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Device tear down videos are as frequent practice as device boxings even so, tear down videos serve a greater good. That of course getting, need to you ever occur to require to fix your device or replace parts, you can do so with a visual guide for reference. The folks over at Directfix have taken apart a BlackBerry Bold 9900 for us all, although — we hope you never need to make use of it. But either way, excellent to know it’s there ought to you ever need it.

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CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. DirectFix tears down a Blackberry Bold 9900 for the greater very good

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Paranormal Agency was released onto the Android Market yesterday courtesy of G5 Entertainment. The game has been finding some fairly good reviews with it’s mix of puzzle and hidden object gameplay. There’s over 50 levels in the game with 7 distinct mini-games and 5 different sorts of hidden object challenges. I was actually surprised to locate there’s a pretty engaging story here as properly. You take on the role of a paranormal detective who solves cases utilizing her special ESP abilities to get to the bottom of the current boom in poltergeist attacks all through the city.

It’s Paranormal Agency’s visual art style that actually drew me in, mixed with a great story and (tougher than it looks) gameplay, I was hooked. It in fact reminds me a lot of those touchscreen arcade games you locate at your neighborhood bar. Protip: The game doesn’t scale properly on qHD devices and even though playable, it is slightly pixelated. You can download the game from the Android Marketplace and play the very first level for totally free, soon after that it’s up to you to decide if you want to acquire the full version for only $ 2.50.

[Marketplace Link]

Android Telephone Fans

LG Electronics unveiled the world’s first full 3D smartphone, called the Optimus 3D, as well as a new tablet at an event on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, reports the WS Journal.

The LG Optimus 3D smartphone features a number of innovative technologies, including the first dual-core, dual-channel and dual-memory architecture as well as the first 3D platform allowing for recording, viewing and sharing of 3D content. You can then upload your 3D videos instantly to YouTube’s 3D channel.

The LG Optimus 3D will be rolled-out globally starting with Europe early in the second quarter. The phone will initially be released with Android 2.2 (Froyo) and will be upgradeable to Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).

“Smartphones are going to go through a generational shift in 2011. With dual core processors and LTE we will be setting new standards,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications. “We think that dual core smartphones will herald a significant turning point in the market.”

LG also unveiled its Optimus Pad tablet which features a unique 8.9-inch display, a departure from the trend toward tablets featuring 7- and 10-inch screens. The new tablet uses Google’s Android 3.0 platform and the NVIDIA Tegra 2 mobile processor.

LG says it is the world’s first tablet with a 3D camera offering users an immersive multimedia environment with Full HD 1080p decoding.

LG also unveiled the world’s first demonstration of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology and Video call over LTE on the Revolution, the first 4G LTE smartphone from LG. LG’s upcoming LG Revolution Android smartphone will make use of Verizon’s new 4G LTE network for not only data, but also voice.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Following the string of Tegra 2 device announcements from the industry’s top manufacturers, NVIDIA’s announcing TegraZone – a game store for Android that will feature the best games optimized for the dual-core processor. It isn’t unlike any other app store you’d find, including OpenFeint’s – social networking integration, trailers, and more will be downloadable alongside games.

Developers who create games that require as much juice as Tegra 2 provides will be pleased knowing they won’t have to compete with crapware in the Android market, and they also won’t be held back by silly file size limitations.

We’re hearing there’ll be anywhere from 5 to 10 titles at launch, with more obviously in the pipeline, though no solid release date was given. “Coming Soon” is all they could give anyone, so let’s hope their version of soon doesn’t stretch far beyond Q1. [NVIDIA via AC]

View full post on Android Phone Fans

image: Nintendo of America

There seems to be an odd split in the gamer community regarding the newly released Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition. On the one hand you have the Nintendo faithful intent on celebrating (and in some cases hording) the limited edition product with its bundled art book and soundtrack collection CD. On the other there are the staunch critics disappointed by the glaring lack of polish applied to both this bonus content and the game itself.

The simple truth is they’re both right.

Celebrating 25 years of Nintendo’s iconic mascot is a huge deal. Mario’s position in gaming culture as well as the greater pop culture has long been cemented thanks to two and a half decades of amazing titles (and sometimes less noteworthy tie-ins). Sadly this collection only pays token tribute to the character behind the rise of contemporary gaming.

Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition comes packaged in a smart red and gold box that touts the set’s content. I’m tempted to say that such amenities look good on paper, but it’s much more honest to say they look great. The packaging itself truly tugs at those nostalgic heartstrings with it’s unique throwback design. Upon breaking the seal, however, you may find yourself rather underwhelmed.

The included 32-page primer on Mario’s history is less a keepsake than a glorified pamphlet. You get the requisite time line and a dash of anecdotal quotes concerning series benchmarks as well as a few classic source sketches, but it simply doesn’t feel big enough, with regard to both content and physical size,  to properly pay tribute to the character in question. The same can be said of the soundtrack CD which limits itself to ten level themes, ten classic sound effects and a bit shy of a half-hour of play time overall. Given the power of Mario’s musical legacy, this too is disappointing.

The game disc itself is also a tad underwhelming. An unadorned port of the original Super Mario All-Stars title, it’s simply little more than a ROM rip of the SNES game enabled for sideways Wii-mote play. The included games – Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (the original Japanese sequel), the domestic flavor of Super Mario Bros. 2 and NES high-water mark Super Mario Bros. 3 – still play exquisitely well all these years later, but while the convenience of having them all on a single disc is a nice touch I still have some minor gripes.

image: Nintendo of America

As this is really just the Super Nintendo collection revisited, each of the included games feature the marginally updated graphics of that age. This means that the blocky sprites of the original outing have been eliminated in favor of a more cartoony representation. This makes sense, of course, as each of these titles is available in all their 8-bit glory via the Virtual Console. Still, I, like many other old schoolers, prefer the original hits by the original artists. Moreover, the modern DVD format easily affords additional space for added selections like Super Mario World or Yoshi’s Island, but Nintendo instead elected to take the easy way out and offer the core content un-supplemented.

The problem with this collection is that it hits many of the series high points without providing very much in the way of additional bang for your buck. That being said, as the entry price for this particular trip in the Wayback Machine is a mere $30 American, it’s hard to get too bent out of shape about the lack of depth in the Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition. Sure, the disc itself is simply a Wii-playable repackaging of the Super Nintendo All-Stars release and the art book and CD are enjoyable if trifling additions, but there’s still something to be said for the staying power of these antiquated platformers, gussied up for current gen play or otherwise. Plus, this thing will look positively smashing on your media shelf!

WIRED: a nice collection of classic Mario titles compiled on a single disc, pack-in bonus book and CD, handsome overall packaging, low price point

TIRED: really nothing more than a port of SNES classic Super Mario All-Stars, book and CD are likewise light on content, standard aspect ratio gaming looks kind of sad on your big-screen LCD

Review materials provided by: Nintendo of America

View full post on GeekDad

Cake Toppers photo by WordRidden via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Half of marriages end in divorce—true or false?

False, as it turns out. The actual divorce rate is much lower—for college graduates married in the 1990s, it’s about 16%, a far cry from the 50% touted by conventional wisdom. As you’ve probably learned, conventional wisdom is often wrong about a lot of things. But when it comes to marriage—that commitment that we make “for better or for worse”—we often have little more than conventional wisdom, traditions and anecdotal evidence to go on.

For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, by Tara Parker-Pope, aims to change that. The book is an exploration of a diverse array of studies that have been done about marriages, relationships, sex, parenting, flirting and more, and it’s meant to provide evidence-based answers rather than “well, it feels right” advice.

When I first read about For Better, I was hoping it would be like NurtureShock, only for marriages. Like NurtureShock, this book is based on scientific studies—however, the focus of the parenting book was on areas in which conventional wisdom was wrong, making almost every chapter an eye-opener. For Better, while it’s a great book on what makes marriages work or fail, didn’t always surprise me with its findings. Maybe that’s a good sign for my marriage, but it meant that the book wasn’t as compelling a read and it took me a while to work through it.

However, despite the fact that it wasn’t an exciting page-turner, I’d still consider For Better recommended reading for GeekDads and GeekMoms—indeed, for anyone contemplating marriage (or divorce). Parker-Pope, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, became interested in the science of marriage when her own marriage of seventeen years ended in divorce. She had written often about medicine and disease, and knew a lot about finding evidence-based answers to health questions, but she couldn’t find something similar for relationships and was disappointed by “relationship experts” and self-help books. Instead, she turned to science, and found that there’s actually a wealth of knowledge if you know where to look.

