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Found under: Google, Nexus One, Android,

Googles own Android phone the Nexus One is going to be available on January 5 on an invitation basis. In other words Google will decide who can play with the phone early next year while T-Mobile will start selling the device at some point later on.In the mean time we have all the specs as they have been conveniently leaked right before Christmas. So check them out folks and decide for yourselves if the Nexus One is worth buying 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED screenHSPA 900170021

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If your family is anything like mine, your holiday traditions include a moment when the presents are unwrapped, the Tofurky (hey, it’s my family) is eaten, and everyone drives to the theater to a catch a movie. But how will you decide what to watch?

Well, if you want to see which movies the masses are talking up on Twitter, or what your friends are recommending, you should check out a new site called FlixUp. The team is putting the final touches on the site, and it should go live either tonight or tomorrow morning. (I’ll update the post once it’s available.)

Bazaar Labs, the San Francisco startup that created FlixUp, started out by releasing an iPhone app earlier this month. The company compares its website and app to Rotten Tomatoes, the site that aggregates (mostly professional) movie reviews. There are other review aggregators out there (I’m a big fan of Metacritic), and those sites often include a place for users to post their own reviews. What’s missing however, is a site that measures the general population, or at least a sizable subset, not just select critics.

That’s where FlixUp comes in — it pulls in movie-related comments from Twitter, then calculates both how “hot” a movie is (basically, how many people are tweeting about it) and whether those comments are positive or negative. For example, I see there’s a thermometer showing that the movie Avatar is getting the most buzz right now. The thermometer is green and is adorned with a happy face, so I know that most of the comments are positive. Meanwhile, New Moon comes in second when it comes to buzz, but the thermometer is yellow, so the comments are more mixed.

You can also bring up the actual tweets about each movie. Of course, you could do this via a search within Twitter itself, but FlixUp says it uses an algorithm called the “Twitter Noise Assassin” to focus on higher quality, useful comments. And you can limit yourself to what your friends are saying about the movie, which strikes me as particularly useful. I’m usually curious about what people I know think about new movies, but if I’m not checking Twitter right after they make a comment, there’s a good chance I’ll never see it. You can also post your own comments to Twitter directly from FlixUp.

The website doesn’t really offer a ton of new features compared to the mobile app, but it’s important nonetheless, since it makes the app available to non-iPhone users. Bazaar Labs plans to add more social data soon, like updates from Facebook and MySpace. It also plans to release apps for topics other than movies.

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BlackBerry users are still fuming over the near-total collapse of e-mail this week, and the impact on manufacturer Research In Motion could last a lot longer than a New Year’s Day hangover. Users got an early piece of coal in their stockings Tuesday when many BlackBerry smartphones — now deemed “Crashberries” by some wags — stopped sending and receiving e-mails.

BoxTone, a mobility management software provider, said the outage started between 3 and 4 p.m. Tuesday and reached a critical state by 7 p.m. “At each of our customers, BoxTone detected a greater-than-normal quantity of users with messages pending, based on our learned baseline of what is normal for each server and carrier, and immediately generated a warning alert to our customers before the flood of user calls,” the company said.

On Wednesday, RIM released a status update, explaining the outage and apologizing to users. The problem appeared to be a software glitch in new versions of BlackBerry Messenger. Users are advised to download the latest version, 5.0.0.57, which solves those problems.

A Security Threat?

“A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas,” RIM’s statement said. “Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure.”

BlackBerry users weren’t mollified by the announcement, judging from angry comments on the popular Crackberry blog. In a post entitled “WOW … just WOW,” one user wrote, “BBM causes a system-wide crash?!?! Glad RIM isn’t responsible for y’know, security or Wall Street or something.”

Indeed, a major outage on the eve of Christmas…

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Filed under: Motorsports, Videos

Has your inner stunt driver ever wondered what it would be like to fling a ridiculously overpowered rally car off a ramp and onto a waiting platform some 250 feet away? Don’t have enough Red Bull running through your veins to actually attempt such a stunt yourself? Well, we have good news for you.

