Despite the fact that FusionGarage hasn’t bothered to let anyone in on what chips are running the JooJoo Tablet, we can now say, thanks to the FCC, that it will be sporting Intel Atom N270 and NVidia Ion Graphics.
Yep, the FCC spilled the beans. Intriguingly enough with the JooJoo relying on x86 technology I guess it isn’t surprising that Wireless Goodness spotted a photo of a JooJoo running Windows 7.
In addition to the chipset specs, there was a 3G modem with SIM slot spotted, but the word so far in this mysterious and controversial Tablet’s history is that 3G models weren’t going to be available until later in the year. If FusionGarage sticks to the March 25 delivery, I’m guessing we’ll know more soon.
Speaking of the FCC. We’re not far from the pre-order date for the iPad. In fact, Apple has said that you can start pre-ordering at 8:30EST (5:30PST) on March 12. Maybe I’ve missed it, but I don’t think we’ve yet seen confirmation that the iPad has FCC approval. And there is that little caveat at the bottom of the iPad page on Apple’s website that says:
“This device has not yet been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.”
I doubt it is a problem, but it is interesting given that the FCC usually outs just about everything before its time.
JooJoo news via Engadget and Liliputing
Every once in a while a media outlet comes up with reasons why the iPhone will surpass BlackBerry in cell phone market share. The latest is Forbes magazine, though the analysis comes from company called Trefis. They break down the trends of each company, and have determined that the iPhone will overtake BlackBerry in early 2011. As in, a year from now. The main evidence is that Apple has grown a bit faster, going from .3 percent market share in 2007 to 2 percent in 2009, while RIM went from 1 to 3 in that period. Further, they expect RIm to have an 8 percent cell phone market share by 2016, with Apple ahead of them at 11 percent.
I’ve never been one to buy into long-term forecasts like this. So much can change, and change quickly. For instance, if you were doing six-year forecasts in, say 1994, you might not have accounted for the internet. That would have thrown off everything. So, while Apple might be on pace to grow faster than RIM, it’s far from a given.
At PC Pro, writer Paul Ockenden tested out the keyboards of six popular smartphones to see which allowed him to type the fastest. The list includes the Apple iPhone 3GS, the HTC Hero and Touch HD2, the Nokia E75, and the BlackBerry Bold 2 and Storm 2. Here are his results.
It looks like the Bold is the best, and by a decent margin. The drop-off seems precipitous after the Nokia. The Touch HD2 did the next best, beating the iPhone by two seconds and one error. The downside, of course, is that the Storm 2 is by far the worst among the group. But there’s good news about that…
This news came down last week, but there wasn’t confirmation (I think) before we ran News From the Wire. It appears RIM is shipping out the Storm2 with an improved screen. Verizon stores have to return their stock by today, and have already started receiving shipments of the new models. Users having issues with their screens might be able to trade it in, though there doesn’t appear to be a hard and fast guideline. Best to check with your local store.
Tip of the week: Don’t wipe your device if you see JVM Error 201. First, use this workaround so you can recover everything from your device. And then wipe it and start over.
As we know, BlackBerry users will soon be able to make Skype-to-Skype calls from their devices. While we don’t have a ton of details on the matter, we do have a video. And if we have a video, well, we have to post it.
Just some stray links and items.
This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.
BlackBerry News From The Wire for the Week of 3/8/2010
We are crawling the Internet all the time; monitoring the latest trends and technologies, seeking, discovering. If you’re like me, during your web travels you often come across treasures you want to share. Some deserve a tweet; some belong on your pro blog; others on your personal blog. But sharing what you find can be time consuming and hinder your productivity.
Posterous takes care of this problem for you by making it extremely easy to post content to the social media apps you use.
Doriano previously described how you can use email to share photos through Posterous, but I’m going to talk about how easy it is to use the Posterous bookmarklet to share any content across multiple platforms.
To create a Posterous account, you don’t fill out a registration form, you send an email. Then you get a confirmation email that will take you back to Posterous to add your social apps accounts to the service.
