Blog

Palm has posted to their Developer Center that they’re hosting a ‘San Francisco PDK Party’ on Wednesday, June 9th from six to nine at 111 Minna Gallery in, well, San Francisco:

Palm and Appcelerator invite you to a co-hosted night of networking. Enjoy hot food and cold drinks on us. Mix it up with your fellow developers, check out our demos, or watch video turntablist Mike Relm take you on a trip through sight and sound. Don’t miss this fun event—and a chance to hear about porting your apps with the Palm® webOS™ PDK.

Would-be attendees should be sure to hit up [email protected] to secure a spot.

The event, not coincidentally, comes right around the time of Apple’s WWDC event. Given that the PDK is now officially part of Palm’s full SDK for webOS and given that many iPhone apps can be ported to the PDK in ‘a matter of days,’  the timing and placement of the event is either fortuitous or opportunistic, depending on your point of view.

Appcelerator, the cohost, is interesting because to our knowledge they have been focusing on other platforms to date. However their core business model is to offer a cross-platform development environment that creates native apps that look and feel like native apps on each platform – much of which is based on HTML, CSS, and the like. In other words, a pretty darn good match for a party focused on porting apps to webOS.

Palm Developer Center

After a flurry of arguments and debating in the last few days, we’re turning today’s Daily Reckoning over to a few learned readers. No, we haven’t run out of ideas or salient, socialist-destroying arguments to make. But there are deadlines to make in the publication of our trio of investment newsletters. We’ll be back tomorrow on the great super triple lindy back flip dive.

In response to yesterday’s letter, Argument from Authority:

Morning guys. As you can see, I am reading your latest at 1.53 am , this is one of the most brilliant essays on the complete ignorant upstuff of the rudderless socialist government ever. Well done. About 25 years ago my doctor, a Hong Kong born Chinese true Aussie told me. “You whities will become the poor white trash of Asia.” WERE DOOMED!! DOOMED!!

Hmmn. Maybe not try to read the DR after mid-night?

More yesterday’s piece:

Dear Dan,

I am sorry, but I can’t let your recent Daily Reckoning commentary pass without some reply. Your attempted rebuttal of the letter concerning the Resource Super Profits tax was weak and misleading. After saying you’d attack the argument on its merits and then proceeding to regurgitate your ravings against economists in general for a couple of tedious pages. While amusing the first few times and no doubt justified, they tend to get monotonous and repetitious and did nothing for your argument here. I have no idea which school of thought the economists who wrote the letter are from and, frankly, don’t care, as it is their claims which are under question not their personal beliefs. I am no fan of current economic thinking and am a forester not an economist. Thus, perhaps you will be happier to listen to my interpretation of the tax and its implications.

When you finally did get back to the subject, your arguments are weakened by selectively quotations and misguided logic. You appear to be suggesting that miners should pay nothing to the public for the use of non-renewable resources. You also suggest that if miners were to pay for the use of these resources then everyone should pay because, apart from a few industries such as agriculture and forestry, we are all basically using up non-renewable resources derived from somewhere or another.

The first point would result in us effectively having no rights over our countries own resources. The miner could simply take the resource sell it and only be liable for normal company tax (that it wasn’t able to avoid paying through other means). While some might benefit from increased employment etc. while the resource is being extracted, once it is gone there would be nothing. In this way miners are different from other industries which may be able to access non-renewable resources from other geographic locations without having to physically relocate to another region or country. Thus, mines tend to be more disruptive socially, than other industries unless there is some way of investing some of the profits for future benefit of the population. This is exactly what some Scandinavian countries and now oil rich countries are doing with oil revenues – investing them into renewable resources and technologies which will maintain employment and wealth long after the oil has gone.

The second point – that it is unfair to single out miners is perfectly true. Furthermore, such a tax would ensure that all industries depending on non-renewable resources sourced from Australia or other countries with a similar system would have to pay their fair share for the use. This is because the miners will simply pass whatever portion of the tax the market can bare to downstream users of those resources. The key difference between miners and other industries is that, for many, the largest cost is not the raw materials used but a perfectly renewable resource – labour.

