TO CLOSE

Jefferson Graham from USA TODAY takes a look at three new connected speakers with video capabilities.
UNITED STATES TODAY & # 39; HUI

Thanksgiving is now behind us, Black Friday seems to be like yesterday, and leftovers dominate for our lunch and dinner plans.

Which can only mean one thing. This is again the moment for our annual list of Top Tech Turkeys of the year. This year, we benefited from the help of some 1,000 consumers, whose answers were "universal" and totally in line with our choice for No. 1.

"Overall – regardless of age or gender – the Facebook portal has been named by 25% of consumers as the turkey tech of the year (25%)", has said the Survey Monkey Audience research team, which conducted the exclusive USA TODAY survey. .

The portal, a video chat device launched in early November, began for the first time in a year with almost weekly excuses from Facebook about hacking attacks and data breaches on social networks.

The portal has a permanent microphone and a video camera that can move around the room to allow more people to see. On the technical side, the portal is the best video chat experience we've ever had, far superior to FaceTime, Skype or Hangouts, because of the superior resolution of the screen and camera movements, which transform a static image into a professional quality video. .

In our review, we noted this. But beyond that, and the innate creepy that stems from the installation of what is called a Facebook monitor in your home, the product is also mediocre compared to its competitors. In addition to video chat and digital photo frame, he can not give you the voice. Recalled music videos, recipes or any of the other features of Amazon Echo Show or Google Home Hub.

And if you try to chat with someone who is not on Facebook Messenger, you will not be able to help yourself. This is not the case with Home Hub or Echo, which allows you to call landlines and mobile phones. Gobble gobble.

Our 2018 Turkey Tech of the year goes to the Facebook portal (Photo: Jefferson Graham)

. Our technical turkeys of 2018:

The ever-increasing prices of Apple

The company, which has more than $ 200 billion in cash, has decided to raise the prices of each of its branded products this year to new heights – with the premium iPhone and premium iPad equal premiums or greater than $ 1,000. brand, the MacBook Air at $ 1,200, the price of the Mac Mini has risen to $ 300 – and eliminating the entry-level iPhone SE of $ 350 from its range.

Now the cheapest iPhone is the still available iPhone 7, which starts at $ 449. Apple still produces the best-selling product in the world, but if prices keep climbing, one of these days will turn around and buy elsewhere. (And on another note, those crazy repair price. Buy an Apple Watch at $ 400, crack the screen and Apple bills $ 300 to repair it. Something is wrong with this equation. Why not make a product that does not crack?

Google introduced its new line of hardware including the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones and the Google Clips camera when launching the new product. (Photo: Monica M. Davey, EPA-EFE)

Google Clips

The search giant has made several great products this year, including the Pixel 3 smartphone and the Home Hub video speaker, which is one of my favorite new devices from 2018. Google Clips, however, would not make my top 10 best lists. The $ 250 camera will automatically record video clips and dumb photos for six to seven seconds when Google decides to do it. The camera is the photographer, not you. And what will I do with all these dumb videos? No thanks.

Battery life

This year's smartphone harvest has a higher resolution, more features that are of little interest to people and will not last as long without cost. His colleague Geoffrey Fowler, a technology specialist, recently tested 13 of the best models of 2018 and found that no model will last as long as the 2017 models. Again, smartphone makers, here's what we want: screens that will not crack and a battery that lasts all day. (Note the above on repairs.) Nothing else. Well, maybe lower prices too.

Flickr logo (Photo: Flickr)

Blackmail on the cloud

The SmugMug photo site arrives and saves the day to revive Flickr from the hands of Verizon, who broke it when he bought the remains of Yahoo. Everything looks positive, then SmugMug earlier this month indicates that anyone with more than 1,000 photos stored on the site, prior to Instagram and Facebook as a social sharing hub, should pay more than $ 50 a year or see their 1,001th photo and beyond. Delete now, otherwise they will be deleted by Flickr in January. Well, it's a good way to get people back to Flickr and start sharing again, is not it? (People who pay $ 50 a month get unlimited storage.)

YouTube and machine learning

That year, YouTube had to deal with Logan Paul, Alex Jones and all those ill-informed plot videos that jumped to the top of the rankings and have the potential to make viewers believe they are revealing the truth. Paul posted a video of a suicide in Japan, Jones' InfoWars threw conspiracy videos. Paul has been warned twice, Jones has been banned. But the problem remains. YouTube videos are uploaded by humans, and if they do not meet community standards, it's up to the machine to report them. 10,000 YouTube users watch about 400 hours of downloaded video every minute. It is a battle lost in advance. YouTube claims to have stepped up its human surveillance, but is doing a search for anything that goes wrong, and we guarantee you'll always find it in the YouTube index. There must be a better way.

AT & T kills Filmstruck

It did not take long. AT & T engulfed Time Warner in 2018, quickly announced that it would attack Netflix in 2019 with a new Warner Bros. themed movie service. Studios, before killing Filmstruck. The famous classic movie service, which featured films by Turner Classic Movies and Criterion Collection, had only about 100,000 subscribers, which AT & T said was not enough. For consumers, this is where the big streamers, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, present the current and original movies, and as a rule, the classics should not apply. So, if the video store and DVD rentals are gone, it was hoped that movie buffs and students today would have an online resource to discover classics such as "Citizen Kane" "and" City Lights ". (Criterion launches its own service in the spring, but without the participation – and movies – of WarnerMedia.) For now, check out your YouTube, where classic clips are plentiful and where many artists are available for a fee.

The free TiVo DVR

The company that invented the DVR recently introduced a new model, Bolt OTA, for cable cutters who simply wanted to record broadcast TV shows in addition to watching Netflix and Amazon. TiVo, which has a unique business model, which involves selling you a device and charging $ 15 per month to use it – in order to access TV programs – has not changed style, even when wire cutters are the target. The OTA Bolt costs $ 249 plus $ 6.99 a month to use it. Consumer Alert: Toshiba's Fire TV Edition bundles offer free TV programs in the menu. Ditto for TCL Roku TVs.

Amazon plays cities

Amazon has launched many cities into an "Apprentice Contest" in order to sign up for its new headquarters and has finally retained the usual suspects – New York and Washington, DC, where some speculate that "no one is going to do it." he would have always been directed towards him. She obtained huge tax breaks in New York and Washington to get Amazon, while other cities spent valuable time and considerable power to try to seduce the giant of online commerce. Net result: These poor souls helped Amazon to get richer conditions in the cities of the east coast.

And that's our 2018 Tech Turkey list. If you take it into account, Snapchat's glasses were at the top of our chart last year, and the Samsung Note phone exploded in 2016. What's left for 2018? Let us hear you on Twitter, where I am @ jeffersongraham.

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