Friday, August 2, 2013

The End of Catch and The Beginning of Chromecast

I was a bit distressed on Wednesday (July 31st) reading in TechCrunch that Catch is shutting down. The article; “Evernote Competitor Catch.com Shuts Down….” is an interesting read. TechCrunch refers to Catch as an Evernote competitor however I might not go quite that far. On the other hand I have used one of Catch’s products, AK Notepad, for some time.

Is this the ‘fear’ behind latching onto an app and then down the road it disappears? I admit that AK Notepad was free and I used it as one would use a scratch pad on my phone. I made quick notes, grabbed a phone number, simple shopping list, and even used it to alert me to buy lottery tickets. It was easy to use and it was FREE. Perhaps the FREE part is what did Catch in. Although my PRIME use was the phone it was also available on my tablets. Catch, the parent, would sync my notes between my phone and my Nexus 7.

NOW I am a big Evernote user but AK Notepad, as I said, was my scratch pad. I will now be using Evernote as my scratch pad I guess but what if it sells out? Always there in the background.

Going back to the FREE aspect. I am more than willing to pay a reasonable amount to have an app and I would have paid for AK Notepad. How much would I pay is the question. I pay for Evernote – $45/yr, and PrinterShare Premium for printing from my phone and tablet. I pay for many other apps on my phone and tablets. You have to determine the value to you versus the cost of the app. The NY Times is a case in point.

I like the NY Times however I will not pay the current rate for the NY Times subscription as I believe it is too much money. At $16.75/mo or $195/yr. (currently) for a digital subscription I believe that I can do as well with my RSS feeds and other resources. I would pay but we have to get it down considerably.

Chromecast -

On a little different note I received by Chromecast device yesterday and installed it last night. Installation was a wiz after dealing with some Internet access issues on my home network. I was able to show my desktop on the beautiful 60” Samsung screen and it looked cool. The desktop did stutter and not scroll as I wanted however that aspect is in Beta and I am sure it will begin to work.

I lit up the Netflix 3 month gift and away we went. Seamless viewing and my router is on the second floor the TV and I on the first floor. I controlled it from my notebook and next up will be controlling from my phone. I was quite pleased. Over the next couple of weeks I am sure we will be playing a great deal with this.

No comments:

Post a Comment