Edward Kiledjian

As a scuba diver I love the water. On vacation, all I want to do is go diving or grab my mask and snorkel looking for fish, lobster and coral. Every trip, I meet vacationers who profess their love for snorkelling but admit not being able to use the traditional snorkel (breathing from your mouth).

The new Easybreath (link) is a fantastic option for these people. The Easybreath fits over your entire face allowing you to breath normally, has an air intake high above your head (so you don't have to worry about keeping the snorkel straight) and has a one way valve to prevent water from seeping in.

All of this can be had for a low $US55.

I come from a generation where cheap Bic pens were plentiful and the go to tool anytime you wanted to write something. There is something nostalgic about using one of this pens these days. 

Imagine my surprise when I learned that Bic was releasing the above Bic Cristal Stylus pen. It looks exactly like the Bics I remembered except this one has a nib at the end for your tablet or smartphone. These pens sure bring back a lot of memories.

Unfortunately this bringer of old memories is the european version (link). The North American version looks like this (link):

Sure its cool but its nothing like the Bic I remember... Too bad... I would love to get my hands on the old school european version. 

All Amazon links provided in this article are for convenience only. I do not get any financial benefit from them.

I first started using Fongo when it was powering a free VOIP service for Dell Canada called Dell Voice (link). The premise was simple. It offered a free IOS and Android app that provided free calling to most Canadian locations with free calledID and free voicemail. 

The Dell deal ended but I continued using it when travelling or when selling something on kijiji (when I don't want to give out my personal number). Now we learn that Fongo is working on a Blackberry (BB) 10 client. 

The Fongo website still says "Fongo for Blackberry is not currently available" but now we know they are working on it. 

It's still too early to know if this will ever be converted to a real distributed client but thousands of Canadian Blackberry users would love to get their hands on this free VOIP service. Now we have to wait and see.

evleaks is at it again. This time we learn that Samsung will release a brand new (2014) Windows 8.1 phone that looks like ... well... a Galaxy phone...

This Verizon device will support LTE have a 5" 1080p capable screen. Expect this device to be showcased at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona alongside Samsung's other Android devices. It seems Samsung really wants to have a device for everyone in every possible size.

The Chromecast is a little wonder at $30. It allows you to easily stream content directly from authorized apps (the internet) straight to your Chromecast without going through you smartphone or tablet. But El Goog (aka Google) has been very protective of its little baby and hasn't allowed "unauthorized" apps to connect and use it.

Why the change? Google released the Cast SDK yesterday which will allow developers to legally write apps for it (most creative developers has reverse engineered the code and were using that to stream to it, which Google didn't like).

Koushik Dutta, the famed developer of the first illegal Chromecast streaming app for Android, reports that he has now added legal support for his Chromecast to his all cast app (which already streams to Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, Playstation and most DLNA compliant devices).

Koushik said adding Chromecast support through the Cast SDK was a 20 minute affair. 

I am really excited because this means we may start seeing Chromecast support popping up on dozens of apps on Android and IOS. 

Streaming content from dozens of apps for $30 is a fantastic deal. Let's see what crazy products developers come out with.

October 2012, I wrote an article called Stop what you're doing and clean your phone , if you haven't read it, go and read it now. Your phone can get filthy. I mean it can get dirtier than a public toilet yet you routinely jam it against your face close to your ears and mouth.

A company has now come up with a neat idea called PhoneSoap (link). they combine the act of sanitizing with charging which  ames a lot of sense. It works like the Violight unit by employing UV-C lamps to sanitize your cherished smartphone. And its been resigned to work with an iPhone (30 pin connector or lightning) or any Android device.

It costs $50 and I'm going to try and get one for testing and report back.

Apple prepared the above special video (shot entire on iPhones) to celebrate its 30th and to remind the world of its promise of making computing accessible to everyone.

Hundreds of iPhones were involved in this project generated hundreds of hours of raw footage that had to be reviewed and edited.

Still impressive to see what they were able to do.

BestBuy is kicking off another organizational restructuring to "optimize its retail footprint" (link)

They have now announced another 950 full-time employee layoffs (from both BestBuy & Futureshop brands). They will be consolidating departments.

The company has said “We have seen our online sales grow by more than 50 per cent in the past year and new services such as in-store reserve and pick up more than doubling. These changes in the way our customers are interacting with us have led us to look at how to best deploy our staff to meet those evolving needs.”

Re/Code, the new site from Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, revealed  (link) that Twitter is working on a new commerce platform that will enable users to buy and sell via tweets.

It looks like Twitter will use the Sponsored Tweet model and insert commerce ads into your twitter stream. The user can click on the link and will be taken to a special Twitter page showing the standard commerce information (pictures, description and the ability to buy the item. The current information shows Fancy.com as the backend.

Twitter has refused to comment on this story but the word on the street is that Twitter is attempting to find solid, highly desirable partners for a possible launch.

I found it interesting that these sample screenshots show Bell as the wireless provider. Not sure if thats a clue to a Canadian test launch or just a coincidence.

To celebrate the launch of the TimmyMe blackberry app (which allows customers to pay via their BB10 device), tim Hortons and Blackberry launched a special promotional campaign at the Adelaide Street West location.

This is a tasty promo, not sure it would make me buy a blackberry device!

EVLeaks was the first to proclaim the coming of a red Nexus 5

An Android Police (link) informant also provided the usual "non clear" spy shots from Sprint showing the red Nexus 5 promising a February 4 launch.

Eldar has mixed success with his predictions but this is an interesting discussion.

Google updates its Chrome web browser for IOS yesterday and finally bestowed many highly anticipated features to its IOS faithful. The first major feature is automatic in browser translation. visit any webpage that is not in your preferred language and (just like on the desktop version), it will ask if you want Chrome to translate it for you.

Like its desktop counterpart, you can translate just this page or ask Chrome to translate all french pages in the future as well. 

Google has also added a feature to reduce mobile data usage by passing all browsing traffic through its global network of servers first so they can compress, reformat and remove junk (Google says you can save up to 50% on data usage). I have been testing this feature on Android for many months now and I find it typically saved 20-35% of Chrome web browser traffic. Some privacy conscious users may not like this feature so it is off by default.

The final feature is a redesigned  New Tab page with is cleaner and simpler to use.

Overall it is a nice update that Chrome on IOS users will appreciate. I have been using it for several hours and I haven't noticed any major bugs yet so I recommend you head over to the app store and download the update now.

You may not know this but Ryan Seacrest is the founder of an iPhone accessory company called Typo. Typo designed and sells an add-on iPhone physical keyboard which Blackberry claims is a copy of its own proprietary design.

A report by CIO magazine says Blackberry has submitted a request to the US District Court in Northern California to block Typo from "making, using, offering to sell, or selling within the United States, or importing into the United States, the Typo Keyboard.”

Blackberry has said it will "vigorously" defend its unique keyboards intellectual property and of course Typo has said ”BlackBerry’s claims against [us] lack merit and we intend to defend the case vigorously.”

The first shipment of Typo keyboards is already sold out and new orders are expected to be delivered in March (each kit costs $99). If you own an iPhone 5s, be aware that you lose the fingerprint capabilities when this case is installed. You can order one directly from Typo keyboard if interested (link).