Phil Nickinson

Awwwwww, ain't that cute? When your producers "suggest" you do something, I suggest you do it. And that's how I ended up in that pose inside the Donut statue last week outside Building 44 on the Google campus.

We swung by the Googleplex last week to update our B-roll pictures of the statues. That's it. No secret Nexus meetings, folks. Just a quick, 20-minute (out-of-the-way) stop on the way back to our hotel in Palo Alto, where our real work was for the week. As for that that was ... well, you'll have to wait for that.

But if you're ever near Mountain View, you really should swing by and check out the statues. Just drive up, find a visitor's parking spot and snap away. Do try to remember that folks are working in the offices above, though.

A few other thoughts for this fine Sunday ...

  • I've been wearing the Qualcomm Toq smartwatch for the past few days. Price notwithstanding — this thing's another $50 above the Samsung Galaxy Gear — it's a surprisingly decent effort. 
  • I'm very much on the fence about the Mirasol display. Can't deny the battery life, though.
  • So we'll have more on the Toq in the next week or so. It's a pretty good smartwatch that fits somewhere between the Pebble and Galaxy Gear, I think, in terms of experience.
  • Speaking of smartwatches, now's the perfect time to bookmark Smartwatch Fans. You'll probably see some familiar faces there soon enough.
  • I'm really enjoying our "Through Glass" series. It's great to read about the experience others are having, and I loved getting MoDaCo's Paul O'Brien on board this week. We need to step out of our own little circle here more often. 
  • We got a rejection letter last week from Samsung regarding getting our app in the Samsung app store. Nothing we can't work though — but what was really interesting was that we got a short video showing our app in testing, and the technical thing they'd like us to fix. That was cool. So, we'll go back to work on that.
  • The feel-good hit of the holiday season, for sure.
  • I think the Nexus 5 camera update helped a little — but only so much is going to be fixed by software.

That's it for this week. Lots of fun stuff to come. Thanks for being a part of it!

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