Finally, you completely miss (or ignore) the point that this tax will actually benefit miners during downturns in the economy because it is a tax on profits from selling resources not the resources themselves. Currently miners are taxed for digging up resources regardless of whether they are making a profit or not. In this way, the tax payer will be assisting miners during downturns when they might otherwise close down and will benefit from them during upturns thus helping cool a potentially overheating economy. This is what the writers mean by a “more efficient tax” not that it is easier for the Government to collect.

So I think the tax is generally a worthy idea. It is certainly worth a more thorough rebuttal than your half baked attempt. The more important argument is “How can we stop the Government by wasting any profits on mindless schemes such as first home buyer grants, baby bonuses, subsidies for inefficient industries and new freeways”.

Cheers,

Barrie

And finally, in response to our claim last week that there is no such thing as “the public interest“:

Dear Dan,

What has rattled your cage? I think you are being a bit fundamentalist today. No public interest?? Try telling that to BHP, Rio , the Banks, and property owners. The public interest is the law, the people who maintain it, the system of law enforcement, property rights, the parliament, free speech, infrastructure, hospitals – in short, the Commonwealth. And as its name implies, it does not exist in a vacuum but takes vast amounts of money to run and maintain. The market system does not provide the stewardship of private property. People do with the backing of property rights and the law.

While there may be some truth in your assertions about the use of the term “the public interest” by lawyers, litigants and policy makers, more often than not it is the large corporations who use the lawyers to run roughshod over any that get in their way.

By your way of thinking there was no public interest involved when BHP and the PNG government poisoned a whole river system with the OK Tedi mine. BHP then secured a cheap get out of jail card from an impoverished government and walked away. Certainly, in some people’s eyes there is no public interest. Your use of the Tragedy of the commons argument is exceptionally glib and misleading.

You say that “The general welfare is best promoted by people being free to pursue their own interests under the equal protection of a transparently made and enforce law.” Trouble is corporations may be run by very powerful people using other people’s money but that is in no way the same thing as an individual going into the Pilbara with a pick-axe and a wheelbarrow. You equate people with corporations and while corporations may be treated in law as people, in reality they are very different beasts, does a corporation have a conscience for example?

I may be getting a bit off the track here but your American gung ho attitude has its merits but there are other ways of going about things too. It would be hard to argue in light of the events of the last 3 years that the American way has been a shining light to the rest of us. You like taking a swing at Aussies. I do too. I am a Pom. However, having lived here for 35 years (my entire adult life) I respect the Aussie way. It does not pay to be gung ho here. It is a very unforgiving continent. Drought and bushfire define this nation. The first colony barely survived although the aborigines had done the hard yards for 50,000 years but had hardly achieved anything along the lines that had been achieved in the golden crescent of the Middle East over 6000 years ago. No disrespect to my aboriginal friends – this is one tough country and I take my hat off to them. Self interest takes on a slightly different reality under such circumstances.

Provoking thought is one thing, Dan, but insulting people’s intelligence is not helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Nick M.

Similar Posts:

• Markets Binge, then Purge
• Real Estate Brokers: The Latest Victims of the Housing Crunch
• China’s Worst Case
• An African Divergence
• China’s Economy is the Greatest Bubble on Earth

From now on, NBA Live is no more. No, don’t worry, EA isn’t scrapping out the franchise. They’re just giving it a new name, freshen it up a bit. So when the 11th iteration of the NBA

There have been plenty of cases where a person or company gets a subpoena to try to identify an anonymous online person — such as in various file sharing cases. It’s also not uncommon for those anonymous internet people to fight the subpoena, and it’s quite possible to do so anonymously. Apparently, no one informed that to one guy who decided to fight a subpoena by Worldwide Film Entertainment over an alleged attempt to file share the movie The Gray Man. Apparently, in filing the challenge, the guy used his real name and address:

Comcast notified its subscriber in this case, one Mr. Simko, of Worldwide Film Entertainment’s efforts to learn Mr. Simko’s identity.