Travis Pastrana is just the type to try it out in your stead, and the helpful folks from the aforementioned Austrian energy drink company have mounted a camera to the car’s bumper during practice so you can see exactly what the scene looks like from behind the wheel. As with the last video, this is just a teaser to whet our appetites before the real jump (over water and onto a barge, no less) takes place on New Year’s Day, meaning that the actual landing is left up to your imagination… for now. Click past the break to see it unfold.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading VIDEO: Travis Pastrana’s New Year’s Jump. Take two

VIDEO: Travis Pastrana’s New Year’s Jump. Take two originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quite a few years ago, one of my friends unknowingly started an unusual tradition. He found himself with a little extra time on his hands that holiday season and decided to take advantage of it. With a beer in hand, he set out to write something a little whimsical. It turned into the most entertaining piece of email I’ve ever received. Each year, there’s a request for a new edition.

The e-mail was an adaption of Twas the Night Before Christmas where he recounts the happens of the year of everyone in the whole college crew. I decided I’d borrow the idea, but made it into a year-end financial review.

Twas the Night Before Christmas and all through the States
Nothing was stirring, especially not interest rates.

The year we speak was two thousand and nine
And more people than found themselves in the unemployment line

This was the year Obama had to really perform
We saw stimulus, CARD act, and Healthcare reform

The real estate problem got more exposure
As more homes started to go into foreclosure.

Bernie Madoff was not cool like Fonzie
Instead he reminded us of a man named Charles Ponzi.

Time’s Person of the Year seemed a little wacky
On the cover was a man named Ben Bernacke.

CEOs from car companies wanted bail out from debt
So they all went to Washington in their own private jet.

The insurance company AIG said, “money, please loan us!”
“We have all these international executives that need a big bonus!”

So the Feds granted that bailout and it was quite a ton
Even more, the Feds cried, “give them vaccines for H1N1.”

Cash for Clunkers was really a great plan
It boosted the economy – especially for Japan.

Searching for green electronics became such a pity
Especially as we had to say goodbye to Circuit City

Think positively, the year gave us many a gift
Captain Sully, The Hangover, and country star Taylor Swift.

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SynergeTech Solutions has released a substantial update to their popular Windows Mobile SMS Sync software.  Windows Mobile SMS Sync is an application that allows you to backup the text messages from your Windows Mobile phone to a universal CSV (comma seperated values) file that can be read using Microsoft Excel or the special text message viewing application that comes with the application on your desktop computer.

With the release of so many new Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, many people are upgrading their phones.  In the past, this would mean losing all your text messages in the transition.  This new release of Windows Mobile SMS Sync allows you to restore the backup created from your old phone on your new one!  It even maintains the same folder structure of your messages.  In essence, you can now transfer your text messages from your old phone to your new one!

The desktop application for viewing your text messages has also been overhauled in this new release.  The new desktop viewer application has the ability to do complex searches of your text messages on a number of criteria.  Once you have filtered your text messages to those you are seeking, you can export them to a seperate file, print them as a report, or even upload them to a SQL Server database for further analysis.

The other minor enhancements included in this latest release are better support for international phone numbers, non-latin character sets, improved performance, a streamlined user interface, and the ability to backup your call history log.

Windows Mobile SMS Sync runs on Windows Mobile 5, 6, 6.1, and 6.5 devices – both on standard (smartphone) and professional (pocket pc) models.  The included text messages viewing application requires Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or 7; although this application is not required to backup or restore your messages.

Click here to learn more about the new Windows Mobile SMS Sync release on SynergeTech Solutions’ website!

This post was submitted by Brian Hamachek.

