I got a new Fitbit for Christmas and decided to compare how it works versus Google Fit, the mobile app that also tracks your steps. While this isn’t exactly scientific it was an easy comparison.

I basically started the day at zero. I kept my phone in my pocket and the Fitbit on my wrist and went from there. By the end of the day the count on the Fitbit was about two hundred steps greater than the Google Fit app. The reason for this is that while you keep the Fit on your phone, you sometimes forget to put it in your pocket. With the Fitbit you don’t forget, it’s just there.

My suggestion if you’re looking for a connected pedometer like the Fitbit or the Fit, go with the Fitbit. It’s rugged, it’s always on and it’s slightly more accurate.

I had written recently about what happens when you gut a place like Silk Road. What you see is new technology replace the old and a hundred platforms in place of the one.

Recently it appears that this lesson hasn’t been learned and probably never will be as long as the original platform is deemed illegal. The Pirate Bay, after years of prosecution against its founding members, has finally shut its doors.

But nobody really believed that would be the end of it, that would be too naive.

Open Bay has opened up and created a platform that allows anyone to set up shop as a Pirate Bay clone. Where we had one Pirate Bay, we now have 372.

From VentureBeat -

The Open Bay, which lets anyone with “minimal knowledge of how the Internet and websites work” deploy their own version of The Pirate Bay online, is becoming an open source engine of The Pirate Bay website, the group told VentureBeat...

ChangeTip is a simple way to send and receive Bitcoins. This video does a better job at explaining, take a look.

The Vox has a blow by blow of the long winded and somewhat ridiculous screed released by the DPRK earlier today. If you can stomach 10 minutes of insanity from North Korea, I highly recommend the read. Here’s a snippet.

Pyongyang, December 21 (KCNA) – The Policy Department of the National Commission of the DPRK issued the following statement Sunday:

Strange thing that happened in the heart of the U.S., the ill-famed cesspool of injustice, is now afloat in the world as shocking news.

The Sony Pictures Entertainment, the biggest movie producer in the U.S., which produced the undesirable reactionary film “The Interview” daring hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK and agitating even terrorism and had a plan to distribute it, was exposed to surprisingly sophisticated, destructive and threatening cyber warfare and has been thrown into a bottomless quagmire after...

Tinder has perfected the art of the swipe, left for no and right for yes. This approach has partially made the app so addictive others are trying to mimic their success.

I can imagine I’m not the first to try to think of uses outside of the dating world though I’ve yet to see the swipe approach out in the wild. So what other services could use the swipe left or right method for attracting new clientele? A few come to mind.

• Doctors - you show your vitals, health history and insurance type and you see the ratings of doctors, number of comments, time in practice, malpractice claims and you go from there.
• Cars - your credit rating, car type desired, new or used and the dealer/seller sees your credit rating.
• Babysitters - how many kids do you have, what’s your credit score, what’s your occupation, have you used sitters from the service before? You see the sitter’s rating, age...

Amazon, Google, Uber and others are all working on same-day delivery services in various locations around the United States. I’ve personally had the pleasure of using Uber Essentials to have some basics delivered to my house. While the experience was a little slow, it did get to my house in short order.

Of course services like FedEx and UPS have offered same-day for years but those costs are astronomical. So what are folks liked Uber and Amazon shipping? Everything from groceries to clothing to Christmas lights, all same-day and all super-fast.

My question is, what’s next? What other services will offer same day, ultrafast delivery? Which industries that are dependent upon delivery will become even faster as getting your order to your door?

I have a few ideas -

• Cable and internet installation
• Home care and maintenance services (painting, plumbing, etc.)
• Legal services
• Medical...

I was asked “What is the best way to predict the future?” on the website Quora. I don’t really know the best but I have an idea on how you can figure out what the next big thing will be. My short Quora answer went like this -

The best way to see what’s coming down the road is to think about which industries and current technologies are ripe for disruption. The status quo, in the age of the internet, won’t remain the status quo for long.

Another way to think about this is which new technology feels disruptive? Either that technology will continue to develop (bitcoin) or the technology is headed in the right direct (nano tech).

Like I noted above, the best way to think about the future is which industries and services are in need of disruption now? What comes to mind? Here are a few that I can think of -

• The airline industry
• Money and related transactions
• The workplace and how we...

Drones have made their way into the popular vernacular appearing in the media on a near daily basis. Many of us think of drone strikes when we hear the term but the reality is that they come in all shapes and sizes as well as uses.

Amazon has proposed the idea of using drones to deliver goods while others have ideas more geared toward the common good. Below are six ideas for using drones.

Photography
From surveillance to monitoring to policing, drones could be used to photograph marches, neighborhoods, crime scenes, people of interest and other targets.

First Responders
Hospitals and ambulance services can send needed resources to disaster areas, accidents and other emergencies for first aid needs. Along with instructions and gear drones could be the very first on the scene.

Delivery
As noted above, Amazon has proposed the use of drones to deliver good to customers but they...

The holidays are upon us and it’s the season for giving. I’m always interested in finding the most interesting and unique gifts that fit the personalities of my friends and family. Tech of course is big on my radar (though not always my family) so I searched to see what was hot this year and made my own top 10 list of must-have tech.

Lytro Light Field Camera
The Lytro is a pocket-sized camera capable of refocusing an image after it has been taken. $249.00 for Amazon Prime Members

GoPro Hero4 Black
A fun video camera to take as you hike, skate or bike your way around. It’s small and compact and easy to use. $499.00 for Amazon Prime Members

DropCam
A must-have camera for home surveillance, it’s also easy to use and can be accessed from the web. $197.85 for Amazon Prime Members

Oculus Rift Development Kit 2
The new DK 2 allows developers to create games, apps and videos for the...

YouTube, while technically a Google property, is considered the second largest search engine on the planet. 100 hours of video are uploaded each minute, 6 billion hours watched each month and 1 billion unique viewers every 30 days.

These are big numbers with folks watching everything from how-to videos, to commentary, to announcements to news and on and on. YouTube is a real wealth of easily searchable and indexable knowledge at your fingertips. Quite impressive actually.

In August of this year, Facebook surpassed YouTube by about a billion views. Remarkable.

“In the month of August, on desktop viewing, they delivered about a billion more views than YouTube, which is pretty amazing,” comScore co-founder and chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni reveals to Beet.TV …

This is quite a feat but I have two problems with this. The first is that the videos are auto-played, which doesn’t...