After tinkering around with their custom Tizen operating system for the past several months, [Samsung] is making it official: all of their new smart TVs in 2015 will run Tizen. Samsung showed off their first Tizen-powered TV set back in June and pushed out a Tizen TV apps SDK in July, and now CES 2015 will bring us our first real life look at the new OS in action.
If you type "lmao" you get an animated laughing Google Hangouts emoji blob, and now to celebrate the new year, the words "Happy New Year" gets you a celebrating fox, duck, and fireworks. Google believes in the small touches that sometimes make the biggest difference. Have a Happy New Year folks, be safe, and don't spam your Hangouts contacts with "Happy New Year" just so you can get a little animated fox in a top hat and a duck with a bugle.
It's that time of year in which we look back on the months that proceeded this, the last month of the year and the keeper of many a filler post, intended to inform, entertain and give us just a moment's pause between the maelstrom that was and the tempest that is about to be in 2015.
In other words, it's that weird week between Christmas and the new year.
So let's take a quick look back at our five most-viewed videos of 2014, as seen by you fine folks on YouTube. (And as a reminder: Now would be an excellent time to subscribe to our YouTube channel!)
Another year has come and gone. And that means it's time for the annual popularity contest.
We asked you fine folks to give us your picks for the best smartphone. The best tablet. The best smartwatch — a new category for us this year!
And these are the winners. Your winners.
We hope you're all coming back from a great holiday week ready to take some photos and win more prizes. We're going from bright sparkles in the last contest to "darkness" for this one, and even though it's on the opposite end of the spectrum we're sure you can take just as many great shots. With all of the craziness surrounding CES next week, and the lack of a contest last week, it made sense to extend this week's contest a full two weeks. You still have just one entry allowed, though, so make it count!
According to HTC's Jeff Gordon (he's their Senior Global Online Communications Manager), 2015 is going to be a big year for HTC. Of course, as their head online PR guy he's not going to say that 2015 will be a ho-hum year for the Taiwanese manufacturer of some of our favorite smartphones and the latest Nexus tablet, but we can't help but be interested in what HTC is planning on bringing to bear in the coming year.
In the week that we transition to 2015, it's as good a time as any to reflect on some of our favorite Android things from the previous year. I've already highlighted all of my favorite apps for 2014, and now it's time for devices. We always get to play with an exorbitant amount of Android-powered phones and tablets each year, but with the addition of Android Wear we now have yet another category as well.
After using all of the latest devices as they came out in 2014, I narrowed things down to pick my favorite phone, tablet and smartwatch of the year. Even with all of the choices we're given, we always end up settling on the few that really work for us — read along and see which devices worked for me in 2014.
