The Galaxy Tab  is very real. I’ve personally played with this amazing device and it blew me away. Yes, I work for Samsung so I’m a bit biased, but as a geek and Android fan I can tell you that I’m extremely excited. And based on today’s hundreds of awesome tweets to @SamsungTweets, it is obvious that there are many out there who share the excitement.

Here’s a glimpse of the awesomeness that’s soon to come… Get ready.

http://galaxytab.samsungmobile.com

Social Nerdia was at the live taping of The Engadget Show in New York City. Lucky Charms is not a sponsor, but the cereal sure got a lot of attention thanks to Fable III’s designer Peter Molyneux. Watch the video with Somerlea to know why.

Here’s the story on Engadget’s site.

Touchscreens have been around for a while now. We’ve become used to them thanks to the wide array of small and personal mobile devices we carry on our pockets, manipulating them to open and close windows, zoom in and out on maps, and bring data to life as we move, swipe, hold, and press pixels. No longer do we have to think about interacting with computing devices with one single point of interaction. And no longer are we limited by a stylus, a mouse, or even a keyboard. Today, our fingers give us access to a wealth of digital information that we could only imagine decades ago.

While the mouse is still the main way in which we talk to the desktop, but that is certainly starting to change. I’m not saying the mouse is going away, but it’s starting to feel old, tired, and full of limitations. Its only a matter of time before all screens are controlled by our touch, and new and exciting applications that are manipulated by two, three, four or more points of interaction become the norm, not the exception.

Watch the various videos in this post to see the Microsoft Surface and Windows Phone 7 Series in action, as well as parts of the SXSW Interactive 2010 presentation “That Game Feels Nice: Tomorrow’s Touch Interaces” about Win7 touch games by Microsoft’s Amish Patel and Fuel Industries’ Philip Glofcheskie.

I believe we should all seek to do something meaningful with our lives. While paying the bills is essential, we should try to pursue something that we truly get excited about and enjoy doing on a daily basis. We should try to impact the world in a positive way, even if in a small way.

I’m personally passionate about the convergence of technology, marketing, and the social web. I feel like a huge nerd reading the sentence I just wrote, but it’s true. I like to think, learn, and talk about those three things as much as I enjoy playing sports and listening to music. It’s how I’m wired. If you’re reading this, you might be wired like that too.

So this is a short version of the story of how I went from being a social media participant to a social media content producer to a social media manager, in less than one year…

Up until two and a half weeks ago, I was a tech and business consultant. For the three years prior to that, I had been a consultant with a promising career. I had worked on challenging and interesting projects concerning innovative mobile web sites, IT cost-reductions and, my favorite, identifying social media opportunities for communications service providers.

It was going pretty good. However, my interest in social media was growing. I found myself thinking about the rapidly changing social web on a daily basis. I read blogs like TechCrunch and magazines like AdAge. I listened to podcasts like Buzz Out Loud and kept up with the latest in social media thanks to people I had started to get to know as friends (instead of followers) on Twitter.

I was fascinated by all things social on the Internet and I wanted to further explore the future of the web. I needed a creative outlet. I needed a new “home base.”

So, after two years of thinking of domain names, I finally decided it was time to write a blog I’d actualy read myself. I had created several sites and blogs in the past, but this one was going to somehow stand out from the gazillions of blogs out there.

One night, I was watching a Gary Vee video (the kind of Gary Vee video that gets you excited about stuff) when Jennifer Leggio wrote a tweet with a typo. That tweet inspired the name “Social Nerdia” and Gary’s video reminded me that working hard was going to be worth it. I asked Jennifer what she thought about the name, and she suggested I buy the domain name.

I did.

I had created most of my own previous sites, but I was going to need a really good CMS to be able to pull it off this time. Plus, I didn’t really want to spend any money if I could build Social Nerdia on my own. I chose WordPress and was pleasantly surprised.

WordPress was much better than I imagined it to be and it gave me enough flexibility to make Social Nerdia my own. I decided to make purple the main color. I mean, TechCrunch is all about the green. Gizmodo is pretty much orange. Engadget and Mashable both like blue. Most social networks are also blue. UPS owns brown. You get the idea.

I was going to own purple.

