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Happy Thanksgiving 2015

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I want to take this opportunity to wish EVERYONE a very Happy Thanksgiving!

I have a LOT to be thankful for and one of the things that I’m most thankful for is the overwhelming amount of support that I receive from my readers and fans. Enjoy time with your friends and family.

If you get into the whole holiday shopping thing be sure to come back tomorrow to take a peek at some hand picked Black Friday Gadget/Tech Deals. I would ask that you not give in to the desires of retailers today and not go shopping on Thanksgiving. Black Friday is starting to become Black October and November and there’s really no reason that the deals can’t wait until Friday.

Otherwise, enjoy! I’m looking forward to the long weekend.

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My 2015 Holiday Gadget Gift Guide is Here

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That’s right it’s my guide to help you with you holiday shopping for the gadget lover (freak) on your list. The way this thing started was each year towards the holiday season all my friends started asking me and emailing about what my picks were in various categories and of course the answers were usually the same. So I decided to compile a list and just email it to the folks that asked.

Once again I’ve put together a Holiday Gadget Gift Guide to help you pick out gifts for the techies and gadget lovers on your gift list. I’ve chosen Amazon.com simply because they are the one online retailer with not only the largest presence, but also the one that carries 99% of the items I recommend. Another advantage is that I can continue to add things that come up all the way up to the final days of the holiday season. In previous years I would always find some cool gadgets after the static gift guide was published.

Something NEW This Year!

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I’ve simplified my guide this year. Instead of including dozens of products each year (yeah it was overwhelming to me too), I’ve selected only the TOP 9 Products in any one category. This forces me to only pick the BEST items for my gift guide and makes it a whole lot easier for you to pick a gift.

How did you pick the items that you recommend?

Simple! If it’s in my guide it’s because I either use it now, have used it in the past or one of my close friends or colleagues use it and I trust their opinion. Now in some cases there may be an item in the guide that is NEWER than the one I use and I had to list that one because my model is no longer available. Unless I’ve used it or know someone who has, it doesn’t get in PERIOD.

How does the gift guide work?

The guide is broken out by Category so that you can shop accordingly. This way you can pick your gift by the kind of person you’re shopping for. I know that sometimes you have to buy a gift based on a certain dollar amount or budget (like gifts for co-workers), so I’ve given you a couple of dollar amount categories too. Happy shopping and in case I don’t see you later, Happy Holidays to you and your family! You can go straight to my 2015 Holiday Gift Guide here.

 My Top 10 Picks for 2015

While the guide above has my TOP PICKS for 2015 that I like and would recommend, here are my Top 10 picks for BEST GADGET GIFTS OF 2015:

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This is an AWESOME Keyboard for Your Computer AND Your Mobile Devices

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This Logitech keyboard rocks! When I received my iPad Pro last week one of things that was missing from the order was the New Apple Smart Cover Keyboard for the iPad Pro. It’s backordered and while I hope to get it this week or next, I kinda wanted to use a keyboard in the meantime. My good friend Larry Becker, turned me on to this Logitech keyboard and I couldn’t be happier with it. This Logitech keyboard has a feature that I hadn’t seen on other wireless keyboard before…

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iPad Pro first impressions

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I received my work iPad Pro this past Friday and while I will do a more extensive review once the Apple Pencil and Apple iPad Pro keyboard arrives, I wanted to give you a quick update. As with any new major piece of tech that I get my hands on people want to know what I think about it? Is it worth it? Do I like it? Is it for me? Those are all good questions, but some of them are hard to impossible to answer when it comes to questions like “is it worth it?” That’s because it depends on YOU. I can’t answer if it’s a good fit for you or not. All I can do is tell you my experiences and you can go from there.

So let’s get to it…

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A Perfect Use Case for Photoshop Fix and Mobile Apps

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Adobe makes mobile apps for your iOS and Android mobile devices. Now that the iPad Pro is available people asking me more questions about running Photoshop or Lightroom or Illustrator on this big new FAST tablet? What’s the workflow? Why would I want to use an iPad instead of my desktop/laptop computer? Can I shoot tethered to it? How do I get my RAW files into it? How do I color calibrate it? Many of these questions are the same questions that people asked when the iPad was first introduced back in 2010 (yes it’s been 5 years already).

There’s a lot of excitement about the prospect of just carrying around this small, lightweight tablet and leaving your computer behind. While the iPad and now the iPad Pro are GREAT mobile devices, they were never designed to or intended to replace your desktop computers. First off let’s talk about RAM. Apple usually never shows the RAM of the iPad as a spec. I’m not talking about storage (16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB), I’m talking about the RAM that the Apps run in. Rumor has it that for the most part the iPads have had 1-2GBs of RAM. The NEW iPad Pro is rumored to have 4GB’s of RAM. Now pause and take that in for a minute. When was the last time you bought a desktop/notebook PC that you wanted to do production level work with only 2-4GB’s of RAM? How well would an App like Photoshop CC run in only 2GBs of RAM? We also don’t know how much iOS itself uses. Instead of trying to cram desktop apps into the much smaller footprint of an iPad or Android tablet/smartphone, Adobe has done the next best thing by taking the tasks that people do the most and making FREE apps to do those tasks.

A perfect use case for Photoshop Fix

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The Game That Facebook Plays With Your Content

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The average Facebook user has no idea how Facebook really works when it comes to the content that the post. Facebook is a business! While it’s free for users to join and share content with their friends, family and colleagues, Facebook actually makes its money by advertising to its users. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a simple model. You can use the service for free and the only price you pay is seeing ads (unless you have an ad blocker). Yes it would be fine if it stopped here, but it doesn’t.

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Great Tripod for those times when you can’t use a Tripod

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If you’re a photographer either you have already run into this or you will soon. You will run into the Tripod Police. These are the security guards at various locations that are employed to make sure that you take crappy shots. Yep, they wake up each day saying “whose shot can I ruin today?” I’m kidding of course, but there are definitely locations where tripods are prohibited for “safety” reasons. They don’t want someone tripping, falling and suing based on your tripod legs. Unfortunately these are usually the locations where you really want to use a tripod so that you can do a long exposure or shoot bracketed for HDR. If only there was a solution…

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Improve your smartphone video recording with the BEST 3 axis gimbal

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A good video has great light and good sound. A great video is short, great content, good light, good sound AND STEADY. A shaky unstabilized video may cause your viewers to stop watching for fear of getting motion sickness. While smartphones can capture great video quality these days, the small form factor is hard to hold steady if you are moving or walking. The iPhone 6s Plus can shoot stabilized video and I can stabilize it in post with Adobe Premiere Pro CC. However, if you’re walking your video may be so shaky that the stabilization methods above may not be enough. That’s where a gimbal comes in…

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