons why I cloud gets it right Apple's iCloud I bet you're intrigued by it even if you don't really understand it I'm Brian Cooley with the top five reasons that Apple's iCloud rocks number five back up and don't yawn I know it's kind of a sleeper but with iCloud an iOS device can back itself up to apples cloud servers once a day when it finds Wi-Fi that means photos settings apps app data all that fiddly stuff and not only is it backed up that way you can restore all that to a new iOS device you buy easily and wirelessly as well that's pretty slick number for all your music even the stuff you stole Apple's tight with the record label so it was kind of a surprise that the new itunes match component of iCloud will recognize and sync all your music to all your devices even your pirated music sure you pay 25 bucks a year for that part but that's a lot cheaper than dealing with the lawyers they could have sent number three hiding the sausage and now I mean you don't see sausage being made in iCloud now a certain faction of people think I cloud should have been more literal and folder based with you being able to get your hands dirty dragging and dropping stuff across directories and network shares Apple decided no and they're probably dead right most of their consumers have lives and don't want to administer a server number two just do it I cloud is largely a synchronizing service that happens to use the cloud to make that work that means a high degree of automatic background just do it pneus that you won't find and say Amazon Cloud Drive or Google Music if it works right tylenol sales and a certain amount of harsh obscenities should plummet and the number one reason i bet you find iCloud at least a little bit irresistible is the freeness the heart of mobileme contacts calendar email that used to be 99 bucks a year is now part of iCloud for the approximate cost of nothing free ninety-nine dollars off one hundred percent discount you get it Google hates this part but you're gonna love it now for more top 5s like this including next week's top 5 things that are wrong with icloud head to top five cnet com I'm Brian Cooley thanks for watching and be sure to come back next week for coolies top five features that could make iCloud even better yes there's always room for improvement now there are over 300 million Twitter users in the world today but are you one of them if not what are you waiting for maybe once Sharon Vaknin explains how easy it is to get started you'll change your mind hey everyone I'm Sharon Vaknin for sina com with your guide to getting started on twitter now this is twitter 101 so we'll go over the basics like setting up your account Twitter lingo like RT and pound signs and finally I'll give you a basic strategy for tweeting on Facebook and Twitter asked you guys to give me your best tips so i'll include those two and i should also mention that there are a ton of twitter apps for your desktop or your mobile devices but i'm just going to focus on what twitter does and you can decide which app to use after we cover the basics ok so let's get started at twitter com first pick a username which should be short and sweet refrain from picking weird handles like dog lover XO we just don't do that on twitter now edit your profile there are only a few things to do here so it's important to get it right upload a profile picture and add a bio as ashley laurel explains your bio should include who you are where you're from and what you're interested in it'll help people decide if they should follow you or not good now that you've got your profile setup let's talk about tweeting this is where you tweet and below this is your timeline where you see updates from people you follow for tweets you're limited to 140 characters or less which you probably know but there is some Twitter lingo you need to learn if you want to talk someone in a tweet use the @ symbol followed by their username your tweet will show up in their mentions tab and anytime someone tags you you'll see it in your mentions tab so if I want to say something to eric franklin or need opal on twitter ID right at need opal than the message this tweet will only show up in eric's mentions the timeline of anyone who follows Eric and I but if I tweet something and include at need opal somewhere in the middle it'll show up in the timeline of everyone who follows me at replies or mentions our public so if you want something a little more private send a direct message you can send a message to anyone who follows you just go to the messages tab and send one here now let's talk about retweets if you see something interesting from someone on your timeline you might want to repost it to your followers just click retweet under the tweet you want to repost and it'll show up in the timeline or you can copy the tweet and preface it with rt than the person's Twitter handle and that way it'll show up in that person's mentions tab but now that you know how to communicate on Twitter you might be wondering what the heck you should tweet about unless your Kim Kardashian or Charlie Sheen you're not going to get a million followers instantly be patient and use my tips to build your following assignment Everard points out please please please don't talk about what you had for breakfast instead find a niche and tweet about things that you're interested in or good at like if you decided that your niche is gaming post links to articles you found new games you're playing and retweet other people in your gaming community when you retweet your building relationships and getting the attention of other people like you which is important for building a following talk to people or you'll get really lonely send them at replies and ask