FCC checks out the Blackberry Pearl 8120

Here is the first photo, from the FCC showing T-Mobile's new prize; the 8120. Nearly identical twins of it's parent the 8310 (Blackberry Pearl). The major difference seems to be the inclusion of WiFi which makes this one of the more cherished of RIM's creations. For more info on this device check out Technofilic's initial post on the 8120.
http://technofilic.blogspot.com/2007/11/fcc-t-mobile-first-to-get-wifi-equipped.html

[via FCC.com]

Black Friday deals continue to leak: AT&T

A week ago Technofilic reported on T-Mobile's fantastic Black Friday deal - http://technofilic.blogspot.com/2007/11/t-mobile-does-something-unprecedented.html. Now it seems AT&T has decided it needed to play ball and has gotten in on the fun. They are offering 50% off all phones (other than the one you want, iPhone). Despite not being able to get your fanboy on, you can get in on some other great deals:

Motorola RAZR 2 - $149
Blackberry Curve - $99
Pantech Duo - $99
Samsung a737 - $24.99
Sony Ericson w580i - $24.99

So after you wake up from a turkey and pie based coma, if you feel so inclined to get your handset fix on, stop by an AT&T retailer.

Motorola loves Taiwan

This year has not been the best year for Motorola. After over exposing their prize product, the RAZR, to the market and releasing every possible shade of chrome at prices from $400 to free, Moto really needed a hit. Their RAZR 2 has been available for months now, and has not sliced through the competition. Instead they have slipped to to #3 in the world in handset sales, letting Samsung take their spot behind Nokia.

They may not be as concerned with the world market as they ar with Taiwan, where they announced they would be taking bold steps to escape the #4 spot for handsets. Their plan over the next year is to release 20-30 new phones in that relatively small country. That is roughly two phones per month (or more). Besides making us want to move to Taiwan, maybe Motorola is trying to beat HTC in its home market and create a worldwide surge back to a MotoWorld ?

Good luck Motorola, just don't forget about the rest of the world.

Introducing miShare

This little device is pretty useful. It does what many iPod owners have wanted to do since they first envied a track on someone elses iPod, copy a track, picture, or movie in a seemless fashion over to their own iPod. And it does exactly that. However it is not the quickest process. The Linux powered device allows you to select the item you want to transfer and at 500K/sec you won't have to wait too long.

It is available for preorder in a week and will ship a few weeks later. Check out more photos over at Engadget.

[via Engadget.com]

The new Chocolate: LG Venus

Yesterday it was Verizon's LG Voyager, and today it's the LG Venus. Upgrades of both the EnV and Chocolate, LG has become the handset maker of choice for Verizon. It has been an early Christmas for Engadget receiving both in the passed two days.

Hop on over to Engadget and see their unboxing. This phone looks flawless, despite a lackluster Verizon interface.

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/photos/hands-on-with-the-lg-venus/

Earthlink bails on municipal WiFi

For some time now Earthlink has seen municipal WiFi projects as a great way to get into markets which they did not have a strong foothold. Recently they have begun to withdraw most involvement in such projects after coming to a realization that profits would not be seen for some time.

Stating that investing anymore time or capital in municipal WiFi projects is inconsistent Earthlink's goals when in comes to increasing shareholder value. They had been hinting at such a move since the beginning of the year as one of their more costly ventures, Philidelphia, had not panned out as they had hoped it would. Following the higher-than-expected costs for nodes in Philly, Earthlink ran into a few problems in Chicago and Houston, leading them to basically give up.

Apparently the entire Municipal Wireless business model has been sputtering. Even in tech/venture capital rich Silicon Valley there is nearly no desire to begin such investments. However Corpus Christi, Texas has managed a very efficient wireless system. It just might be too soon, but keep your fingers crossed.

[via http://www.ArsTechnica.com]

Oh yeah, The LG Voyager gets explored

The lucky bastards over at Engadget have gotten their hands on the LG Voyager. We have given you the specs on the successor to the wildly popular EnV and now we have some actual perspective on this gem. Not available for another week or so for the average person, Engadget has made our decision easier. For the post on specs check out http://technofilic.blogspot.com/2007/11/verizon-opens-pre-order-for-venus-and.html and for all the specifics from how well the keyboard works to the feedback on the outer touchscreen check out http://www.engadget.com.

Amazon's infamous Kindle, ebook reader

Recently, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos officially announced the Kindle ebook reader. The man who made his second fortune selling a classic item in a new way is trying his hand at it again. This time he will have to convince the masses that dissing their paper and adopting a PDA-like device is a good idea. The biggest problem he will face is the price. At a whopping $399 it may be a tough sell.

The Kindle is however, somewhat feature rich. It sports a 600 x 800 pixel screen measuring 6" diagonally, for starters. It weighs 10 grams and sports an awkward keyboard at the bottom that we don't see a need for. The best features that haven't been mentioned are its' EVDO connection for domestic downloading, and it's free. Amazon has factored in the EVDO data rates into the $399 price. It has no ability to send data but you can email .doc, HTML and most picture formats to the Kindle specific email address. Other features include Dictionary and Wikipedia access for those troublesome words or a deeper understanding. Without playing around with one we at Technofilic don't know what to think. The Kindle may be a little ahead of its time if it intends to make kindling out of paperbacks. More info and photos ar available over at Ars Technica.

http://www.arstechnica.com

FCC: T-Mobile first to get WiFi equipped Blackberry Pearl ?

A close look at some very recently released FCC documents shows that a new Pearl, the 8120 will soon be released sporting WiFi and a UMA client. The UMA client leads us to believe that this will be a T-Mobile release. This is good news for those of you who recently got the short end of the stick when you bought the Sidekick Slide. This new Blackberry will have the regular host of specs including a microSD slot, GPS and 3.55mm headphone jack. What you won't get is 3G becuase of well, T-Mo, but who needs it when you have a very cheap data plan and WiFi ?

[via FCC]

Leopard outsells Vista in China

In such a large market such as China, change like this not something to balk at. During the month of October, sales of operating systems in China were a bit different than they usually are. With Apple's Leopard earning 60% of the market and Vista only holding 30%. This may sound more astonishing than it in actuality. When you consider the fact that Leopard was just released compared to Vista being released months ago, the new product hype must have played a large part. Another factor is price. In China the price of Vista is a mind blowing $274, while Leopard will cost you a reasonable $130.
Despite all of the evidence there is one fact you cannot ignore. Apple is growing at a very fast pace in one of the largest growth markets around, and if you knew what was good for you would go buy it.

NASDAQ: AAPL

[via BoyGeniusReport.com]

ADrive: The best free online storage option

No other sites can really compare to the new service ADrive in storage capacity. After signing up, they allow you a whopping 50 GB of free online storage space. The only shortfall are the speeds which are not gonna have you dissing your hard drive anytime soon. When uploading a test file we got speeds ranging from 100KB/s to 200KB/s which is ok if your intentions are to add a large amount of smallish files to your space, but would prove to be a bit cumbersome when dealing with larger files. It is however free and at the moment only features a web-based format for uploading files. ADrive's "Coming Soon" page says it intends on creating a desktop based drag and drop app for adding files, but there is no mention as to how soon. They also intend on adding Premium Account options for those who need more than 50GB.

While this is not a complete back up system it is a very viable option for storing those important files. Keep an eye on them because all they need is a speed upgrade and a system for adding entire directories and they are the new king of the block.