And here’s the part that makes this little vignette so charming: rather than challenge the plaintiff’s efforts to unmask his identity, Mr. Simko filed a motion to quash the subpoena USING HIS REAL NAME.

The court denied the motion to quash. The basis for denying the motion is kind of an aside (the motion to quash phase was not the right time to challenge venue or knowledge of the infringement).

What’s noteworthy about the case is Mr. Simko’s decision to voluntarily waive his anonymity. Not only did he challenge the subpoena using his own name, he filed as an exhibit the letter he got from Comcast notifying him of the subpoena. Right there, in all caps and as plain as day were Simko’s name and address for all to see.

Oops.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Last week, the Senate followed the House and passed a bill to
regulate Wall Street, all but ensuring President Obama another major
legislative victory. At moments like these, the Washington press corps
drops its adversarial tone and adopts a witness-to-history earnestness.

Pronouncements are made about the historic nature of the new law
(“The most profound remaking of financial regulations since the Great
Depression,” declared the Washington Post). The key figures, like
Senators Blanche Lincoln and Christopher Dodd, are lionized (“Dodd
Prepares to Depart in Triumph,” blared The New York Times). All of this
is routine and customary and to be expected. It’s also lazy and
misleading.

Like a good pulp thriller, the standard media narrative of any major
law requires high stakes, a clear delineation between good guys and bad
guys, and a satisfying resolution. But the truth about legislation,
including financial reform, is usually more mundane.

Politicians tout modest reforms as being great ones. They act in
their own self-interest. And they often can’t gauge a law’s
effectiveness until years after the fact, though you’ll rarely hear
this. For the press, the tradition of “writing for history” entails
burnishing the story, and that often means subordinating what was really
at stake and why the major figures acted as they did.

Three points in particular are likely to be underplayed. First, the
new financial regulations are the most profound since the Depression
chiefly because most of what Congress did in the interim was to
eliminate regulations, which brought on the recent crisis. Nobody’s
clearing a very high bar.

Second, whatever Obama signs into law will be modest given the scope
and severity of the crisis, nothing like the New Deal reforms. No bank
will be broken up, no government agency punished, no Wall Street
executive denied his bonus.

The thrust of both the House and Senate bills is to repair and
preserve the current system rather than reform it root and branch. “The
system isn’t changing that much,” Douglas Elliott, a Brookings
Institution scholar and former investment banker told National Journal.
“There is a hope, I think, that everyone is going to do better.”

Among the first to exhibit better behavior were the committee
chairmen who drafted the Senate bill, Dodd and Lincoln. In a break from
the Washington norm, the reform legislation got stronger, not weaker, as
it wended its way through the Senate. This was especially interesting
given that both senators spent years doing Wall Street’s bidding. Their
about-face added drama to the proceedings. That no senator in either
party was willing or able to thwart them only made the story better.

The third point likely to be underplayed is that this unusual dynamic
owes nothing to the integrity of the senators and everything to the
anger of the American public. Dodd and Lincoln, both facing wrathful
voters and long odds on reelection, simply were trying to survive (Dodd
finally gave up and decided to retire — sorry, “depart in triumph”).

It speaks volumes about the Democratic leadership’s attitude toward
financial reform that its two toughest bills have both been acts of
blatant insincerity driven by electoral desperation. That a few members
of the GOP, which would block Mother’s Day if a Democrat proposed it,
felt compelled to go along says as much about the power of an angry
electorate. But that’s really not so bad. Cravenness, it turns out, can
be a force for good. “This bill has been a constant one-upping of people
proposing stronger and stronger provisions,” a Senate leadership aide
marveled. “The dirty work of watering it down is dangerous, so it just
keeps moving along.”