Back to that divorce rate, for instance: risk of divorce is influenced by a variety of factors, including your age when you marry, level of education, and even the decade you got married. People who got divorced decades ago are more likely to get divorced than recent newlyweds. The reason for this may partly be due to the changing nature of marriages—as more of a partnership than a relationship of economic support—as well as other trends which Parker-Pope addresses. When you think of the success or failure of a marriage as having about the same odds as a coin flip, it doesn’t necessarily encourage you to do something about it if things take a turn for the worse; perhaps knowing that most marriages succeed would make a difference in how you respond to difficulties.

The truth is, we all marry “for better,” right? Nobody enters into this thing hoping that it’ll make their lives worse. And the science shows, most of the time, there are tremendous benefits to marriage: longer lifespans, better health and more wealth. But there are also conflicts that arise: money issues are high on the list; infidelity; chore wars; and, of course, the roller coaster that is parenting.

For Better walks you through all of this, citing studies and statistics, and offering some simple quizzes to diagnose the health of your own relationship and offering practical steps towards making improvements where needed. It teaches you how to fight well and how to resolve conflicts, how to improve your sex life, how to lower your risk for divorce. For myself, I thought two chapters were particularly interesting: the one on parenting gave some insights about the effects of children on a marriage, good and bad; another chapter talked about gender roles and power struggles, which was particularly interesting to me as a stay-at-home dad with many of my responsibilities reversed from the traditional model.

Some of the studies are things that you may have heard in sound-bite form: eye-rolling is a strong predictor of divorce; the first three minutes of a fight are the most important; it takes five positive interactions to counter one negative interaction. What’s different about For Better is the way that it digs into the research and really explains what that means. Unfortunately, not even science has all the answers: there are places where the book discusses the results of a study but the causation is still unclear. In these cases Parker-Pope does her best to give a solid analysis but in the end you’re left to judge for yourself.

Marriage books are a hard sell—either you think your marriage is great so you don’t need to read them, or you think your marriage is in trouble but you doubt a book could really change anything. For Better is great because it gives you a way to assess the health of your marriage and find its strengths and weaknesses, and then offers concrete steps towards addresses the problem areas.

Wired: Relationship advice backed by evidence instead of anecdotes; Parker-Pope is good at giving a clear, easy-to-understand explanation of the science.

Tired: Not always an exciting read; some scientific studies show correlation but don’t prove causation, leaving you with inconclusive evidence.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a review copy of this book.

View full post on GeekDad

The busiest shopping day of the year, aka Black Friday, is only two weeks away. Best Buy is always a major shopping destination on that day, and they have a few great Android deals to be had. A couple of them require a new 2-year agreement, but if you’re in the market for one of those the price for a couple of these is out of the world. Check out the deals below:

• Samsung Transform – $69.99 with 2 year contract
• Samsung Galaxy Tab – $549.99
• LG Optimus S (Charcoal and Purple) – $1 with 2 year contract
• HTC Droid Incredible – $1 with 2 year contract
• Samsung Fascinate – $1 with 2 year contract
• Samsung Galaxy Tab -$549.99

Any of those one dollar deals are pretty sweet, but again you need to get that pesky new contract. We’d love to hear from you! Are you planning on heading to Best Buy in two weeks and grabbing one (or more) of these Android devices? Leave us a comment below and let your voice be heard!

Best Buy offering up some good Android deals on Black Friday

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

The web is awash with CSS frameworks. But, while frameworks can be great for prototyping and quick mockups, they’re often overkill for most projects. It’s also pretty rare to find a framework that meets all of your design needs.

If you’re just looking for a way to get some great typography on your site, but don’t need a grid or other tools that often come with a full-blown framework, check out Type-a-File. Type-a-File isn’t exactly a framework, it’s more specific — a set of typography styles that you can adapt into your CSS.

Type-a-File is the work of designer Russ Maschmeyer and currently offers eight different typographic style sheets, designed, in Type-a-File’s words, to “give your web typography a head start.”

The style sheets takes advantage of some of the new features in CSS 3 like column-count and border-radius, as well as services like TypeKit for fancy fonts. Fortunately, the vast majority of the rules aren’t based on the still-nascent CSS 3 spec, so nearly all the effects will work in older browsers as well.

In addition to basic rules for typographic elements — h1-6, p, lists, cite and so on — Type-a-File has a few classes you can apply to pull quotes, create “kickers” or “sidenotes” and change default headings.

