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If I had a wallet full of one-hundred dollars bills and some time off, I would try and make my way to the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Russia. But since I'll be around 6,000 miles away, I'll have to rely on technology and all the apps that will keep me up to date on what's going on. The Olympic officials say around 1,650 of the world's best athletes from over 45 countries will compete in five Paralympic sports. A quick search of the apps stores will bring up a slew of Sochi 2014 apps that are free, although a few will cost from around $1 to $4. The Olympic organizing committee also has developed their own free Sochi 2014 Guide app for iOS , Android and Windows Phone devices. It'll provide up-to-date information on the events. These apps are for the fans, while the American athletes will get their very own special app. The AT&T Mobile Application Development group is developing a custom-built application for members of Team USA. The app will be launch...

As I got into my car for my daily commute to work, my latest iPhone app tells me there are 25 other drivers nearby ready to assist me with real-time traffic reports and commuting information. The commuting information is from Waze, a traffic and navigation app that I have been testing over the past few weeks. I can truly say that it works and also has very impressive GPS capabilities. The technology behind the Waze app is based on a community of other drivers with the Waze app, or "Wazers" as they like to call themselves. The beauty of the concept is that these drivers are local to your area and drive some of the same routes that you would take every day. Once in your car, just fire up the Waze app, type in your destination and leave the app open. You'll notice right away that your location is accurately displayed and a little icon tracks your route on a three-dimensional map, or 2D if you prefer. As you drive along, you might notice alerts on traffic jams or si...

I have been enjoying the company of the BlackBerry Q10 for the past couple of weeks. Some might think this smartphone is too little and too late. I think it's a lot of innovation and I hope it's not too late. My soft spot for the BlackBerry platform goes all the way back to the trackball or roller ball, and the scroll-wheel days. These devices set the standards for security and email management and were considered the "must have" mobile phone during its heyday, especially for enterprise customers. Now fast forward a decade and the BlackBerry is fighting for survival among the iPhones, Samsung Galaxies, Motorola Droids and a host of other newcomers. But the latest BlackBerry, the Q10, with the QWERTY physical keyboard for us that remember the good old days, is quite a smartphone and I wouldn't count BlackBerry out just yet. The Q10 is running the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, which is supposed to propel the BlackBerry devices into the future of smartphon...

The Samsung ATIV S Neo is coming to Sprint on Friday. This will be Sprint's second Windows Phone 8 smartphone of the year, with the HTC 8XT being the first WP8 device earlier this summer. The ATIV S Neo will be sporting a 4.8-inch display with a 1.4 gigahertz dual-core processor under the hood, which falls short when compared with some of the other high-powered quad-core smartphones, such as the 1.9 GHz Samsung Galaxy S4 or the LG Optimus G Pro at 1.7 GHz of processing power. You can also add 1 gigabyte of RAM and 16 GB if internal storage to the balance sheet. The battery is a respectable 2,000 mAh lithium-ion, but there are other devices out there with larger capacity. The good news is that the ATIV S Neo features ATIV Beam for sharing photos, music and video with other WP8 devices using the NFC technology. For snapshots, Sprint's WP8 baby has a eight-megapixel camera with LED flash and a 1.9 MP camera for video chats and self-portraits. Despite a few shortcomings, th...

Samsung chose Memorial Day, when our minds are not on hot tech news, to roll out a teaser for an event on Thursday, June 20, in London. The hints in their poster point to maybe new Galaxy and ATIV devices, which means Android and Windows 8 flavored announcements. Then we have images of some pretty thin devices that might could be a tablet, laptop and something that resembles a camera lens. Samsung announced Windows 8 devices just under a year ago at a conference in Berlin, Germany, which included a two notebooks and a smartphone, called the ATIV S. Since the launch of these devices, the ATIV S has suffered several delays and has not gained much traction among carriers in the United States. The Samsung ATIV smart PC is currently available from AT&T, while the Samsung ATIV Odyssey smartphone is available from Verizon Wireless. Maybe the London event will bring new features to these devices. So circle June 20 on your calendar for the latest tech news from the Samsung camp. Visi...

Members of the media enjoy a sneak peak of what's to come at this year's CES event. The 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show is underway and Las Vegas is the place to be this week for gadget lovers. The keynote addresses will kick things off today, with Kazuhiro Tsuga, president of Panasonic Corp. leading the way. Tsunga was to share to his vision for the future and elaborate on how Panasonic is engineering a better world for us all. We'll also hear from Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of CEA, and Lowell McAdam, chairmen and CEO of Verizon. As we know from previous years, Apple Inc. will not be in the house and Microsoft was on tap on a keynote appearance, but I hear that Chairman Steve Ballmer worked in a few comments on the new Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 devices. It didn't take long for gadget news to start filtering out from the convention booths at the Las Vegas Convention Center/Hilton and The Venetian. Huawei, a leading global information and...