Once you’ve added the accounts to which you want to be able to post, the next thing I recommend you do is install the bookmarklet. On the “Manage” page, under the “Posts” tab (the default) scroll down and find the “Posting” box. Click the bookmarklet link and follow the very simple instructions to add the Posterous bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark toolbar.
Now go to some content that you want to share and click the bookmarklet in your bookmark bar. In the window that pops up, you can customize the info you’re about to post:
Posterous grabs images, videos and sometimes text from the site and lets you pick which you want to use. You can add your comments and click “Post” if you want this item to go to all your social media accounts, or you can click “Advanced Options” and pick and choose which accounts to post to. For example, I only want this link to go to my Twitter account and a personal blog:
Tips: If you want to use a specific text excerpt from an article, select the text before clicking the bookmarklet, and it’ll be added to the image/excerpt options. Choose it, and it’s neatly inserted as a blockquote. If you want to send the item to a blog where you have categories, in the title field, type ((tag: Category1, Category2)), for example, and it will automatically be categorized on your blog.
Note: Unless you want the cute puppy video you sent to your family blog, the excerpt of the article on agile programming you sent to your pro blog, and the photo of Freddie Mercury in an eyeball suit you just tweeted all to appear together in sweet cacophony on your Posterous site, you need to create multiple Posterous sites. This is easy to do, and you only have to add your social media accounts once. Then when you choose Advanced Options in the bookmarklet, a drop-down lets you pick the Posterous site you want the item to appear on:
I have only tested sharing with Posterous to a blog, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you post something to Twitter or LinkedIn, Posterous inserts a link that takes people to your Posterous site, not to the original site online. I assume the same is true of other social media apps, too. On a blog, the links go to the original item wherever it appeared online. I recommend testing Posterous a little bit at a time to see how it works for you.
I’ve only talked about the bookmarklet here, but do check out the email options. The first thing I did with Posterous was take a photo with my iPhone and email it to Posterous, which automatically autoposted it to every service I’d added. Doriano explained how to email content to specific sites in his article, so check that out as it’s actually kind of hard to find the info on the Posterous site.
Have you tried Posterous yet? What tools do you use for social sharing?
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Social Media in the Enterprise
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Wednesday that the search and advertising giant was “in active negotiations” with China over censorship that would end soon. His remarks came two months after the company revealed there had been in-country attempts to hack into the GMail accounts of human rights activists and declared that it would stop censoring results on google.cn — something it has yet to do.
“We are in active negotiations with the Chinese government,” Eric Schmidt told reporters at a media summit in Abu Dhabi, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
“I’m going to use the word ’soon’, which I will not define otherwise,” Schmidt said, according to Reuters. “There is no specific timetable. Something will happen soon.”
Schmidt’s remarks were the first confirmation by Google that it was even talking to China, though Bejing said as much last week. But they did nothing to clarify what Google’s intentions are after its stunning statement some 60 days ago that it was prepared to abandon the market if things did not change.
The GMail attack, which targeted some other 20 tech companies including Adobe, Yahoo and Intel, also sought source code, and resulted in Google losing some intellectual property. But Google co-founder Sergey Brin was reportedly the driving force behind the decision to publicly repudiate its Chinese censorship.
Schmidt did not say what the two parties were negotiating about — or even what there was to negotiate about, given Google’s seemingly unequivocal Jan. 12 statement decrying the status quo. The copany did not at the time say it when it would leave if things did not change, but did make clear it knew the stakes were that high, given the Chinese government’s intransigence in such matters.
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president for corporate development, wrote on the company blog. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
Google has been reticent say much of anything in public. Only eight days ago Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong told the Senate Judiciary committee no more than “We are still weighing our options” during a hearing on internet freedom. Google’s .cn address, and possibly its other operations, could be shut down by the Chinese government if the company declines to adhere to censorship rules.
One insider has told wired.com that Google is willing to trade off stricter limits on sexually explicit and gambling-related search results for complete freedom for political topics. China has shown equal aversion to all such topics.
See Also:
Google’s Schmidt: China Negotiations Should End ‘Soon’
- Louis GrayGoogle’s Schmidt: China Negotiations Should End ‘Soon’
- felixRemember when people thought something was going to happen?
