Google

What do we ask for? Consistency. What do we get from Consumer Cellular? More than a dozen ways to configure our Google Nexus 5 to their network. Unfortunately, many of those recommended settings don't work. Luckily, time is on our side. In the past 6 months Consumer Cellular and Nexus 5 owners have settled on APN settings that actually work properly on the Consumer Cellular network.

When Google announced in 2012 that they were bringing Google Fiber to Kansas City, my father called me and said he was interested. As an information technologist, I was excited. I told the “old man” that Google Fiber was going to change everything. Last month, Google Fiber finally came to my parents' neighborhood, and I made the six-hour drive to visit the house I grew up in.

Google has already rolled out its fiber-optic technology for residents in specific areas of Kansas City – on both sides of the state line. High-speed Internet and TV services have come to many of the city’s “fiberhoods” – a neighborhood which has pre-registered for Google’s network in order to get its service.

The fiber has been installed in twelve areas of Kansas City, Kansas and in two areas of Kansas City, Missouri. The installation is in progress in many more areas of the Kansas City metropolitan.

While Twitter remain my social network of choice, I've struggled over the years with Facebook. For me personally, there is something about Facebook that has rubbed me the wrong way. Facebook's user interface has always felt "cluttered" to me and the addition of "social advertisement" this past year hasn't helped win me over either. More importantly, the seemingly never ending changes to both Facebook's privacy policy and privacy tools has left me very uncomfortable. These days, I'm only on Facebook because my closest friends are on Facebook. In short, with Facebook I feel like I'm a hostage as it may be the only way I keep close ties with friends unwilling to try Twitter or Google+.

If you follow me on Google+ or Twitter, you likely already know that I am not a tablet fan. I know the statement is contradictory when coming from a techy person like me. I have a hard time seeing the benefit of a tablet in my day to day life. I already own a great smartphone (the Android-based Droid Razr) and I prefer the ease of a physical keyboard on my computer and notebooks when writing content is crucial. Overall, I'm just not convinced that a tablet will allow me to do anything more than what my current devices already do. Perhaps this is a sign of my age, but I lost my "wow" some time ago for new technology.