Wednesday, April 28, 2010

H-Palm

HP announced it was buying Palm today. Engadget has a live blog transcript for the conference call:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/hp-buys-palm-the-liveblog/

This is good news for me as I really liked the webOS and it keeps Palm competitive with Android, iPhone/iPad and the upcoming new Windows 7 Phone OS. There is speculation that HP will develop tablet products using webOS ala iPad but we'll see.

Maybe we'll see iPaq hardware running webOS in the very near future.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

TV: Weekly Musings

Lost: More of a go-nowhere episode for me. Seems like they have a lot of questions to answer in only 4 more episodes.

Idol: As predicted last week, Tim Urban finally exits. This week, probably the young kid but Casey and Mike are also vulnerable depending on their performance.

Flash Forward: Demitri lives and they kill off the guy with all the answers. I'm not sure if I'm liking this show anymore.

Fringe: Peter finally knows. But who is the Secretary? Walternate? Willternate? Or the best loop of all... Walternate's wife Elizabeth since she witnessed Peter's abduction.

Stargate Universe: Stranded and Rush becomes more likable. I'm sure they'll use a Stargate to get the Oceanic 4 back.

The Ultimate Fighter: Boo... Tito gets a win. Yaeger has an awesome strking game but we'll see if he can handle someone who can get him to the ground. I don't know what Lidell was thinking putting a short stocky fighter against him.

WEC 48: I'm actually surprised Dan Brown lost to Manny so quickly... weird. Ben Henderson pwns. It looks like Uriah Faber's days of dominance are over, two title shots and both losses. Weird to see WEC being called by Goldberg and Rogan.

Getting the scoop on the next iPhone may lead to requiring a jailbreak.

So if you live in a cave, you may not know that the Gizmodo editor who broke the news on the next iPhone had his house raided last Friday.

All the details (from a Gizmodo point of view) are here:

http://gizmodo.com/5525388/the-investigation-into-that-missing-iphone

It will be interesting to see how this resolves as there are good points on both sides of the case but Giz is going to have a hard time explaining paying $5000 for property that was not the seller's. Appled should call it the iPhone 5G (heh).

And Scott Adams jumped into it a bit with a Dilbert comic that will never see newpaper print:

 
You can read more about this on his blog:

http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/thatlost4gphone/

I'm a bit apathetic to both sides as they are both getting tons of free advertising from it and in the end, it's not going to stop anyone from buying the next generation iPhone in millions. Whether you like it or not, the iPhone has entrenched itself into technology culture... it's amazing that someone could come this late into the game and dominate like they have.

Monday, April 19, 2010

TV: Weekly Musings

Lost: Hurley taking charge! Ilana's death... what a waste but we saw it coming. Is Smocke afraid of Hume (bruthah)?

Idol: Bye-bye to YouTube sensation Garcia (he should have stuck to acoustic redux) and mature beyond her years Katie(?). I hope Tim Urban or the young kid gets the boot next.

Flash Forward: I hate how they are doing the whole relationship thing with Olivia and Simcoe. So stupid how they are now in love... dumb dumb dumb! Janice as the mole the previous week was a huge twist but what is her motivation and are the guys who shot her actually part of her alliance? Will Demitri make it past March 15? If he does, how will he explain his kid with a traitor to his fiance?

Fringe: Robocop does time travel! This show is way more awesome than X-Files. I still think that there is some connection between Walter Bishop and William Bell (both WB) that we don't know yet.

Stargate Universe: A sun and planet out of nowhere? So did anyone stay on the Genesis planet? That new scientist that just appeared this season? And are they done with the stones and the LaBamba storyline with Colonel Young's wife?

That's Incredible!

Anyone watch that show way back when?

Well... Verizon will soon release (April 29) their newest "Droid" phone, the HTC Incredible (which they are calling the Droid Incredible). If I were to get an Android phone, this would probably be the one. Very close in specs to Google's private labeled Nexus One but with an optical trackpad instead of the trackball (which I prefer).

It has been reviewed by both Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/19/droid-incredible-review/


And BoyGeniusReport (the back of the phone is interesting):

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/04/19/htc-droid-incredible-for-verizon-wireless-review/
I really wish Sprint was getting one of these but I guess they are going all-in on the EVO with 4G.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

iPhone 4G: Spy pics?