Type-a-File is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so if you’d like to take one of the eight example style sheets and use it to build something of your own you’re feel to do so. You can even submit it back to Type-a-File for inclusion on the site.

Photo by the four elements/Flickr/CC

See Also:

• Design for Readability First
• CSS: Should You Use a Framework or DIY
• CSS3 Pie Lets You Have Your CSS and IE It, Too

View full post on Webmonkey

Lawn Mower Kids is a game where you control kids as they mow lawns around their neighborhood. Trust me: it’s a lot more fun than it sounds.

Law Mower Kids is actually a twist on the classic “real-time strategy” gaming genre. Rather than ordering around tanks or legions of soldiers like in Command & Conquer: Red Alert for the iPhone, Lawn Mower Kids is mellow and non-violent.

The player controls three kids, each with a different type of lawn mower. The kids have to mow sprawling suburban lawns before the clock runs out, all while avoiding stereotypically-suburban obstacles like dogs and grumpy old men. (…)
Read the rest of Lawn Mower Kids is an Allergy-Free Good Time

All App Reviews © AppCraver.com, 2010. |
Lawn Mower Kids is an Allergy-Free Good Time | Best iPad Apps | Best Free Apps

View full post on AppCraver

Alvarion has signed a $75-million deal with Canada’s rural broadband provider Barrett Xplore to deploy a WiMAX network across the country, reports Fierce Wireless.

Under the agreement, Alvarion will supply its end-to-end 4Motion 4G solution, including subscriber devices, along with professional services to support the country-wide rollout.

“Alvarion has a strong track record of deploying 4G networks around the globe and its solution provides the flexibility to evolve toward a TD-LTE network,” said John Maduri, CEO of Barrett.

Barrett says the terrestrial wireless network will be complimented by a new 4G satellite network, which will be based on Viasat-1 – scheduled to launch in 2011, followed by a second satellite – Hughes, Jupiter – in early, 2012. The company says these satellites will allow Barrett to provide robust speeds up to 25Mbps. Canada’s home-grown Telesat has apparently said ‘no’ to anything to do with user services on the ViaSat-1, so Xplornet bought all the available Canadian bandwidth.

In July, an Alvarion executive said that the TD-LTE ecosystem will likely advance in the next three to five years and include the WiMAX spectrum bands and therefore Alvarion will support both WiMAX and TD-LTE on its platform. All major WiMAX vendors now sell base stations that have the ability to deploy WiMAX and upgrade to TD-LTE technology as it matures, including Samsung’s U-RAS Flexible base stations,Huawei’s TD-LTE technology, and Motorola (NSN). Clearwire’s Phoenix LTE test will use Huawei gear.

In May, Alvarion announced a loss in the first quarter and said it would downsize its workforce as it struggled with delays of numerous large projects.

The company also has a $100 million WiMAX deal with U.S. rural operator Open Range Communications, but the service provider’s future looks bleak, says Fierce Wireless. Last month, the FCC denied a request from MSS operator Globalstar for a 16-month extension to come into compliance with the commission’s rules for their Ancillary Terrestrial Component (ATC). With Globalstar’s ATC authority suspended, that leaves its lease partner, Open Range, without spectrum and likely without funding.

Open Range Communications Secured $374 Million in funding to deploy WiMAX to 546 Rural Communities using terrestrial repeaters using GlobalStar’s frequencies.

Related DailyWireless Space and Satellite News includes; Alvarion, Open Range To Build 17 State Net, Lightsquared: Big Bump, FCC Okays Terrestrial LTE for SkyTerra , TerreStar Successfully Launched, AT&T/TerreStar: Dual-mode Satphone, AT&T/TerreStar Ready Satphone Service, TerreStar Phones Home, Motorola + SkyTerra Team for 700 MHz/Sat Radios, TerreStar’s 60 Ft Antenna Deployed in Space, Satphones Maneuver, WildBlue: $30M, Shovel-ready, Alvarion, Open Range To Build 17 State Net, WiChorus Ropes Open Range, Satellites Collide, AT&T/TerreStar Ready Satphone Service, Godzilla SatPhones WiMAXed , WiMAX and/or Satellite,

View full post on dailywireless.org

Firefox for Android beta: A good first effort
The first beta of Mozilla’s browser for Android is critical to keeping Firefox relevant in the mobile-computing era. Here’s a First Look at the software.