- felix
First we heard that the HTC Desire will hit AT&T in May/June, and now, according to Androincia, a manager at a T-Mobile USA store was being trained on several phones that are coming to the carrier this year, and the HTC Desire Android phone is on the list. They also said that they contact other T-Mobile employees and they said that their manager’s are off for training.
It seems that the device in question comes with a large touchscreen display, which means that it might not be the smaller Motorola CLIQ XT, but the name is still unconfirmed. For what it’s worth, considering that T-Mobile already has the Nexus One on its airwaves, there are great chances that Desire will also land there, especially since the two phones are basically the same device. However, previous rumors suggested that other carriers in the US would receive it, and this remains in the rumor side until further confirmation emerges.
Just rumors guys.. stay tuned for more information
Press Gazette has confirmation from the Newspaper Society that it isn't doing its Circulation, Editorial and Promotions awards this year – despite the cancellation of the Regional Press Awards. So regional media are going to be missing a day out on the commercial side, as well as editorial. They also give details of the kind of fees that the regional groups now consider it impossible to pay: £39 for an entry (which is significantly cheaper than I remember being told a couple of years ago) and £130 for a ticket (which still seems relatively steep).
For now, at least, it appears you can still win awards for how well your regional newspaper is printed.
Facebook is going to launch its location-based features “next month,” according to a report today from the New York Times — a confirmation of many months of rumors that we and other publications have been hearing. Sources close to the company shared specific knowledge of the tightly-wrapped project, including a clear message for developers: Get ready for location at f8, Facebook’s developer conference.
That’s where the new service will be unveiled, according to the report. Facebook will launch a way for users to check in at physical locations and share the information back with their friends on the site (possibly by attaching location data to status updates, for example). Crucially, there will also be a set of APIs so developers can access Facebook’s location service in their own applications.
Developer Impact
But certainly, by providing a location-based service itself, Facebook is making it harder for smaller companies to differentiate themselves through location alone. Foursquare, Gowalla and increasing number of other startups have been building services where users win “badges” or other virtual goods if they use their phones to “check in” at a physical place more regularly than other users. Given the details of Facebook’s plan, it seems the company wants to funnel consumer interest in these types of location-based games through its platform.
Facebook’s social graph likely reflects who many people would want to share their locations with, and for this reason some startups, including Foursquare, Gowalla and the FriendSpin iPhone app, among others, already offer ways to share locations with Facebook friends — although the effort hasn’t converted to lots of users, that we’ve seen.
The promise is that Facebook’s own service would make location more popular, and so any company that relied on Facebook’s service might somehow ride that wave. On a related note, while Facebook may not be trying to build a location-based game, but game developers and other application companies on its platform could use the features to more directly compete with existing startups.
Location’s Long Time Coming
Facebook has been looking at location for a long time. But it has delayed launching the service, as many have previously heard, because the company has been concerned about privacy issues. It was also waiting for the concept to become somewhat popularized before launching anything, according to today’s report, something that is not yet clearly happening. But big web rivals have been testing their own location services, and startups are getting in to the fray.
As we covered last fall, the company updated its terms of service to reflect its interest in location:
Location Information. When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post (for example, it is subject to your privacy settings). If we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate.
More recently, it has been rumored to be looking at acquiring location-based social network Loopt. And VentureBeat today notes, as we’ve heard, that Facebook has been working on a variety of location-related projects internally recently.
Given the lineup of location-based services launching at South by Southwest, a popular media and technology culture conference starting in Austin next week, we expect location — as a concept — to get even more buzz this spring than it has already. In fact, Facebook’s design team will have a location-related presence there, via a partnership with Gowalla. The team made a special set of drink coasters, it’s going to scatter them around the conference, and anyone can redeem the coaster for a free drink from the team; Gowalla is providing digital versions of the coasters, with the same reward.
In any case, F8 is looking like an especially opportune time for a launch.
