Weekly Wrap-up with Mr. Noobie™ 10-14-11

This week's edition of Weekly Wrap-up with Mr. Noobie™ covers the new family of Amazon Kindles, the iPhone 4S announcement, Steve Jobs's death and Netflix's attempt to fix customer relations by putting an end to Qwikster.

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Audio Transcript

Hello, this is Patric Welch, otherwise known as Mr. Noobie™.

Today, I am creating this video to try and give birth again to something I started a few years ago but then let fizzle out. I'm talking about a segment I did called "Just a Minute with Mr. Noobie."

Back then, the segment was audio only and lasted almost exactly 60 seconds every time. And during that 60 seconds, I would give a sort of state of the union for the technology world.

But technology itself has improved since then and video has become wildly popular. That's why I'm shooting this on video instead of just letting you hear my voice.

As for the 60 seconds, I'm going to toss that by the wayside. Now that doesn't mean my videos are going to be 10 minutes long. But I do remember it being overly difficult to try to come up with exactly 60 seconds of content last time. My goal is to keep each new segment to 2-3 minutes or less. Believe me, I don't want to listen to myself drone on and on any more than you do.

So what about the name of the segment? Well, "Just a Minute" doesn't quite apply any more and "Just a Few Minutes" sounds kind of silly. I think I'll stick to something that represents pretty much what I'm doing each week, which is a weekly wrap-up of technology. So I'm going to go with "Weekly Wrap-Up with Mr. Noobie™" and release a new segment on Friday of each week.

I'm also going to include a written transcript of each video on my blog. This is mainly for my own selfish reasons so that Google has a better chance of ranking my keywords but hey, if some of you want to read this instead of watching the video, then I've killed two birds with one stone.

What do you think? Do you love it? Hate it? Leave a comment either on this video or on my blog and let me know your thoughts.

Ok, let's get to the wrap-up. And let me apologize right now that this will probably be the longest of the new weekly wrap-up videos since I blew the first few minutes explaining the new segment. Furthermore, my wrap-up may cover the last couple of weeks since I really want to get some momentum on my first segment.

Four big stories come to mind in the past week or two. The first is that Amazon announced a whole new family of Kindles. The first is the most traditional Kindle, still with buttons but without a full keyboard, priced at an amazing $79. Next is the Kindle Touch which functions like a traditional Kindle but with a new touch screen. The Kindle Touch is priced at $99. And finally, the brand new Kindle Fire, which is a Kindle and Android-based tablet all in one. The first version is wi-fi only but should meet a market need for people who want a tablet but can't afford the $500 entry point for Apple's iPad. The Kindle Fire is priced at just $199. For more information on the new Kindle family, go to www.amazon.com.

The next big story is Apple's announcement of a new iPhone called the iPhone 4S. And although several people (myself included) were disappointed the announcement wasn't about the iPhone 5, the iPhone 4S still has some features worthy of checking out. These include a faster processor, a better camera and a new voice-activated digital assistant named Siri. For more information on the new iPhone 4S, go to www.apple.com/iphone.

Sadly, one day after the big iPhone 4S announcement, Apple announced that its co-founder, Steve Jobs had died at the age of 56. And while many of us knew Steve was sick, the announcement still came as a big surprise. Steve Jobs was an incredible visionary and will be missed by many. The days following his death were filled with dozens of tributes and rememberances. Even Apple themselves modified the home page of their website with a tribute in the clean and simplistic style that Steve brought to Apple. Well done, Apple.

Finally, if you haven't been following the Netflix debacle recently, let me quickly catch you up. Netflix recently decided to split its DVD and streaming service into separate services which resulted in a significant price increase for those customers who wanted to keep both. Shortly following this, Netflix announced that the DVD side of their business would be called Qwikster and only the streaming business would continue with the Netflix name.

Long story short, Netflix lost over 1 million customers and its stock took a big dive. Due to the overwhelming negative outburst (at least that's why in my opinion), Netflix made another announcement that the DVD and streaming business will both still be called Netflix and that Qwikster will never come to be. Oh, and as for that price increase? Yup, it's staying although Netflix promised it would be the last price increase. We shall see.

That's it for this week's edition of the Weekly Wrap-up with Mr. Noobie™. I'm Patric Welch, otherwise known as Mr. Noobie, and I'll see you next week.