Sprint, Verizon to bring more Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones

RIM BlackBerry Tour (Verizon Wireless)

The Wi-Fi-less RIM BlackBerry Tour

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

The RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 has received positive reviews from around the tech world, though there’s been one universal complaint: the lack of Wi-Fi. However, Sprint is hoping to right this wrong by releasing a Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry Tour next year …

HTC’s redemption song: 3.5mm jacks coming to ‘vast majority’ of post-Hero devices

Better late than never, we suppose. Our friends at Mobile Crunch have it on word from a HTC spokesperson that a “vast majority of devices we launch after Hero” are gonna be including a 3.5mm headphone jack as a standard feature. The rep also added that devices already announced would “not necessarily be part of this change,” which while not ruling it out entirely, doesn’t get our hopes up. Still, it’s refreshing to know the future generations won’t be beholden to the adapter-laden shackles of its ancestors — so Lancaster, where will you fall in all this mess?

[Via Smartphone Thoughts]

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HTC’s redemption song: 3.5mm jacks coming to ‘vast majority’ of post-Hero devices originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wal-Mart serves up $98 Blu-ray player

We don’t know how long it will last, but several blogs are reporting that Wal-Mart has rolled back the price on the $168 Magnavox NB530MGX to $98 (in-store only). Apparently, on Father’s Day weekend, the same player was selling for $128.

Is the Magnavox NB530MGX any good? It’…

Learn to save lives with useful iPhone app

You’re obviously incredibly fortunate if you are helped in a life-or-death situation, but being on the giving end of such emergencies is very satisfying, too. Now, with Pocket First Aid & CPR, you can make sure to be ready the next time you are called upon to save someone.

(Credit:

NHL 10 improves on an already winning formula

(Credit: Jeff Bakalar/CNET)

Ask any diehard hockey fan out there and he’ll tell you that last year’s NHL 09 was close to being the best hockey game ever made. After countless critical acclaim and 19 sports-game-of-the-year awards over the past two years, the EA Canada team is back with NHL 10.

Along with Chicago Blackhawks young superstar Patrick Kane as this year’s featured cover athlete, the game promises plenty of improvements, from board play to first-person fighting.

We sat down and played a full three periods in Stanley Cup Final fashion, Penguins versus Red Wings, to find out what’s new in NHL 10….

Nintendo DSiWare gives us what we want br(in Japan): Electroplankton, Game and Watch

Nintendo's portable virtual console is going to the source.

(Credit: Wikipedia)

Nintendo’s DSiWare service, like its WiiWare platform, are temptations and teases for the lovers of the independent and obscure. Because no boxes or cartridges/discs need be sold, the ability for much-loved indie titles to be

The Week In iPhone Apps: Navigation, Inebriation, Multiplication

Oh, I can keep going: financial news aggregation, slideshow presentation, carrier lamentation, lyrical collect-ation, and… and… tethering? Seven out of eight ain’t bad. Anyway, enough of that—here’s your weekly app dump:

Navigon Lite: Hark! Dedicated navigation units are dead, for the iPhone hath slain them! Except no, not at all, because navigation apps are still fresh, imperfect, and too expensive to “just try.” Navigon’s Lite version, then, is a great idea: It lets users test the app’s routing power, nice UI, and Navteq mapset—all 1.29GB of it, taking up space on your phone. The catch—and it’s a big one—is that GPS doesn’t work. But even as is, it’s marginally useful, and definitely worth your time if you’re considering taking the plunge on the full version—whenever it comes out, that is. So you’re not shocked when it does, the Euro app is $140.

Absolut Drinkspiration : Drinking apps are almost invariably junkware, and advertisement apps are usually a waste of time. Absolut Drinkspiration is both of these things, and nonetheless manages to be pretty good. At its core it’s a drink recipe and recommendation app; at this, it does fine, helped by the fact that Absolut is happy to accommodate non-vodka listings. (A true gentleman, this app!) If your drinking needs a little guidance, it can help with that too: it’ll recommend drinks based on parameters like taste, time and mood. It’s also got GPS built in so you can upload your mixes and see what others all over the world are drinking, and exactly where they’re drinking it. Free.

