The past month has brought around some cool gadgets for making my networking life better. I got to play with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone for a few weeks over Christmas. It’s the latest in Android phones, and in addition to having Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android operating system installed, it had a couple of cool features. The one you see in all of the advertisements is the face recognition. When it works properly, you unlock the phone, hold it up so you can see your face, and the phone unlocks. My guess is that it worked about one time in three for me. I ended up keying in my PIN number most of the time. I guess I shouldn’t wear so many disguises. As you have no doubt discerned by now, if a phone does not have a good camera, it is hard for us to get along. I am happy to report that although the Nexus has a 6 MP camera rather than the 8 MP offered by so many of its competitors, it was exceedingly fast and thus completely useful. This was one of these times that comparing the technical specs of a phone just wouldn’t reveal something that worked really, really well. It pays to play with your smartphone, in hand, before you buy it. You never know what you may end up really liking or hating about one model or the other. The Nexus is a competent, if not exciting, Android phone with the most usable camera I’ve seen so far.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus: www.samsung.com
I learned this month that the company that makes my absolute favorite piece of memory extension software, Evernote, got named company of the year by Inc. Magazine. In addition, I’ve discovered that they make an add-on piece of software called Evernote Hello which allows you better remember the people you meet by capturing their photo during your encounter. It’s a cute little app on the iPhone that encourages you to hand your phone to the new person and have them key in their name, email and phone number. Next, it asks them to take their own picture using the forward facing camera. The application enchants by making the process look a bit like a photo booth. It uses the iPhone’s tilt sensor to make sure your subject is holding the phone level to their face and the photo booth approach invariably makes them smile. It takes four pictures, keeping them all. It also tracks where you are in the world when you make the connection and it puts that in your Evernote database as well. One very nice touch is that it includes a Google Street View photo of the building you are standing in if it can figure that out. While I am hoping for a couple of improvements in the app, like being able to choose which notebook it stores my new contacts in, I like it a lot already and am eager to see what improvements they include in future versions.
Evernote Hello: http://www.evernote.com/hello/