Got gdgt?

When Peter Rojas and Ryan Block left Engadget and Gizmodo a few months back, they said they were going to be collaborating on a new and exciting venture. That venture just went live and is called gdgt, a social networking site devoted to technogeeks and chipheads who are WAY too emotionally involved with their hi-tech toys and love to bore their friends by talking and sharing information about them…you know, for people like US.

Here is a little of what Ryan says about gdgt…

While the core concepts that drive the site — gadgets and community — will always stay the same, what we’re most excited about is the fact that we can use gdgt as the foundation for building tons of new features and tools for the gadget world. Stuff like the gadget finder — which lets you search for devices based on specs (finally!) — is only the start. We’re already working like crazy thinking up lots of new stuff to introduce over the coming months. And since we’re building this site for you, it goes without saying that the gdgt community has a direct say in what we’re working on. (Hit us up in gdgt feedback to tell us what you want from gdgt, or just what’s on your mind.)

So check out gdgt…in my opinion, this sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun and will be a valuable and unique addition and enhancement to your favorite gadget sites on the web…like MobilitySite.

Watch the intro video below and if you DO sign up for gdgt, drop a friend request to me..user name BardHaven.

 

           

World’s smallest nation finally gets cell service

In a world where cell phones seem ubiquitous, and many of us feel naked without our mobile phones, it is good to remember that there are places in the world that are just beginning to discover the freedom that mobile communication can bring.  Starting in August the tiny island nation of Nauru will get its first cell service from Digicell.

Nauru is the world’s smallest independent island nation and is located in the south pacific just 26 miles south of the equator and has a population of around 10,000 people. Digicell is the largest communications company in the Caribbean, and is rapidly growing in the pacific to give access to some of the most remote islands there. 

While most of us are lusting after the next new phone, and arguing about the benefits of capacitive touch screens versus resistive touch screens, it is exciting to think about how the worlds most remote people living on a tiny outpost will use mobile technology to make their lives better.

Source: Cellular-News

           

Phone Creeper Espionage Suite, windows mobile Ultimate Spy App!

Guys, are you curious what your “Old Lady” is up too when your not around, or when she’s out on a “girls night out”?

Well, worry no more. I present Phone Creeper Espionage Suite!

Chetstriker has created an app that will help a lot of parinoid guys sleep at night, (and get some in major trouble if the old lady finds out you’ve put this app on her phone).

This app will work on any WinMo phone running WM 5 and later.

You simply install the app on the windows device, then send SMS’s to the phone to start spying. Here are just a few things you can do:

• secretly and remotely read incoming / outgoing sms
• secretly and remotely view call history
• create a pop-up message on phone
• send a secret fart sound
• secretly and remotely listen to person. (Initiates silent call back of person to your phone with thier speaker phone enabled)

It is all remotely controled by another phone. Simply send a SMS command to the phone and start spying.

Just be sure of your state and local laws on invading others privacy with this app.

           

The death of XP has been GREATLY exaggerated!

 
Looks like Microsoft has caved a bit and extended the life of XP one more time.  According to this article in Computerworld, Microsoft has extended distribution of the aging O/S well into 2011 – past the point where Windows 7 will be released.

I’m a Vista user now myself but saying I upgraded it out of need is a stretch.  Vista is fine (and Windows 7 shows promise) but MS had no idea how deeply entrenched XP was going to become.

The O/S upgrade cycle will go on – but those of you still happily running XP don’t rush out to buy either of the new O/S offerings until you’re darn good and ready.  A more compatible and solid piece of software has never been written and just ain’t going to die any time soon.

-CB

           

A Film for Father’s Day

OK, I admit it, this is maudlin as hell…and I saw the payoff coming from several miles away.

Still, I imagine it has a message for many of the fathers out there in MobilityLand, as it did for me (in fact, it made me tear up like an idiot, telegraphed or no).

Happy Father’s Day to all you sons and former sons out there, young and old.

 

           

Palm Pre fans line up to buy the new smartphone

Saturday was the day for fans of the Palm Pre – Palm’s hot up-and-coming SmartPhone.  One of the guys I work with has been really anticipating getting his – his computer has has screen-saver pictures of the device for weeks!

The reviews of the device seem to be mixed.  The new “Web O/S” is said to be pretty impressive.  The device itself is supposed to be pretty nice as well though maybe a little lightweight for business users.  Time will tell.

The launch yesterday morning was seen as not being quite as hyped up as the launch of the Apple iPhone but from what I’ve read there was a shortage of devices at the outset.

