Best Buy still garners plenty of headlines when they announce more store closings, but the writing has been on the wall for some time. The age of the consumer electronics superstore is over; and with it, many fond, fun, and geeky memories.

If you have any sort of geeky bone in your body, the1990s were highlighted by trips to those places, half amusement park and half trendy consumer indulgence. My nostalgia and regret isn’t reserved for Best Buy, the flag-bearer of these big box electronic wonderlands; depending on where you lived, there were glittering destinations like The Good Guys and Incredible Universe, but there was no shortage of competitors anywhere. Some, like Ultimate Electronics and Circuit City, had a definite home entertainment focus, and others such as Computer City and CompUSA provided more of a full-on PC geek experience.

Wherever your wonderland was, it was the same experience; walking through those front doors and seeing big wide aisles full of the greatest electronic diversions under the sun. Many of us share poignant recollections of those magical weekend afternoons lost among the seemingly unending possibilities of technological fun. My grubby fingers were all over every button, touchscreen, and joystick that I could find. My covetous eyes fondled high-def TVs, audiophile home theater systems, the latest game consoles and handhelds, CDs, DVDs, geeky tech gadgets, and of course every category of PC software and component that one could imagine. My throat was sore from telling the staff “no thanks, just looking” for hours on end.

And this is part of the disease that killed them, and part of the desperation that infects the remaining Best Buys. Going there became less and less fun for many reasons; at first, you might be tempted to think that it was all about YOU growing up and losing your sense of wonder, but you know better (I’m still every bit the gadget geek that I ever was, if not more).

What Has Caused so Many Stores to Fail?
Internet Shopping: Yes, Internet shopping is the recurring scapegoat for the failing brick-and-mortar electronics retailers, who complain about undercutting and losing customers that they’ve persuaded with vital hands-on experience and well-informed staff. It’s a compelling argument, but I suspect that it’s overstated. Aside from the whole ‘experience’ that I’ve described in such glowing terms, the superstores have the advantage of proximity. I know that I’ve often been willing to pay a few extra dollars to get the real thing home NOW, not in 7-10 shipping days.

Bad Service and Selection
And when it comes to customer service and selection, Best Buy (in particular) just got worse and worse as time went on. Every six months led to fewer products in stock; they typically began by weeding out the things you actually wanted, followed by the things that you needed, and ultimately you’re now lucky if you can even track down one of the barely sufficient last-call Plan B options.

Employee Knowledge
The employees got pushier, but also less informed about their products; and let’s face it, if you’re any sort of self-respecting geek, you ALWAYS knew more about what you were looking at. And all other things being equal, I suffer far less existential distress from having to say no to Newegg and Amazon’s offers for membership cards, branded credit cards, extended warranties, and accessories. Plus, I’ll happily trade inefficient and dismissive ‘real human’ interaction for an online company that takes steps to keep me satisfied and coming back.

Big Box and Department Stores
In addition to the online stores, big box stores and department stores share in the blame of killing the consumer electronics superstores. They all offer a somewhat compelling albeit smaller-scale electronics department ‘experience’ of their own. All of the 21st Century WalMarts, Costcos, and Targets include a department with some semblance of that electronics wonderland quality (and some good deals, as well).

Apple Stores
When it comes to the electronics shopping ‘experience’, I have to mention Apple Stores. The growing trend toward single-brand integrated manufacturer retail may make perfect business sense; just watch Google and Amazon snap up vacated Best Buy lots in a year or so. However, it’s kinda boring to be browsing a more limited selection, all sharing a single aesthetic (no matter how sleek and modern it may be). On top of that, the Apple Store vibe creeps me out in a way that even the most gung-ho Geek Squad team never did. Maybe it’s just my overactive imagination, but it always feels like I’m walking into a cult compound, as if the fun products are a lure to convert me to a Jobs-worshipping True Believer.

Fry’s Electronics
Despite the onrushing demise of Best Buy, those wonderful days of superstores aren’t completely gone and forgotten. One of the best of the electronics superstore chains, Fry’s Electronics, is still alive and doing relatively well. I still get the geeky thrill from Fry’s, and I’ve never encountered any significant issues with price, inventory, or selection. Okay, so the employees are still generally uninformed and unhelpful, but they’re mostly confined to their checkout cages where they have limited power to infuriate the shoppers. Unfortunately, Fry’s has fewer than 40 stores total; less than the number of stores that Best Buy has closed over the past few months. However, some of them are former Incredible Universe stores, and in many cases the fun and unique IU atmosphere was largely preserved after the takeover.