Read more on CNET

Samsung to Discontinue Symbian Developer Support; Not a Good Start for the Nokia Corporate Re-vamp
Samsung has announced today that the company would no longer support the development of Nokia’s Symbian platform. The announcement was made in a letter via Samsung mobile innovator forum. The brief announcement gave the rollback schedule, pointing towards the complete shutdown for Symbian support till the end of this year. Symbian Platform was launched in 2008 [...] Samsung to Discontinue …

Read more on SiliconANGLE

Picture by Ken Denmead.

Their luck could only be worse if they’d hired Terry Gilliam to direct it. There seems to be no end to the calamities befalling the new two-part film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic The Hobbit. But yet there is a light at the end of the goblin cave!

The first blow to the production was when MGM went bust financially this spring, since the studio owns half the rights to the film and controls the international distribution. Next came Guillermo del Toro’s decision to quit the project, though that was quickly followed by word that Peter Jackson would likely be returning to the director’s chair in his stead. Just about a week ago there was news that two major unions were telling members not to work on the movies.

And, adding insult to injury, word came yesterday that, on Friday, a fire had destroyed Peter Jackson’s miniatures workshop and special studio (reportedly only one of a very few like it in the world) in New Zealand. Surely this would give any superstitious person pause, but not the folks involved in the movie!

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that Warner Bros., MGM and Warner’s subsidiary New Line Cinema are close to an agreement to start production of the films in January! If this happens, we could see the first part hit theaters for the 2012 holiday season and the second part for the 2013 holiday season. So yes, even if the deal goes through now, we still have at least two years and a few months before we get to see the final product.

But at least it might get the curse to go away. Although there are rumors (which given the current movie-making climate are probably true) that The Hobbit films will be made in 3D. This may or may not be good news, depending on your personal feelings on the subject.

View full post on GeekDad

Since my evaluation Nokia N8 hasn’t arrived quite yet I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for my friend Rafe Blandford’s coverage on All About Symbian to post. Rafe and Steve went above and beyond the call of duty in posting this first part of their extended N8 series and offers in depth thoughts, screenshots, and video that I have yet to see from anyone else on the Internet. We can expect MUCH more from the experts there at All About Symbian and I will try to supplement that with my American take on the device.

I was extremely impressed with the video they shot showing some features I was unaware of in regards to the video recording capabilities, including the amazing digital zoom and depth of field features. I always have written off digital zoom and cannot tell you how impressed I was with what Rafe and Steve showed on the N8.

You may also want to check out unboxing and first impressions and T-Mobile vs AT&T 3G speed tests over at The Nokia Blog. I do not have AT&T so I will only be testing out T-Mobile, but as you know the Nokia N8 is the first penta-band smartphone so we no longer have to worry about that rubbish of US AT&T vs. T-Mobile vs. the rest of the world for data speeds. It was also nice to see Mark’s T-Mobile SIM spank AT&T, but that is highly dependent on your geographic location. HSPA+ is rolled out here in the Seattle area, so I may see quite fast speeds even though the N8 doesn’t support HSPA+ itself due to the way the data is still managed by T-Mobile.

View full post on Nokia Experts

Ahoy, me hearties! Set your goggles double quick on this jolly good book: A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade, written by the old salt James Preller and illustrations by Greg Ruth that’ll shiver yer timbers. OK, yes, International Talk Like a Pirate Day was eleven days ago, but I didn’t discover this treasure in time. Besides, who says you can only talk like a pirate one day a year, right? This delightful picture book is an account of a young boy’s first day in school, told from his point of view completely in pirate jargon. The illustrations are terrific, too, showing the ghostly pirate crew in the boy’s imagination as he gets ready for school, rides the bus and gets tuckered out from schoolwork. The best part? The end pages have a “Pirate’s Vocabulary” with all the words used throughout the book so that your kids can start talking like pirates themselves!

My kids had fun with this one, particularly my six-year-old who would stop me to ask what everything meant. A couple more times through this and maybe she’ll talk about “shining her choppers” after having some “grub and grog.”

If you love pirates and you’ve got a kid starting school, take a look for A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade — it’s a fun treat!

View full post on GeekDad

The History Channel sent review copies of season 2 of its series, Life After People, which I spent several loud evenings watching. If you like scenes of apocalyptic destruction, you’re going to love this one.