A few big issues remain when the House and Senate merge their bills
in the coming weeks. Will the “Volcker Rule” banning federally insured
banks from making risky bets find its way into law? Will banks be forced
to spin off their derivatives business? We may soon see for ourselves.
Somewhere along the line, someone proposed televising the proceedings,
and no one’s summoned the courage to stop them. This is undoubtedly for
the good. Fear and self-preservation aren’t the most admirable
qualities. They make for lousy copy. But they do seem to work. The real
story of financial reform is that nobody wants to depart in triumph.

Joshua Green writes a weekly column for the Boston Globe.

Christopher Dodd – United States – Great Depression – Washington Post – Wall Street

If this was the past 18 months for Android then the next 6 months of Android will “blow your mind”. [AndroidTapp] More »










Android – Handhelds – IPhone – Android Market – Google

The iconic American country singer-songwriter William Hugh Nelson is famous for his long braided hair style. Nelson would wear one single three strand braid that would cascade down the back of his head. On other moments, he would wear two braids on either side of his head.

Born and raised in Abbott, Texas, Nelson is the son of Myrle Marie and Ira Doyle Nelson. Nelson wrote his first song when he was seven and he played in a local band when he was at age nine.

Fans of Nelson were shocked yesterday as the legendary Willie Nelson cuts his hair.

The waist-deep, reddish pigtails are gone. They have been one of the signature features of the singer-songwriter.

Spokeswoman Elaine Schock said that Nelson, who’s been hanging loose in Hawaii, got the hair cut in the past couple of weeks. She said that Nelson did not make a big fuss about the haircut, but she thought that the makeover was fine because Nelson might have grown tired of dealing with the braided long locks.

Related posts:

1. A Mystery beneath the Baseball Cap: Robert Pattinson’s New Haircut!
2. Chris Daughtry is Back on the Idol Stage
3. Out of This World Victoria’s Secret Fashion

Today, Facebook announced new privacy controls and settings in response to the tremendous public outcry over its April changes. Here we explain step-by-step how to take advantage of the new settings and maximize your privacy on Facebook.

This is important because you must take affirmative steps to adjust your settings in order to take full advantage of the revised privacy practices. While some information, such as your name, profile picture and gender, will remain publicly available, these steps are designed to provide as much privacy as Facebook’s new system allows. Please enjoy our video, which goes through each of the steps detailed below.

Step by Step to Maximize Privacy

First, log in to Facebook. Click on the “Account” pull down menu in the top right corner, and select “Privacy Settings.” Facebook is rolling out these changes gradually, and not all users will have the new options right away. If you see “Choose Your Privacy Settings” on the top of the privacy settings page, then congratulations, you have the new privacy options. Otherwise, you will have to wait until the rollout reaches you. In the interim, you can follow our previous instructions to opt-out of Instant Personalization.

Basic Directory Information

Start with the Basic Directory Information. Click on “View Settings” at the end of the second line.

The Basic Directory Settings control how your friends, exes, enemies, government agents and everyone else might find you on Facebook. To lock down your account, set all of these to the maximum privacy available — Friends Only, except for “Send me friend requests,” which must be Friends of Friends or higher. Note that even if you select Friends Only for the “See my friend list,” setting, “[your] friend list is always available to applications and your connections to friends may be visible elsewhere.” Click on Back to Privacy when you are done.

Sharing on Facebook

Next, you will need to set your Sharing on Facebook preferences. To maximize privacy, click on the Friends Only tab, which will make the all available settings switch to Friends Only with one more click of the “Apply These Settings” confirmation button. Facebook promises to keep these settings sticky, so that future changes will default to the privacy level you select here. However, many users will want to customize to reflect their individual tastes. If you customize, the default for future features will be Facebook’s recommended setting.

To customize, click on “Customize settings.” This brings up a new page, where the setting for each element of your profile can be tuned individually. You should review these settings, and modify any that you would like to share more widely than Friends Only.

At the bottom of the first section, you will see another link, “Edit album privacy for existing photos.” Click this to modify your photo settings on an album-by-album basis.

Click the back button in your browser to return to the customization page, and complete your review. When finished, click Back to Privacy to return the main page.

