Friday, November 16, 2007

Diss that EDGE data plan for your iPhone


The people over at TUAW.com have discovered something that may make you a very happy person. Now you can save $240 a year off that expensive iPhone plan by dropping the EDGE data plan. This is great news for those of you who are consistantly using WiFi and do not mind losing the visual voicemail service. Just jump on over to manage your account and remove that data plan. Regardless, this is a great option to be made available to the masses.

[via TUAW.com]

iPods now capable of DRM free video thanks to RealPlayer

Thanks to the guys over at RealPlayer we are now able to use a source other than iTunes for our iPod video desires. After spending half a year in beta, for $40 you can now buy the RealPlayer Plus package. It is in beta still for Mac users but now it seems that our iTunes DRM limitations have finally been lifted. Hop on over to http://www.realplayer.com/ and start downloading your little heart out.

[via RealPlayer]

Google Notebook goes mobile

Google may not have created a single stand alone app for all their services (yet) but they have been getting close. Over the past year or so they have been regularly adding to their mobile suite. With a very healthy Google Docs, Google Calendar, GMail, Google Maps. Yesterday they made it one step closer by releasing one more mobile site. Google Notes for mobile www.google.com/notebook/m is a very helpful and convenient platform for writing and storing thoughts while on the go. One of the best features is how perfectly the notes syncs with your Google account. It is one of Google's simpler web apps but it a nice addition. Let us know what you think.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Ultraportable PC running OS X

So, the possibility of an ultraportable Macbook leaked earlier this week and it seems some enterprising techie took it upon himself to jump the gun. Modding $399 Eee PC and installing Leopard sounds great. It actually is not too difficult either, requiring not much more than a PC ready version of OS X (found in BitTorrent land) and a desire to thumb your nose at The Man.

[via Gizmodo]

The NSA is watching, listening and reading everything

If you are still a bit hazy as to what the NSA does, after you read this there won't be any question. Whistle-blower Mike Klein recently said that he witnessed and help set up a secret NSA room at an AT&T switching center in San Francisco. While that in itself is not that disconcerting, what he said he noticed while wiring the room was that the equipment being installed was unable to do the specific filtering tasks the government claimed it wanted to do. Instead of filtering, Mr. Klein claims the only capabilities the equipment had was of sending duplicates of all Web, e-mail, and phone activity. This is all probably not news, just a friendly reminder to think twice about the government. There is some real scary stuff over at DailyTech: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=9620 Check it out.

Samsung's newest 8 megapixel sensor

Samsung has taken over a bit of Motorola's marketshare in the past year and become the world's second largest handset maker. Motorola used to be the biggest innovator in miniture technology, making the RAZR and jump starting the slim phone craze. The 3 megapixel sensor is slowly becoming standard fair, but if Samsung has anything to say they intend on jumping directly to 8 megapixels.

According to Samsung they have done this without sacrificing any bulk in the process. This is great news if they can manage to get the price down. Maybe you will wake up one day soon and the next new phone will have the ability to take the photos your fancy camera can.

Bell Canada and the HTC Touch for $149

The HTC Touch is a fantastic phone and we are jealous of the people up north for continually getting mind boggling plans. Signing a 3 year contract will get you a Touch for only $149 or $400 off contract. That alone is a good deal but the real motivation is the T-Mobile like price of $7 for unlimited web and e-mail access. I have never wanted to live in Canada more. This will no doubt start a lot of buzz for Bell Canada, and a lot of contract signing. Check out Bell Canada's website fo more info.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Alltel anounces Parental Controls

Incase this loser Chad didn't bother you enough, beginning in February 2008, the number 5 wireless company in the U.S. Alltel, will begin offering a system for filtering content downloaded on their handsets. In an effort to keep your little one from viewing naughty pics and vids on their mobile device, they will be the first north amerian company to do this.

Alltel's Parental Controls will be customizable via a web interface and will have the ability to filter out innaprpriate web sites. It does seem that provocative MMS' will be allowed though so fret not!

Gold remote control for morons

Look at the picture above...does that look like $55,000 in technology? Hell no. It seems that either people are a hell of a lot dumber than you think or a hell of a lot richer. You may have seen universal remotes with price tags in the $1500 range before, but this is out of hand. Not only does this not have a tactile feedback touch screen, like a remote worth five figures should have, it cannot even turn on your microwave.

In fact this remote, designed for those of you customizing your uber yacht, seems to have one major feature: gold. If you are made of money and have a little brain go grab one of these, I bet they look swell next to a $50,000 ashtray.