Radio Shack
The pure persistence award has to go to good old (and I mean OLD) Radio Shack. Before the dawn of the big box electronic store era, the Shack was one of the truly geeky electronic hangouts. Sure, they’re smaller; often nothing more than a narrow mall stall. And they’re typically split between an ultra-geeky collection of cables and components in the rear half and the more consumer-oriented front space, which can’t even begin to compare with the electronics section at the average Wal-Mart. Despite a self-conscious determination to gain some cutting-edge credibility, The Shack is still mainly a place where misguided grandparents can purchase ‘high-tech’ Christmas gifts. Oh well, at least some things never change.

==== About the Author ====
Tagg writes on behalf of CableTV.com. He typically writes about technology and finance. When he’s not preoccupied with the latest gadget, he’s an avid hiker and kayaker. You can follow him on Twitter. @CableTVcom

Earlier this year, HP released the Enyo framework source code as open source software under the Apache 2.0 license. This was done as part of HP’s bigger plan of open sourcing the entire WebOS platform. The WebOS open sourcing effort will reach a closure in August. WebOS was an excellent mobile platform and its UX has been appreciated widely. Popular mobile platforms like Android and Blackberry borrow heavily from it and this open sourcing would have helped HP create a competitive mobile platform. However, HPs plans have been disrupted with some latest development.

The Verge writes in an exclusive report saying that the entire WebOS Enyo team will leave HP to start working at Google shortly. This strikes a serious blow to the future of WebOS. It is not known what the awesome people in the Enyo team will do at Google. One of the best comments on the post was perhaps:

Google buys Palm for zero billion dollars.

Android took a major UX leap with design ideas from Matias Duarte and it showed in Honeycomb. Now, with the entire Enyo team and Matias Duarte under its belt, Android might just rock the mobile segment.

Google can either borrow their mobile expertise for improving the Android user experience, or leverage their HTML5 expertise to create a better ecosystem for Google Chrome and Chrome OS. Looking at the technology stack that the Enyo team worked on, the latter seems more probable. Either way, Google has gotten hold of a golden goose, which will lay golden eggs. What remains to be seen, is which way the eggs roll.

The browser wars has just heated up with the latest entrant, Yahoo’s Axis browser. For now there is a standalone app for the iPad and iPhone whereas for the desktop an extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Let’s take a quick look at what it has to offer.

Adding the browser enhancement is one easy process. Head over to the official Axis website and use to the button “Get it Now” to download the appropriate extension for your browser. Once done you’ll notice a black search bar at the bottom the browser window. Start typing in it and it will bubble up to show you the search results in real time. The visibly brilliant search interface offers a speedy experience without necessarily interfering with your browsing. The search results are shown in a carousel like manner and the search is carried out with Bing powered search engine. Users can then click on any of the results to open it on the very same tab(right click and it can also be opened on a new tab) and this cancels out the detested feeling of fishing for the dull text links. So unlike other browsers you get to search for keywords without leaving the current page or firing up a new search page. No wonder it works much like it’s publicized.

Apart from these, there is a bookmark button which can be used to add the current page to Favorites or a Read Later folder. Use the login option to link the Axis Browser to your Yahoo account. The bookmarks can then be accessed across any browser or devices that has Yahoo Axis Browser(or browser plugin) installed and logged in to with the same Yahoo account. This is nothing new as Chrome does it in a much better way and so does Firefox.

The iOS version of the app is however a native app that can act as a standalone browser. Unfortunately as Apple don’t allow external links to be opened on any browser other than Safari, Yahoo’s new brainchild search browser won’t be getting much traction unless it is primarily preferred for performing a search on those devices. On a personal note, I wonder why Yahoo didn’t launch for Android(a version is coming soon)?Thankfully Google allows other browser competitors to be launched by default for any external link.