Bigger competitors are also looming. Google and Twitter, in some sense Facebook’s main competition, both have location-based services already. Google’s Latitude has been out for many months, but it doesn’t seem to have caught on, partly because the interface is always on in the background, trasmitting your location. Changing Latitude to the “check-in” model and making it a more central part of Buzz, its new activity feed aggregator, could be a good way for Google to get in on the location action, as TechCrunch details — but now Buzz is out of the gate, with issues. But expect Google to work hard in this area, especially with its larger push into mobile with Android and the Nexus One. Twitter, meanwhile, has been testing a way for users to show the locations of their tweets for months, and that feature appears to going live for all users soon.
Location and Facebook’s Business
Getting into location will likely help Facebook accelerate into more local advertising. It has already been making location a part of its advertising services, in some sense. Advertisers can target ads on the site based on country, region or cities — as of today, thousands of cities. And Page owners can share news feed items with fans who identify themselves as being in certain geographic locations. Local businesses now have half of the 3 billion Pages on the site, according to Facebook statistics, and make up an increasingly large portion of spending on Facebook’s fast-growing performance advertising service.
A location-based service that allows users to specify where they are down to the building, for example, would provide data to Facebook and advertisers about the places they frequent. This could help Page owners and advertisers target ads to be more relevant.
Facebook has other reasons to want to try its hand at location now. It has quickly grown to 400 million monthly active users (it announced in early February, so the number is likely a bit higher today). And around the same time it said that 100 million of these people access the service every month via their mobile phones, up from 65 million in September. Meanwhile, more and more mobile devices offer some way to share location. That’s a lot of people who can start quickly sharing their location with Facebook friends.
Last night we rolled out an experimental new feature for the Backpack Calendar. If you have a Plus or higher account, you can now SMS events to your Backpack Calendar. If all goes well we expect to roll this out to other paying plans down the road.
Click the Calendar tab at the top of your Backpack account, and then look in the sidebar below your calendar list. You'll see an SMS icon with a link. It'll look something like this:
When you click the link, you'll see a screen that looks something like this:
This screen display your code (unique for everyone - don't use the one you see in this example screenshot) and a phone number. Text this code to the phone number using your mobile phone. This will registered your phone number with your Backpack calendar.
You'll then get a confirmation back on your phone saying everything is set up, or that there was a problem.
You can add events to your calendar via SMS using the same formatting as you use on the web. For example, SMSing "April 23 3pm Dentist" will add a "Dentist" event to your calendar at 3pm on April 23. Or "9am Client meeting" will add an "Client meeting" event to your calendar today at 9am. Or "1pm tomorrow Fedex the contract" will add a "Fedex the contract" event at 1pm tomorrow.
Here's something else really useful: You can ask your calendar what your schedule looks like via SMS. If you just SMS "Tomorrow" Backpack will SMS tomorrow's schedule back to you. Or SMS "April 7" and you'll get back your schedule for April 7. It's that easy.
Here's a screenshot from the SMS app on the iPhone 1. showing the setup confirmation, 2. checking the schedule for tomorrow and April 7, and 3. adding a dentist appointment at 3pm on April 23rd.
So there you have it! Again, this is Plus and higher only at this point. If all goes well we'll roll it out to all paid accounts down the road. Thanks again for using Backpack.
The Pussycat Dolls have broken up and fans finally have confirmation of it straight from founder Robin Antin, following many months of speculation and contradictory reports. In a statement released to blogger Perez Hilton, Antin confirms the PCD as we know them are done and will never do anything in the same format. Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Smartphones, VoIP, Mobile
What the heck is a “weblication?” The answer is in Riverturn’s new Google Voice web application that looks more like a native app, in fact, it fooled everyone I showed it to. The new app brings the Google Voice experience to your iPhone, allowing you to place calls, send and recieve SMS, and even browse recent calls. Even better, Riverturn did it by working around the App Store and its oft illogical approval process. Take that Apple.
In fact, the whole effort is very impressive. The app is actually running in Safari, but most users won’t realize it (I had to keep reminding myself). Voice Central, Riverturns name for the service, has the look of a great app but, according to Riverturn, runs faster thanks to the data running through their servers. Finger swiping delete calls, little icons on the bottom provide good-looking navigation, to contact details with the stock wallpaper background, Riverturn managed to make the Google Voice web app look like child’s play next to Voice Central Black Swan.
User simply navigate to the Riverturn website and the weblication loads in and users add the link to the home screen.