Before proceeding to any commentary on the content of Season 2 of Life After People, it might be helpful to watch this short clip (SFW) of Joe Flaherty and the late John Candy as hosts Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok from SCTV’s classic Farm Film Report.

Big Jim and Billy Sol would have loved this show. Stuff blows up real good! Actually, a lot of it doesn’t explode so much as collapse, but slow motion views of iconic buildings suffering that final gust of wind or popped rivet that brings the works crashing down is going to keep fans of disaster porn glued to their sets.

Life After People: Season 2 from History Channel

The premise of Life After People, for those who haven’t caught an episode, is to speculate on what would happen in a world where all humans suddenly left one day. It’s not an apocalyptic ending per se, so no corpses in the streets, bombed out cities or zombies to worry about, they’re just gone. Then the countdown begins. What happens to the infrastructure and all the things that humans left behind, from pets to food and famous works of art is imagined through a virtual time lapse camera. Unfortunately, we watched the episode entitled “Wrath of God” first and found it almost comically heavy on the religious hysteria. I’ll let the description of the episode help make my case: “Structures of God and symbols of Satan face their post-apocalyptic fate. Churches around the world crumble in a world after people, while the devil’s minions multiply.” Ahem. My wife didn’t make it past this episode, although it did feature some epic statue destruction scenes.

The rest of the series lightened up a bit and included some interesting segments to accompany the destruction. Watching the contents of a supermarket succumb to bacteria, rats and insects was like watching a slightly toned down version for TV version of the Stinkymeat Project (link here, but be warned it’s gross). Other episodes see DaVinci’s The Last Supper, Airforce One, Taipei 101, the White House and New York’s Central Station meet their respective fates (spoiler alert: nature eventually wins in every case). There are actually some honest to goodness explosions too, thanks to disintegrating chemical drums, accumulating sewer gases and the like. For a taste of the carnage, the series home page includes dozens of clips -turn down the volume if watching at work. Once we got past that “Wrath of God” episode, my kids seemed to enjoy Life After People, especially the boys. It took a few repeats to explain the whole “people disappeared” concept, but once they finally left that alone, watching nature encroach on the cities was kind of fun. And we all loved watching stuff blow up, especially with the sound system cranked up.

You can pick up Season 2 of Life After People at Amazon, or leave a comment here before midnight Eastern Time, indicating whether you’d prefer DVD or Blu-Ray. History Channel provided a copy of each format to give away to our readers; one random commenter in each group will win.

12am: Thanks for the entries everyone.  We’re closing the contest down now and winners will be notified by e-mail.

View full post on GeekDad

It’s not her first video appearance and you’ll have your own opinion as to whether it looks good or not, but if you are craving to see more of the BlackBerry Style, keep reading. PoderPDA has namely put up a couple of videos on youtube showing the clamshell in all its glory. This particular device rocks firmware v6.0.0.203 and makes the Pearl Flip look unstylish in comparison (sorry for the pun). The first video (above) shows off the hardware while the second video (below) takes a look at BlackBerry 6. The videos are en Español, but there is not much we already do not know about. So grab some snacks, lean back and enjoy the show!

Source: PoderPDA

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CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. BlackBerry Style looking good on camera, stacked up against other models

View full post on CrackBerry.com blogs

Forget Android vs. iPhone; the real enemy is the carriers. Plus, Consumer Reports wants the iPhone 4′s gun and badge, and Microsoft has a bridge, er, tablet they’d like to sell you. Some day.

View full post on Macworld

Product: iPod Touch 2010 4th Generation

Manufacturer: Apple

Wired Rating: 8

There’s a joke widely told among tech nerds ending with a punch line that goes something like, “I loved my first gen iPod Touch when it could make calls and was called an iPhone.”

The iPod Touch may constitute 40 percent of iOS sales, but the general consensus among gadget hounds is why? Why would you shell out for a device that looks like an iPhone, operates like an iPhone, but doesn’t make calls? (It might be argued that the iPhone doesn’t really make calls either.)

For its 4th generation iPod Touch, Apple has done much to answer this question and labored hard to set the gadget apart from the iPhone. First off, it does not co-opt the iPhone 4G’s aluminum and glass ice-cream sandwich design. Instead, the Touch retains a trapezoidal shape with a flat glass front and a smudge-attracting chrome back plate. It’s also extraordinarily thin at 1.48 x 1.61 x .35 inches, weighs just .75 ounces and flaunts a vibrant 960 x 640, 3.5-inch screen. When compared side-by-side, the iPhone 4G looks rather like a behemoth next to the Touch. But aside from outward appearances, the two devices do share some important similarities.