After creating the site, I wrote my first blog post. I called it “The Mindblasting Explosion that is Social Media.” The word mindblasting came from comedian Russell Peters. In the post I talked about how companies and people were using social media, and even mentioned the now popular “snake oil salesmen” that everyone was trying not to be.

In the months to come I interacted with people on Twitter, created videos that I posted on YouTube, and wrote blog posts about products, news, and ideas. Good friends, my brother, and my wife all started contributing to the site. I was enjoying my new life as a blogger.

Sometimes it felt like no one was reading. Other times, a single post created more buzz than I thought it actually deserved. Google Analytics (and later Woopra) provided great insights, but I knew that content had to be my focus, not numbers. I knew a lot about marketing, but content that people actually cared about was hard to come up with.

One day, I noticed that Andy Milonakis was on Twitter. Andy is an actor/comedian/rapper, but he got started making online videos. I exchanged a few tweets with him and sent him a few interview questions. He answered them. And just like that, I became an interviewer.

Soon I had interviews with people like Alex Bogusky and John A. Byrne.

At first, the interviews were all via email, but one day GM’s Christopher Barger changed that. His social media team agreed to do a phone interview with me even though I hadn’t mentioned anything about a phone. A phone interview? I had no idea how I was going to record this phone conversation, but I agreed anyways.

Kara Andrade recommended I use BlogTalkRadio, a web site that lets you turn your phone into a podcasting machine. I fell in love with podcasting. I soon bought a microphone and then another one. Skype and I became very good friends. More importantly, I started to have amazing conversations with admirable people. “The Social Nerdia Show!” gave me a platform to talk with people like Loic Le Meur, Brett Erlich, and Bob Knorpp. I connected with almost all of them through Twitter and I’m still in contact with many of them.

There’s something about Twitter that makes people more willing to respond, more willing to talk to anyone willing to start a conversation. Some people say it’s like a new telephone, but it seems like some people are answering this new telephone much more than the old one. The cool thing about this new telephone is that it lets you be public or private, and always encouraged you to be as transparent and authentic as possible.

One of my favorite interviews was with Matt Moller and Keith Swiderski, Samsung’s Social Media Strategists. The interview with them went well so I decided to send them my resume the next day. I knew there was a social media position available in Dallas (where I lived), so I hoped somebody had a contact there. I received a reply soon after. I was told there was a Social Media Manager position…

In New Jersey.

Less than two months later, I moved to NJ to join Samsung Electronics America as Social Media Manager. While I know that the timing was more than perfect, and that my work experience was what ultimately got me the position, I’m quite positive that I would not have gotten Samsung’s attention with just an e-mail.

Or anyone’s attention, for that matter.

These days, if you want to work in a competitive area that people are passionate about (like social media), you’re going to have to get creative and you’re going to have to work hard. It might take a lot of long nights of hard work (like when you have to post-produce a podcast that had 18 minutes of silence), and many sacrifices (like moving half-way across the country away from family and friends in the middle of winter), but in the end, the things you learn and the people you get to meet can make it all worth it.

So worth it.

I am very grateful with Samsung and one of goals in life now is to help turn the company into a truly social one. I absolutely love what I do every day and I am excited about the opportunities and challenges that will come in the months and years to come.  Not only do I get to think about what a Social Media Manager is, but I also get to be one of the first to help define what one should be.

If I have any advice for anyone, it is this: get started.

Think about where you’d like to be one year from now, learn from people that have more experience than you do, and imagine how you could take it to the next level. Don’t be afraid of your dreams and don’t be limited by whatever usually limits you.

If you don’t know where to start… try WordPress, Twitter, and BlogTalkRadio. None of those tools will do the work for you, and we can’t know for sure if they’ll be around five years from now, but each of them is a good starting point.

They were most definitely a good starting point for me.

Disclaimer: I recently joined Samsung as Social Media Manager. While I am employed by Samsung, the views expressed on this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung.

It’s been more than 3 months since I first got my hands on the Palm Pre. Yes, I’m technically a blogger, and yes, I received this awesome phone from Palm so stop worrying FTC. As one of 10 winners of the “Real Reviewers Program,” Palm provided me with a Pre (along with an unlimited plan) for 6 months! Palm did not tell me to blog about it, but I can’t help myself. The truth is that I was a believer since the day it was announced and I am totally a fan. Popular Mechanics ranked the Pre as one one of the 10 most brilliant products of 2009 so I don’t think I need to tell you that this phone is amazing.