TroubleSpots: TroubleSpots is part of an ambitious project, providing a tool to report when, where and how your cellular network has failed you. The reports, with embedded geodata, are passed on to AT&T, who will presumably see them and feel guilty, or something.

Two things: I think AT&T probably already knows where its network is thin; and I have a sneaking suspicion that using TroubleSpots inadvertently draws you into a secret guerilla annoyance campaign run by, say, T-Mobile, waged with iPhone apps and complaint forms. We’ll never know! Anyhow, if having the ability to instantly file a complaint with your carrier will keep you from hurling your iPhone out the car window, this app is worth its (nonexistent) price of entry.

Pix Remix, Slideshow Builder : A pair of slideshow apps, both paid, which do very similar things. Both make Ken Burns-style moving picture shows, both can share presentations from phone-to-phone or though a web interface, and neither can export presentation into common slideshow formats, like PowerPoint or Keynote. The differences? Slideshow Builder pans more intelligently using facial recognition, while Pix Remix has many more presentation options. Another biggie: Slideshow Builder, though a dollar more expensive at $4, has a near-full-featured free version.

Lyrics+ : There are a few annoyingly obvious, dead-simple apps that we just weren’t allowed to have on account of the iPhone SDK’s prior restriction on music library access. Thank god for OS 3.0. Two weeks ago, we finally got a music-library-enabled alarm clock; this week, a real-time lyrics fetcher. There are plenty of ways to incorporate lyrics into your audio file tags pre-transfer, but this one will do it over the air (correction: it just displays lyrics. Nothing is written to your tags), while you listen. A buck for now, regularly $2. (via TUAW)

Finalprice: Fun fact: With a little help from the App Store, anyone can function as an adult without any understanding of math, at all. This is thanks to apps like Finalprice, which calculates discounts and sales taxes to give you an actual, at-register totals for whatever you’re considering buying. Or, you know, you could just figure this stuff out on the built-in calculator in a few seconds. Your innumeracy tax: one dollar.

CNN Money: A polished single-source news app with a solid video section, clean (but weblike) interface, and a real-time ticker, if you’re into that kind of thing. Good if CNN Money is your thing, although I’ll stick with multi-source aggregators like Fluent, or an RSS reader. Free.

MyWi: And finally, one for the jailbreakers. MyWi is an extremely slick tethering app that, instead of connecting to computers via Bluetooth or cable, sets up a zero-config wi-fi network, router-style. It even broadcasts an SSID (a network name) so you—and others—can easily tap into an iPhone’s data connection. It’s great, but $10 is a bit steep for a jailbreak app—especially one that violates your contract, potentially landing you in trouble with your carrier.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

NYC Exit Strategy: The Other NYC Subway App You Need

The Cost of Buying Every iPhone App: $144,326.06

SoundAMP App Turns the iPhone Into a Makeshift Hearing Aid

Amazon Won’t Let Mobile Apps Use Its Product Info Anymore

iTwitter: The First iPhone Twitter App With Push, Sorta

TwittaRound Twitter Reality Augmentation Looks Amazing, Even If It Is a Horrible Idea

Push Gmail for the iPhone, Finally (It’s Not What You Think)

Prowl Pushes Growl Notifications to Your iPhone

Nearest Tube iPhone App Adds Digital Directions to Your Surroundings

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

Microsoft’s “Gazelle” browser detailed — it’s more of a research project

If you’re particularly attuned to tech gossip, you’ll know that Google’s Chrome OS announcement has prompted a lot of whispers about something called “Gazelle” being cooked up in Microsoft’s labs. Part browser, part OS, the word on the street is that Gazelle will be announced soon, and ultimately compete in some way with either Chrome (the browser) or Chrome (the OS). As usual, most of this is just based on hopes and fairytales, but the scholarly folks at Ars Technica have done some digging and come up with a white paper from Microsoft Research that details some of what Gazelle is all about — and surprise surprise, although it shares some similarities with Chrome, it’s actually quite different.

