Tag: SWITCHEDONTHESTREETS

When Google launched the Nexus One way back in January, the smartphone was supposed to be a serious contender against the iPhone, and was expected to serve as exemplar of the Android handset. By circumventing the carriers' brick-and-mortar stores, Google also hoped to usher in a new era in cell phone sales; however, it appears to have doomed itself to obscurity, instead. With no presence in ...

Quite frequently we hit the streets of New York City to ask random passersby if they can identify the latest gadget, app or Web site, but we don't think we've ever seen our subjects as stymied as they were when trying to identify Foursquare. Most simply shrugged their shoulders, and one poor person even thought we were giving them a math quiz. In the end, we were only able to find one urbanite ...

If, a year or two ago, you'd asked us what FarmVille was, we'd have said we were pretty sure that it was a small college town in southwest Indiana. We would, of course, have been wrong, but we sort of wish that we would've been right. 'FarmVille,' after all, has managed to dominate our Facebook feeds, telling us of our friends and family who trade cyber-cattle for cyber-corn, build e-barns and ...

We hit the streets to see how effectively Palm is getting its WebOS-based Palm Pre out there into the world. Perhaps it's the fault of some horrific advertising campaigns (e.g., the creepy 'New Age meets Renaissance Fair' wench, those painfully unfunny Verizon spots), but Palm's next-generation smartphone didn't get much recognition on the streets. Here's hoping HP can make Palm into a real ...

Not too long ago, we dropped by Times Square to test the crowd's knowledge of Web browsers. Surfin' the tubes has come a long way since the early days of Mosaic, and modern browsers can play games, movies and all types of other media. They've even left the constraints of the desktop to leap onto mobile devices. Although Mozilla Firefox offers countless improvements over that old standby Internet ...

Share As bloggers, we were heartened to know that most of the people we asked in Times Square actually did know what a blog is. One man was quite fervently opposed to blogs, saying that he had never sought one out himself. (But we're willing to bet he's read one -- and now he's even being featured on one. Bam!) We'll just pretend that all of the negative comments about blogs were directed at ...

Share We understand that Apple's brand-name recognition stretches from one hemisphere to the next, and that competitors face a nigh-impossible task of out-marketing the Cupertino giant. But, still, we expected at least a few people to get this one. Considering all the fanfare with which Microsoft released the Zune HD late last year, we'd have wagered that at least someone in the New York area ...