Fletch writes “Here’s an interesting little article on why Sherlock Holmes remains so popular. Of course it happens to come right before the new movie opens and I am just sure it is pure journalism even though CNN and Warner are owned by the same company. Though I do find it rather odd that they don’t mention a small part of the reason why Holmes is still so popular is that he is in the public domain and new and varied stories are created about him daily. Yes, he has always been a widely loved fictional character but there are a great many characters with fan bases. Holmes has stretched his by being used in almost all genres and having been written by some of the most popular authors even today. People like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have written Holmes short stories and will continue to because of his public domain status. Even TV shows have gotten into the act with House M.D. which is a thinly veiled Holmes knock off. I find it odd that the same companies who decry the public domain are more then happy to use it when it suits them.”

Definitely an interesting point from Fletch, but there is some dispute over the state of Sherlock Holmes’ copyright status. While the character is in the public domain in some countries, there’s still at least one book in the US covered by copyright, The Case Book, and the legal representative of the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle seems to suggest that this means the character itself is protected by copyright until 2023, though that doesn’t seem correct to me. My understanding of other characters that have gone into the public domain is that when their first works enter the public domain, the characters themselves enter the public domain — but only the aspects of their characters originally covered by copyright that were included in those works.

Of course, this is made even more complex because it’s still something of an open question as to what, exactly, about a character is covered by copyright. It used to be believed that the characters themselves were not covered by copyright, since it was only the expression, not the “idea” that was covered. But, a variety of court rulings in the US have ruled in favor of the claim that characters themselves can be covered by copyright — leading to highly questionable legal results like the recent banning of a book using an updated version of Holden Caufield, the protagonist of JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.

Not surprisingly, the estate who owns the copyrights tries to present the situation as saying that all uses require a license. But, then again, it’s not like they’re going to tell you what’s in the public domain when it’s in their best interest to claim that nothing is. Either way, it appears that the initial claim concerning the public domain isn’t quite the case — and I would bet that the studio that made this latest movie paid for a license to avoid a legal fight. Why they should have to — especially given the fact that when the content was written there was no way for it still to be protected today under copyright law — is a separate (but rather important) question.

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El fabricante nipón no ha tenido un buen año a pesar de que continua innovando en el mercado, por esa razón tiene la necesidad de reducir sus gastos; sin embargo la compañía japonesa no desea aminorar la mano de obra y en cambio ha planteado reducir los costes de producción utilizando autopartes de menor precio durante los próximos tres años.

Un portavoz de Toyota indico que el fabricante nipón expuso a sus proveedores varias alternativas para reducir costes incluyendo disminuir entre un 30 y 40 % el precio de sus productos.

La compañía se negó a ofrecer más detalles acerca de la iniciativa pero varios analistas el mercado empezaron a especular con un importante desfase en la calidad de sus coches.

Por historia sabemos que Toyota siempre ha ofrecido un nivel de competitividad en todas sus líneas de producción y es difícil pensar que sus productos vayan a decepcionar a los usuarios, por lo tanto le otorgamos el beneficio de la duda y esperamos que pronto se aclare su iniciativa.

Vía | Autoblog

Who needs to dream of a white Christmas when you live in Boulder? But as a devoted astronomer, I need a little polychromaticism in my life, too.

Enjoy a fun and happy holiday, folks.

P.S. Last year’s holiday message still holds, too.

Filed under: Motorsports, Videos

Has your inner stunt driver ever wondered what it would be like to fling a ridiculously overpowered rally car off a ramp and onto a waiting platform some 250 feet away? Don’t have enough Red Bull running through your veins to actually attempt such a stunt yourself? Well, we have good news for you.

Travis Pastrana is just the type to try it out in your stead, and the helpful folks from the aforementioned Austrian energy drink company have mounted a camera to the car’s bumper during practice so you can see exactly what the scene looks like from behind the wheel. As with the last video, this is just a teaser to whet our appetites before the real jump (over water and onto a barge, no less) takes place on New Year’s Day, meaning that the actual landing is left up to your imagination… for now. Click past the break to see it unfold.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading VIDEO: Travis Pastrana’s New Year’s Jump. Take two

VIDEO: Travis Pastrana’s New Year’s Jump. Take two originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rishi Srivastava, consumer and online marketing officer of Microsoft India has revealed in a Wall Street Journal interview that Microsoft in trouncing its competitors (besides Nokia of course) in the small but rapidly growing Indian smartphone market.