Anyway … it’s here.  I’m looking forward to seeing the one my coworker brings to the office tomorrow. He was probably camping on Friday night!

Read more about it here or click the Computerworld logo below.

-CB

           

AvantGoing, Going…

The end of an era in mobile computing is upon us. AvantGo, once a must-have application for many mobile users, is shutting down as of June 30th. The web-clipping service allowed users to download entire stories from such A-list media players as The New York Times, CNet and The Sporting News via their PC’s internet connection while syncing. No measely stubs or headlines as one gets from RSS feeds, no need to continue paging back to a website. These stories could then be read off line, in full, anywhere, anytime.

Starting this weeks, users have been discovering bright orange banners on most AvantGo pages saying that such content will soon no longer be available, and are receiving notices such as this…

After June 30, 2009, AvantGo will no longer be providing mobile Web content for sync or online access, and you will not be able to access or update your AvantGo content or account.

Since my first Tungsten E, AvantGo has always been one of the first applications I install on any device. It has been with me for years now through Palms and Clies and iPaqs and smartphones, and is still an application I open daily on my Moto Q. Born in the days before there were passable web browsers on every phone or PDA, when unlimited data packages were the province of only the most wealthy or best connected and when WiFi access points were few and far between, AvantGo was a lifesaver for many of us content-addicts. It allowed us to get the news of our choice in an easily readable handheld format, via our normal daily sync. No muss, no fuss, no long wait, no high phone bills.

To be honest, as mobile data speeds have been increasing, and data prices dropping I have been waiting for AvantGo to give up for some time now. When the iPhone ushered in the era of every media outlet from the New York Times to the New Haven Pork Breeders Gazette creating their own branded applications, I knew it was time to begin looking elsewhere for my lunch time reading material. The decision by AvantGo’s parent company, Sybase, to pull the plug on the web content service and move towards SMS marketing is certainly not surprising and likely a good business move…but sad none the less.

June 30th will be the last time I see that happy message “Saving updated Web Pages to your Device…” as I breathlessly await the latest NBA news…though I will miss the ease and user friendly nature of AvantGo for a long time to come.

           

What a FriendFeed You Have in Jesus?

Technology continues to sneak it’s way into every aspect of our daily lives, including our personal religious beliefs. There have been applications on most all mobile platforms to provide religious readings or instruction in many different faiths for quite some time now.

However, now the Vatican has kicked the level of electronic observance up a notch by apparently making the Pope utterly wired, debuting a brand new Web Portal for Benedict as well as custom iPhone and FaceBook applications.

The Jerusalem Post reports…

In its first day of operation Thursday, the Pope2You portal gathered some 45,000 contacts and 500,000 page views, while a Facebook application that sends postcards with photos of Benedict and excerpts from his messages was used around 10,000 times, the head of the project said.

Also available on the portal is an application for iPhone and iPod Touch that gives surfers video and audio news on the pope’s trips and speeches, as well as on Catholic events worldwide.

No word yet on how many friends the Pope has on Twitter, or if he or Jesus have Plurk accounts. However, by allowing the Vatican to choose FaceBook, it seems that The Almighty has entered the great social website debate and decreed that MySpace is, in fact, tired and “soooo last Millennium”.

           

Receive Web Site Updates Via EMail

So you are not into RSS feeds on your mobile device (or even on your PC) then Don Sorcinelli from http://www.sorcinelli.net has a tip for you!

For those that are unaware, RSS provides a way of receiving web site updates without having to visit the actual website itself. It does, however, require software (an RSS reader) to receive the updates. If you want to receive updates but don’t want to go through the hassles of using an RSS reader, there is an alternative – getting the updates in email.

A great example of a service that sends RSS updates to your Inbox is the appropriately named Feed My Inbox website.

Simply enter in the full URL (web address) of the website and your email address, then click on the “Submit” button. You will then be sent a confirmation email (to ensure that someone is not trying to set up feeds using your email address). Follow the instructions, and voila! – whenever new posts are made to the website, you will receive that post in email.

If you are looking for a way to keep up with the latest news here, simply use Feed My Inbox and enter  – it’s just that simple!

via

           

Why Text Messages are limited to 160 Characters

I always wondered this myself.  I had certain ideas like maybe 160 out of 255 characters in an Ethernet Packet or some other method of squeezing the data in.  Turns out that my thoughts on that were not all that far-fetched…

Looking for a data pipeline that would fit these micro messages, Hillebrand came up with the idea to harness a secondary radio channel that already existed on mobile networks. This smaller data lane had been used only to alert a cell phone about reception strength and to supply it with bits of information regarding incoming calls. Voice communication itself had taken place via a separate signal.

