Sunday, December 20, 2009

iPhone Hacked by Teen and Trades For Nissan 350Z

A New Jersey teenager has cut a deal to trade a hacked iPhone for a new set of wheels and three further iPhones, Yahoo! reports. Seventeen-year-old George Hotz, of Glen Rock, made the announcement on his blog, having successfully unlocked the Jesus phone. Duly released from the shackles of AT&T, the device was then swiftly offered for sale.

Hotz said: "Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell contacted me this morning, and offered to make a trade for the iPhone. I traded it for a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones." He described the trade as "a great end to a great summer", and he can only hope AT&T's attack lawyers don't provoke a sudden autumn chill.

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RIM to Launch New BlackBerry App Store in India

Apple really grabbed the attention of everyone involved in the mobile device market when it came up with the iPhone App Store even if things have not always gone as smoothly as users might have liked.

Then, just last month, we reported how Microsoft was looking to enter the App Store business with 'Skymarket' for Windows Mobile downloads early next year.

Now, pretty much inevitably, Research in Motion has announced at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in California that it has two major new 'distribution initiatives' for BlackBerry applications.

These take the shape of a new online application storefront plus a new 'on-device' application centre to provide consumers with easy discovery of and access to a wide range of BlackBerry apps. Those businesses with either BlackBerry Enterprise Server or Professional Software deployments will still control the applications that can be downloaded within the corporate infrastructure.

RIM tells me that the application storefront is scheduled for a March 2009 debut, but BlackBerry developers can start submitting stuff for inclusion as soon as December. The pricing model has also been confirmed, with developers being allowed to set their own prices.

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Twitter to Introduce SMS Tweets Service on Airtel

Twitter is committed to fostering the open exchange of information because we passionately believe it can have a positive global impact. When people can exchange information freely and publicly they are able to accomplish great things. As powerful as the Internet has become for the democratization of information, its range is limited when compared to mobile texting—a format uniquely native to Twitter. There are over one billion people with internet access on the planet but there are more than four billion people with mobile phones and Twitter can work on all of them because even the simplest of these devices feature SMS.

We have seen people use Twitter to help each other during fuel shortages, track the spread of wildfires, check in during earthquakes, organize major charitable events, spread urgent news efficiently around the world, and much more. In many of these scenarios, texting has been the key. People exchanging information quickly and efficiently with the device that has become essential to everyday life, their mobile phone. In many parts of the world people do not have Internet access but they can text—and that means they can access Twitter.

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Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X With Wine

Wine lets you run Windows software on other operating systems. With Wine, you can install and run these applications just like you would in Windows.

Wine is still under active development. Not every program works yet, however there are already several million people using Wine to run their software.

Open Source and User Driven

Wine will always be free software. Approximately half of Wine's source code is written by volunteers. The rest is sponsored by commercial interests, especially Codeweavers who sell a supported version of Wine.

Wine is heavily reliant on its user community. User tests fill our Application Database to track how well programs work, and all the answers in the forums come from volunteers.

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Dell Mini 3 – iPhone’s Brother From Another Mother?

Dell unveils Android-based Mini 3 smartphone

Dell said Friday that it's ready to enter the smartphone business with the Android-based Mini 3.

Long rumored to have a smartphone in the works, Dell said that the first two carriers to sell the Mini 3 will be China Mobile and Brazil's Claro.

In China, the Mini 3 will use OPhone, China Mobile's customized version of Google's Android operating system. "We are excited for Dell to be among the first manufacturers to introduce new technology based on the OPhone platform," an unnamed China Mobile representative said in Dell's press release.

Dell would not offer any specifics about the software on the Brazilian phone, saying simply that "the initial Mini 3 smartphones are designed around the Android platform."

Article Source Full Dell Mini 3 Photo Gallery.

Western Digital WDTV Media Player

The Western Digital WDTV ($110 as of March 5, 2009) marks the hard-drive maker's first foray into the field of media players, but the move makes sense as an extension of the company?s existing hard-disk products. The WDTV box lets your HDTV play media transferred from any USB storage device (flash drive or external hard drive), without any need for a streaming network device to bridge the distance from your storage drive or PC to the TV. Western Digital?s first-generation WDTV accomplishes its core task fairly well, but its menu system is slow.

The WDTV can connect to any standard-definition or high-definition television; it has composite audio/video connectors and HDMI, as well as optical audio output. HDMI is actually missing from its competitor, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater player.

The WDTV's two USB ports--one at front, one at back--let you keep two storage devices connected to the player simultaneously.

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Archos 7 Internet Media Tablet

The Archos 7, the bigger, beefier brother of the Archos 5, is an Internet Media Tablet that offers a slick design, a solid Web-surfing experience (complete with Flash support), and excellent video playback on a large, high-resolution 7-inch display. Unfortunately, Archos nickel-and-dimes customers when it comes to adding format support, and we had some issues getting premium movies to download from CinemaNow.

Design and Interface

Measuring 7.5 x 4.3 x 0.6 inches and weighing a hefty 1.4 pounds, the Archos 7 isn’t a device designed for toting around in your jacket pocket. But with the girth comes a sharp 7-inch (800 x 480-pixel resolution) display that’s far more suitable for watching movies than the Archos 5 (which sported a 5.0 x 3.1 x 0.5-inch, 8.8-ounce figure). The player sports a shiny gunmetal plastic finish that conveys that it’s a premium product (which is welcome considering the $449 price tag), but it attracts all manner of fingerprints and smudges.

Two dedicated volume keys are on the top of the device, headphone and AC adapter jacks are on its left side, and two non-standard USB ports are built into the bottom. Stereo speakers flank the display, and a kickstand in the back props the Archos 7 into prime movie-watching position.

Like the Archos 5, this model utilizes a touchscreen for input and navigation; We had no problems navigating the system’s intuitive menus and folders. A dock on the left side of the screen that lets you quickly access media files, TV, Internet, settings, and Add-Ons (and their corresponding sub-folders) using bright, colorful icons. The latest firmware (1.3.05) was very stable and worked in conjunction with the ARM Cortex processor to produce a lag-free experience when moving about the system.

Homepage Review(Source)

Friday, December 11, 2009

Microwave With Built-In YouTube Player (video)

Two researchers from Japan’s Keio University (which yours truly attended just until recently by the way) have developed a kitchen appliance aimed at the total web geek in you, a YouTube-powered microwave. The so-called Castoven [JP] is based on a conventional, unbranded model of “good quality” but sports a 10.4-inch LCD screen in the door panel. (Video and pics)