It is not sure whether the new browser will be released as a standalone application for the desktop platforms in future or it will simply stay as a browser extension only intended for the amelioration of the search and browsing experience for the already popular browsers. It might also be a marketing strategy to gain popularity riding on the success of the widely used desktop browsers which can later be leveraged with an independent app. The fact that the internet giant uses Bing instead of its own search bear witness to Yahoo’s dependence on the existing market leaders. Microsoft has definite reasons to cheer as this move might see much deserved growth for its powerful search engine. We’ll have to wait a little longer to comment on that. In the present scenario, the tool is nothing but a new search extension for almost all the popular browsers out there. Speedy, seamless and less-intruding search experience is quite pleasing. The roll-out was hasty decision perhaps, leading to a serious security vulnerability but that is something already taken care of. For me, a Bing lover, this simply serves as a quick tool to use the service but not likely a replacement for the feature rich Chrome browser.

Samsung recently announced the new Android powered Galaxy Ace Duos smartphone. As the name suggest, it is a dual-SIM Android smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos is the dual-SIM variant of the highly popular Samsung Galaxy Ace. This handset allows the users to manage their work and personal lives with one smartphone. It runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) Operating System. However, this device might get the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update in the near future. Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos owners, keep your fingers crossed!

JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung, said:
“With Dual SIM convenience, enhanced connectivity, and performance features, the GALAXY Ace Duos delivers a sleek design and incredible features intended to provide consumers with a smartphone that meets their hidden needs. We continue to listen to our customers and lead them to a life extraordinary by expanding our GALAXY smart device range, which continues to gain traction as one of the most recognized and popular mobile brands in the world.”

Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos features a 3.5 inch touchscreen display, sporting a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels, 832 MHz Processor, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) Operating System, Samsung Touchwiz UI, 5 megapixel rear-facing camera with auto-focus, single shot, smile shot and panorama shot, VGA video recording and playback, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, 3G Connectivity and much more.

Other features include a 3.5 mm headset jack, music player with SoundAlive, FM Radio with RDS, stereo speaker, Samsung ChatON, Samsung Social Hub, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 3.0, Swype, Document Viewer, A-GPS, Google Play Store, 512 MB RAM, 3 GB internal memory, Micro SD card slot, 32 GB expandable memory, up to 520 hrs of stand-by time, up to 390 mins of talk-time and a 1300 mAh battery.

This handset measures 112.74 x 61.5 x 11.5 mm and weighs just 122g. Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos will be available from June starting in Russia, followed by Europe, CIS, Latin America, Southeast and Southwest Asia, Middle East, Africa and China. The price of this device will be announced soon. Stay tuned for more updates!

Earlier this year, Sony Mobile Communications unveiled the unique Sony Xperia Sola smartphone. It is the company’s first device to feature the unique “Floating Touch” technology. This technology allows the users to navigate the web by hovering their finger above the screen, without actually touching the screen. Once the link is found, it can be highlighted and a simple tap will load the page.

This handset was already up for pre-order at major online retailers from the last couple of weeks. Today, Sony Mobile Communications officially launched this amazing handset in India. This device runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS. However, Sony will roll out the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update shortly after launch. Sony has also partnered with Tata Docomo to offer free 3G data usage as well as exclusive games for the Xperia Sola owners.

Mr Sunil Tandon, Head of Non-Voice Services, Tata Teleservices Limited, said:
“At Tata Docomo, we have always strived to take the mobility experience to newer levels and add new dimensions to our range of handsets, since they are an important element of our ecosystem. Partnering with Sony Mobile will enable us to provide customers with a compelling proposition—that of accessing free data services (up to 3GB) on Tata Docomo platform, making for a new and invigorating mobility experience on Xperia Sola.”

Sony Xperia Sola features a 3.7 inch Reality display, sporting a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels, 1 GHz STE U8500 dual-core processor, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) Operating System (upgradable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS), Floating Touch, Xperia Timescape, 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with Flash, 16x digital zoom, Face detection and Geotagging, HD (720p) video recording, Facebook inside Xperia, DLNA Certified, Native USB tethering, NFC (Near Field communication), Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, 3G Connectivity and so on.

Other features include a 3.5 mm audio jack, FM radio with RDS, 3D surround sound, Stereo Bluetooth with A2DP, PlayNow service, Google Play, NeoReader barcode scanner, A-GPS, Wisepilot turn-by-turn navigation, Micro USB support, 8 GB internal memory, microSD card slot, 32 GB expandable memory, Wi-Fi Hotspot functionality, up to 40 hrs of music playback time, up to 6 hrs of video playback time, up to 6 hrs of talk-time, up to 470 hrs of stand-by time and a 1320 mAh battery.

