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Despite trying to paint an image of being a serious, enterprise-friendly corporation, Google is still pretty much the stereotypical geek among the tech giants. It just loves to solve its problems with machine learning and AI, which is understandable given the amount of data it has to wrestle with. But while there are things that can be efficiently solved with advanced machine learning, some things, like recommending apps for users to install and use from Google Play Store, need a bit of human touch.

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Pokemon Sword and Shield are officially out and, like many Pokemon fans, I spent much of the weekend playing through the opening hours of Pokemon Sword. Though it's going to take more playtime before I'll have a comprehensive opinion on Sword and Shield, I've played it enough to form some early impressions of it. After somewhere around 15 hours of game time, I can indeed confirm that this is a Pokemon game.

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If the number of people asking me about the new Motorola Razr is anything to go by, rebooting the classic flip phone may have been the best thing Motorola has done in years. Announced last week, the new Razr pairs a clamshell design with a flexible display; it may not be the first foldable to be announced, but it's shaping up to be the most intriguing one.

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Netflix’s throne could be shaken up in months to come. The OG streaming site’s dominance is challenged by big changes in the industry. Rising competition, supply issues and an erratic streaming landscape are all giving the multi-billion company a big headache. These changes are forcing Netflix to respond early to keep its lead.

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The bad news for Motorola is that, beyond a few true fans with deep pockets, nostalgia isn't enough to make a hit product. the good news is that 2019's Motorola Razr is more than just a familiar name. While foldable phones may be in their infancy, what this new Razr brings to the table isn't just gadgetry and branding.

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Pokemon Sword and Shield are right around the corner and the discussion about these games in the lead up to release is, frankly, all over the place. There are a lot of angry Pokemon fans out there at the moment, as a large number of leaks have supposedly revealed a lot about these games. Make no mistake, it's a pretty turbulent time for the Pokemon community, and it's definitely easy to get caught up in the controversy.

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Apple is dominating the smartwatch business and Google is finally feeling the FOMO. With Apple Watch devices capturing almost 46% of the market in Q2, Google with its WearOS smartwatch software, knew it had to respond. On November 1, Google paid $2.1 billion to acquire fitness-tracker brand Fitbit. They current sit second in the wearable band market, at 24%.

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Black Friday is coming but the holiday shopping season isn't waiting for its traditional kick-off, though while tech deals may be everywhere you look, there are some gadgets I won't be putting into my cart. Smart speakers and, more recently, smart displays have become a go-to gift for many over the past few years, but in 2019 they may not be quite so warmly received.

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Pokemon Sword and Shield have been going through a rough patch for these past few months. Though The Pokemon Company's marketing machine is in full gear, Pokemon fans keep coming back to one topic in particular: the national Pokedex, or the lack thereof. During E3 2019, Game Freak confirmed that the Pokedex in Pokemon Sword and Shield won't include all previously-released Pokemon, making them the first mainline games in the series to do something like that.

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"Stock Android" is a term often lauded in the tech world. Android the way Google intended it to be, without bloatware and other confusing modifications, seems to be a standard many users want. Diverging from that standard tends to draw some lukewarm reviews.

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Facebook's plans to launch its very own cryptocurrency was met with heavy opposition last week, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Libra proposal to Congress was hijacked into a hearing of the company's past mishandling. To put it briefly, the social media company's involvement in the Cambridge Analytica and election controversies had broken its trust with authorities. Without a clear structure for regulation, there are concerns that Zuckerberg's new Libra project could undermine the national dollar, as well as contain loopholes for criminals to exploit.

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A future of surveillance and cameras draws even closer to our reality. This month, the world’s second-largest country, India, joined the list of governments that have announced plans to build a country-wide facial recognition system. This follows China’s commitment to similarly build a facial recognition database that can identify any citizen within seconds.

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