Oh yeah, it will be available this December from Lantic Systems, a Danish company. Here is the link; http://www.bornrich.org/entry/worlds-most-expensive-remote-control-in-pure-gold/

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

T-Mobile does something unprecedented

Most companies are offering great deals on Black Friday but T-Mobile is doing something that makes them seem downright desperate. They are offering a free flight to one of ten different cities (New York City, Boston, Atlanta, LA, Las Vegas, DC, Miami, Orlando, Dallas) if you sign up for a new contract with a myFaves plan. Typically this would only be an offer made to new customers, however this deal is for both new and existing customers and is not only on just Black Friday, it extends from Nov. 23-25. So if you have been about to make the switch to T-Mo or are due to re-up your contract, get in line at a T-Mobile store right after you eat your turkey.

[via BoyGeniusReport.com]

New HTC phone given OK by FCC

Thanks to the guys over at PhoneScoop.com for this one. Apparently HTC has finally decided to give the CDMA folks some lovin'. This Smartphone is going to look something like Sprint's Centro (Palm Treo 500v).
Here are some specs:

- A Landscape QVGA screen
- WiFi
- EVDO
- Bluetooth
- 2 megapixel camera
- QWERTY keyboard
- microSD

Thanks to the FCC documents we know that this will be on Verizon. Another bit of good news is that it will be fitted with a 'very large battery'. That is really good news, just hope it has a somewhat sleak design. Codenamed Iris there is no information yet on when it will be announced or available but knowing Verizon it probably won't be until Q2 of next year at the earliest.

Cable Companies vs. The FCC

Ever wonder why you cannot have 'a la carte' packages when you fork over money to cable companies ? Well the answer is the FCC. Back in 1984 the FCC passed a de-rugulaltion initiative and since then the Cable companies have had free reign to steal our money, however their was a provision left in. I don't want to pay for CMT, EWTN or even BET but under the current arrangement we have no choice. Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC has recently been grumbling about possible real change under a non-utilized provision of US law called the 70/70 rule.

The 70/70 rule allows for serious intervention by the FCC if two situations are met. The provision states:

"at such time that cable systems operating 36 or more activated channels are available to 70 percent of households in the United States and are subscribed to by 70 percent of households to which they are available, the Commission may promulgate any additional rules necessary to provide diversity of information sources."

What is currently up in the air are if both 70 percent thresholds have been met. Mr. Martin is a strong proponent of the 'a la carte' system mainly because of its parent friendly. He also has a good relationship with the telecom companies and if this 70/70 standard is met, then he will like look for regulation Finally more options, the U.S. May be finally looking like more of a free market. Much more on this story from ArsTechnica.com check this link: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071113-fcc-wants-to-regulate-cable-could-force-a-la-carte-on-industry.html

Sprint's new Motorola Q

I guess changing the way they handle ETF's, their policy on upgrades for current users, and overall customer satisfaction is weighing heavily on Sprint. First they release a promo photo of the new Motorola Q device but instead of having Windows Mobile as the OS in the photo it has Palm's rusty OS. Putting the online blogosphere into a tizzy and momentarily having everyone a bit confused. Well now the graphic designers (with too much freedom) have fixed the apparent mistake. Strangley they have named the smartphone the Motorola Q2, which makes sense it is the big brother of the orginal Q, but many leaks have namd this the Q9c. The Q9m came out for Verizon, the Q9h has since been released for AT&T and with the Q9c being in the pipeline for Sprint (and Verizon) why is it called the Q2. All will be forgiven Sprint if you will just release whatever the hell it is called already.

PS3 to support DiVX

This seems to be more of an announcement than anything else. On the heels of Microsoft announcing that the Xbox 360 would soon be given playback of DiVX and Xvid formats, Sony has jumped in and tried to beat them to it. It is important to note that most media centers have already adapted the DiVX media format. It doesn't make us any less excited though. The newest Development Kit will give developers the tools it takes to implement this nearly standard format into their games.

[via Sony]

The Sidekick Slide's major flaw

It seems that Motorola is really losing it. Earlier this year they slipped to number 3 headset after Samsung stole some of their marketshare. Following that with a lackluster response to the RAZR 2 and it would seem unimagineable that when given a possible homerun opportunity by creating a new Sidekick device they could screw it up. Well they seem to have done so. Moto did manage to make the typically bulky Sidekick device into a more trimmed down device, but they did not test it enough. The Slide is a decent Sidekick phone and would no doubt garner a lot of T-Mo customers but a major flaw found by one such customer and seems to be a part of each handset (and not isolated) has been exposed.

The flaw in question comes when activating the Slide mechanism. Apparently when you repeatedly slide the screen up and down it develops a nasty little habit of hard resetting. Considering the slide function is a major selling point, this is a bit more than unsettling. The culprit as Boy Genius Report found is a fraction of looseness in the battery compartment. To be fair this only occured at a small percentage of attempts and took more than 15 consecutive slides, but with thousands of these out in the world that's a lot of hard resets.