Sony Xperia Sola comes with a price-tag of Rs.20,449 (approx. $370) in India. Tata Docomo 3G pre-pay customers will get 3 GB of free data for three months, while the post-pay 3G customers will be get 1 GB data per month for three months. On the other hand, Tata Docomo 2G pre-pay customers will get 3 GB free data usage for 90 days and 300 minutes of local Tata to Tata calling, while Tata Docomo 2G postpay customers will get 1 GB free data usage per month for the next three months, along with 100 minutes of local Tata to Tata calling per month for three months.

In the days leading up to the Facebook IPO, one thing that pundits loved to harp on was its weakness in the mobile segment. One of the cornerstones of Facebook is its Photos feature, which helped it to gain rapid traction in the first place. However, in the mobile segment, Facebook lacked a compelling app to leverage this advantage. Not only is uploading videos to Facebook through its iPhone and Android apps cumbersome, but viewing it also is a less than pleasant experience. As a result, upstarts like Instagram that made sharing photos from your mobile phone elegant and pain free quickly gained popularity. Zuckerberg himself realized this and went on to shell out a billion dollars to prevent Instagram from falling into its competitors laps.

However, long before Facebook purchased Instagram, it had set about to fix the void in its mobile offering. A team was hard at work to come up with a dedicated Instagramesque photography app. A short while back, Facebook unveiled its creation on the iTunes App Store.

The new app is called Facebook Camera. While Facebook wouldn’t win any awards for the name, it pretty much nails everything about the app. Facebook Camera is Instagram with a few differences. It features multiple photo effects to lend your snaps the ‘artistic’ touch, it enables quick sharing of photos, and it has a photo stream that just contains pics shared by your social graph. Its biggest advantage compared to Instagram is that it supports batch photo upload, which allows you to club multiple related photos together. However, it also has its share of disadvantages. The biggest one is that Facebook Camera doesn’t allow sharing of pics across social networks. No one really expected Facebook to make it easy for you to share your pics on Twitter or Google Plus, but this is still a very real drawback. Also, since the Facebook Camera photo stream includes pics that were not shared through the mobile app, not all photos look as classy as Instagram. Of course, folks who have a strong disdain for the artificial photographs popularized by Instagram will probably appreciate this.

The big question is how does Facebook Camera fit into Facebook’s future strategy. It will directly compete with Facebook’s Instagram, which is the current leader in the mobile social photography app segment. A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch, “As Mark asserted, we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently, so I anticipate some healthy competition.”

Most people believe that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram was a defensive move rather than an aggressive one. Zuckerberg didn’t want Google or Twitter to get a boost from Instagram’s existing popularity, so he acquired it. He had to promise to keep it independent, as otherwise Instagram wouldn’t have allowed itself to be taken over by Facebook. However, this also means that Instagram’s social graph is going to remain distinct from Facebook in the foreseeable future. Instagram doesn’t really tie into Facebook, and augment Facebook Photos. Even though Instagram is under Facebook’s control, Zuckerberg will obviously prefer if people used Facebook’s social graph to share photos on the mobile. It will increase the stickiness of the platform, and strengthen the lock that Facebook has on a user. This is probably why Facebook went ahead with the release of Facebook Camera, even after announcing the acquisition of Instagram.

Facebook Camera is currently available for download in the App Store for English speaking countries.

If you are a gamer, last week was probably pretty torturous you. The eagerly anticipated Diablo III hit the shelves about a decade after its predecessor, but most gamers couldn’t play the game due to crappy DRM and sloppy Blizzard infrastructure. While Blizzard continues to firefight with infrastructure upgrades and hotfixes, Ron Carmel of World of Goo fame has strewn together a neat little package that should cheer you up.

In an initiative called “Because We May”, several indie game developers have come together to offer their games at deep discounts (typically 50% or more). Unlike most other similar promotions, “Because We May” is as platform agnostic as you can get. It features games for Windows, Windows Phone, Mac, iOS, and Android. The promotion will last till June 1, and is meant to celebrate online stores that gives developers the freedom to determine pricing.