Applications and Websites

Click on “Edit your settings” under Applications and Websites, in the lower left region of the Privacy page. This brings you to the application page, which has several submenus. First, check your “Game and application activity” setting, which should be Friends Only if you’ve followed the instructions so far.

Next, to control what happens to your information when your friends sign up for an app or website, click the first Edit Settings button. Uncheck all the boxes that show up in the dialog box. Note that “your name, profile picture, gender, networks and user ID (along with any other information you’ve set to everyone) is available to friends’ applications unless you turn off platform applications and websites.” Save changes and click Okay.

The next setting controls Instant Personalization, the controversial program by which your information is shared with Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft by default. To opt out, click “Edit Settings.” Scroll to the bottom and deselect the check box. Click Confirm. Click Back to Applications.

Public search sets when search engines like Bing or Google can find your on Facebook. “Edit Settings” brings up a new page. If you have followed these instructions, “Enable public search” should be off already. After confirming that public search is not enabled, click Back to Applications.

Even with these settings, Platform applications can still see the information Facebook deems public — name, profile picture, gender, etc — even if you deselected everything in the “Info accessible through your friends” control. To more fully protect your information, you can choose to turn off all platform applications. However, the consequence is that you cannot use any platform applications, and you may lose data held by apps that you delete. There is currently no option to block all applications except the ones you choose. If you want the most protection and do not want to continue to use any Facebook apps, click on “Turn off all platform applications.” You will see the apps that you will lose, and must select all of them before you can click the button to Turn Off Platform.

Congratulations, you’ve now maximized your privacy settings on Facebook. If you have any trouble following these instructions, please contact Facebook’s technical support. And if you find this tutorial to be useful, consider supporting our work to help protect your privacy online.

Glee paid tribute to Lady Gaga during last night’s episode and Lady Gaga gives the love right back. Lady Gaga told Entertainment Weekly, “I love Glee. I went to a musical theatre school, and used to dream that someday the students would be singing my songs.” She also said in her twitter, “GLEE WAS SO AMAZING! AH!!!!” The episode was called “Theatricality” which featured “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face”. Gaga’s most memorable looks were put on by the club’s female vocalists and Kurt that rocked the auditorium with “Bad Romance”. Lou Eyrich, costumer for the show, said “The costumes are not replicas; we want it (to) look like the kids made them. Rachel (Lea Michelle) wears two outfits. The first is inspired by Gaga’s Kermit the Frog dress: She goes through her stuffed animals at home and staples all of them to her dress. The second is like the dress Gaga wore with the big silver mirrored triangle.”

However, it was Rachel’s duet with Shelby of “Poker Face” that stole the show. It was a shared final moment between the mother-daughter pair after Shelby came clean about being unprepared for full-time motherhood. Idina Menzel, who played Shelby Corcoran, told MTV “I don’t channel Lady Gaga. I’m just in awe of Lady Gaga.”

Related posts:

1. Lady Gaga Prefers To Die On Stage
2. The Monster Ball Tour – Lady Gaga Tickets
3. There Is Only One Lady Gaga

Total parody from the Onion News Network … there’s nothing like a little Armageddon humor to lighten your mood.

President Obama gets to see solar technology up close and personal at the Solyndra factory in California.  Solyndra builds cylindrical solar panels that convert more of the sun rays into power.  The company benefited from investments through the Recovery Act.  …

…   “… construction of the new facility has created over 3,000 construction-related jobs and the new factory could create up to 1,000 long-term new jobs.  The Solyndra project is just one of the many ways the Administration is supporting clean energy manufacturing in America.  Today Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman participated in a ground breaking ceremony for Nissan North America’s new advanced batter manufacturing facility in Smyrna, Tennessee. ”   …

Via The Whitehouse: Make Things.

   

Supply chain impact of the solar factory investment …

Filed under: Car Buying, Classics, Coupe, Sedan, Marketing/Advertising, Honda, Design/Style

Honda Vice President John Mendel recently admitted to AutoWeek that the next-generation Civic will be delayed from the Fall of 2010 to sometime in 2011. Mendel said in the interview that the Civic was delayed because of tightening emissions standards and he also noted that changing market conditions were partly to blame. AW also notes that the Civic’s design was changed along the way, as Honda’s second biggest selling model was originally scheduled to be larger for 2011. Happens all the time, right? Well, not to Honda it doesn’t.

