Hasta La Gadget!

Planning on picking up a Moto X handset for yourself? Well we heard that Motorola would be offering a $150 discount on its Moto X handset for those interested in purchasing the device outright as part of its Cyber Monday deals, meaning that its asking price has seen a drop to $349 from $499, and $399 from $549 for the developer edition. Well if you think that the price outright is a tad expensive for your tastes and would like to pay less, and by that we mean a lot less, it seems that AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint will be offering the handset for $0.01 come Cyber Monday, but this means that you would need to sign a new two-year contract with either of the carriers.

No word on how long this deal will last, but we can only assume that it will be applicable until the end of Cyber Monday. The deals are available via Amazon’s website (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint) and will only apply to the black or white model of the Moto X. This means that if you wanted to customize your device, such as get an engraving or get it in different colors via the Moto Maker website, you’d have to pay the regular price on contract which is currently at $99.99, but if you’re not too fussed, $0.01 seems like quite a steal! So, any takers?

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint To Offer Moto X For $0.01 On Cyber Monday original content from Ubergizmo.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems are used on things like ebook and movie files to make them more difficult to share. During the Napster era the major record labels got on board with DRMs in a big way hoping that they could reduce piracy by locking their music files down. But a new study shows what we’ve all thought for a long time. It doesn’t help. And in fact it DRMs hurt sales.

Read more…

This article was written on September 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Walt Mossberg is a very well respected technology journalist for the Wall Street Journal, and he was recently known for being the one to head up the Steve Jobs & Bill Gates interview. His articles typically revolve around either Windows or Macs, but his readers had been asking him to jump into the Linux side of things.

Mossberg was able to get his hands on a Dell 1420N laptop preloaded with Ubuntu. Right there you know he should have a great out-of-box experience since there shouldn’t be any hardware complications (such as getting the wireless card to work). That was partly true, and here’s a quick overview I put together of the good and bad things he discovered while using Ubuntu:

The Good:

• It’s free and open source
• Looks a lot like Windows or Mac OS X so it is easy to get used to
• Runs on the least-expensive popular hardware configurations
• Essentially free of viruses and spyware
• Built and constantly improved by a world-wide network of developers

The Bad:

• No control panel for adjusting the way the touch pad works
• Every time the computer awoke from sleep, the volume control software crashed and had to be reloaded
• Codecs had to be downloaded to play audio and video files, and the  user is warned that some of the codecs might be "bad" or "ugly"
• Several computer reboots were needed to recognize a Kodak camera and Apple iPod, and the iPod had problems synchronizing
• No built-in software for playing DVD’s
• Nobody is ultimately responsible for the quality of the product, and open-source developers often have an imperfect feel for how average people use software

Are all of these things the fault of Ubuntu? Not at all. In fact many of the problems could be reconciled if the hardware developers would create proper drivers for the Linux operating system. Instead Linux distributions are often left on their own to make sure the different hardware configurations are supported.

Mossberg isn’t saying that all of these things are show stoppers, instead he’s just trying to get the point across that Linux isn’t quite ready for the mass market. He even quoted Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder, as saying "it would be reasonable to say that this is not ready for the mass market."

Here’s a 5-minute video that Mossberg put together to explain the details:

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

The Nokia Lumia 929 has been leaked multiple times in the past, and the most recent leak we’ve seen is just yesterday where a white version of the handset with Verizon’s logo was spotted. According to the rumors, the handset is expected to make its debut in mid-late December, and now according to retailers, it seems that a release date around the 20^th of December might be possible. This is according to Amazon’s listing for alleged Lumia 929 accessories, such as screen protectors, where the accessories’ release date has been pegged for the 20^th of December release.

Assuming Amazon knows something we don’t, this does seem to corroborate the earlier rumors which suggested a late December release, although we’ll be taking it with a grain of salt for now and will wait for an official announcement from Verizon. The Lumia 929 was originally rumored to see a release in November, but given that November has come and gone without any news, we guess the next best thing to do is hope for a December release. The handset is said to be a smaller version of the Lumia 1520 with a 5” Full HD display, a quad-core processor from Qualcomm, and a PureView camera accompanying it.

Nokia Lumia 929 Accessories Set For 20th December Release original content from Ubergizmo.

Lately Microsoft has been making the news by poking fun at both Samsung and Apple products, but it looks like it’s Amazon’s turn to have some fun and the company has recently released an ad which pokes fun at Apple’s iPad Air, although in this case they made use of an actor with a British accent which we can only assume is mocking Apple’s Jony Ive, the designer of the iPad Air amongst other Apple products. As expected the ad pits the iPad Air against Amazon’s own tablet offering, the latest Kindle Fire HDX which was announced a couple of months back.

The ad boasts that the Kindle Fire HDX weighs 20% less than the iPad Air, features more pixels in its display, and not to mention its lower cost which is at $379 for the 16GB model, while Apple’s own offering is set at $499. Those are some valid points, to be honest, but once again we are comparing different smartphone platforms and ecosystems, so apart from just hardware specs, there are other factors the customers have to consider when buying into a platform. In any case if you have a minute to spare, you can check out Amazon’s attempt at mocking the iPad Air and Jony Ive in the video above.

Amazon’s New Ad Pokes Fun At The iPad Air original content from Ubergizmo.