Hasta La Gadget!

For many people bacon is the food of the gods. Our culture is becoming obsessed with the stuff. You can buy a bacon wallet, bacon hair accessories, and ties. You can purchase Baconaise for your sandwiches. Denny’s is having a "Baconalia" celebration that brings you bacon galore, even a brownie sundae with bacon. You can join the Bacon of the Month Club. Now you can add that bacon taste to everything with Bacon Salt.

In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.

At a rather vitriolic (and frequently profane) presentation given to a small group of frequently bemused journalists (myself included), T-Mobile CEO John Legere laid out the company’s reinvention. In the interest of keeping things PG I won’t repeat the colorful language, but Legere accused the other major carriers of being not only confusing, but also misleading — ignoring the fact that his own company has, for years, enacted the very same policies. No more. It’s time for the UnCarrier to step up.

But, it’s important to note that you’ll be paying full price, or near to it, for your smartphone.

First is a series of contract-free Simple Choice plans, which are similar to those the company offered before. It’s $50 for “unlimited talk + text + web” — though the data use is indeed limited to 500MB. Stepping up to truly unlimited everything is $20 more, which is a fair bit cheaper than the biggest plans from competing carriers. But, it’s important to note that you’ll be paying full price, or near to it, for your smartphone.

Filed under: Misc, Apple, Blackberry

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Fisher Price Apptivity Case is your baby’s gateway to the iPhone. I want my 2-year-old to be smart and healthy and well-adjusted. I don’t know how smartphones and tablets fit into that. Worse, it seems like there is simply no …

Take today’s latest iPhone news with a grain of salt, folks, but it looks like Apple’s next iPhone could be announced on June 20, and be released a couple weeks later sometime in early July. This isn’t an odd time frame for Apple, however, as they’ve made announcements in June in the past. This would then point to a fall launch of a possible lower-cost iPhone that, according to a new patent, could come with a ceramic body.

The new patent filing from Apple provides only slightly more evidence that a cheaper iPhone may be in our future. The patent suggests that the low-cost iPhone could be made out of a type of ceramic, with the materials mentioned being zirconia and alumina. Zirconia is said to allow radio waves to pass through easily, making it ideal for electronics consumption.

Of course, there’s a whole list of materials that are rumored for a low-cost iPhone, so we’re merely just adding more to the list with today’s ceramics patent. As for the iPhone 5S this June, that would be right after Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference took place, or at least compared to last year’s dates for the event. Apple has yet to announce dates for this year’s WWDC, but that could be the time when Apple makes the official announcement.

Apple has recently been using the fall season to announce and launch its new products. The last time that the company announced a new iPhone was back in 2010 when they unveiled the iPhone 4 at WWDC in June. Of course, it certainly wouldn’t be odd of them to go back to the summer release cycle, but we’ll ultimately have to wait and see what they decide to do.

[via CNET]

iPhone 5S event tipped for June 20 while Apple patent suggests ceramics is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week it’s been revealed that Blizzard Entertainment’s own Diablo III will be coming to the PlayStation 4 without access to the Real Money Auction House still present in the desktop PC iteration. Though this might have some odd effects on those hoping to play the game with access to weapons, armor, and everything in-between with their own real-world cash, Blizzard is presenting a firm “not a chance” as they suggest that, if they could, they’d take the whole mess out of the game entirely.

If you have a travel down our Diablo III tag portal, you find a series of stories that are just as often negative and full of disappointment as they are exciting and action-packed. This release was one of the most long-awaited in the history of gaming, with 8 years separating the second installment of the series (Diablo II in 2000) and the announcement of this title.

Though Diablo III was first announced in 2008, it was only actually released to the public on May 15th, 2012. That’s one massive amount of time for a game to be in development, especially with the 5-minutes-of-fame atmosphere we’re in now. Then there’s the bits and pieces that Blizzard has had to change right from the outset. Today’s big kicker is the announcement from former Diablo 3 Game Director Jay Wilson.

“Most of the auction house’s use is with in-game virtual gold.”

Speaking with Joystiq this week about Diablo III’s real money action house, he suggested that the feature has “really hurt the game.” According to Wilson, over 50 percent of the players that play regularly use the auction house, while most of the auction house’s use is with in-game virtual gold rather than with real cash.

Because of this gold use, not necessarily the real money, motivation to collect gold and broken items (otherwise useless, able to be sold in the game to virtual vendors for gold), have become far more popular goals for users. There’s simply not as much junk everywhere anymore – Diablo II continues to be a massive mess of item drops and coins.

“I think we would turn it off if we could, [but it’s] not as easy as that.” – Wilson

Citing the near-impossible task of figuring out how much of the Diablo III user population wants the auction house to stick around or be kicked to the curb, Wilson was clear on one point: they are looking for a “solution.” A solution to what, exactly, we might never know.

Diablo III’s next big “oops” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.