questions comment on their tweets and make conversation if you're looking for people to follow twitter will give you suggestions over here on the front page like this person said be active in other people's conversations and don't be discouraged if others are not active in yours another key Twitter trick is to use hashtags which are like keywords for tweets just put the pound sign before any word for example I can tweet I found this awesome recipe on chow com I can't wait to try it then you click that hashtag and see who else is talking about recipes sometimes hashtags become so popular that they end up in the trend section in the sidebar it's a quick way to see what people are talking about so those are the basics of using Twitter but before I go here's some advice from Joe sigler when starting new try not to follow too many people too quickly you can get overwhelmed I've seen a few friends quit Twitter because of too much information thanks Joe now if you do get overwhelmed or just have any questions feel free to ask me on twitter or facebook fits more than 140 characters and if you want to see more how to videos visit how to cnet com for cnet I'm Sharon Vaknin and i'll see you on the interwebs see that's not so hard of course once you do sign up make sure you follow me shameless plug at Bryan underscore Tong and you know don't forget to follow mollywood too now they'll probably better known for their laptops and tvs the sheban Vizio are just two of the latest companies to dive into the tablet deep end let's take a look at what these new models have to offer I'm Scott Stein senior editor at cnet com and this is a look at the toshiba thrive tablet now you're seeing a lot of Android Honeycomb tablets around but this one's a little bit different what makes it different well its got a 10.1 inch screen it's getting Android Honeycomb 3.1 but it takes a few steps that make it a little bit more like a netbook in terms of its customizability it's got a back cover that's replaceable including a battery that's replaceable behind it it's got an SD card slot that supports up to 128 gigs of extra memory and Toshiba built in a file manager so you can actually browse pictures and music from it and be able to play them back so it expands the memory that's usually pretty limited on these tablets now the pricing is pretty aggressive although the memory starts limited 8 gigs for 429 16 gigs for 479 or 32 gigs for 579 and it's available in mid-july also what's really great is that despite its thickness it also is able to work in a number of full ports that you don't see on tablets very often hdmi full USB and a mini USB as well also as you might expect from Toshiba there are some built-in AV enhancements that are supposed to improve the quality of standard definition video common to what we seen on toshiba laptops I'm Scott Simon that's a quick look at the do Sheba thrive tablet from the CEA line show in New York I'm Scott Stein senior editor at cnet com and this is a first look at the vizio tablet at the CEA live show in New York now you want to talk affordable this Android Gingerbread tablet is 349 now that does come with four gigs of memory two of which are assigned apps two of which are user specified but it does have a micro SD card slot for up to 32 gigs of add-on memory it also has an 8 inch screen which is not something you normally see in a tablet it affords a lot more space and has a 1024 x 768 resolution that also comes with stereo speakers that aligned vertically or horizontally giving you a little more of a home theater feeling either orientation also really interesting Lee this acts as a remote it actually is an IR blaster that's the great part of it and if you pair it with any variety of TVs DVD players receivers what have you it can recognize them and be used as a remote and universally really don't have to use it the vizio tv or any other and that's a really nice of a great appeal for many people in addition i are in bluetooth this vizio tablet also comes with video output and USB courtesy of hdmi and USB outputs here it's priced really kind of above the e-reader market below what most people think of and is an Android tablet price whether or not these internal storage will bother you depends on whether you're going to think of investing in those micro SD card slots can be worthwhile and maybe you really think of it as more of kind of a super smart remote that you also can use as a tablet there's a first look at the vizio tablet that'll be available starting in july i'm scott stein and this is the vizio tablet at the CD a line show in New York I can totally see the vizio via you know propped up on my coffee table if I didn't already have this piece of junk now will I see if I can find someone who wants they use the iPad let's take a break but we've still got a lot more tech review right after this welcome back to the Cena tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at Cena TV now continuing on in the good with so many versions of Android phones out there it can get pretty confusing if you're trying to decide which one to buy but if you happen to be a t-mobile customer I'm about to make things a whole lot easier for you what's up prize 5 fans i'm brian Tong and this is a matchup between 24 inch 4g touch screen phones on t-mobile it's a prize 5 foot out between tmobile g2x and HTC Sensation 4G our judges for this fight our senior editor Bonnie boom shakalaka cha senior editor Nicole it's so coldly and myself ringing tone now we'll take all three judges blind scores and average them out to the nearest tenth each round the final prize fight score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system it's five rounds to the finish to let's get it on