At the most general level, Gazelle is an experiment in building an ultrasecure browser. Like Chrome, it breaks tasks up into different processes, but instead of separating at the page level, Gazelle breaks individual page elements into different processes, allowing content from different servers to be isolated and ultimately providing fine-grained security controls. To manage all these different processes, there’s a central “kernel,” which is where all the OS talk stems from — it’s all still running on Windows, and the rendering engine is still IE’s Trident engine, but Gazelle manages all those separate processes independently, kind of like a virtualized OS. It’s certainly interesting stuff, but it’s still all just a research project for now — Chrome OS is still vapor, but it’s clear that Google intends to ship something, while Gazelle seems more suited to inspire future versions of IE. Still, it’s interesting reading if you’re into it, so hit the read link for more.

Read – Ars Technica analysis
Read – Microsoft Gazelle white paper [Warning: PDF]

[Image courtesy of Robert Scoble]

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Microsoft’s “Gazelle” browser detailed — it’s more of a research project originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon Leads, ATT Runs Last in Wired.com’s 3G Speed Test

A smartphone broadband test conducted by Wired.com found that AT&T customers reported the slowest average 3G network speeds, while Verizon subscribers posted the speediest results.

Conducted in May, our interactive 3G speed test attracted about 15,000 participants — 12,000 of whom reported valid, usable results. The study focused on 3G networks deployed in the United States by AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Verizon came in first place with an average download speed of 1,940 Kbps, as reported by 856 participants. T-Mobile’s average rate was 1,793 Kbps with 1,189 reported T-Mobile users. Third was Sprint with 1,598 Kbps, based on data from 1,570 users. In dead last was AT&T with an average of 901 Kbps — but an overwhelmingly large user sample of 8,153 test takers.

The debate over which carrier is best has been around for as long as there have been cellphones. A common myth is that Verizon’s is the most reliable and fast, while AT&T’s is the worst. These claims have been difficult to verify because of the variable nature of wireless technology. But Wired.com gave it a try on U.S. phones anyway.

(We also conducted an earlier test on the iPhone only, rating its network performance on a global level; that study revealed that AT&T customers reported considerably slower speeds than iPhone owners on European networks.)

To gather the data, Wired.com asked U.S. smartphone owners to test their 3G download speeds by running a custom web page that involved downloading an image. Then, we asked participants to manually plot their data on an interactive map. For a second data set, our test developer Ben Reubenstein automatically tracked download speeds using the test page.

After analyzing both data sets, Wired.com opted to use Reubenstein’s automatically reported results, because the information was more complete, comprehensive and reliable.

We acknowledge our speed test is not scientific; we view it as a general barometer that gauges the performance of 3G networks in the United States. With that said, we note a few caveats:

  • We realize that the substantially larger amount of AT&T test takers may unfairly contribute to an overall lower download speed — so take this considerably lower result with a nugget of salt.
  • The test results rely heavily on good faith that participants were being honest (and not, for instance, running the test over Wi-Fi). We did, however, remove any bogus, impossibly high results, as well as incomplete data fields.
  • Software, processors, memory and other factors will obviously affect a cellphone’s overall download speeds. Smartphones with faster CPUs, more RAM and so on will clearly give the network an advantage. But then again, these test results should give you a general idea of the network performance you should expect not only on these networks, but also the phones they carry.

Interestingly, our results appear to coincide with a similar test conducted by PC World in May. PC World’s test involved working with Novarum Inc., a wireless consultant firm, who performed a 3G stress test from 283 locations in a day. PC World’s testing also found Verizon was fastest, with Sprint and AT&T coming in second and third, respectively. (T-Mobile was not included in the PC World test.)

With that said, we thank Reubenstein for coding our test, and we also thank our fellow friends in the blog community for helping spread word of the study to attract participants. We invite readers to take a look at our spreedsheet containing the results [csv] if they wish to perform their own analysis.