Games on offer include World of Goo, Osmos, Super Meat Boy, Beat Trip Runner, Penny Arcade, Dungeon Defenders, Zen Bound 2, Fieldrunners, Riptide, and dozens of other stellar indie titles. Head over to becausewemay.com to check out all the games on offer.

The explosion of personalized web has pretty much clobbered online privacy to its death bed. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, someone or the other is tracking your surfing habits. The worst part is that this practice has become so rampant that most of us have come to accept online tracking as standard affair. Mozilla has been trying to tackle the problem of behavioural tracking on the web for quite some time. Couple of years back, it introduced the “Do Not Track” header, which has already been adopted by Internet Explrer, Safari, and Opera. Now, Mozilla has released an experimental add-on to showcase how personal data is being tracked across the web.

Earlier this month, Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla Corporation, unveiled Collusion. Collusion is a Firefox extension that visualizes the spider-web of interaction between websites and third-party trackers that often track you without your explicit permission. Collusion is essentially a reporting tool whose purpose is to make netizens realize just how grave the situation is. Here’s how my Collusion graph after a brief ten minute browsing session involving Techie-Buzz, TechCrunch, Mashable, and BBC.

My Collusion graph is peppered with third-party tracking website that I never explicitly browsed to. Personalized web isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can increase engagement, reduce user frustration, and improve productivity. However, the mad rush of advertisers to track users without their knowledge and permission is something that is deeply worrying. Kovacs very righty remarked that “with every click of the mouse and every touch of the screen, we are like Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs of our personal information everywhere we travel through the digital woods”.

[ Download Collusion for Firefox ]

Last month, Apple revealed iPhone TV ads featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Zooey Deschanel. Today, the company has begun running  a pair of new television ads for the iPhone 4S and Siri featuring actor John Malkovich.

Turns out, the past two celebrity ads scored very well with viewers, registering higher scores from advertising tracking firm Ace Metrix than any other iPhone 4S ad released so far this year.

Malkovich is best know for his acting style and his iPhone 4S ad reflects his somewhat peculiar persona. The first ad is called “Life”:

Malkovich: Life.

Siri: Try and be nice to people. Avoid eating fat. Read a good book every now and then. Get some walking in. And try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

Malkovich: That’s pretty spectacular advice, actually. Thank you. I enjoyed this chat immensely. You are very eloquent.

Siri: That’s nice of you to say.

The second ad is called “Joke”:

“42”

“I Kant answer that. Ha ha!”

“It’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya.”

“Life: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.”

“I don’t know. But I think there’s an app for that.”

“I can’t answer that now, but give me some time to write a very long play in which nothing happens.”

“I find it odd that you would ask this of an inanimate object.”

“That’s easy… it’s a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general.”

“Life: a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings. I guess that includes me.”

“A movie.”

“I give up.”

It is not every day Apple disappoints me, but I found these ads to be disappointing! The bottom line is that these ads are monotonous, depressing, and terrible. Remember when Apple’s iPhone 4S/Siri ads used to be fun to watch, struck a cord, and magical? You know, ads like “iCloud Harmony” and “Roadtrip“? And my favorite, “Santa“. That ad was genius and magical.

I hope at some point Apple gets rid of the celebrities and brings normal people back.

The Linux Mint blog has announced the release of Linux Mint 13 codenamed Maya. Maya saw an RC release just a week ago, and this final release came sooner than expected. There have only been a few minor bug fixes from the RC release.

Linux Mint 13 Maya sports some interesting features. The boot splash screen on Mint 13 has been replaced with a black screen that shows nothing. The Mint ISO image is no longer 700 MB in size, and so it cannot be burned to a CD. However, there is a guide on remastering Linux Mint by removing extra packages and shrinking the ISO size. Mint4Win, the Windows installer for Linux Mint is functional only on the 64-bit ISOs, although it is present on both the 64-bit and the 32-bit version.

Although based on Ubuntu, Linux Mint is competing head on with it and surpasses Ubuntu by a huge margin in Distrowatch page hit ranking. Now, that is not an accurate indicator of who is using which of Linux Mint and Ubuntu but it might be an indicator of the popularity of these Linux distros. Linux Mint is indeed popular.

Linux Mint Maya is available for download from both torrents and HTTP mirrors. All the download links are provided at this page. Existing users can upgrade from a previous version of Linux Mint using this guide.