round one is design t-mobile g2x has a solid design with a matte finish on the back it's camera lens puts a little bump in its trunk but this is a classy phone with a vibrant 4 inch 800 x 480 touchscreen display HTC Sensation 4G ups the ante with a 4.3 inch qhd display that's even crisper with the 960 x 540 resolution but not as bright now we all liked it's contoured body but it's sweeping three tone pattern on the back reminds we have a girl skirt but it doesn't hurt it here the sensation 4g takes the first round with the 4.7 and the g2x gets a solid four next rounds controls and user interface this round isn't easy when the tmobile g2x brings a pure stock Android experience there's no bells and whistles and it makes for a clean design you'll still get widget customization and if you want more good news it feels a tad bit snappier to use now HTC Sensation 4G brings the next generation of its user interface with an even sexier design yep i just called an OS sexy now there are seven home screens and flash your animations across the board the sense UI has always been a favorite of ours and it gets the edge with a perfect five and the g2x gets a 4.7 so after averaging two rounds the sensation 4g leaves by half a point with plenty of fight left next round is features both of these phones are pretty evenly matched with dual-core processors 8 megapixel cameras androids turn-by-turn maps and voice of text and HSPA+ compatibility Wi-Fi and Bluetooth now you'll find everybody's favorite swype keyboard technology on the g2x it also comes pre-loaded with eight gigs of internal storage space and an additional microSD card slot to add more storage the main difference here is that it's currently running only android 2.2 with a gingerbread update coming soon now HTC Sensation 4G is preloaded with Gingerbread and you'll get some of the cool benefits like a much better cut copy and paste an application task killer or launching apps directly from the lock screen it comes with its own flavor of swype called trace but it tends to be a little less accurate at times the sensation also gives you access to only one gig of internal storage space and the microSD card slot is occupied with an eight gig card which limits some of your flexibility out of the box we're calling this round even at four next up is web browsing and multimedia web browsing is a push and a pretty similar experience on both phones the sensation was a tad faster at pinching and zooming but in many cases the g2x was a beat faster when loading pages the g2x features an eight megapixel camera with a single flash and a micro-hdmi port for video out while the sensation brings an 8 megapixel camera with a dual LED flash both cameras record and playback 1080p video sources but we had mixed opinions with the image quality of their pictures the sensation 4g also brings the watch app that allows users to rent or buy movies directly from their phones but in the end the sensation 4g gets a 4.7 and the g2x gets a 4.3 so after averaging four rounds HTC leaves by just three-tenths of a point the final round that decides at all quality and performance t-mobile's g2x was excellent with its clear and crisp sound quality with little to no distortion or static in the background it was also the snapper you're performing foam between the two with its dual core tegra two processors and menus that jump instantly from one to another now the sensation 4g sounded excellent as well the speakerphone wasn't as strong but regular voice calls we're pretty clear Qualcomm's new dual core processor kept things running smoothly but maybe the sense you eyes animations were a little too taxing but this phone was still a tiny step behind and you can feel it the g2x gets a perfect five and HTC gets of four let's average out all the scores and in a prize fight where ACC sensation 4g took an early lead t-mobile g2x storm back but it just wasn't enough and the sensation takes this battle 4.5 to 4.4 and is your prize fight winner t-mobile brings two heavy hitting contenders that you can't go wrong with but the final decision as usual is up to you i'm brian song thanks for watching it will catch you guys next time on another prize by so the sensation just barely squeaked by with the win over the g2x but really like I said you can't go wrong no matter which one you choose which is more than I can say for the two phones we have coming up in the bad ok so these phones aren't terrible but with so many choices out there I wouldn't waste too much time considering either one of them well why don't you guys just see for yourself I'm Nicoli senior associate attorney common this is a first look at the samsung dart for t-mobile it is a very basic entry-level android phone for t-mobile and as you can see here it's a very simple silhouette on the frontiers a 3.1 inch display it's a little bit small by most smartphone standards on the back here is a 3 megapixel camera lens the samsung dark ships with Android 2.2 but it has Samsung's own TouchWiz interface on it the TouchWiz interface means that instead of the main menu scrolling up and down like most Android phones it Scrolls site to site in multiple pages the screen is quite small as we mentioned before and the resolution isn't really dead sharp either however it's quite colorful as you can see the Samsung dart as we said is quite basic but it does with a number of basic Android features that include support for google apps and services it also has a very unique featured courtesy of t-mobile and that's Wi-Fi calling that means you can make calls over Wi-Fi the samsung dart is a quad-band 3g gsm phone so you can be used internationally as well the samsung guard is available for free after a new two-year service agreement