See Also:


WrapUp: Offline Gmail, Free Push Email for iPhone, and More

This article was written on July 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

google calendar offline.jpgGmail & Google Calender Offline Support
Sometime in the next 6 weeks Google will be adding Gears support to both Gmail and Google Calendar. This is a big step for Google, and it will mean that their most popular services will be able to go offline if needed.


opera mobile.jpgOpera Mobile 9.5 Beta Released
It took a little while, but Opera has finally gotten around to releasing the first public Beta of their Opera Mobile 9.5 software. This is designed for Pocket PC devices, and is free while it’s in Beta. [related]


meebo.jpgMeebo Launching Branded Chat Services
Meebo has plans of launching a branded chat service for users that want to integrate chat capabilities on their own sites. It will also include an advertising option, and with it the publishers will get a cut of the revenue.



youtube tivo.jpgYouTube Comes to TiVo
Can’t find anything on TV to watch? Just flip on your TV and start watching millions of different YouTube videos through your TiVo. You can watch popular videos, recent videos, or search for something on the site. Talk about hours of quality entertainment.


app store.jpgUnofficial RSS Feeds for iPhone App Store
One thing Apple really needs to do is create an RSS feed that makes tracking new applications in the App Store easy. Luckily one group of people have taken it upon themselves to create RSS feeds for new apps, updated apps, and more.


dell xt.jpgDell Latitude XT Gets a Multitouch Upgrade
Dell has impressively released a free update for Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC owners that gives the operating system multitouch capabilities. You can do things like zoom in/out of photos in an iPhone-like fashion. [related]


gmail igoogle.jpgGmail iGoogle Gadget Gets Updated
Google has finally done justice to the iGoogle gadget for Gmail. Before it didn’t do much more than tell you what emails were in your Inbox, but now you can delete, mark as spam, and compose messages right from the homepage. Not bad.


leopard-1.jpgApple Goes After Psystar
Psystar has been selling computers with Mac OS X for a few months now, and it looks like Apple has finally unleashed their lawyers. Not only do they want Psystar to stop selling their computers, but they want them to recall all of the ones that have already shipped! [related]


android.jpgGoogle’s Android Not So Open After All
Google has apparently been giving 50 or so developers private access to improved versions of the Android operating system, and have bound them to non-disclosure agreements. That’s a little disappointing for everyone else developing for the platform.


share calendar.jpgFind the Name of Any Gmail User
Using Google Calendar you can apparently find the name of any Gmail user by simply sharing a calendar with that person. This is one way that spammers could possibly get your name to make an email appear personalized.


kindle.jpgAmazon Kindle 2.0 Coming Around October
The next generation Amazon Kindle will be coming just in time for the holiday season this year. It will have an improved form factor and be smaller in size, but the screen will still be the same size. [related]


youtube.jpgYouTube to Mask Data Before Giving it to Viacom
There was some worry about what kind of information Viacom was going to get from Google, but it looks like the data will be masked before it reaches the hands of Viacom. [related]


twitter.jpgTwitter Buys Summize
The Twitter search engine called Summize was purchased by none other than Twitter themselves. The transaction amount is unknown, but it’s estimated at about $15 million.


blimp-1.jpgBig Blimps Making a Comeback
Boeing is working with a Canadian company to create blimps that can carry heavy loads in remote areas. The 302-foot-long airships will be equipped with rotors to make flying them easier, and they’ll be able to carry 40 tons up to 200 miles without refueling.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

windows fixes.jpgTop 10 Computer Annoyances & How to Fix Them
Lifehacker shows us how to fix common annoyances, such as slipstreaming XP SP3 or shutting down Dashboard widgets on Mac OS X.


firefox background.jpgFirefox Wallpapers
Want to show off your love for Firefox? This is a great collection of wallpapers that you’re sure to enjoy.


iphone push email.jpgFree Push Email for iPhone
This is a guide on how you can setup free push email, contacts, and calendar for your iPhone. It’s not an optimal solution, but it’s hard to complain when it’s free.


print urls.jpgStop URL’s from Displaying When Printing Websites
Prevent URL’s from showing up whenever you print a website. These are instructions for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and it takes just a few seconds to do.


tinyurl.jpgConvert TinyURL’s to Real URL’s
Services like TinyURL are nice because they conserve space, but it can be frustrating to not know where a link is going to take you before you actually click on it. Webware has a few different solutions that will convert the TinyURL links into the actual URL’s that they points to.


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