There are some limits to a weblication. For starters, Safari (which is running Voice Central) can’t access your contacts. Instead, Voice Central suggests syncing your data with Google Voice’s contacts to get around this inconvenience. Apple prevents this so websites don’t have access to your contacts. Another limit is a confirmation box pops up when you initialize calls, again set up by Apple to protect users from websites initiating calls without users consent. And finally, voice mails are played through the speaker, not the earphone. Little issues but something to be aware of.
Users can now download the program and register for free. A premium version is available that brings contact images through, allows a setting change for Do Not Disturb, unlimited history, inbox searches and product support (free version is supported via forums only). Premium is a whopping $6/year, on sale from $10/year.
Product page: [Riverturn]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Chris said he bought an AlienWare monitor through Dell's site and has been getting the runaround for more than two weeks, with no indication his order has shipped yet.
He writes:
I apologize in advance for probably not directing this to the right recipient I couldn’t quite figure out how to submit an experience to Consumerist. Anyway, I have a miserable story about Dell if anyone there is interested Thanks for listening. This is pretty much copied-and-pasted from what I just submitted to the BBB.On 2/22/10 I placed an order via AlienWare.com through Dell's website for a computer monitor (OptX AW2310). AlienWare makes great products and this complaint is not about them. I immediately received an e-mail that my order had been received. On 2/25/10 I received an e-mail from Dell saying that my order had shipped, my Mastercard had been charged, and the estimated delivery date was 3/2/10. The e-mail provided a link to Dell's website where I could obtain tracking information on the shipment. Between 2/25/10 and 3/2/10 I logged on several times to try to obtain tracking information. Each time this service was "temporarily unavailable." On 3/2/10 I decided to call Dell customer service to see if I could obtain the FedEx tracking number over the phone. To my surprise, the CSR told me that the shipper had never actually received the order, and that nothing was on its way. She apologized and told me that a "replacement" would be ordered right away. I was transferred to another CSR who confirmed my address. Both CSRs took down my e-mail address to provide me with the new order confirmation. Shortly after this conversation, I wrote Dell a complaint e-mail via their order support e-mail service. They claim that most inquiries will be answered within one business day. It has been almost 48 hours and I have not received any e-mails from Dell regarding my "replacement" order, nor my complaint e-mail.
So today I called Dell again. After being on hold for 30 minutes and transferred between two CSRs, I spoke to a man named Gorav (spelling may be wrong) who was very short with me. He repeatedly interrupted me and told me "I don't know what to tell you" and "The exchange has taken place but the order number won't be generated for another 24 to 48 hours." I asked him if there was ANY POSSIBLE WAY I could receive an e-mail confirming our discussion or this vague "replacement" order. He said no. When I asked to speak to a manager, he said that his manager wouldn't be able to provide me with any additional information or help.
I am frustrated and angry because Dell now has about $500 of my money and I have no idea whether my order is on its way or has even been processed, except for the word of a rude customer service representative probably located across the Pacific Ocean. I also wonder, had I never called on 3/2/10, would I ever have been informed that my order hadn't been shipped? Would they ever have told me? Why did I have to call customer service to discover this? Why was I even sent the "Your Order Has Shipped!" e-mail in the first place? Why hasn't Dell responded to my complaint e-mail for almost two business days? Why have I received no confirmation of the "replacement" order I made on 3/2/10? Why would it take up to 98 hours in order to receive an e-mail that this "replacement" order was processed?
Ironically, while on hold for a CSR, the automated message says repeatedly, "Did you know you can check your order status on Dell's webiste twenty four hours a day, seven days a week?" And every single time I tried over the course of several days, this feature was "temporarily unavailable."
All I want is my AlienWare monitor. I don't understand why this is so difficult. I have always heard bad stories about Dell but up until now have had the sense to avoid voluntarily buying their products. Now that AlienWare has been swallowed up by them, I'm unable to avoid going through Dell. Add me to the list of angry, frustrated, regretful Dell customers.
