Hasta La Gadget!

Google this week announced that it has joined forces with Israel’s Yad Vashem Museum to host photos and other Holocaust documents–130,000 in all, making it the largest online collection of such information.

Bits and pieces about the Verizon iPhone have finally fallen into place to tell the full story on how much the coveted handset will cost you.

Apple’s website this week temporarily revealed that the Verizon iPhone voice plans start at $40 per month. Text-messaging plans start at $5 per month, or you can pay per use for 20 cents each text.

Also news is that Verizon’s hot-spotting feature — the ability to turn the handset into a Wi-Fi network to share an internet connection with multiple devices — will cost an extra $20 per month on top of voice and data plans. As part of the same plan, customers will also have the option to use tethering, which shares the iPhone’s internet connection with one device. The plan includes 2 GB of data for hotspotting plus tethering per month.

As for the price of internet usage, Verizon said Tuesday that the iPhone would offer an unlimited data plan for $30 per month. However, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam clarified that this plan would be available for a limited time, as Verizon will eventually move to a tiered pricing structure for data.

So there you have it: the Verizon iPhone starts at $200 with a two-year contract, and if you go with the minimum voice, data and texting plans, you’ll pay about $75 per month. Factor in tax and government fees, and that should amount to roughly $90 per month.

On AT&T, the options are a bit different:

1. Unlimited data is no longer an option for new subscribers, though many old subscribers still have the option to stay on their unlimited data plan. The cheapest data plan costs $15 per month for 200 MB.
2. There isn’t a pay-per-use option for texting.
3. AT&T doesn’t support hot-spotting, though it does offer tethering for the same $20-per-month rate.
4. However, AT&T doesn’t give you additional data for tethering when you pay $20 each month; this comes out of your data plan. (So if you buy a 2-GB data plan for general internet usage, for example, tethering counts toward the 2 GB.)

So with the tiered data-pricing structure, the minimum you’ll pay for an iPhone on AT&T per month is $65 for voice and data; after fees and taxes that comes out to roughly $75 per month.

Confused yet? See the chart above for a side-by-side comparison of AT&T and Verizon iPhone costs.

The Verizon iPhone hits stores Feb. 10.

Updated: A clarification of the AT&T iPhone’s tethering plan was added to this story Jan. 27, 2011 at 10 a.m. PT.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The rumor mill is abuzz with news that HTC is developing a phone for Facebook, but we’re not so sure.

Originally posted at Dialed In

Remember the dream of the Concorde? It was that supersonic passenger jet that would ferry passengers from New York to London in less than 3 hours, but supersonic travel never took off because of the loud sonic booms that the planes would generate as they broke the sound barrier.

NASA is working on new technology that would dampen or eliminate those booms, and the space agency is hoping that this will usher in a new era of supersonic travel.

Early experiments add a 24-foot-long spike to the plane mounted on the nose of the aircraft that creates three smaller shockwaves to greatly reduce the noise as the aircraft hits Mach 1. It could mean shorter travel time for consumers, but Jeff is more excited to wean himself off the sleeping pills he takes every time he boards an aircraft.

In less exciting historical innovations, New Yorker Till Krautkraemer is touting a beverage that offers a new way to supplement your protein intake: drink it! MeatWater is intended as a meal supplement with flavors like Peking Duck, Beef Stroganof, and Fish’n Chips; but the liquid contains zero animal byproducts, so vegans and vegetarians are encouraged to consume it for their daily dose of protein.

This is not a joke. According to the Web site, MeatWater has 22 amino acids that aid in performance recovery and decrease body fat when ingested with liquids, and it’s recommended that you drink MeatWater warm, as the flavors and aromas are heightened this way.

And while we’re solving first-world problems with technology, check out this double USB concept that hopes to save precious microseconds and the frustration you experience from “plug rejection.”

Finally, Intel is following in the footsteps of Polaroid and Lady Gaga by introducing its own celebrity employee: Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am has been appointed director of creative innovation, a role that places him as an ambassador to the company and collaborator in “new technologies, music and tech advocacy.”

There’s not much to say about this should-be joke, so we’re just waiting to hear the BEP single that samples the Intel Inside chime. Wait, he’s already doing that.

Episode 744

Listen now:

Download today’s podcast

Subscribe in iTunes audio | Subscribe in iTunes video | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video

Originally posted at The 404 Podcast