I'm going to miss it.  I have all the things I want on one page.  And now I'll have to go somewhere else to get it.  

I think Yahoo has an alternative to it but I'm not thrilled with having to use my yahoo account as I don't really use my Yahoo email or profile.

I recognize that Google needs to drive products that drive money and that this specific product probably fell out of favor because nobody wanted to own something that was too difficult to monetize or manage but it was definitely convenient for me.

I'm sure when it's gone there will be a few sites that will pop up like when Google killed off Google Reader but this one doesn't seem to be drawing as much attention compared to Reader which is fine.

Time for me to figure out a new option.

"Everyone gets a free terabyte."

What a great statement.  And I hope it causes other online photo databases to respond the same way that email providers did when Google provided 1 gigabyte of email storage which at the time was unheard of online.

Flickr has always been one of those sites that I had tried and thought it was o.k.  It didn't have the exact tools I wanted and I slept better at night knowing my photos were safe on my computer.  The other main reason was that online storage limits for photos was nowhere near the capacity I wanted without having to pay a monthly fee.

This move by Flickr makes them relevant again in my opinion.  This is a big, bold move and if this is any indication of how Yahoo! is going to go after competitors in their spaces, I'm looking forward to what Yahoo! has planned.

I've never really gotten into the Picasa / Google photos services enough to make it something I use all the time but I'm close to wanting to just put all my stuff in the cloud and photo storage and sharing will be the next thing I am going to focus on.

Flickr is back in the discussion because they took away a barrier that won't matter in a few years.  Storage is always getting cheaper and to jump to 1 terabyte for me is a big deal but for Yahoo!, I'm guessing it's not that big of a deal.

Nice move by Flickr / Yahoo!  Innovation doesn't always have to be shiny or new.  It can sometimes just be "more".

Movie people are getting on board the Netflix original content bandwagon and I think this is the beginning of a major shift in how content is produced or even packaged for consumers.

Netflix announced today that it will be bringing 10 episode season one of the series Sense8 to Netflix in late 2014.  This marks the first time the Wachowskis, the people behind The Matrix triology, V for Vendetta, and other movies, will work in television.  Or does it?

Is Netflix really television?  The lines between television, movie, internet, and even mobile are starting to get blurred to the point that it really doesn't matter anymore.  You can watch a movie on your cell phone and then switch to your TV when you get home.  So is that television or mobile or does it matter?  If you are Nielson, it matters.  If you are Comcast, it matters.  But if you are the consumer, it doesn't matter.

With House of Cards and Sense8 going directly to Netflix, it confuses the definition.  I've never watch the television series Louis "live" on FX but I've watched it via Netflix on my AppleTV on my television.  And when I watched it, i've watched a few episodes in a row.  But what is an episode?  30 minutes or really 22 minutes due to time for commercials?  60 minutes or whatever it is with commercials?  

If you consider that a television season is 12 episodes at 22 minutes each, you are really talking about a little more than 4 and a half hours of content.  But what if you started to take away the conventions of the standard television show and time constraints and gave the creator control over time?  Maybe some seasons will be 20 episodes while others are 10 but with longer segments.  Would ABC's Lost series been scripted differently?  Would we get better story telling and character development?  Could you do different character arcs or even although the view to pursue their own development?

Netflix knows something we don't which is what everybody is watching and what everybody wants.  They are potentially the Google of visual media.  Remember when Google filed their IPO and it seemed very risky?  I think television and movies will be changing a lot over the next 5 years and we'll remember how television is today the same way we remember television before there were DVRs.

Analytics is being applied to every part of our life from fitness (Fitbit, Nike Plus) to home automation (SmartThings) or even finance (Mint).  While some cars have had the ability to display some statistics about how you are driving, it's always been an expense option to add as part of a package.

This will change when Automatic goes live.

Automatic connects your car to your smartphone  to give you high-end car features such as driving feedback, trip timelines, and check engine light codes to diagnose what is wrong with your car.  It can also tell you where you parked and in beta is a Crash Alert to call 911 if you get in an accident.

And all it costs is a one-time purchase of a car plug for $69.95.  There is no subscription to buy.

I can already tell that this would save me money because anytime the check engine light goes on, my local garage charges me $99 to read the code and "diagnose" what the potential problem may be with my car.  Other cost savings would come from the driving feedback and the trip timeline.  And that's just for the individual user.  Parents would love this device to keep track of their kids and their driving habits.  

You can imagine a small business using this to both track and manage their drivers and to compensate them for their miles and to make sure their fleet of cars are being driven according to company guidelines.  And if a driver ever gets into an accident, you would have some information regarding hard breaking or speeding which might even help should you have to go to court.

The idea of this has been around for a while but it's nice to see that somebody has taken this "to the masses" and to show the big automakers that technology like this is possible and doesn't cost $500 with a monthly subscription.

iPhone users can pre-order now for May shipping, Android ships this fall.  

Pre-order the Automatic here:  
https://www.automatic.com/order

To me, this is the future.  It's a little scary but it's incredible.  

Google Now has changed how I view my email and search.  I'm actually wanting to give it more information so that Google provides me with more of everything.

Let me step back for a minute and explain Google Now.

From Google's site:
Google Now gets you just the right information at just the right time.

It tells you today’s weather before you start your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, when the next train will arrive as you’re standing on the platform, or your favorite team's score while they’re playing. And the best part? All of this happens automatically. Cards appear throughout the day at the moment you need them.

I bought a Nexus 4 just so I could have this functionality.  It tells me when UPS has delivered a package to my home, it tells me when I should leave for an appointment and factors in traffic.  It's the future we were promised when Palm launched the PRE.

This is a huge differentiator between Apple and Google.  Siri can't compete with this because this displays relevant information without me asking it.  Consider Google Now "pre-search".  

Google has done an excellent job with Google Now.  This is the future, now.