Chris followed up with this update yesterday:
I still haven’t gotten an order number or any follow-up to my complaint e-mail. It’s been about 136 hours since the CSR said my “replacement order” was made, as well as when I sent my complaint e-mail to Dell (at around 4:00 p.m. on 3/2/10). It’s been about 88 hours since my last conversation with Dell’s rude CSR who told me that it can take up to 48 hours to “generate a new order number.”I’m beginning to think this is all a joke. I guess I’ll just let the BBB handle it from here. Dell’s still got $500 of my money and I have no indication (except for the word of the CSR) if I’m to receive anything in return. ...
I told him to take his complaint upstairs with an Executive Email Carpet Bomb to the addresses listed on this post. We'll post a follow-up when Chris tells us how things play out.
In light of Valve’s confirmation that several Steam games are headed to the Macintosh, AppleInsider has scored an interview with John Cook, director of Steam development at Valve. The Q&A sheds light on the process of porting the Steam online gaming system to the Mac, as well as the role Apple played in its development.
Further to the news last week that b5media had dumped its women bloggers is confirmation since that time that all remaining previous contract bloggers at b5media have been terminated.
We don’t have numbers, and although we’d suggested previously the remaining numbers (prior to the women bloggers purge) might be around 100-150, it would appear that the number may be 50-75, in that b5media has not been actively replacing bloggers leaving since the change of management last year.
Included in the final termination round were bloggers who had been blogging for b5media since early in its inception. As per last rounds, many ex-b5media bloggers have moved on to set up their own blogs, while others are seeking new writing opportunities.
Problogger and Digital Photography School, both sites owned by Darren Rowse but part of the b5media network from its earlier days have also been dumped from the network.
The new b5media strategy of having New York linked bloggers hired by former Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers continues despite celeb/ fashion site Crushable struggling to establish itself.
b5media has also launched a new site called “The Gloss,” which appears to be a beauty site of sorts (we say appears to be because they don’t have an active about page.) Notable with the site is that the design seems to be ripped straight from the Gawker Media playbook.
Further to the news last week that b5media had dumped its women bloggers is confirmation since that time that all remaining previous contract bloggers at b5media have been terminated.
We don’t have numbers, and although we’d suggested previously the remaining numbers (prior to the women bloggers purge) might be around 100-150, it would appear that the number may be 50-75, in that b5media has not been actively replacing bloggers leaving since the change of management last year.
Included in the final termination round were bloggers who had been blogging for b5media since early in its inception. As per last rounds, many ex-b5media bloggers have moved on to set up their own blogs, while others are seeking new writing opportunities.
Problogger and Digital Photography School, both sites owned by Darren Rowse but part of the b5media network from its earlier days have also been dumped from the network.
The new b5media strategy of having New York linked bloggers hired by former Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers continues despite celeb/ fashion site Crushable struggling to establish itself.
b5media has also launched a new site called “The Gloss,” which appears to be a beauty site of sorts (we say appears to be because they don’t have an active about page.) Notable with the site is that the design seems to be ripped straight from the Gawker Media playbook.
Do you make it a habit of falling asleep at night while watching Windows Media Center? Today we are going to take a look at the MC7 Sleep Timer for Windows 7 Media Center. This simple little plugin allows you to schedule an automatic shutdown time in Media Center.
Note: At this point MC7 Sleep Timer doesn’t work with extenders. If you’re using ClamAV or Panda it may detect this plugin as a virus, we’ve tested it and this is a false positive for these two antivirus apps.
Download and install MC7 Sleep Timer. (See download below)
After the installation is finished, you will find MC7 Sleep Timer located in the Media Center Extras Library. Click on the tile to open the timer and configure your settings.
The MC7 Sleep Timer will open in full screen mode. You can choose to shutdown the PC after 30 or 60 minutes, create a custom length shutdown timer at any 5 minute interval, or select the exact time you want the PC to shutdown. After setting your PC to shutdown, you’ll get an audio confirmation.
To set a custom timer length, scroll to the “Custom timer” option and click right or left on your Media Center remote or, the right or left arrow keys, to choose how many minutes before shutdown.
To schedule a shutdown for a certain time, browse to the “Shutdown at time” button, and scroll right or left with the arrow keys on the keyboard or remote. When you’ve chosen your time, hit “Enter” on the keyboard or “OK” on the remote.