Like the processor! Using Apple’s A4 CPU (same chip in the iPhone 4G and iPad) the Touch runs supremely quickly. Scrolling through the OS is swift and simple. Multitasking is also effortless—we ran the music player while engaging in some heavy app usage. If you’ve never FatBoothed a friend while listening to Thunderstruck, then, well I don’t think you’ve truly lived yet.

Overall the VGA quality cam takes some decent images but is not quite as sharp as ones taken with the iPhone 4G. Colors are a bit more washed out and there is some distinct noise. Check out the difference below.

The rear-facing video cam records at 720p and 30 FPS. The footage is … meh. But it’s also just good enough to stay competitive with video recorders like the Flip. The front-facing cam, designed to work with apps like FaceTime, only operates at VGA resolution but still has 30 FPS.

Speaking of apps, FaceTime is a hoot. The app allows you to video chat with anyone who has iOS 4.1, is easy to set up and conversations are passable but the audio is slightly muddled. Gaming, which is rapidly becoming the iPod touch’s raison d’être, is baked into the software of the Touch. Called GameCenter, it wasn’t active when we received our review unit. We’ll be sure to update the review when this feature becomes active.

And what about media playback? You know, the thing the Touch was designed to do in the first place? Video is smoother than a freshly oiled veal cutlet, while scrolling through the music library is a breeze. Audio playback is sparkling—especially in Apple lossless. As always, it’s wise to steer clear of the garbage earbuds packaged with this thing and upgrade to a grown-up set of headphones.

So this brings us back to the question at hand: Why get the Touch over say a new iPhone? Good question. When you look at the sum of its parts, the Touch is actually a lot of single-serving devices rolled into one. Its video camera makes it competitive with the Flip, its gaming abilities (while not on par with a Gameboy or PSP) are decent for casual users, and video playback is better than just about any dedicated device available out there. So if you want to trade all of those gadgets in for an all-in-one device, you could do a lot worse than the Touch. It may not make phone calls, but hey, we hear your iPhone doesn’t either.

WIRED Feels impossibly thin—we literally lost the Touch in our own pockets. Looks so sharp you could nearly shave with it. Runner? You’re in luck. Touch supports Nike plus. 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi support. The display is beautiful, brilliant and mesmerizing. All glory to the hypno-screen!

TIRED Metallic finish collects more fingerprints than the NSA. Higher end models are fairly costly. No flash on the browser or the camera. Video recording and still-image capture could be a touch (ha!) better.

View full post on Wired Product Reviews

Mobad Games, an apps developer for children, is slightly to one side of our last feature developer, Duck Duck Moose. But they are worth keeping an eye on, and as you would have seen from GeekDad Jonathan’s recent review of My First Hidden Pictures they are producing apps that are well targeted to children’s development.

They are different from Duck Duck Moose in that Mobad have ventured out and found partners who think about children and engage in presenting the world to them. The team at Mobad recognised the need to pull in people already creating great content for kids which have allowed them to bring their design and technical flair to build some great apps. As CEO Kory Jones from Mobad points out, “Apps need to be simple, but well executed which requires a combination of exceptional design and great technical ability. We don’t subscribe to the ‘more apps are better, crank them out as fast as you can’ approach, treat each one like a unique piece of art and the sales will follow.”

So, like any company they have a focus on sales, but that isn’t to say they don’t get kids, they do. In my engagement with Mobad’s CEO, Kory Jones he insisted, “‘edutainment’ is a crappy word so don’t use it in relation to Mobad, please.” It is good to hear that Mobad Games is working hard to distance itself from this type of gaming for kids.

The results? Well, so far two great partnerships with Highlights Magazine and BBC Earth— and some whispers about a few others not far away. There is also their next app with Highlights, which will be Highlights Sticker Fun which continue to use the great illustrations from highlights to great games and puzzles of varying levels.

My children are obsessed with the documentaries coming out of BBC Earth, David Attenborough inspired of course, but since his retirement the interest has continued. So, the use of their great images in their forthcoming app BBC Life Matchgame is of great interest. So many apps have content that sells children short. This is something Mobad and their partners appear to be unwilling to do. And, parents should thank them for it. Quality content will become a defining mark of quality apps.