Rishi claimed, according to IDC, that Windows Mobile had been outselling RIM and also the iPhone for more than 3 years now, and that both in terms of installed base and sales Windows Mobile was 3-4 times larger than RIM or Apple.

Rishi admitted however that Microsoft could do better, but said with recent launches such as Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, the Bing search engine and also Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft has “rediscover(ed) our DNA as a consumer company”.

Saying Microsoft was best placed to integrate the PC, phone and the Web to provide a digital lifestyle, the company intended to, with the help of their partners, push for greater market share, .

“We want to get a bigger piece of the pie.”

Read the full interview at LiveMint.com.

There are a lot of Christmas classics, many of which are now but a click away, in a cavalcade of online video clips available from movies and television.

While I style myself as a Scrooge, each and every one gets to me right where it counts–most especially the first I posted below: Judy Garland at the peak of her promise, singing, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the movie, “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

Every time I hear it, all is right with Judy and with the world

Which it wasn’t and it’s not, but the clip will make you believe it for a moment.

So, have yourself a Merry little Festivus now, and enjoy four others too:

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

“It’s a Wonderful Life” (colorized version, last scenes)

“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (not the Jim Carrey horror show):

“The Brady Bunch” (Christmas minisode)

“Seinfeld” (”Festivus” episode)

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If your family is anything like mine, your holiday traditions include a moment when the presents are unwrapped, the Tofurky (hey, it’s my family) is eaten, and everyone gets in the car to a catch a movie. But how will you decide to watch?

Well, if you want to see which movies the masses are talking up on Twitter, or what your friends are recommending, you should check out a new site called FlixUp. The team is putting the final touches on the site, and it should go live either tonight or tomorrow. (I’ll update the post once it’s available.)

Bazaar Labs, the San Francisco startup that created FlixUp, started out by releasing an iPhone app earlier this month. The company compares its website and app to Rotten Tomatoes, the site that aggregates (mostly professional) movie reviews. There are other review aggregators out there (I’m a big fan of Metacritic), and those sites often include a place for users to post their own reviews. What’s missing however, is a site that gauges the group closer to the general population, not just select critics.

That’s where FlixUp comes in — it pulls in movie-related comments from Twitter, then calculates both how “hot” a movie is (basically how many people are tweeting about it) and whether those comments are positive or negative. For example, I see there’s a thermometer showing that the movie Avatar is getting the most buzz right now. The thermometer is green and has is adorned with a happy face, so I know that most of the comments are positive. Meanwhile, New Moon comes in second when it comes to buzz, but the thermometer is yellow, so the comments are more mixed.

You can also bring up the actual tweets about each movie. Of course, you could do this via a title search within Twitter itself, but FlixUp says it uses an algorithm called the “Twitter Noise Assassin” to focus on higher quality, useful comments. And you can limit yourself to what your friends are saying about the movie, which strikes me as particularly useful. I’m usually curious what people I know think about movies that just came out, but if I’m not checking Twitter right after they make a comment about it, there’s a good chance I’ll never see it. And you can post your own comments to Twitter directly from FlixUp.

The website doesn’t really offer a ton of new features compared to the mobile app, but it’s important nonetheless, since it makes the app available to non-iPhone users. Bazaar Labs plans to add more social data soon, like updates from Facebook and MySpace. It also plans to release apps for topics other than movies.

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BlackBerry users are still fuming over the near-total collapse of e-mail this week, and the impact on manufacturer Research In Motion could last a lot longer than a New Year’s Day hangover. Users got an early piece of coal in their stockings Tuesday when many BlackBerry smartphones — now deemed “Crashberries” by some wags — stopped sending and receiving e-mails.