Clicking the “Monitor Off” button will turn off only the monitor and “Cancel Timer” will cancel your shutdown request.
If you often find yourself falling asleep every night watching Media Center and then fumbling and stumbling in the middle of the night to shutdown your computer, MC7 Sleep timer might just be a perfect addition to your Media Center setup.
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While PlayStation still hasn't confirmed whether its motion controller will be called the Arc, the rumor mill has gone one step further this week with a forum-poster claiming it'll work alongside a Wii-like nunchuk.
GDC is kicking off over in San Francisco this week, so if ever there was a venue to announce a new add-on—or even confirmation of the name—that would be it.
The forum-poster at NeoGAF, by the name of Ichinisan, reckons the pictures he saw of the nunchuk included an analog stick, plus X and O buttons, along with L1 and L2 buttons under the D-Pad. The wand-shaped Arc meanwhile apparently has "one very big button on top" (no word if s/he meant the big glowing globe, or something else), and X, O, triangle and square buttons. The trigger is the 'T' command, according to this mysterious poster—who could very well be full of shit, as he's just a junior member of the forums. He does comment that "it's actually long, not like the Wii Nunchuk"—which measures 22.9 x 17.8 x 5.7cm. [NeoGAF via VG247 via TechRadar]
Vitaminwater has introduced its newest flavor: Vitaminwater Connect (named after Facebook Connect)… and they are giving away 100,000 free bottles of Connect to their 1.2 million Facebook fans. If you remember, over the last few months, Vitaminwater ran a major Facebook campaign that allowed fans to create their own flavors and vote on the best concoctions: “made by fans, for fans on Facebook”:
The announced flavor is Vitaminwater Connect… which will arrive in stores shortly and carry the Facebook logo on it:
As it prepares to hit shelves, Vitaminwater is giving away free bottles to the first 100,000 Facebook fans who request one. Users request their free bottle via their fan page and the coupon “tab”:
Once you request the bottle, two interesting things happen:
1. you are encouraged to share your discovery to your Facebook friends… which is how I found this offer
2. you receive a confirmation page that also changes the fan page’s logo to denote that you have accepted the offer (notice the “request accepted” portion of the graphic)
As we have seen time and time again, people love offers, samples and customized ’stuff’ (product, content, etc). With the Connect flavor campaign, Vitaminwater has effectively crowdsourced the flavor, marketing and launch.
Hurry and get your free bottle by becoming a fan at http://www.facebook.com/vitaminwater
Continue reading Windows Phone 7 Series demo video reveals new apps, screens
Windows Phone 7 Series demo video reveals new apps, screens originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Continue reading Windows Phone 7 Series demo video reveals new apps, screens
Windows Phone 7 Series demo video reveals new apps, screens originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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So here's the deal. Yesterday the image above (center one) popped up on an accessory and parts supplier website labeled as OEM Blackberry Pearl 9100 Keyboard Keypad Black. I think the notion of a full qwerty on a Pearl caught everybody by surprise, including me, though conceptually it could be pretty awesome - more intuitive than SureType and if they get the keys right it could be easy to type on. So plausible, but still "rumor." Over the course of the day though, I received confirmation from a couple of sources who verified that the Pearl would in fact be offered in two keyboard configurations - SureType and Full Qwerty, and hence updated the original post to say that it looks like we will in fact someday be seeing a Full Physical Qwerty on a new Pearl. Cool stuff.
But dreaming on it last night and also looking at some emails we received from CrackBerry readers (having the same dreams and thoughts as me apparently - thx to Michael for his great email in particular), this morning we took another closer look at what we were seeing. And what it seems is that this new keyboard that showed up yesterday would look MUCH more at home on a PEARL FLIP device than on a PEARL CANDYBAR device. Note how the button configuration around the trackpad matches the original Pearl Flip as does the more rounded corners above the buttons. Looking at the image on the far right that surfaced previously of the Pearl 9100, the new full-qwerty keyboard (at least the one shown in the image above) wouldn't fit so smoothly onto the candybar style. The candybar design puts the buttons in a row and it's a much straighter line across the top below the display. Also, the current Pearl Flip uses the "guitar frets" -- akin to those on the BlackBerry Bold series -- so there is more Pearl Flip precedent for the look of this new full qwerty keyboard to go on a Pearl Flip than it does on a Pearl candybar which we have already seen in 9100 candybard photos does not feature the frets.
