Some tech coming at ya

So I’m gonna get nerdy on you for just a second, but it might be in your own best interest. And I’ll even bulletpoint it for you so you can skip the really dorky parts and go right to the good stuff. You’ve probably noticed a trend if you read this, which I think you are the only one. Ha. The trend, among other trends like selfless acts of promotion and contrition, long winding diatribes, uncanny cynicism, and general malaise, well, the trend is that I end up doing most of my tech stuff on mobile devices and platforms and this will be no different.

Isn't it pretty? Click for more story.

First up – HTC is just gettting  ridiculously ahead of the game with their software and the hardware isn’t far behind. They have announced that Firefox mobile (the mini me of what I am blogging with right now) is going to be ported to the HTC Touch Pro later this week. This week. Now that is dedication to say “um, yeah we will get to it…..soonish, maybe. Then BAM! Oh yeah, that browser thing? Nailing it like a sorority girl against a dumpster behind a towny bar this friday. You’re welcome, dueces.

Kogan Agora. Better Q. Click for more story.

Second up. Swinging for the fences, but yet still in the on deck circle. Go figure. So this phone has been in the works since Google  announced Android and yet it has still not been built. Why you ask? Cause Google is a dick with a cicle, that’s why. Well, not completely true, but true enough that I’ll post it. Credibility, it makes the world go round. The original design from Kogan (who I can only infer is some twisted industrial designer gone mad) didn’t meet Google’s specs so they canned it. Now that it is up to snuff, it’s going to be produced and in the mid to upper range price point. It is more or less a slicker, better, open sourcier Moto Q. That works. That part’s important, don’t forget that.

Oh and lastly, iPhone software 2.2.1 ships. I am willing to bet your iTunes will let you know. Also if your shit is jailbroken, wait till the dev team gives the go ahead, you can’t lose the hackity goodness over some .1 envy. Oh, and Apple got their patent. Palm it’s on like donkey kong.

That’s alliteration homes.

Trying not to turn into a tech blog

As hard as I try, I just can’t avoid not talking about these kinds of things. I am a tech junkie, one of those people we will second guess where I should by a couple pillows so I can get the best deal – then go drop 2 large on a laptop because I walked by the store. I bought an iphone without even checking when my other contract was up. Then I shopped around diligently for about a week trying to find where the best and cheapest place to get my pants hemmed was.

Fucking nuts. And this is why I’ll probably never be rich. Instead of saving up money for, oh I don’t know, a sound business investment; I’d rather spend it on shiny pieces of metal that are the single fastest depreciating items in the world. And I also want a new TV. I’m stupid.

Oh well, we all have our own vices (I’m looking at you internet porn addicts) (and red bull drinkers, I think you have a caffeine problem). I mean really, the stuff is damn near siezure inducing.

I will post about more stuff in Raleigh – honest, hand over the heart – you should see me! Actually I think there will be some more interesting stuff to talk about in the next couple days or so. So keep your earholes open. Or rather your eyes. Unless you can actually translate a web page into speech using mind power, in which case I’d really like you to write about here cause I think we’ll be famous. Bigger than Bono, and he is the biggest peice of shit out there. Literally, I saw it on a respectable cartoon once.

Now, on to what I was wasting time at work for in the first place.

Todays lesson is number five in your workbooks and it is about cell phones. New ones. So I’m sure you’ve all seen the ads that are really annoying. The ones with the guy from the office doing the voice over then they don’t show you the device till two weeks later even though most of us have seen the photos of it out in the wild about a year ago when they said it was going to come out next the the iphone 3G then they delayed it another year and missed that boat but now claim it’ll still take it down even though they are running around with their heads cut off trying to get the thing in stores before black friday which won’t even be a big deal because everything and everyone in theis country is broke.

Whew, check that out! An entire paragraph without puncuations. I even held my breath while I types it. So the new Blackberry Storm is going to retail about 219 with a two year, 289 with a one year and 519 if you just walk in and out with it. Pricey. But I’ve got to say, from everything I’ve read about it and seen the actual demos, this thing is slick. And people love their balckberrys more than their own children. Look to see a lot of these. Verizon is making their formal announcement in a couple weeks at most.

Update: The storm goes on sale to the general public the 21st for 199.

Also, the HTC Fuze is now stateside. Not as great as the Touch HD, but we can deal with it. It looks great and they say is bulletproof, but it is only through AT&T and I wouldn’t want to compete in that circle.

Lastly, Sony just announced that they are taking all the DRM restrictions off all their content in itunes. That’s right fuck you labels! Wait, sony is the label. Thanks Sony!

By the way…..

T-Mobile introduced the G1 today for the masses in the US. Now we can have it too! Not quite as much fanfare as they thought, but none the less – they have a dude on stilts. Impressive.

More after the jump.

Depressing…..HA!