Michelle Krebs over at Edmunds Auto Observer has taken a deep-dive look at the broader implications of the Civic redesign, and came up with some very interesting points. For starters, Krebs speculates that the next Civic was delayed in part because it wasn’t competitive compared to the new, vastly improved competition from companies like Hyundai, General Motors and Ford. While some analysts feel that the Honda redesign shows that the Japanese automaker is willing to swallow some humble pie and get things right, Krebs counters that going back to the drawing board shows that Honda has lost its touch with the car-buying public. Further support for her theory centers around the lackluster greeting for the Insight by both consumers and pundits, Acura’s polarizing styling language and the love/hate Accord Crosstour and its embarassing social media launch efforts. Analyst John Wolkonowicz of Global Insight appears to agree with Krebs, saying that Honda is living off of its reputation from the 1980s and 1990s.

Where do we stand on the Honda Civic design pushback? We’re thinking that as long as the Civic continues to sell in big numbers with relatively small incentives, Honda is smart to head back to the drawing board, especially as it is still selling strongly five years into its lifecycle. However, we’ve been worried that Honda has been losing its engineering-led focus for a while now, so we’ll be looking to the next-gen Civic for some level of redemption.

Be sure to take our poll and check out our high-res gallery of Honda Civic history before heading over to the Auto Observer for some very interesting analysis.

View Poll

[Source: Auto Observer]

Delayed Civic Begs the Question: Has Honda lost the plot? [w/poll] originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 26 May 2010 20:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

-Not Safe For Work, Life, or While Eating: CLICK HERE To Watch the first 10 minutes of the Kendra Wilkinson sex tape. You can thank me later….

-Beyonce Dereon/C&A Commercial….

–Make Me A Supermodel Season One champ Ronnie Kroell is stripping down for Playgirl….

-Your tot can take a dump in style, thanks to Huggies’ new denim diapers!

-While we’re on the subject of jeans, Desperate Housewives’ Felicity Huffman has been named the official ambassador of National Denim Day…

-This just in: Jesse James is a lying sack of dog mess!

–Facebook banned in Pakistan….

-Get your Freakum Dresses ready, girls: Serena Williams and Common are reportedly no more!

-Duchess Sarah Ferguson really is up to her eyeballs in debt…

–Girls Aloud star Cheryl Cole files for divorce….

–Glee star Lea Michele is glad she’s learned to embrace her natural beauty….

-Russell Brand and Jonah Hill attend a Get Him to the Greek promo event at the Diesel Store in New York City….

-Hide the babies! Hellraisin’ Heather Mills is looking to adopt!

-TV icon Art Linkletter, who hosted the popular TV shows People Are Funny, House Party, and Kids Say The Darnedest Things in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s died Wednesday. He was 97.

-Here’s the trailer for Going the Distance, the new movie starring Drew Barrymore and her sometimes beau Justin Long….

-New York will host the Super Bowl in 2014…

-President Obama will present Beatles legend Paul McCartney with the Gershwin Prize — a lifetime achievement
award for outstanding contributions to pop music –at The White House next month….
–Home Alone Reloaded: A 12-year-old Oregon girl saved her home from burglary…

-Paging Child Protective Services! A two-year chain smoker is puffing cancer sticks like a freight train over in the Philippines?!