[via BoyGeniusReport.com]

Monday, November 12, 2007

Microsoft to acquire Musiwave

Openwave, the company that makes the web browser that is probably on your non-smartphone just sold Musiwave. They had acquired Musiwave is 2005 for $120 million and now have flipped it to Microsoft. Musiwave is a mobile music distribution company/platform and will be a nice addition to Microsoft's WinMo platform and the Zune. Windows Mobile, currently in a fierce fight with Nokia's Symbian OS. Buying Musiwave is an attempt by Microsoft to to integrate more into the European market where they have been embattled in regulatory hell. Musiwave is based in Paris and will help Microsoft get more involved in Europe where there is no doubt going to be strong moves made by the iPhone and eventually by Google's Android.

Helio Ocean $99, Unlimited Plan $99

Recently Technofilic reported that Helio would be restructuring with help from SD Telecom http://technofilic.blogspot.com/2007/11/helio-not-down-for-count-yet.html Well it seems that it has begun to show in the form of Helio lowering it's plans across the board. A refurbished Ocean will cost you only $99, which is a significant discount from the $295 they run new. If you don't mind having a used Ocean then their unlimited voice plans for $99 is also pretty nice. This will definitely get some customers looking their way and will hopefully pull this innovative MVNO out of the red and into the black.

Check out Helio.com for more information.

Ultraportable Macbook coming in January

The long rumored addition by Apple to it's blooming laptop business is coming in January at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. It makes sense since Apple's laptops are already sleak designs. Aspects of the new mini Macbooks are just speculation for the time being. The people over at Apple Insider have it on good authority that they are likely include a 13" screen, a pretty decent size. An SSD, NAND drive in order to prolong battery power and reduce the moving parts, but also end up raising the price a bit. The size is supposed to be 50% thinner and lighter, mainly due to the removal of the optical drive. An LED is also expected to backlight the laptops.

No word on if the design will be dramatically differ with Steve Jobs' new baby, guess we have to sit and wait until more rumors/spyshots or the announement in January.

Not

Google releases SDK for Android

The Open Handset Alliance is becoming more of a reality. One week after being announced Android now has legs. The Software Developers Kit will help programmers create that killer ware for the mobile OS. The SDK will run on most systems and 10.4.8 and higher for OSX. Despite not even being released yet, Android is getting a considerable amount of attention which will likely translate into a massive wave of software. The OHA also said it will provide $10 million for the software that ends up creating the most buzz. Not too shabby.

[via BoyGeniusReport.com]

The HTC Touch Cruise

HTC is extremely happy with the success they have had with the HTC Touch and HTC Touch Dual. Because of this they have decided to create yet another installment of their franchise. GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 and that pretty cool TouchFlo screen UI is just part of what this powerhouse rocks. The guys over at CoolSmartphone have gotten their hands on one and have some video to prove it. Which you definitely need to check out. A bit of redesign to the outside and a some polishing to the WM6 OS on the inside are basically all the updates, but these Touch's look better and better every month.

HTC's constant innovation in the touchscreen market is further proof that they plan on making it a serious part of future design. This is one of the best 2.8" touchscreen phones around and will be available from HTC and at retailers later this month.

Check out: http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news3630.htm for the video and more info.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Sony is tired of Blu-Ray, HD DVD fight

CEO Howard Stringer is about as tired as we are when it comes to the fight over who controls the next media format. The thing is, he started it and now there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. He admits that over the past few months it has basically come down to perception of who is winning since the sales numbers are so similar.

Paramount recently jumping ship from Blu-Ray to HD DVD and the European market favoring HD DVD has taken a bite out of what appeared to be a substantial lead by Blu-Ray. Sony had gotten Blockbuster on their side and with booming sales of the PS3 there were more Blu-Ray players out there, now it seems to have evened out making it very difficult for customers to decide.

Not to say I told you so, but maybe if Sony and Toshiba had held hands in the first place Sony wouldn't be facing a possible BetaMax situation for the second time in three decades. This seems to be primed to continue on into 2009 unless something happens (like say, the pornography industry stepping in like they did for VHS).

[via arstechnica.com]

Gnarliest PMP of the Year: DVB-700 by Yung Fun

This almost looks like a concept device from the 1980's but instead it's the latest from Yung Fun. It really is great the freedom that design firms are given in the Asian markets and also unfortunate that this gem will (probably) never make it to the U.S.

Rocking a very distinct handle (did you notice) this personal media player sports a 7" screen and supports MPEG-2 formats for playback of audio and video. It measures 8.25 x 5.5 x 1.125 and weighs in at a heavy 1 kg. Also features speakers, AV output, and a remote control. What a fantastic gift for this holiday season.

[via mobilewhack.com]

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