Palm has made some really interesting announcements recently, including the Palm Pixi, the second WebOS device on the roster. The Pixi is a more affordable, more artistic version of the Pre that should be released soon. Palm is also releasing the Palm Pre in various countries and networks, including a GSM version in Spain on October 14th.

In addition, paid apps are now available and Palm is going to allow open and closed source version of Pre apps to be distributed (which is drastically different better from Apple’s app approval process). With over 120 apps and soon to grow exponentially, Palm is finally able to say that it has a good quantity of apps on its catalog. And the quality of the apps is great so far (see below for examples).

Also exciting is the fact that Adobe Flash might be coming to the Pre much sooner than I expected. Yes, you heard that right. Flash Player 10.1 tailored for the Palm Pre. That means Hulu, YouTube, BlogTalkRadio, etc. Sweet. Double Sweet.

But, what’s it like having a WebOS phone? Good question…

Here’s a summarized example of how I use the Palm Pre on a regular basis:

7:00am- Wake up. I’m not very good at waking up so I have 5 alarms that go off every 5 minutes with different songs.
7:25am – Check my Gmail account, which is beautifully integrated with the device.
7:28am – Check my Hotmail account, which is integrated almost as nicely, but with 5 times the spam.
7:30am – Check my Calendar (which includes my Google Calendar appointments) to make sure I know what I have going on that day.
7:35am – Listen to Pandora while getting ready for work.
7:50am – Open up Tweed, Spaz and Twitter.com to check my @replies and DMs.
8:00am – Drive to work streaming  a podcast on Stitcher Podcast Radio (which already has TSNS!)
9:30am – After a meeting with a client, take a photo of the whiteboard. I also write a few notes. Evidence is always good.
9:45am – Can’t mentally multiply 482 x 330 quickly enough to impress anyone so I use the Pre’s Calculator (which looks freakishly real).
11:00am – Get an email on my Gmail account with a spreadsheet. Download the .xls file, read it, do a few edits, and reply with the updated version attached.
11:50am – Get on Tweed to talk to some friends and random people on Twitter.
12:00pm – Open up the browser to read some favorite web sites in their full splendor (including AdAge, TechCrunch and
12:05pm – Head out for lunch with a friend. Check out restaurant reviews using the GoodFood and Yelp apps.
12:10pm – Use the Sprint Navigation (GPS) app to get to the restaurant.
12:45pm – Show off my Palm Pre by opening up the Sprint TV app. People get more excited about videos than WebOS. Little do they know.
2:0opm – Charge my Pre. Pandora will be heavily used for the next 3 hours because I have some Excel crunching to do.
2:25pm – Check out my photos of the whiteboard from the meeting that morning. Update my notes with further thoughts.
3:25pm – Get a call from my friend Alex. He tells me about his Palm Pre. Hang up. The Pre immediately goes back to Pandora. I LOVE Pandora.
4:00pm – A friend who likes Nascar walks around. I show him the Nascar app just to show off. I don’t like Nascar. And I can’t seem to be able to delete the app so I might as well use it for something.
5:05pm – Head to the printer to get some reports and accidentally drop the Pre. No worries, it didn’t shatter like an iPhone.
6:25pm – At another meeting. Take more photos of the white board and email them to everyone in the meeting.
6:50pm – Check out the mobile version of Facebook to leave messages for a few friends.
7:05pm – Check out the weather on the AccuWeather app. I don’t check the weather much, but it’s raining tonight so might as well.
7:25pm – Call my wife, who is already at the gym waiting for me.
7:45pm – Work out while listening to Pandora. It seems like Pandora knows me.
7:48pm – I realize that I won’t be home to watch a TV show I like. So I schedule a recording using DIRECTV’s DVR Scheduler online.
9:30pm – Drive home. Stream the “The BeanCast” podcast directly from their site.
9:45pm – Hang out with Michael J. Fox. Ok, not really. But if I did and Palm had something to do with it, I would disclose it to the FTC.
10:00pm – Make plans to watch a movie on Friday. Check out the Rotten Tomatoes reviews using Flixster.
11:00pm – Open up the browser to head to IM+ for Skype, a web app where I can talk to anyone using Skype all over the world.
11:30pm – Open up the browser to sign in to my blogtalkradio account and schedule a new show.
11:35pm – Make sure my alarms are all on. I need to wake up early the next day.
This is just an example. There are many other apps I use regularly (including FlightView, AP Mobile, Mileage Monitor, etc.). More great free and paid apps ARE coming to the Pre so skeptics beware. So far, the only app that I think is really disappointing is Concerts because it NEVER displays shows in my area (it thinks I’m in Sunnyvale, CA, which is not helpful at all).