It is also pleasing to see a team who are well versed in tech and design, getting excited about the possibilities of the future of technology for children. Clearly, Kory gets it: “The future of the technology is a much bigger question. To me that speaks of simple touch control interfaces on personal, portable devices. That is the future of education and entertainment for kids. When you have a device a three-year-old can pick up and navigate with no direction (as mine does) it’s a game changer. All the poorly designed sheets of paper home work my seven- year-old brings home could go away. The replacement will be well-designed, live on a device like this, grade it as he’s doing it, explain it with animation if he gets something wrong then give him a new similar question to see if he really got it.”

That type of thinking certainly demands that we keep an eye on where Mobad head in the future. I know I’ll be checking out every app they put out to see if they engage my own kids.

View full post on GeekDad

public domain image via NASA

Having trouble getting your kids to believe there are more than four or five stars in the sky? That’s life in the big city.  The map on this page might help you decide which direction to drive in search of some genuinely dark skies for stargazing.  Although the bottom line appears to be that if you’re anywhere in the eastern half of the continental United States, you’re pretty much out of luck.

View full post on GeekDad

We saw the release of Gartner’s Q2 2010 worldwide smartphone data report that contains both encouraging and discouraging news for Nokia. Let’s start with the good news and this is the HUGE growth in the smartphone market from 41 million units to 61.6 million in one quarter. This shows that more people are buying smartphones and thus the potential for Nokia customers is growing. We also saw that Nokia’s worldwide market share went down only 2.6% in the quarter. This actually is not that bad considering we saw no flagship device release and haven’t seen such a release since last year’s Nokia N97 that did not even do as well as hoped. Nokia has been able to stay pretty flat with few new devices hitting the market and still sold 111.5 million devices, of which 25.4 million were running the Symbian OS.

The market share of Symbian devices fell significantly over the year from Q2 2009 to Q2 2010 with a 51% market share going down to a 41.2% market share. This is disappointing, but given that S60 is getting long in the tooth while Symbian^3 (and ^4 and ^5) is being developed this is not that unexpected. The Symbian Foundation and Nokia have to do a good job with these upcoming Symbian devices and encourage developers to create apps for their platform.

Android took off like a rocket over the last year, but it looks like people are becoming bored with RIM and iOS while Microsoft works to get Windows Phone 7 out the door. Given that Nokia devices are available around the world in different form factors, I think there is serious potential for Nokia to recapture market share with the release of Symbian and MeeGo products later this year and moving forward. I hope that the N8 is as successful as the Nokia N95 was and want to see Nokia get back up to that 50% smartphone market share in 2011.

View full post on Nokia Experts

Market Research Corp., a Canadian-based provider of market intelligence, announced today forecast that AT&T Mobility will replace Verizon Wireless as the largest mobile service provider in the US by the second quarter of 2011.

“We think that, by the end of 2014, there will be 365.4 million mobile connections in the US, and AT&T Mobility will have a 34.8% market share,” said Nizar Assanie, Vice President (Research) at IEMR.

They forecast that the number of total wireless subscriber connections in the U.S. will increase from 285.6 million in the end of 2009 to 365.4 million by the end of 2014.

Notable highlights of the 3Q.2010 United States Mobile Operator Forecast include:

• Verizon Wireless will be enjoying the highest level of profitability in the US wireless market. The market researcher predicts Verizon Wireless’ EBITDA margins will remain stable at about 45.5% in 2010 and 2011.
• AT&T’s EBITDA margin is projected to improve from 39.6% in 2009 to 46% in 2014. This will be the highest level of profitability among wireless carriers in that year.

They expect that the industry-average monthly ARPU level will remain in the range of $50 – $51 over the next five years, with monthly ARPU levels about $50 at both Verizon and AT&T and about $45 at T-Mobile in 2014.

Verizon’s 2Q 2010 results show data revenues up 24 percent; with a 30 percent operating income margin and 47.5 percent Segment EBITDA margin on service revenues (non-GAAP). AT&T’s Gross Profit Margin is reported as 59.0%, with EBITDA Margin at 33.6%.

IEMR’s United States Mobile Operator Forecast covers 50 financial and operational metrics on wireless operators in the United States, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, Leap Wireless, and Metro PCS.

RCR Wireless lists the top paid wireless executives in U.S.

View full post on dailywireless.org