“The footage shows two-year-old Ardi Rizal reclining with a cigarette in his mouth. He waves it around, and draws back deeply on the cigarette. Ardi’s parents claim that the child is addicted to nicotine. His mother Diana 26, told Britain’s Sun newspaper she felt powerless to deny the child. ‘He’s totally addicted,’ she said. ‘If he doesn’t get his cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.’ Ardi Rizal smoked his first cigarette when he was 18 months old and now smokes 40 cigarettes a day. The overweight toddler is deft at blowing smoke rings, but is so unfit he cannot play with other children…”

The Firefox Home iPhone app will allow you to sync your desktop browsing sessions to your iPhone. This means that you’ll be able to access your Firefox history, bookmarks, open tabs, and Awesome Bar right on your iPhone. More »










iPhone – Smartphone – Handhelds – App Store – Poem

My toes are tingly, my head kinda hurts, and last night’s a bit fuzzy. Did I have a seizure? Is it lupus? Where’s my iPad? The WebMD app will help me figure it out—Oh God! It’s Sjögren’s syndrome! More »










IPad – Health – Conditions and Diseases – Musculoskeletal Disorders – Connective Tissue

Overview

What’s Good: Additional system memory helps general performance; trackpad and Wi-Fi are also welcome improvements.

What’s Bad: More of a revision than an entirely new model.  At $199, it’s also way too expensive.

Verdict: If you’re using an older BlackBerry, the Bold 9650 is worth considering.  If you’re working with the Tour 9630 or Curve 8500 series, it’s not worth the jump.

Introduction

Shown off at WES 2010 in Orlando, the BlackBerry Bold 9650 has landed on Sprint, with a Verizon version in the works.  Featuring Wi-Fi, a trackpad, additional system memory, and a few cosmetic changes, the device is more of a revision of the Tour 9630 than it is an entirely new model.  Still, the improvements are welcome changes that die-hard BlackBerry users have been asking for.  The real question – is the Bold 9650 worth purchasing if you’re using a Tour 9630 or Curve 8500 series?

Design & Features

The Bold 9650 measures in at 4.41 inches tall by 2.44 inches wide by 0.56 inch thick and weighs 4.8 ounces, making it slightly heavier than the Tour (4.5 ounces).  Continuing the trend, the screen on the Bold 9650 is beautiful. Measuring in at 2.4-inches in size, it offers 65,536 colors at a 480×360-pixel resolution.  The left side of the Bold houses the speaker and a customizable button, while the right side sports the 3.5mm headphone jack, volume rocker, another customizable button, and the microUSB charging port. The lock and mute buttons can be found on top of the device.  Cosmetically speaking, little has changed outside of the trackpad.  Sprint opted for a rubberized battery door versus the glossy one found on the 9630, and the center houses a new design versus the carbon fiber design from before.  “Bold” is now written above the 3.2-megapixel camera.

Though the exterior design has been modified slightly, the Bold 9650 ships in the same box as the Tour 9630 did.  Sprint and RIM were generous with accessories – in the box, you’ll find the device, battery, SIM card for international travel, USB cable, charger, swivel holster, AC adapter, 2 GB microSD card, earbuds, and instruction manuals.  From a design perspective, the phone is virtually identical to the Tour 9630.  Buttons are in nearly identical locations (save for the charger, which is just slightly higher), the chrome looks exactly the same, and the keyboard is the same.  Overall functionality is a bit faster thanks to the 512 MB of internal memory.

Usability & Performance

As with the other trackpad-equipped BlackBerrys, using the new navigation method is flawless.  I can’t even begin to count how many trackball issues I’ve seen over the past few years, and the addition of the trackpad completely removes the problem.  The trackpad is always fluid, and I’ve had no issues to date with it.

The keyboard is a bit of a mixed bag for me.  Though it looks nearly identical to the QWERTY on the Tour, I’ve found that the keys are a bit smaller and the row that houses the space bar has shrunk in size.  What’s more, it you place your finger on the trackpad and move from right to left, the keyboard appears to be domed (right around the trackpad).  It’s a strange feeling – it’s as if they packed a bunch of stuff under the keyboard, and tried to cram the keyboard over it.  As a result, using the keyboard makes me feel like it’s going to pop off and motherboard components are going to go everywhere.  Over the course of a few days, I got used to the keyboard, but was never able to type as quickly as I did on the Bold 9700, 9000, and Tour 9630.

