Tsikbal: from my perspective

I remember when cell phones where startinting to become popular, feature phones were the norm, with smartphones on the other hand being rare; relegated to business executives, government officials, or geeks with Blackberry being king. Now, smartphones are what most people have, with the market being ruled by iPhone and Android devices; with feature phones being few, and far between, so much so that its odd seeing them. The transition took several years, so much so that the current state of affairs seems to be how things are supposed to be. While many of the predictions made didn't come to pass, or at least not as they were thought to unfold, it seems that smartphones will continue to be a part of our daily lives, even shaping how we live our lives and interact with people, but with business and governments. My first smartphones was a Nokia E63 , which I selected because I was already a big Nokia fan. Before that, my favorite Nokia device was the Nokia 6170 . Now I...

For many, technology seems the perfect scapegoat to explain their lack of empathy or why society doesn't seem to fit their expectations. They say that technology dehumanize. I say that technology changes what it means to be human, since it changes how we interact with each other. Not only that, technology changes also changes they way we interact with our surroundings. It has changed how, and when, we engage with other people and our environment. What we have to keep in mind, is that each individual is the one who choose if he or she will use technology to connect with others, or to isolate himself from such contact. At the end, technology is only a tool and each decides what use is to be given to it. At the end of the day, technology does our biding. We have to make a choice on how to use it. Technology will change how we do things, and things will not remain the same as time goes by. We might feel nostalgic for what was, but we need to keep adapting to the times. ...

My favorite email client has been Thunderbird for quite some time, since it really works well for the uses I've and it allows me to check all my email in one place. The one thing that I've been wanting for Thunderbird ever since the Photon UI was Firefox 57, aka Quantum, was that Thunderbird to make use of it too. For me, the new interface is far better than the one had been used until now. Though I must admit that I've always liked better Firefox's user interface far better than the one used by Google's Chrome. As such, the news that with the release of Thunderbird 58 it also is going to be using the Photon UI are much welcomed by me. It does make this release one I'm looking forward to.   The new use interface makes it look more modern, and clean than it did before. As such, it makes it a welcome change.

My favorite Linux distro has been Ubuntu , with Linux Mint a close second. For a while, my favorite desktop was Ubuntu's Unity , which has been sadly discontinued in favor of GNOME . Ever since I heard that Unity was being replaced for GNOME around February, I jumped to Linux Mint. Linux Mint desktop, Cinnamon was my second favorite for quite some time. Yet, when I came back to using with its 3.2 version it quickly became my favorite desktop. I come to love how you can customize almost every aspect of it, and it integrates rather nicely with all my favorite apps. I've found it to be even faster and more responsive than Unity was for me. And to be honest, Cinnamon feels like a modern desktop should work and aesthetically it simply looks better for me with a few relative tweaks. Personally, I just change some of the typography and use Numix icons. When Ubuntu released the 17.10 Artful Aardvark, I decided to give GNOME 3 a try. Though the experience was not all...

Firefox has always been my favorite browser, with Chrome a close second, ever since it was released. I've found that Firefox is the better fit for both my needs and my tastes, its the browser where I feel more comfortable at. Now, with the release of Firefox Quantum (aka 57) it has cemented its position. Not only I've found it actually a big step forward in terms of performance, I found that the user interface looks a lot better. While the performance enhancements are really nice, and welcome, the new user interface is what I enjoy the most. One of my favorite tweaks is now I can get rid of the search box altogether, since I stopped using much once I was able to use the navigation box for internet addresses input and for search. There is also the fact that now there are more options to personalization options to make Firefox look even more like you want it too. With this release, Firefox has become a truly modern browser and a worthy contender.

When I read the news last year that Nokia was coming back, I felt really happy since Nokia was my favorite mobile phone brand. What made things better, was that it was making a come back using Android , which is my favorite mobile OS, made it all that better. To be honest, the Nokia/Android combination is one I wanted to see a long time ago. Nokia had been one of the top smartphone manufacturer, and Android seem to be the best choice to keep on top of their game. But, it didn't happen that way and we know how that went. For me it was a sad thing to see Microsoft Mobile being abandoned. So, when it was announced that Nokia was to make a comeback I felt quite hopeful. Specially since it was making a comeback using Android, I felt that it has a fighting chance depending on the quality of the devices they released. Then, last weekend I had the chance to get some hands on experience with Nokia 3 device. I didn't want to get my hopes all that high, yet the device managed to ...

A couple of months ago I decided to subscribe to Spotify Premium , and I've really pleased with the choice. The have been several things that I've really liked about Premium account over the Free one. The main one is the ability to listen to my playlists offline, which it's really nice since I don't have to use my mobile data if I don't want to and maintain access to my favorite music. For me it's quite a big deal, since I tend to use the app on my smartphone most of the time. I mainly use the desktop app at home, where I do use the online features to discover new artists and their music. Spotify has been where I have discovered new music the most for a while now, and while I like the mobile app, the desktop app is the one I feel most comfortable in for music discovery. Another feature I like, and I've come to really a bit on the mobile app, is the ability to choose with what song I want to begin with and then shuffle the rest of the playlist I...