Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like Apple isn’t the only one wanting to make sure that app payments are being run through appropriate channels. The Visual VoiceMail app, which has been downloaded about a million times (literally), has just been pulled from the Android Market. When developers at PhoneFusion asked the reasonable question, “why,” they were simply directed to section 3.3 of the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement:

If you want to collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on the Market… All fees received by Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed by the Market’s Payment Processor.

The service allows users to purchase premium features through the company’s website, something that many other apps do and that is certainly not new to Visual VoiceMail. What’s next remains to be seen, but sadly Google is saying PhoneFusion must re-submit the app with a new name — losing all the positive reviews it’s racked up. Hardly an ideal solution.

Visual VoiceMail pulled from Android Market, Google accused of ‘pulling an Apple’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CNET Car Tech reviews the 2011 Smart Fortwo Cabriolet.

Originally posted at The Car Tech blog

Clockwise from the top left, that’s the the Sprint Arrive, the likely-for-Verizon Merge, the Sprint Evo Shift 4G, and the T-Mobile G2. If we had to rate them, we’d say the Arrive has the best key feel, followed by the Merge, the Evo Shift, and finally the cramped G2 — although the super cheap-feeling hinge on the Evo Shift knocks off several points. We’d also say the physical keys on the G2 feel better than the mushy keys on the Merge, but the G2’s cramped layout doesn’t do it any favors. In any event, picking one of these is a pretty great problem to have, don’t you think?

Visualized: the HTC keyboard slider family originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC also brought along a Sprint-branded Arrive to our San Francisco reader meetup, and while we’re already familiar with this Windows Phone 7 slider from our time with the HTC 7 Pro it’s still nice to see a CDMA WP7 device in the flesh. Oh, and the keyboard is pretty fantastic — not only does it feel great, but the dedicated number row alone is reason for keyboard fans to give this thing a look. The best part? The demo unit was loaded up with the Windows Phone 7 copy and paste update, which is the first time we’ve seen it in the wild. The system worked well, but we noticed that you once you paste out of the clipboard your text is gone, so you can’t multiple paste. It’s a little odd — we’ll have a video up shortly.

Update: The video is up — check it below!

Update 2: Okay, so you can multiple paste! The paste icon just disappears after the first paste, which is super confusing. You can just swipe to the right to bring it back, though. We’d suggest Microsoft re-think this implementation a little for an update, since it wasn’t clear to anyone here at first glance.

Continue reading Sprint HTC Arrive with Windows Phone 7 copy and paste first hands-on! (video)

Sprint HTC Arrive with Windows Phone 7 copy and paste first hands-on! (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After a poor response to the first Clash of the Titans movie and its substandard 3D effects, courtesy of a rushed conversion process, you’d think they would never try that again, and you’d be wrong. Director Jonathan Liebesman, fresh off of Battle:LA is helming sequel Wrath of the Titans and says was talked into doing the conversion process again (but shooting with that in mind, Piranha 3D-style) on this flick by a series of demos including, Christopher Nolan’s Inception. This is notable both because no 3D re-release has been announced for the visually engrossing flick, but also because Nolan himself has suggested 3D would be a bad choice due to the dimming effect of the glasses. Warner Bros. could only manage to tell Cinematical “At this time, the plans for Inception 3D cannot be confirmed,” leaving the possibility of a return alongside Star Wars, Titanic and others to twist in the wind for now.

Clash of the Titans sequel will be another 2D-to-3D conversion, and Inception too? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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