Hasta La Gadget!

The CTIA 2009 spring show is just a few days away, and there are sure to be new product announcements. HTC, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG–they’ll all be there. However, there’s one company in particular that’s at the forefront of my mind, and it would be Palm. I’m sure you can guess why.

Palm Pre, where are you?

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

Both Palm and Sprint will be in Las Vegas for the show, but the companies don’t have any news conferences or major events scheduled–just an invite-only VIP Lounge where they’ll have the Palm Pre on display.

I really hope we’ll learn some new information at CTIA (ahem, pricing, release date), since we clearly didn’t during their last Webcast. However, I fear it’ll be more of the same and we’ll come home none the wiser. Part of me also thinks that they’ll wait till the last possible moment (June) to deliver on their “first half of 2009” promise, but I hope I’m wrong.

Palm and Sprint are running into dangerous territory right now. We said at CES 2009 that it was risky for the companies to announce the smartphone (though smart in many ways) back in January and they had to careful to deliver on their promise and not delay the phone.

On the one hand, I commend Palm for better communication with the public whether it be through its blog or Twitter feed, but there’s comes a point where the canned responses get old and things like the Webcast look like a stalling method or shameless self-promotion. I think it’s pretty safe to say, we’re at that point, and the masses are getting restless.

Also, with the new iPhone OS 3.0 and all its new features, the Pre has lost some of its competitive edge. (The chart below gives you a side-by-side comparison of the basic features of the two smartphones.) Plus, there’s a chance we could see a new iPhone at WWDC in early June and that could certainly steal some of the Pre’s thunder. …

Originally posted at CTIA show

Cut, copy and paste is an easy task.

For the past week, I’ve been able to play with the beta version on the new iPhone OS 3.0. As you probably know, the 3.0 update brings a long list of features to the iPhone including multimedia messaging, cut and paste and a landscape keyboard. As I said last week, iPhone 3.0 has more many more hits than misses, particularly since it finally adds some very basic features that almost every other cell phone has.

Since this is a beta version, I’m not going to get hung up on the obvious bugs. Yes, my iPhone is much slower, and it has a tendency to crash more often, but such problems are to be expected on an OS that’s not quite ready for the real world. Instead, I will tell you about my general experience form a usability standpoint.

Cut, cop and paste This is just as Apple execs described at the OS 3.0 announcement. Just double tap a selection to get the cut/copy/paste commands to appear. You then can change the highlighted area by dragging the blue “grab points” around the page. Once you get to your pasting area, just tap the screen again and select the “paste” button. I like the “shake to undo” option, as well.

Landscape keyboard This is one of those “careful what you wish for” situations. After haranguing Apple over the past twenty months to give us a landscape keyboard for texting, notes and e-mail, I have to admit that it does take some acclimation now that I have it. Though the landscape keyboard is much wider with larger buttons, it’s also a lot shorter. It did take me a couple of days to get the hang of it. Don’t think that I’m not complaining, though, as it’s quite the opposite. I love …

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

That blurry, numb sensation you feel just behind your eyes? Yeah, you’ve been staring at a computer screen for far too long. According to a recent study, Americans spend an average of 8 hours a day staring at screens–TVs, PCs, cell phones, and so on. About 61 minutes of that time is spent taking in TV ads.

The dominant form of media delivery in most Americans’ lives remains the TV, according to the $3.5 million study conducted by Nielsen. The PC has edged into second place, though, beating out the radio, with the struggling world of print in fourth place.

The study also found that most age groups spend about the same amount of time sitting in front of screens. 45-to 54-year-olds actually rack up the highest daily rate, with an hour more than other groups.

We’ve covered the original and wireless FyreTV boxes already, but the porn-on-your-TV streamer has finally gotten to a point where it’s stable and usable. And it really is great.

The newest wireless box, combined with the latest firmware updates, make this box a porn streaming solution that’s practical in that you can hook it to any TV in your house and deliver porn to it.

Here’s the gist of the device. The FyreTV box connects, via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, to the FyreTV servers. For $9.95 a month (plus more if you go over your 100 allotted credits), you get access to a 10,000+ title library of porn. There’s HDMI as well as component and composite connections, as well as a (as of right now, pretty crappy) remote to control what you see.

What you need to know, as a gadget person who also enjoys the occasional pornographic video, is that this is probably the easiest way to get legal porn onto your TV. Where the previous version required you to drag an Ethernet cable for a connection—something not every person has in their bedrooms—the Wi-Fi on this version allows you quite a bit of freedom.

As for the quality, it’s essentially DVD-level video parsed through a streaming filter. FyreTV will have HD content soon, but the DVD quality is good enough for most people. The menus are navigated easily enough, and with the latest software updates, you won’t see too many slowdowns. Suffice it to say, you’ll be able to get the job done without waiting for stuff to load and menus to pop up, provided you have a decent enough internet connection.

Is it easy to use? Definitely. Is it free? No. You can rig up a PC to your TV and download free internet porn if you have an extra machine lying around and know what you’re doing. But it is the easiest, quickest and most legal way to get streaming pornography onto your bedroom or living room TV. [FyreTV (NSFW)]

Looks like the NVIDIA and Intel’s lawsuit over Nehalem chipset licensing is heating up — NVIDIA’s filed a countersuit seeking to terminate Intel’s licenses to its patents. This little bit of nyah-nyah is just the latest in the recent feud between these two: we’ve got a month-long argument about Atom chips and NVIDIA’s Ion netbook platform going on, and don’t even get anyone started on whether GPUs or CPUs are the wave of the future, it’s freaking endless. Of course, this will all likely end in a settlement agreement and the these two realizing that they’re actually in love, but until then we’re just going have to put up with it. Video after the break.

Continue reading NVIDIA sues Intel right back over Nehalem chipset licensing

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

NVIDIA sues Intel right back over Nehalem chipset licensing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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