So the story on Endgadget is someone left their prototype iPhone at a NorCal bar and there are pictures from a prototype iPad at an Apple testbed which shows the same unit.



I'll let you decide but Engadget has the scoop (they rock):

Engadget's iPhone 4G?!? 

iPhone 4G Proof?

UPDATE: Gizmodo did a more complete inspection and this looks like the real deal:

http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Touchy Feely: Capacitive vs. Resistive Touchscreens

I don't really know what the big deal is about capacitive touchscreens on mobile phones. Whenever I read reviews of a new touchscreen phone, there is usually complaints about the display not being capacitive.

Is it just because the iPhone does it?

For those who don't understand the technology behind the two, the best way I can sum it up is resistive responds to pressure and capacitive responds to touch.

Here's my short list of pros and cons for both:

Monday, April 12, 2010

UFC 112 Not So Invincible

The non-title fights were better than the co-main events.

Palm: Five Finger Discount?

So the household name when it came to PDAs is in trouble. Although their future looked promising with the release of the Palm Pre (and Pixi) and their new WebOS... they aren't doing as well as they hoped. According to Bloomberg, they are taking bids and are being looked at by hardware makers HTC and Lenovo.

I really like WebOS and I think Palm messed up by trying to do the Apple route of controlling both the OS and the hardware. They should have been like Android and let other makers build phones so that they could get saturation at multiple mobile companies. Unlike Apple, Palm doesn't have the customer base or retail presence do pull an iPhone-type strategy and if they had partnered up with HTC, Samsung and others, they would probably be fighting it out with Android rather than performing worse than Windows Mobile.

We'll see what happens. If HTC does buy them, I think things will get very interesting in the mobile space.

Friday, April 9, 2010

What do big nerds watch on TV?

What I am following currently:
  • Lost (wish this wasn't the last season)
  • Flash Forward (almost like time travelling)
  • Fringe (alternate universe!)
  • American Idol (yeah... so I like music)
  • Stargate Universe (almost like BSG but without the Cylons)
  • The Ultimate Fighter (big UFC and MMA fan)
  • Warehouse 13 (when it starts up again)
  • UFC/MMA shows/events

What I wish I had more time to watch:

Just like my pizza... I want it thin: LED TVs

I really want one of those new super-slim LED TVs. Not only because they save energy but they are so thin and will look awesome on my wall (even if I'm the only one who sees it).

I really want to hate the iPad...

... but I actually played with one at Best Buy yesterday and it's hard not to like it.

When they initially announced it, I laughed because it just seemed like an oversized iPhone. And then when they said it would not support multi-tasking (that has changed with the release of the new OS), doesn't have a camera and has no USB ports... it became less of a sell for me.

But once you hold one of these things and surf the web, play games or just use any of the apps... you realize how useful it can be and why there are so many people going Lady GaGa over it. The price point is the main barrier for me and I doubt I will actually ever buy one but my opinion on its utility has changed and seeing how it's constructed (along with their notebooks) makes me wonder why PC manufacturers are so behind the curve when it comes to designing consumer products like these. Maybe if they come out with an iPad Nano (rumors abound), I may revisit the iPad.

Newer and Improveder: iPhone OS 4.0

So yesterday was the announcement of the new iPhone operating system, version 4.0. You can view the video here:

Apple Keynote for iPhone OS 4.0

Apples says they've added 100+ new user features with 7 of them being "tentpole" features:
  1. Multitasking
  2. Folders
  3. Enhanced Email
  4. iBooks
  5. Enterprise Enhancements
  6. Game Center
  7. iAds

Thursday, April 8, 2010

In Search of the Perfect Notebook(s) 2.0: Part 1

I initially started my notebook review site long ago because I was looking for a notebook for myself.

Well, it's that time again, as my old Dell Inspiron 8600 is at its last days. That guy has seen a lot of action and even though it is outdated, it's Pentium M, 512mb and 40gb hard drive running on WinXP still does what I need it to do.

So this time around I'm searching for TWO notebooks:

Welcome...

This is sort of the first blog for me... at least the first of this type. I actually started "blogging" many years ago (1997 to be exact) when I used to do reviews for notebook/laptops way before the magazines and online sites used to do them. Back then, they would usually lag months behind when it came to reviewing new notebooks and so I would actually arrange to get review models from different companies and post my own thoughts.