Last week Sony confirmed the launch of the PlayStation 4 for 2013. They held a two hour announcement where they showed off some of the hardware, had developers speak about games that are in the pipeline, and touched on release info. There’s definitely things that I liked, as well as a handful that I didn’t. Here are some of the takeaways:

This morning Google put up some new details regarding Project Glass, including a video showing what it’s like to wear Glass, and a list of things that Glass can do. They are also sponsoring a new contest where anyone can join the Glass Explorers (people who will be getting the Developer Edition). I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Glass Foundry event in New York earlier this month, and got to experience Project Glass first hand. While I cannot say too much more than what you can gather from the Google page, I do have some exciting news!

Recently I was trying to find a way to run Ubuntu off an SD card, so that I could use Linux on my Macbook Air (I’d have dual booted, but my Air has the 128GB SSD, which doesn’t leave much space after partitioning). Scouring the web, there’s not that many resources indicating how, or if this is even possible. Fortunately for you, dear reader, it is!

Like I said, I’m using a Macbook Air, so there’s two steps to this process: creating a bootable flash drive with the Ubuntu image, and the actual installation.

Something that is very popular in the Android world these days is rooting and installing custom ROMs on your phone. A problem that I’ve found however, is that information regarding the process, and the terminology involved can be quite confusing for someone getting started, and as a result might discourage them. I decided to write up a series of blog posts discussing various parts of this process, so that it might help someone who wants to get involved, but doesn’t know how. The phone that I’ll be using for these tutorials is an HTC One V, which can be used on Virgin Mobile. It’s a fairly modern phone, comes with a 1GHz single-core CPU, 512MB RAM, and a nice 3.7 inch LCD. This process will almost identical for other HTC phones, and very similar for many other Android devices.

Disclaimer: This may void your warranty, I take no responsibility, etc.

I was trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 in VMware Player on my PC and ran into some trouble during the “Easy Install” process. The installation basically hung at the console after the installation was successful, with a message telling me that the VMware Tools were being installed, and that I could login and use the system while they were installing. Maybe 10 minutes later, there was no progress, so I restarted the VM.

I decided to log in and start X manually, so I could at least mess around with it in the meanwhile. Without being able to resize the window/use the shared clipboard, I decided to try to install the tools manually. No dice here, since VMware won’t let you install the tools while the Easy Install process is still running. Here’s what you can do to fix it:

It’s a what? Ever since I returned from Google I/O, this is what people have been saying when they see the newest addition to my TV setup, the Nexus Q. It’s hard to blame them though, since it just looks so different, for a home theatre device. unlike those bland, black boxes that most living rooms are filled with, the Nexus Q is a heavy (about two pounds) sphere, which is lit by a ring of 32 LEDs. The top side of the Q spins freely to function as a volume knob, and can be tapped to mute.

On the back of the Q, things are less clean. There’s both micro HDMI and optical audio out, ethernet and a micro USB port for “encouraged hacking”. There’s also a set of banana connectors to allow you to hook up speakers to the built in 25-watt amplifier.

So how’s the UI of the Nexus Q, you might ask. Does it look as smooth as Jelly Bean does on the other devices that I showed you a few weeks ago? Funny thing is, the Nexus Q doesn’t have a UI of it’s own; it requires an Android device to set up. All you need to do is tap an NFC enabled device to the sphere, and it will take you to download the Nexus Q app from Google Play. Start up the app, log in with your Google account, and you’re all set to use the Q.

Since the Q doesn’t have it’s own UI, let’s take a look at the Nexus Q app for Android.

You don’t really use the app for anything after setting up the Q initially, all the media is controlled through the Play Music, Play Movies and Youtube apps. All you need to do is hit the little triangle that will appear when you’re on the same network as a Q.

My biggest complaint about the Q is the way you set it up to involve your friends. First you need to enable guest mode from the Q app, and then manually invite all the people you want to have access, which actually sends them an email to download the app. This seems like such a convoluted process, and I doubt people will actually care to do this. Not only that, but I see no way of revoking someone’s ability to use the Q after you’ve invited them. We all know that one person who takes their music privileges a little too far, but it seems that the only recourse in that event is to turn guest mode off all together.

Is it work $300 right now? Probably not, no. Unless you’re a huge consumer of Play media, you’ll probably be better off with a Roku, or something like that. Even if you are a consumer of Play content, you’re probably better off with a Google TV, since after all, that does other things.

So by now you’ve probably heard about the Nexus 7. We heard it was coming last week, and now after using it for a few days, here’s my review.

I’m in San Francisco for Google IO 2012, and while Nate and I were wandering the city, we passed by the Moscone Center and I snapped a couple of photos.

My guess is that there will be a Nexus tablet (see the Nexus banner on the third floor), with NFC and Google Wallet, and then attendees will get to test the tap-to-pay out at the Google Wallet sponsored Google Store.

We’ll certainly find out tomorrow though!

Last night Microsoft unveiled Surface, its entry into the already crowded tablet arena. The name, you might be thinking, sounds awfully familiar. That’s cause it is. Anyway, the hardware of this reincarnation is not a table, it’s actually quite sleek.

If you remember from last week, I made some predictions about what Apple would reveal today at WWDC. Let’s recap what actually happened, and we can see the hits and misses.

New Macs

Yep. Refresh for the Air and Pro lines, and the introduction of the “Super Pro”. Yeah, I was wrong about the “Retina” all around, and nothing for the Mac Mini, but I’d say I was pretty darn close. There was technically an update for the Mac Pro, but as Marco from Instapaper points out, they basically didn’t do Pro owners any favors.

Mountain Lion

Got a release month (July). There was iCloud Tabs, and a few other iOS features (Notification Center, iMessage, etc.) coming to the desktop.

iOS 6

I was a bit disappointed. Nothing I saw made me feel like I needed to have the newest update, since most of the new features are already present in the competitor’s latest offering, Ice Cream Sandwich. Can’t wait to see how Google strikes back in two weeks.