Gadgets posts

Smartphone season unofficially started last week with the release of the iPhone 4S. As Android phone makers try to capture their share of the lucrative Christmas market, the volleying for differentiators takes different angles to be as appealing as possible to consumers. For the Motorola Droid Razr, their gimmick is thickness (or lack thereof). This “impossibly thin”smartphone is equipped with a stainless-steel core, a Gorilla Glass screen and a nanotechnology Splash-guard. Motorola Mobility President Sanjay Jha said the 7.1mm-thick device is the world’s thinnest. Here are some of…

In lieu of a refund or cash considerations, Research In Motion (RIM) is offering an apps package normally valued at around $100 to compensate for the most major outage the company has ever had. The three-day+ outage likely presented major challenges for the business-heavy Blackberry users who often rely on the devices to stay connected while on the go. “You expect better of us, I expect better of us” RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in last week’s press conference. Now, we’ll see if users expected to be compensated more for the outage. Enterprise customers will also receive a free month of tech…

It has been speculated that home entertainment would meld with online and app-based engagement more and more over time. Today, Nielsen revealed that 40% of tablet and/or smartphone owners use them while watching television. As people continue to Tweet or post to Facebook when watching TV while others explore and research information about the shows they’re watching, a growing number of people are using television time as email time. For most activities like email and surfing unrelated information, the gender gap is slim. The notable exceptions are visits to social networks (which women…

Despite heavy support from both parties and an outcry of the people, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill passed by state legislature that would have banned searches of smartphones by police without a warrant. The ban would have prevented police officers from searching smartphones during an arrest. Many smartphones have persistent logins to personal communication services such as email and Facebook, keep track of locations the phone has been, and give access to personal contacts. This stays in line with a California Supreme Court decision that was upheld by the US Supreme Court…

There are two signs that point to a company entering into “desperation mode”: big cuts and big investments. Big, risky investments often signal prosperity at large companies, but they can also mean the exact opposite as companies try to buy their way out of bad situations and stagnant balance sheets. The latter seems to be the case with Sprint, a company that is committing a lot more money than they plan on bringing in over the next couple of years. First, there’s the iPhone. While the initial announcement that Sprint was getting the iPhone was met with glee, the decisions they’ve made since them…

There is little doubt that when Sprint begins servicing iPhones, current Sprint customers will switch to it. The real question that must be answered to determine Sprint’s long-term future is whether or not they’ll get conquest sales from Verizon and AT&T. Rumors have been circulating about unlimited data plans since it was first discovered that Sprint would be getting the iPhone. Many believe it’s the only way they can turn this into a successful move; investors are already worried. They need a big win or the gamble they’ve made by betting so much on a successful iPhone could crush the company….

In the oft-siloed world of grad school, MIT’s Media Lab leads the way when it comes to creating environments that foster interdisciplinary exploration. New discoveries routinely get shared between seemingly unrelated fields and lead to unexpected applications. This approach is broken down by our friends at Online PHD. There are times when accidents turn into breakthroughs. MIT Media Lab has a knack for putting together circumstances and environments that are conducive to these “accidents.” Click to enlarge. Created by: Online PhD…

The trends are heading in different directions. As devices become more mobile-data capable and applications push towards a mobile internet, service providers are shrinking, throttling, and increasing the prices of data plans. In  three minutes, AT&T and Verizon user UrgoClips encapsulates the frustration of the nation. Call it #firstworldproblems, but it’s still frustrating to many to have access to these wonderful new toys but to not have the service infrastructure to truly take advantage of them affordably. Listen to this video editorial and ask yourself if you’re “mad as hell…

While the privacy war wages on one end of the spectrum with people, companies, and even governments going after Facebook, Twitter, and Google about how they handle the information that people give (or do not give) them, the other end of the spectrum is using their mobile devices to announce anything and everything they’re doing and where they’re going. The differences are striking. More and more people are giving stalkers everything they need to keep track of them. Mobile devices are using automatic tracking and one-touch check in features to put our whereabouts out there to the public web. As…

The end of a very short era at HP is around the corner as they announced internally that the employee purchase program surrounding the HP TouchPad opens up at 9:00 am Pacific on September 28th, giving them the opportunity to buy the 16GB version for $99.99 and the 32GB version for $149.99 while supplies last. Many will end up on eBay where they’re currently selling for $200 or more. There was a good amount of excitement surrounding the release of HP’s first (and maybe last) tablet back in February, 2011. The slow sales and lack of developer adoption for webOS doomed the device. Since then, Microsoft…