I have been in smartphone wonderland for the past few weeks. C Spire Wireless took me there with the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Motorola Photon Q. Both of these devices are on C Spire's 4G LTE network. I could stop right here and say these smartphones are what dreams are made of, but you need to know the details. With one in each pocket , I found myself reaching for either the Galaxy S III or the Photon Q, depending on what I was doing. Galaxy S III close to perfect To keep it simple, the Galaxy S III is just plain nice. The spacious 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display makes other devices seem small, including my iPhone 5, which did grow in height from the previous iPhone models. This fine example of a smartphone runs Android 4.0.4, also know as Ice Cream Sandwich. It has been working out and shaping up since the Galaxy S II appeared about a year ago. The Galaxy S III can be packed with 32 gigabytes of memory, compared with 16GB for the S II, and has beefed up to a d...

The BlackBerry 10 interface will include a new feature that will divide the screen into a "Personal" and "Work" display of apps and data. The BlackBerry 10 launch is scheduled for Jan. 30, where Research in Motion, the smartphone's maker, will unveil the first two BlackBerry 10 Smartphones that will run on the new platform. This is what a lot of BlackBerry fans have been patiently waiting for, as the iPhone, Android devices and now Windows Phone 8 devices, chip away at the loyalty of RIM’s customers. The two devices expected to be announced have been rumored to be a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard model. The latter will soothe the fears of a lot of diehard BlackBerry fans, since the famous BlackBerry keyboards have been one of the reason for the device's popularity over the years. According to RIM, the BlackBerry 10 will “create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs” using an approach called BlackBerry Flow ...

Today is the big day for Apple Inc. to show the world the next iPhone, which might be called the iPhone 5. This device will be the sixth generation of the iPhone since Jan. 9, 2007, when Apple unveiled the original iPhone to revolutionize the mobile landscape. When the original iPhone arrived, most the mobile handset manufacturers, such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, RIM's BlackBerry and other were using QWERTY or alphanumeric keypads, along with small displays and navigational buttons. There has been some early attempts at touchscreen technology by Nokia, IBM with the Simon Personal Communicator, Ericsson, HP, Palm and a few others. But the first-generation iPhone got everything right and brought in a new era of touchscreen displays, icons, digital keypads and something called apps in 2008. Now today's smartphones are just as smart and innovative as the iPhone and it's going to be tough for Apple to stay ahead of the pack and continue to hit home runs. There are t...

Nokia and Microsoft launched new Windows 8 smartphones today at a press event in New York. We can say hello to the Lumia 920 and 820 devices. The two longtime technology powerhouses, who have been in a partnership since February 2011, vowed to use their "complementary strengths and expertise create market-leading mobile products." The new Lumia 920 smartphone is chock full of new features, such as PureMotion HD+, wireless charging and Nokia's PureView camera technology, first seen on the PureView 41 megapixel phone announced earlier this year. The 920 will have a 8 megapixel camera. This new device, shown in a new yellow color that Nokia says won' scratch off, is powered by a sizable 2000mAh battery and a Qualcomm 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor. It'll also be available in red and gray. Nokia is bring their notable mapping technology to the Lumia 920 that'll include daily commute drive times, routes and walking directions, indoor maps and Augmen...

The new Windows 8 devices announced by Samsung includes a smartphone, a tablet and two versions of notebook. Samsung has announced several Windows 8 ATIV devices at a conference in Berlin, Germany. They include two notebooks, a tablet and a smartphone that will be a part of Samsung's new brand for its Windows-based devices. The smartphone, called the ATIV S , will run the Windows Phone 8 operating system with a 1.5 gigahertz dual-core processor. It'll have a 4.8-inch display and an eight-megapixel real camera, along with a 1.9 MP front camera. The 2300mAh battery is quite impressive in size, which put the ATIV S in the same arena as the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx, which has a 3300mAh battery. The ATIV Tab tablet will run Windows RT, which will use ARM-based processors. It'll have a 10.1-inch display and will come with a five-megapixel rear camera and a 1.9 MP front camera. According to Samsung, the ATIV Tab will boot up instantly and will come with Office Home and ...

Microsoft has ditched its wavy logo design for the square look. The new design incorporates four squares with different colors and ties in with Microsoft's new direction with Windows 8, their mobile initiatives and gaming devices. According to a Microsoft top official, the new look "signals the heritage but also signal the future - a newness and freshness." It took 25 years for Microsoft to make a drastic change in the logo design, but they have been slowly moving in a direction of simplicity with recent choices for typefaces, a clean uncluttered design and bold colors. I first noticed the new approach in the appearance of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview operating system, where the Metro design influence was very noticeable. We're likely to see the full design initiative when the new Windows 8 OS is unveiled on Oct. 26. Now that the new logo is in place, Microsoft is positioned to move forward with new products that'll have a fresh corporate iden...