Hasta La Gadget!

Google said Tuesday that the company has teamed up with One Economy, Qualcomm, and Cricket Wireless to give away wireless broadband cards to schoolchildren in the Washington D.C. area. Free wireless broadband will be supplied to the kids for two years, according to One Economy.

The trio of companies also donated free computers as part of Project Change Access.

Today’s
announcement grew out of a pilot program launched last year by One
Economy and Cricket to provide free wireless broadband to several
hundred low-income families in Portland, Oregon,” Sunil Daluvoy, in Google’s new business development organization, wrote in a blog post. “Students who
previously lacked Internet access were able to online resources to help
them with their homework. Their parents were able to learn English
online, access online job resources, research health care information,
and more.”

You idiot. Where did you buy those cables? Walmart? You probably think you’re getting the whole 1080p, don’t you! Boy, you couldn’t be more wrong. What the big box doesn’t want you to know, with their cheap-ass $150 cables is that there are, um, waves and some, uh… electromagnetic spectrats. And they eat your pixels! Yeah, that’s right! Pixel-eating EM spectrats! Not even making this stuff up. How much did you spend on that TV? $1,000? You did buy that $1,800 power cable from Furutech, right? Well, don’t you think you should spend at least that much on the all-important cables that are going to funnel the dynamic 1080p transmissions from your Blu-ray player to your TV? Here, try this Platinum Starlight HDMI cable from Wireworld. It has a patent-pending DNA Helix conductor design formed by the gods themselves out of 24 solid silver conductors. Hell, $1,000 is probably a bargain for one of these one meter cables. Your eyes are worth it, after all. You’re welcome.

Wireworld’s Platinum Starlight HDMI cable is only $1,000, better than your HDMI cable originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lala’s business model of selling and hosting digital music was a complete abhorrence to an innovative music startup — named Lala. When the site launched, it was a CD trading service that held up the integrity of the album and the virtues of physical content ownership in an online music market of single-track downloads and subscription-based music rentals. To its trade-by-mail CD service, Lala added CD sales, playlist creation, and for a short time even owned a former broadcast radio station. It had to ultimately scale back, though, on what would have been its most audacious move, giving away full streaming of the major labels’ catalog — all in the name of driving song purchases.

Lala’s shifting strategies through the years may have led many to think that its recent acquisition by Apple would represent radical changes to Apple’s music approach. Lala lives on a Web page, streams from the cloud, and gives users, including Google search users, one full free play of any song in its library. But Lala’s business model was always, at its core, more like iTunes’ than any number of streaming music companies — from the custom radio of Pandora to the subscription downloads of Rhapsody. Those services, however, have long been better at Apple at fostering music exploration when compared with iTunes’ 30-second samples.

Continue reading Switched On: Apple’s song remains the same

Switched On: Apple’s song remains the same originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We run down the 10 most viewed GPS products of 2009, as voted on by our users. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10411699-48.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Car Tech blog/a/p

it may not be at the top of everyone’s wishlist this holiday season, but it looks like those particularly taken with Sony Ericsson’s smartphone are now back in luck after a brief suspension of sales. Of course, there’s also now a software update available for current Satio owners, but details on it are fairly light apart from word that it improves “handset speeds and battery usage” and that it “fixes previous software issues.” What’s more, while retail availability may be a bit hit and miss as things get back up to speed, it seems that at least Phones 4u in the UK is now already selling the updated version of the phone, and it’s even reporting strong sales from over the weekend.

Sony Ericsson Satio back on sale, software update available originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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