The Pre might not be perfect (believe me, I’ve tested hundreds of mobile phones and none of them are), but I wouldn’t change it for any other option in the market today. With increased competition, enhanced user experiences, and continuous innovation, it will be exciting to see where smartphones go from here.

Doug Aamoth is the Reviews Editor for CrunchGear.com, a TechCrunch blog that covers gadgets, gear, and computer hardware. TechCrunch started in 2005 and CrunchGear was added to the network in 2006 when Michael Arrington expanded the site to include a blog that focused on gadgets. Doug has been with the CrunchGear team since 2007 and he now also hosts the CrunchGear live podcast on Wednesdays at 3pm Eastern.

Doug spends a lot of his time reviewing products so I asked him about some of his favorites. He mentioned the Acer netbook 751h and he also told me that he just got iPhones on a family plan with his wife. “It’s hard not to talk about the iPhone. It’s still so far ahead of other phones.” But not all of his reviews are about phones and computers. I’ve noticed that he often writes about random things and deals, from sandals with metal detectors to left-handed underpants. “We try to have something up at the very least every half other so it’s hard to fill a day some times.” CrunchGear as a site does about 50 posts and Doug writes about 5-10 per day.

A lot of Doug’s work is reactive. 10% of the time Doug contacts a company, while they will contact him the other 90% of the time. Doug wakes up every day without really knowing what he’s going to write about because about 90% of what goes up on CrunchGear is reactive. And reactive can mean hard work. “It’s not the picture that most people get of bloggers waking up at noon. I wake up at 7am and work full steam.. until about 9 at night.”

Regarding how the site is integrated with TechCrunch, Doug mentioned that there is some cross-over and reciprocal linking but the interaction between the writers is minimal. The CrunchGear and MobileCrunch teams work hand-in-hand all day though. While those working in Silicon Valley go to the TechCrunch home office, Doug works from home and he’s only met Michael Arrington once. TechCruch also has a Manhattan office but everyone on the CrunchGear teams works remotely spread out all over the US. Doug is technically a full-time contractor, which allows him to blog and guest-write in other media/blogs.

The culture at TechCrunch is laid back. “You don’t have the formality of going to an office. I know everyone and have met everyone at some point. We all get together at CES.” There is hard work going on behind the scenes but working remotely does not make it more difficult as some people would expect. “It’s not hard, we’re in a chat room all day long and we are held accountable by that. It’s very much like a work environment in that we work all day. It’s easier to get irritated at people, but at the end of the day it’s more fun and we joke around.”

With a BA in International Political Economy, Doug has worked at large companies like NBC and Verizon Wireless, as well as in a magazine startup, independent film, IT, and freelance web design. Such experiences helped prepared him for his current position at CrunchGear, but his passion for tech is probably what opened the door for him to become a full-time blogger.

“I was working for NBC and I would get my entire’s days work in an hour. I spent the rest of the day with Google Reader reading a lot of sites, including TechCrunch.” After NBC had a big management shakeup, Doug knew that things were changing, so he applied for a Summer internship at CrunchGear. He sent some writing and work samples, and they offered him the position. “I called my mom and I asked her to sit down, and I told her I was going to be a gadget blogger.”

In terms of what has changed since Doug went from enthusiastic tech news reader to a serious writer, Doug said that the way he reads blogs is very different now. “I read about gadgets all day.. as a technology blogger that has to cover it. Now, my leisure time has nothing to do with technology. And I don’t buy anything any more. I used to spent 10 to 20 grand a year at Best Buy.”