from t-mobile I'm Nicola this has been a first look at the samsung dart hi everyone I'm Jessica doll court for cnet taking her first look today at the Samsung friender this is a new phone for sprint but it isn't exactly trendy why is that because it's got a user interface right here that really takes me back especially to the days when Samsung was really big into its proprietary user interface and that's what you've got right here there are tabs along the bottom and then grids to select the apps and the phone features on this phone these days we see mostly Android as the operating system of choice for this type of phone it's not the proprietary software on this phone that bugs me it's some of the features there is webmail on this phone the app is fine although it's a little bit outdated but really it's the Twitter and Facebook apps they're not native and so you have to reach them from the mobile web and these days do you just have many more better options to do that than this method there is threaded messaging on here which is nice other tools are driving mode and their voice commands the trender has a 2.8 inch qvga screen so it's a nice compact phone there are hardware buttons below the screen on the back there's a 1.3 megapixel camera I'm not impressed with the photo quality so far the camera doesn't seem to focus very well behind the back cover there's a microSD card slot that takes up to 32 gigabytes of external storage there's also the slide-out qwerty keyboard on the keyboard itself the spacing is good for my hands because it's it's kind of compact also the problem though was that the keys are pretty flat so even though they're comfortable the flatness really slowed me down and typing call quality on the trender totally acceptable so there was no real issue there either right now the phone costs 2999 on sprint site it's not a bad phone at all but there are other budget phones for sprint that cost the same or less and you get a lot more especially if those are Android phones and some of those are even free on promotion so I'd say keep your eyes out for that because there's not really a compelling reason for me to get this phone instead of one of those I'm Jessica doll court this is the Samsung trender read my full review for more details on cnet com we don't mean a beat up on samsung but trust me neither of these phones is going to be trending anytime soon which brings us to this week's bottom line let's wrap up this week's show with one more tablet rather than cluttering up the marketplace with another Android device HP's new touchpad is based on the often-overlooked Web OS platform well that might help HP stand out from the pack this tablet has some other notable issues to overcome hey I'm Donnell bail on this is the HP TouchPad it's a tablet that runs palm's webos and uses a 9.7 inch screen just like the ipad and the price is the same with a 16 gigabyte model going for four hundred ninety nine dollars and a 32 gigabyte model going for 599 the hardware itself isn't that impressive the thick glossy design feels a little like a slippery imitation of the original iPad and the finger smudges AQ out you should know that the back of this thing looks like a crime scene just minutes after you take it out of the box also there's no camera on the back though you do get one on the front personally I'm fine without it but it's something that every other tablet offers that's in this price range now there are some hardware tricks that are pretty cool there's an optional dock that can charge the tablet regardless of how it's placed HP also sells a Bluetooth keyboard if you prefer typing on something with real keys and if you have one of HP's phones like the pre three you can physically touch the devices together and transfer information it's pretty cool really though it's the software that makes this tablet unique if you're looking for something beyond the iPad or Android this is one of the few options out there that really approach the tablet from a different point of view one of the main differences is the home screen which is treated like a desktop each open task is represented as a stack of cards which you can rearrange or throw away what's interesting is that the stacks here aren't specific to each app there's specific to each task so you can be reading an email opening up web links and those email and web pages are all going to be stacked together as a single task if you want though you can pull side separate emails or pages by dragging them out of the stack and treating them as a separate task it's a neat trick and for some it's really going to feel like a more natural way to manage your work on a tablet one other thing that makes the touch pad unique is that it makes a real effort to be compatible with a wide range of services on the accounts page you can link the touch pad to everything from facebook to skype dropbox aim and lots more those length accounts are integrated right into the apps that you'll use them with so your photo app will pull in your snapfish account the messaging app will pull in your google talk account and the calendar will fold together your Facebook and Google events and it all just works together so that's a brief look at the HP TouchPad more details be sure to read my full review on cnet com the bottom line this week my friends where is the hand sanitizer like look at those smudges and fingerprints in Donald's full review he said the slippery backing felt like a plate at a pizza party yeah it may be called the touch pad but I won't be doing any such thing okay folks that's our show come back next week for an all-new Cena tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at Cena TV com see you next week and thanks for watching