So all that said, it could be what what we're looking at here in the months ahead is not only the release of a BlackBerry Pearl 9100 in candy bar configuration, but also the release of a BlackBerry Pearl Flip 9100 (or 91xx) that features a full physical qwerty. We really haven't heard anything previously about a Pearl Flip update though with so many codenames "out there" it's hard to keep things straight, though it does make sense that RIM would put out a new revision at some point to the flip form factor. Heck, with 3G, a Full Physical Qwerty and OS 6.0 with Webkit browser, it might even be a pretty nice phone to carry around in your pocket. Going with this theory of a new Pearl Flip that uses this new keyboard, looking at the photos above you can see that the new keyboard/button assembly would take up less height that than current Pearl Flip layout - meaning it could be a tighter device and not look so monsterous when you crack it open. But also the fact that the whole assembly is so tight also lends to RIM likely being able to toss a full keyboard onto the standard keyboard if they want to. So there are a lot of potential options here for what you could see get released down the road. Maybe it's just a Pearl 9100 with SureType. Maybe it's a 9100 with your choice of SureType or Full Qwerty. Maybe it's a candybar and a flip, with the flip getting the full qwerty and the candybar getting SureType. Or maybe it's both candybar and flip and you can have your choice of keyboard on either.
It's a thought anyways that makes for some Friday Fun Speculation. Let us know what you think in the comments!
CrackBerry.com's feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Friday Fun Speculation: Could RIM Also Be Working on an Update to the BlackBerry Pearl Flip?
In its press release announcing an April 3 release date for the iPad, Apple calls the device “magical and revolutionary” (we can’t make stuff like that up). But what will it do for Apple’s sales?
Mobile-Internet analyst Greg Sterling has a good post looking at some very preliminary numbers that basically show nobody knows yet what is going to happen. In one graph, he shows that although the number of people who say they are going to buy an iPad isn’t very high, the number who planned to purchase the first iPhone was even lower — and we all know how that turned out.
There has been debate about the functionality of the iPad. Some reviewers complained about the lack of Flash in particular. But UBS Apple analyst Maynard Um writes that the iPad is likely to evolve — “just as the original 2G iPhone evolved to become more than just an iPod with phone capabilities (recall the original iPhone did not launch with an app store)”.
The April 3 release date is a little bit later than the date some had been predicting for the iPad launch. The company initially said the product would be available “in late March,” and there have been rumors of production delays as that time approached.
But Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says he had anticipated a launch date of April 1 all along. “Production issues, in my mind, are not days or a week in time. Production issues are when things slip by weeks. So I almost see this date as confirmation that there weren’t production delays, and it doesn’t impact any of our numbers,” he said.
In its press statement announcing an April 3 release date for the iPad, Apple calls the device “magical and revolutionary” (we can’t make stuff like that up). But what will it do for Apple’s sales?
Mobile-Internet analyst Greg Sterling has a good post looking at some very preliminary numbers that basically indicate nobody knows yet what is going to happen. In one graph, he shows that although the number of people who say they are going to buy an iPad isn’t very high, the number who planned to purchase the first iPhone was even lower — and we all know how that turned out.
There has been debate about the functionality of the iPad. Some reviewers have complained about the lack of Flash in particular. But UBS Apple analyst Maynard Um writes that the iPad is likely to evolve — “just as the original 2G iPhone evolved to become more than just an iPod with phone capabilities (recall the original iPhone did not launch with an app store).”
The April 3 release date is a little bit later than the date some had been predicting for the iPad launch. The company initially said the product would be available “in late March,” and there have been rumors of production delays as that time approached.
But Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says he had anticipated a launch date of April 1 all along. “Production issues, in my mind, are not days or a week in time. Production issues are when things slip by weeks. So I almost see this date as confirmation that there weren’t production delays, and it doesn’t impact any of our numbers,” he said in an interview.