So even after the last week of terrible news, there is always a silver lining. Check out these next four posts for the best of thursday. And what a great day it was, I got macs, half naked girls, people going to jail, all sorts of cool shit. And even something about events in downtown raleigh. Yeah, I know, the whole reason this blog was started. I realize I go on rambles, and when the new format comes out the will be better avoided, but until then, you have to sort through the shit to find the diamond. Good luck, I can get it pretty deep…..

So to get the ball rolling, I was right about the new lappytops…..

More big ass art festival…..this has been a good fall run down here……

Read on bitches!

Slingbox

So some of you may already know the awesomeness that is the slingbox. You plug this media darling into you dvr then you watch it places. And by places, I mean anywhere. It used to be that you needed a broadband connected device, by it a media center tv, computer, phone, psp, you get the idea. Now they finally released the slingcatcher. Think of it as the gay sex partner to the slingbox’s pitching. I’ll wait for the visual. Yeah, to little black boxes waxing…..sexy. This guy can control your slingbox and therefore anything connected to your slingbox at home. There is no spoon.

I guess we are all alky’s

Listen to this random act of greatness.

It seems that google is trying to help the world have less drunken sex. Or at least help keep them from having to explain harassment at the work meeting on monday.

I feel like I should preamble a little more before revealing this little gem. You’ve done it. Google you sultry siren. One more reason to change from hotmail. You get us google. You really do. And you post it on your official blog to let me know.

The new version of gmail has mail goggles. It’s even fun to say. Mail goggles. This benevolent feature prevents you from drunken late night (or midday if that’s how you get down) ramblings to others that might not be so thrilled to hear from you face down in the gutter at 4 AM. The nifty little add in, which can be turned on and off, makes you answer a series of simple arithmetic questions before it will let you send a message.

Yeah, I know. Awesome. Fucking Awesome. My god, this is ingenious.

I’m not sure if I should be thrilled or disheartened that one – this is an epidemic the proportions of which reached the highest levels of the world’s largest programming conglomorate and spurred them to form a skunkworks crack team to prevent the virus from spreading…..or two, that we are all so haplessly drunk as to need this feature. While I do think it is one of the most entertaining things I have heard of in a while, I have yet to use it. But as one who loves a challenge, I might just keep it on all day in an attempt to keep my mind sharp. Or prevent me from sending an email. The little golden widget can be set to start keeping your boozy ass in check as early as 8 AM. Yeah.

I think that a natural progression for this is next – text goggles. then call goggles. If it could let me blow right into the phone, that would cut down some time. The only drawback I can see is if I am really in trouble and end up crying next to a laptop because I am too drunk to get a hold of a friend to pick me up from the drug house the police are about to raid and can’t figure out what 7×8 is. Why I am at a laptop and in a drug house I don’t know. I am trying to make a point here. So the real question is if you are too drunk to figure out 32-17, are you too drunk to navigate to the settings page and turn it off? I bet you can!

So enjoy your white russian in peace knowing that at 3 Am no one will be sending any emails. Anwhere.

No US love….

So if anyone was waiting to get their hands on the shiny new HTC touch dream or HD…….you won’t! Ha, you thought something good was coming huh? No today junior! Where’s that HTC going? Nowhere! That’s right. It seems that in all the hoopla of getting the first Andriod mobile handset out there they sort of…..kinda forgot……to release it…here. So those snobby bastards across the pond get to wave their googly goodness at us like lighters. Lighters that spell out fuck you. The released a statement on twitter that says they would like to release it, but by the time they do it will be old news. Old news? If I remember correctly you were supposed to unseat the 3G, but now it is not news? They have been selling the iPhone like crazy for upwards of a year now – at 10 million and counting – I’m sure you could probably slip a few in there right? This is rediculous. At least at the end of the statement they said they had cool stuff coming. That was like an hour ago though, so it’s pretty much old news by now. For fuck’s sake.

Hey non iphone people!

So if you are not the iPhone type, or are just now getting into the smartphone arena – hurry up I emailed you 30 seconds ago, why haven’t you responded already – there is a new kid in town. This is the blackberry storm and it is an iPhone made by Blackberry. If anything, it is original. I know, I know, I kid – but really – everyone seems to really love their crackberrys so I guess I can’t knock it till I’ve done more than play with Anna’s while she’s driving. Anyway, it is going to sell really well I’m sure and take down the iPhone as the number two best selling phone. Ever. Actually in all fairness it has some features that the iPhone doesn’t. Too much to list here but it goes landscape in any mode, copy and paste, etc. The iPhone is prettier and has the app store, but it is a pretty tough battle against RIM. They know their shit.

They also have a fliphone. So…yeah. Fliphone.

Tech geeks unite!

So I am a self loathing tech dork. Pretty stereotypical really. I follow computer world blogs, I can tell you when higher density DD3 RAM will come out. I play with Rubik’s cubes. I live in my parent’s basement and haven’t gotten laid in two years. Ok, the last two are a little stretch of the truth (thanks Flad and Anna respectively!). The gist of it is, I do follow everything from carrier’s coverage areas and speeds, to new mobile handsets, and especially laptops. So rather than just regurtitate someone else’s press releases, I’ll link them with cat like quickness! Plus, I’ll even throw in a brief synapsis for those who can only keep the attention span of a chinchilla. Hey! I’m talking to you McFly!