To prepare for his writing, Doug uses Google Reader and checks RSS feeds last. “The first thing I’ll do is check my email.. I have 20 sites I check out manually. The list of those sites changes all the time but I keep it at 20.”

I asked Doug if he still likes blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo. He said, “I still like them. The weirdest thing coming in from the outside is that I started going to events with other bloggers and journalists.. when they’re complaining, I tell them they don’t understand how great it is to write about gadgets all day. Believe it or not there are a lot of technology bloggers that don’t like technology. [We] get to play with toys and write about it all day!”

Still, the blogosphere can get nasty and Doug chooses to stay away from the drama. “There’s a lot of weird rivalries between different blogs. Certain people don’t like certain other people. [They] take themselves way too seriously. We blog about gadgets… who cares, have fun with it.”

The future of print media and the future of blogging are controversial because it seems like everyone sees it from their own point of view instead of the end users’. Doug mentioned that those with doomsday theories about newspapers and magazines are often the ones in technology.

“It’s weird, this whole ‘death of the newspaper and death of the magazine argument has been going on for a while. All that generates from the technology industry. You know, ‘newspapers are going to die because of the Amazon Kindle. But, if you talk to regular people and tell them there will be no magazines or newspapers 5 years from now, they don’t want to give them up. Even regular people know that you don’t go to the library to look it up, you go to the internet.”

“You have to look at it from the point of view of the user. The iPod has one button, it was mindblowing. I don’t think blogging will take everything away from mainstream media.”

Although Doug does not want to be biased, he is fully aware of the advantages of blogging. “I can break technology news faster than CNN or Newsweek,” Doug said and he compared tlarge media companies to slow machines where writing articles and getting them approved takes days. CNN is a great example of a big media company that is embracing blogging.. they use Twitter and iReport.”

Doug said that the future is not that blogging or traditional media are going away. Instead, “they’re moving closer and closer together.”

I brought up that opinion was something that blogs had made commonplace and Doug pointed out that while true, it can become a bad thing. “Part of the criticism of bloggers, and I agree partly with this, is that you can be too opinionated.. There’s almost too much opinion.”

Twitter may be the center of opinion these days and Doug said that he has only written two non-automated tweets: “I’m thinking of standing up” and “I’m standing up.” Doug even compared the MTV show The Hills with what is happening on Twitter and Facebook, “but in real life.” His tweets and Facebook posts consist of his CrunchGear articles. He does keep track of retweets using TweetDeck and likes to check out www.tweetingtoohard.com because it shows “how idiotic some people on Twitter are.”

Doug doesn’t have anything against Twitter though. He simply uses it in his own way, as all people should. He explained, “I see the value of it. It’s not dumb. It’s brilliant. It’s so simple and everyone uses it.”

Podcasting is something Doug started at CrunchGear and it has always been informal and fun. He mentioned that it is something that you have to keep doing. Both the CrunchGear podcast and his other podcast SportsFaction about football are hosted on blogtalkradio.

Regarding what gets Doug excited in the gadget world, he mentioned netbooks, eReaders (especially if they came down in price) and the Microsoft Courier. “If the Courier makes it to market, it will be amazing.”

I ended the interview by asking Doug if the CrunchPad really is coming out. “I haven’t persoanlly seen it but they do have it at the office. Arrington uses one and as far as I know, they are releasing it.” Doug can’t review it yet and they are being kept in the dark because it would be a conflict of interest.

“It’s real. There are working prototypes. The plan is to sell it, but I don’t know when.“

Cali Lewis is the producer, writer and host of GeekBrief.TV, a video podcast about tech, consumer electronics, and web 2.0. An influential person in the tech community, Cali is also quite down to earth and recently did an awesome job as an organizer of WordCamp Dallas 2009, where I was able to ask her some questions.

In the two videos below, you’ll learn about Cali’s real (but not very googleable) name, her geeky roots, and her transition from self-storage manager to full-time video podcaster.

Cali also told me about having friends not “fans” (with one exception), the exciting future of AR and 4G networks, and the threat that bloggers pose to journalists. Cali is aware that “the internet is not going to wipe out TV, just like TV didn’t wipe out the radio, and the radio didn’t wipe out the newspaper“, but it’s clear that online productions of high quality like GeekBrief.TV are  transforming the way we watch and think of content on the web.