The Bold 9650 offers the standard music player found in BlackBerry OS 5.0.  Offering a progress bar along with the option to shuffle, repeat, or add to playlist, it’s simplistic and easy to use.  The speaker worked well, though the actual speaker placement was a bit frustrating at times. When typing on the device, I found that my finger constantly blocked the speaker, making music and ringtones muffled.  The device offers a 3.2-megapixel camera, and in my testing, pictures were decent.  Like BlackBerrys of the past, there is a shutter lag, making it difficult to take pictures of moving objects. The device also supports video recording.

I’ve been working with the Bold in the Charlotte market, and call quality has been very good.  Callers said that audio sounded good, and I was able to hear them just fine as well.  Speakerphone was loud and clear, and worked without issue in a busy coffee shop.  Additionally, I paired the Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset to the device without issue.  In addition to CDMA, the Bold 9650 supports the GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and WCDMA 2100 MHz bands, meaning that the device can be used in numerous countries across the world.

As with many of Sprint’s smartphones, the Bold offers EVDO (3G) and A-GPS.  The Bold also ships with Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, and a plethora of other Sprint-themed programs. Through the BlackBerry App World (installed), users can download a variety of additional applications. While somewhat functional, I was disappointed by the web browsing experience on the device.  Here’s to hoping that RIM’s upcoming WebKit browser provides a better experience.

For a CDMA BlackBerry, the 9650’s battery life is decent.  Though estimated talk time is five hours, I was able to use the device continuously for just under four hours before it shut down.  With moderate to heavy use including calling, text messaging, instant messaging, browsing the web, use of Sprint Navigation, and use of Sprint TV, I was able to make it just over one day before the device powered down.  Though it offers a smaller screen, battery life is slightly better than media-centric devices like the Nexus One, Incredible, and DROID.

Conclusion

The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is a nice addition to RIM’s CDMA lineup.  Strong signal strength, combined with decent battery life and international capabilities will make for a great device for any individual that travels regularly.  Despite that, it’s more of a revision than it is an upgrade, so if you’re using a Tour 9630, Curve 8500 series, or Bold 9700, the Bold 9650 isn’t anything new.  What’s more, at $199.99, it runs a dangerous risk of being flanked by the EVO 4G and iPhone 3GS.

Alguns modelos vendidos no Brasil, também já são vendidos na Argentina, como o Fiat Palio Fire e Siena.

Agora a marca também pretende levar o novo Uno. Pelo visto a Fiat pretende levar novos ares ao Uno.

Segundo fontes, o modelo já está sendo trabalhado para se adequar as necessidades dos argentinos para daqui alguns meses começarem a ser fabricado no país.

O modelo é fabricado somente na fábrica de Betim (MG), mas será fabricado na Argentina como já dito e a muitos rumores de que ele irá também para o mercado europeu.

Fonte: Autos Segredos

The folks at 3 Quarks Daily are taking nominations for their second annual Prize in Science. The judge this year will be Richard Dawkins.

Here are the details for how to nominate a blog post from the past year, written after May 23, 2009. The deadline is May 31.

Some Loom readers have already nominated some posts–thanks! Here are a few other of my favorites…

Full-Spectrum Genomes

The X-Woman’s Finger Bone

A Day Among the Genomes

Kinkiness Beyond Kinky

Skull Caps and Genomes

The Origin of Big

Ardipithecus, We Meet At Last

Ground Zero, Could an Islamic building be build near it?

As the reconstruction of the World Trade Center advances a debate is rising, regarding a Islamic mosque that will be build near Ground Zero, the Cordoba house.

Islamic leaders say that the Cordoba house would serve as a sign of peace, how ever many see this mosque as a tribute to the very ideology that caused the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Islamic group that plans to build the mosque dose not have the funding yet for it, however hopes that the building of it will start is this summer. The Cordoba house project still needs NYC approvals and probably will have a landmark hearing before the construction of it could start.

Related posts:

1. Bloom Box: Bloom Energy Fuel Cell Powered Energy Source
2. Viagra can cause hearing problems
3. Tentative Approval For Maryland’s Budget Worth $32 Billion