I already mentioned the G1 so this will be about some others. Mostly smartphones, but there are a couple stupid ones sprinkled in there. Zing! They get made fun of by the other phones, and spend most of the time staring at the wall with the duncecap on. One is by LG and this one could be slick. Two others are Verizon only, and most people I know around here don’t have them but I’ll link anyway. Lastly, these two are the hot cheerleader with the IQ of a small soapdish.

Secondly, new macbooks are coming out in two weeks. Hold on to your drawers, cause they are about to be soiled! I’m in the market, so maybe I care a little more about these than some others. But I will sprinkle in some tidbits from other makers. Anyway, most everything you read out there is speculation, but a buddy of mine over at macsoda put together a wishlist/rumor list that is pretty on the money to what everyone else is saying. We will know in two weeks. I can barely contain myself. Also LG (they are really on top of their shit lately) is dropping some really cheap slick netbooks. For those keeping score at home a netbook is the new name for the sub notebook models. I.E. tiny as shit. Read the specs. Finally for you Dell officianados, they might give you a shiny new (orange maybe?) laptop! That’s right, step right this way and enjoy the new full length feature “We use substandard parts from other manufacturers that burn”. This sordid tale of recalls features non other than NVidia graphics cards that fail. So if you can prove that a crappy graphics card is in yours, you might get a new one. Right now the lawsuit is pending, but you can bet your soiled drawers that if Dell and NVidia can get out cheaper with a recall, they will.

So I’m spent. If you follow all these links, you’ll realize how big of a dork I am. Welp, back to the Rubik’s cube. I’m up to the 5×5 professor’s cube! Hooray!

The G1

So people are asking me about this new G1 phone that supposedly just came out. For starters, this phone is the final delivery of a OS that Google said was coming out at least two years ago. So yeah, take that Google. You’re slow. Anyway, this new phone is actually not built by Google, it’s made by HTC. It has changed names quite a bit through the months, being called the dream, touch, touchdream, hd pro, which I think they finally settled on. it is marketed right now on T-Mobile which has great reception on that one street corner in Raleigh, but I guess it’s going to get better now that they bought Suncom around here. Anyway, that’s a whole different debate, but the real deal here is Google’s Andriod OS, or the brains and operating system of many more phones to come.

So people are probably asking themselves, “should I get one? What does Andriod mean for me?” That’s a very good question Billy. Let this government prepared film circa 1950 tell you what you need to know. Duck and Cover.

Everyone is touting this as an iPhone killer. It won’t do that anytime in the next two years, but it does have a very good foot on the track to topple some of the smartphone king of the hills. Nokia is leading the charge followed by RIM (though slipping lately) and Symbian who both run their own proprietary OS by the way. Where Google is different, and where Windows mobile has succeded for a brief glittering moment, before fantastically collapsing it’s own market by not being able to make a good mobile OS, is that it is adaptable and open. What that means for you is that other manu. are targeting Andriod for their new phones. Not Windows. If Andriod can deliver just a fraction of what the jesusphone can, then everyone but Blackberry and Apple will be running it. It will flood the smartphone market, flood the developer market, and the carrier market.

Yes, red shirt in the back.

“doesn’t this found eerily familiar to what took down apple back in the early 90′s?”

Thanks captain obvious, I was getting there.

No it’s not familar, it is exactly what bankrupted Apple when it competed with Microsoft in the early 90′s. Jobs even was quoted saying the computer wars are over, Windows won. The proliferation of Windows is unequalled in any market. What has saved Apple and what makes the iPhone so much better of a product than anything out there, is their end to end user experience and the superior design and implementation of their hardware. This is the biggest difference between the HTC and the iPhone. HTC and Google still aren’t the same company and later on when Andriod gets stuck on other phones, it will be this piecemeal kit of parts that gave us the distaste of Windows on multiple manu. platforms. It’s why HP is making its own OS for it’s desktops. Google has left a lot out of Andriod for a reason, it thinks the developer arena is going to fill in the gaps. Which it will. In a while. For now that means empty OS.

So sum it up this way, Apple computers went head to head with Windows. The Apple was a great user experience and was so well engineered end to end by a single company, but it was only available and tightly controlled by that single company. Windows was available to any PC maker in any configuration for a price and Microsoft didn’t care what you did with it, but it was an inferior product. Microsoft won the war.

Apple’s iPhone is going head to head with Andriod. The iphone is a great end to end user experience by one company, but it is tightly controlled by that company to insure the experience. Andriod is available to any manu. in any configuration, any carrier for any service, and any developer for any application.

This time the iPhone will win the war. Apple won’t repeat mistakes. Plus they have a foot in with millions of 3g’s already sold. So my advice – get the iPhone, it really is the best product, and wait to see if Andriod catches on. With all it’s shortcomings, I think it will be a while.

That’s enough for this morning, read chapter 7 in the textbook and bring your reports to class on Monday.