Read the rest of the article here or click on the image above.

-CB

           

Illinois programmer sues Google over “Android”

 
The owner of an obscure Illinois software development company is suing Google and everyone else in the Open Handset Alliance over their use of the word “Android.”

The suit has made public the fact that Google’s own attempts to trademark the word have been rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), largely because the software developer, Eric Specht, had been granted a PTO trademark for his company’s name, Android Data.

The Future Branch Office: Download now

Specht filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, seeking an injunction on Android-branded products, which would include T-Mobile’s G1 smartphone, and $94 million in damages for trademark infringement. Besides Google, the Alliance includes a set of blue chip technology firms such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, China Mobile, Samsung and Vodafone.

Click Here (Or on the NetworkWorld Logo) to read the rest of the article…

-CB :D

           

HTC Touch HD – Fix for Device Not Vibrating

I’ve been using an HTC Touch HD for a while now and I am really happy with it. I purchased it in a not-so-successful transaction (see details here), but after a rough start, the device itself was just excellent. The high resolution screen is bright, clear and gorgeous looking; the device’s performance is just great, I’ve only had two issues so far with it and one of them I already knew from before I purchased it. Here’s what I’ve found so far…

The first issue is at&t’s lack of support for all 3G bands and the HTC Touch HD’s lack of support of the 3G bands used in the US. I already knew this when I bought it, and sometimes it is a bit frustrating having to wait for some pages to download. But, hey, I knew I would be going back to Edge when I bought my HD. It’s a pain in the neck, but I was willing to drop 3G in exchange for everything else the device has to offer. I still do. I am not going to get into the argument of why a carrier chooses not to support one of the available bands or why a manufacturer will not release the same device on different continents… too many variables come to play, and frankly the manufacturer is still at the mercy of what the carriers want to release within that particular device. The more configuration options the manufacturer offers the carriers, the more likely the carrier will use and support a device with positive results. On the other hand, I think that the unlocked version that is sold on the market, should have included all 3G bands so that no matter where you try to use it, it will work as intended.

Finally the second issue that kept popping up every now and then was that after some heavy usage, I would have the vibrating feature stop working both when replacing the regular ringtone and when pressing some of the buttons, including the device’s hardware buttons for picking up, hanging up a call, home and the back/cancel/OK button. I must say this issue was starting to drive me crazy. Setting a phone to vibrate is such a basic feature.

Read on to see the solution for this.

[Read more]

           

Looking for a job? Work on Windows EIGHT!

Good grief man … I just [finally] upgraded my system to Vista, am thinking about going to Windows 7 when they release it and now you’re talking about Windows 8? So it would seem, according to this article published in  Redmond Magazine.

Obviously Version 8 would be several years away but sometimes this gets crazy.  For some reason I thought I read somewhere else that Windows 7 was going to be the last major release for awhile.  Guess not!

One thing’s for sure; there’s not going to be any lack of work for this Olde Country Windows programmer for a long time!  Click on the Logo below to read more about it.

-CB

           

AppStore: 1 Billion Downloads in 9 Months

Following the previous post with the 1 million figure, here’s something with 1 billion!

Few days ago the 1 billionth download from the Apple App Store was done, which means this number was achieved in just nine months.

The total number of applications is 35,000 at the moment (and bare in mind that there are other apps outside the app store), which is definitely an amazing number.

(I tried to see how many of those icons actually exist on my iPhone and found quite a few…)
 

What about Windows Mobile?

The OS which exists for more than 9 years and had the title of having the largest number of applications has, according to a report that was published few months ago, around 20,000 applications.

If those numbers are true, than the iPhone knocked off nine years of Windows Mobile applications in just nine months. How symbolic.

On the other hand, since there’s no centralized store for Windows Mobile, it may be that there are far more applications and mainly freewares which probably were not counted in the report.

           

The “Cophenhagen” user experience… a concept video

Long Zheng had this video up today that was just terrific and I wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to watch it especially if you are a Windows enthusiast.

Once in a while we all, as Windows enthusiasts, come up with those great ideas the next version got to have. Some put it in writing, some vote (shameless plug), some Photoshop mockups, but rarely do we get concept videos as elaborate as Cullen Dudas’ “Copenhagen” user experience video.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure. (The real gem starts 1 minutes in)

Copenhagen User Experience from Copenhagen Concept on Vimeo.

Special thanks to Long Zheng from istartedsomething for passing this on!