Hasta La Gadget!

We’d be lying if we said we hadn’t been waiting on this feature since the service’s debut. As one reader just notified us (and verified by a number of staffers), Google Voice now lets you port your own phone number into its system — as in, that 10-digit hometown relic you’ve been holding onto as long as you’ve carried a handset can now live in the cloud and grant you freedom to start afresh / forward to your many on-hand devices. Check under phone setting to see if “change / port” is now an option. The cost of porting is $20 and, as you may guess, it’ll terminate your current service plan and probably prompt the carrier in question to charge applicable early termination fees, but that’s pittance for saving your old line for the indefinite future. You know, just in case your seventh grade crush gets the nerve to call and say, “sorry.” Of course he / she will, just give it time.

Google Voice now lets you port your own phone number originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like the iPad might not have an exclusive on those new “multitasking” gestures unearthed in the latest iOS 4.3 beta, because BGR‘s got some shots up of an purported internal build that seem to indicate Cupertino intends to push them down to the iPhone line as well. Now, there are a couple of obvious red flags here — using “four or five fingers” sounds pretty unreasonable for a 3.5-inch display, though it’d certainly tie in with recent rumors that Apple’s turning sour on the physical Home button and might indicate that the complete redesign we’re hearing about could include a slightly larger display. Of course, it could also indicate that this is really early software with the wrong (read: iPad) wording — but at any rate, we could definitely see the benefit of, say, a two-finger gesture to swipe between apps.

Now, on to part two: 9to5 Mac seems to have unearthed traces in the iOS 4.3 beta of a new feature called “Photo Streams” that seems to be — you guessed it — a way to share continuous streams of photos with friends you approve, presumably through MobileMe (which would fit in nicely with the Find my Friends stuff). Alone, that’s not worth $99 a year — plenty of other services offer similar functionality — but we wouldn’t be surprised if this were bundled in with a bunch of MobileMe refreshes this year.

Update: We just received an interesting tidbit of information on the above pic (and others that BGR has its hands on). According to sources, after the iPhone 4 barroom debacle, Apple made significant changes to how it keeps track of — and identifies to third parties — its devices. Namely, the company began adding clauses to screens on the phones which read “Confidential and Proprietary, if found, please contact…” followed by a 408 number (that’s Cupertino, of course). This prevents any misunderstanding from parties who may come across these devices. So what does it all mean? Well, not much, save that it seems these photos we’re viewing are in fact the real deal… which means gestures may be headed to your iPhone. Intrigue!

iPhone rumor two-pack: multitasking gestures and MobileMe Photo Streams? (Update: those pics are real) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Japan may have produced the most tweets per minute. Twitter may have saved one local from a toilet mishap. Yes, everyone may seem to be raving about Twitter. But could the backlash be about to begin?

The media has been awash recently with reports of a part-time employee of a high class hotel tweeting about a celebrity couple apparently staying the night on January 11th.

Naturally this is rather intrusive and a clear breach of the hotel’s confidentiality. What actually happened? In truth, it’s fairly innocent.

“Aoi Takenaga” (@aoi_tkng, account now protected), a female university student worker, noticed J-League soccer player Junichi Inamoto and model Miho Tanaka in a restaurant inside the Westin Hotel, Tokyo.

[Image source here and here]

The culprit later went online to Twitter and posted:

Junichi Inamoto and Miho Tanaka have come to the restaurant. Miho Tanaka’s face is so small and cute…Looks like the two of them will stay the night : )
「稲本潤一と田中美保がご来店 田中美保まじ顔ちっちゃくて可愛かった…今夜は2人で泊まるらしいよ お、これは…（どきどき笑）」

This almost immediately spread in the local internet stratosphere, before making its way into mainstream news. Needless to say, the tweeter responsible is no longer working at the Westin. (It later transpired that the couple were simply celebrating Tanaka’s birthday and may not even have stayed the night.)

While obviously embarrassing for the hotel, this might not seem such a big problem for westerners, used to an environment where entertainers regularly have their personal activities exposed for all to see. However, celebrity life and media coverage of it is much more controlled in Japan.

Moreover, the culture takes privacy very seriously and normal users also famously shy away for the most part from having real online identities. This is one obvious reason for Facebook’s stagnant growth here while other SNS where fake names and avatars can be used have gone supernova.

Our subsidized Symbian superphone dreams remain squashed, but it looks like we might have a different party to blame — the Wall Street Journal‘s anonymous sources say it was Nokia itself who decided to pull plans to launch the X7 exclusively on AT&T. Originally, the phone would have waved the white globe banner at Mobile World Congress next month, but Nokia reportedly decided that AT&T didn’t have its back, and wouldn’t provide sufficient marketing support — and cheap enough subsidized prices — to make it worth the company’s while. If you simply must have the handset and live in the US, though, we’re sure you’ll still find a way. It’s only a matter of time before Nokia launches in countries more willing to play ball… and unlocked models appear on eBay.

WSJ: Nokia X7 canceled for AT&T, but at Espoo’s behest originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The story of the Trojan Horse must be a favorite among video game console manufacturers, because software updates these days often come with more than bargained for — today, Microsoft issued a mandatory Xbox 360 update, reportedly for a single bugfix, but which seems to have coincidentally halted scores of pirates and hackers from playing Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 on the console. Members of the Xbox-Scene forums noted the update was taking suspiciously long to download, discovered that backup copies of these games ceased to work, and presently believe that Microsoft included a patch for these two games to enable an anti-piracy feature that specifically targets burned copies. What does the mandatory update do for you if you’re not part of the hacking scene? It merely enables the console to automatically boot a pre-inserted game when you power it on, a feature that was accidentally disabled in November.

[Thanks, Brian]

Xbox 360 mandatory update restores boot to disc, detains Call of Duty pirates for a tad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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