BoxTone, a mobility management software provider, said the outage started between 3 and 4 p.m. Tuesday and reached a critical state by 7 p.m. “At each of our customers, BoxTone detected a greater-than-normal quantity of users with messages pending, based on our learned baseline of what is normal for each server and carrier, and immediately generated a warning alert to our customers before the flood of user calls,” the company said.

On Wednesday, RIM released a status update, explaining the outage and apologizing to users. The problem appeared to be a software glitch in new versions of BlackBerry Messenger. Users are advised to download the latest version, 5.0.0.57, which solves those problems.

A Security Threat?

“A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas,” RIM’s statement said. “Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure.”

BlackBerry users weren’t mollified by the announcement, judging from angry comments on the popular Crackberry blog. In a post entitled “WOW … just WOW,” one user wrote, “BBM causes a system-wide crash?!?! Glad RIM isn’t responsible for y’know, security or Wall Street or something.”

Indeed, a major outage on the eve of Christmas…

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Instead of wishing Verizon Wireless a happy holiday, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn has sent a not-so-happy message to the wireless carrier. In an open letter, the newly appointed commissioner said Verizon has some explaining to do.

Clyburn wants Verizon to provide better justification after the company last week announced a higher early termination fee (ETF) for contracts associated with the purchase of smartphones, PDAs and netbooks offered at a reduced price.

The commissioner called Verizon’s reason for increasing the ETF from $175 to $350 “troubling” and “unsatisfying” and expressed hope the company will reconsider the fee hike that may affect tens of thousands of Verizon users.

What also troubles Clyburn, her letter says, is the $1.99 fee that users without a data plan are being charged to go the mobile home page.

Black and White

Verizon defended its changes and added clarification in a 77-page response to the Federal Communications Commission. The wireless carrier cited advertisements, contracts and other materials to show that consumers know about the ETFs before making a purchase.

“Our ETF for all other devices remains at $175, which was set long before the advent of these expensive, sophisticated, mini-computers that also make calls and can be carried in pockets and purses,” said Thomas Pica, a Verizon spokesperson.

Verizon argues that ETFs allow customers to have it either way. They can have no ETF on a month-to-month service and pay full retail for a mobile device, or they can get a discounted device with an ETF.

An example is a recent Verizon offer. Consumers pay $179 for a BlackBerry Storm 2 with a two-year contract. If the user breaks the contract very early and before the first $10 incremental decline, he or she will have paid $529, including the ETF. The full retail price of the phone is $539.

Verizon said…

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Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Toyota

The unintended acceleration issue has reached critical mass for Toyota, but is it an isolated incident for an automaker with an otherwise stellar record for being frank with its customers? A recent investigation by the Los Angeles Times shows that Toyota may have concealed safety issues on several occasions in an effort to keep its name clean. The newspaper is reporting that it uncovered several incidents in which Toyota concealed defects or delayed recalls even after several complaints were made.

For instance, there was an issue with a plastic panel that could be dislodged, potentially leading to unintended acceleration issues in some 2003 model Toyota Sienna minivans. Engineers reportedly discovered the problem and fixed the issue after 26,000 units were made. Toyota didn’t announce a recall until six years later. Then there was a steering issue with 2004 Toyota 4Runner models. Toyota recalled the vehicles in Japan but insisted that no recall was necessary in the U.S. even after there were dozens of complaints that showed the problem was real. The Japanese automaker finally recalled the SUVs in 2005. More recent was a suit filed by Dimitrios Biller; the ex-Toyota lawyer who alleges that his former employer hid safety data and evidence in rollover cases.

And that’s not nearly all. Click past the break to keep reading about more possible safety defects the LA Times suggests may have been concealed by Toyota.

Continue reading LA Times details Toyota history of concealing safety issues

LA Times details Toyota history of concealing safety issues originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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