Hello world! My name is Alex M. and I’m a Security Product Manager at Research In Motion (RIM). My job is to make sure that folks like you and me are safe when we use a BlackBerry® smartphone. What do I mean by “safe”? Security is about letting the good guys in and keeping the bad guys out. Sounds simple, right? Just don’t tell that to my boss. =D
BlackBerry smartphones come with a huge set of built-in security features, but how do we use them and what do they really do? Those are the questions I’ll be trying to answer with every post. Let’s start from the beginning: protecting your personal information.
Many of us (and I’m no exception) keep important information on our BlackBerry smartphones. The last thing we all want is this information getting into the wrong hands if our BlackBerry smartphone is lost or we replace it with a newer model. The good news is that BlackBerry smartphones are very tough nuts to crack, especially if you take the right steps to protect your information.
Wipe It!
Replacing your BlackBerry smartphone is like selling a used car – you need to make sure you clear it out first! Here are three easy ways to do that:
If you have a BlackBerry® Internet Service account, contact your carrier and ask them to remove it. If you don’t, your emails will keep being sent to your old smartphone even after you wipe it.
If you have a corporate BlackBerry smartphone, ask your IT admins to remove the IT policies. The new owner will thank you!
Protect It!
Of course, smartphones are also easy to lose, and many are stolen each day. To protect your personal information in case your BlackBerry smartphone is lost or stolen:
Make sure you set a password. By default, an attacker only has 10 tries to get it right, so making it hard to guess is very important. Here some useful tips on choosing a strong password.
Use content protection to encrypt all of your personal data. You can enable this by selecting Options -> Security Options -> General Settings on most BlackBerry smartphones.
If you do lose your smartphone, you will also want to contact your carrier right away to disable your SIM card (or equivalent). If you have a corporate smartphone, make sure you contact your IT staff first. They will usually be able to remotely enable security features and/or wipe your smartphone.
So there you have it, a few simple and practical ideas. Any tips you want to share? Anything you want to hear about next time? Let me know in the comments. Till next time, stay alert, stay safe.
Seventy-six year old Frank Morrow is not only having his knee replaced at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s also helping to test a Medicare payment system. Under the “bundled” approach, Medicare makes a single reimbursement for all the hospital and doctor care for heart and joint procedures, rather than making separate payments to the facility and physicians.
It’s a win-win-win proposition: The hospital gets guaranteed customers, Medicare saves 4.4% on procedures and Frank Morrow gets $271 as an incentive for going to a hospital that participates in the program.
Back in 1997, the band Aqua released a song called “Barbie Girl,” that was actually somewhat critical of “Barbie doll” culture. Mattel, famous for its rather aggressive intellectual property stance, wasted little time in suing the band, claiming the song infringed on the company’s rights. In 2002, everyone’s favorite appeals court judge (seriously, the guy never fails to entertain) Alex Kozinski told Mattel too bad, parody songs are a part of what you get for being a cultural icon — and included the classic line: “The parties are advised to chill.”
It took seven years since that decision, but apparently Mattel had decided to heed Judge Kozinski’s suggestion. Reader Sallo alerts us to the news that Mattel has actually licensed the song for a commercial — though, they “adjusted” some of the lyrics to make it a little more pro-Barbie, rather than mocking-Barbie. Still, that’s quite a jump: from suing the band for infringement to actually licensing and using the song in just a few years.
Oh man, yet another “élite” phone for us to look over and never be able to afford. It’s the Mobiado 350 Pioneer. It looks sort of like an Indiana Jones relic (note: I’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie), and is part of Mobiado’s Grand Line.
In his latest article for the Chicago Sun Times, Mac-afficianado and supergeek Andy Ihnatko discusses LongBox, an iTunes-like comic book online store and screen reader. If you’re into graphic novels, you’ll likely want to know more about this service, which promises to bring order and unity to the chaotic digital world of comic books. What caught my eye, however, was Ihnatko’s belief that LongBox is deep in discussion with Apple over bringing its app to the iTunes Store and making, in due course, the mythical Tablet the perfect e-reader for their graphical content.
Ihnatko describes how LongBox CEO Rant Hoseley dropped a very juicy hint at a recent convention:
Rantz spoke at the Long Beach Comic-Con last weekend, as part of an industry panel on the future of digital distribution. Referring to a future strategic partnership with an unnamed company, Rantz said “It seems like everything is going to go through as planned.” He identified the company only as one that “all of a sudden leaves us with a multinational launch with literally millions of installed users.”
That sounds a hell of a lot like access to the iTunes Store, either in the form of software in the App Store or readable content in a hypothetical “iTunes Newsstand.”
Ihnatko spoke with Rantz for an hour, relentlessly questioning him and expecting him to “stumble” over common issues that have kept the comic book industry from so far settling on a unified online sales and distribution platform. Apparently, Rantz didn’t stumble, but provided further tantalizing clues that something is afoot with our friends in Cupertino.
I’m pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.
What follows is an explanation of further clues and detective work that convinced Ihnatko LongBox is working with Apple. It’s worth reading in full. However, he’s cautious, and warns against getting too excited too soon.
CEOs say a lot of things during these briefings and when you’re on the other end of the phone, you need to be cautious before passing along any speculation that makes the company look this good. Even on the record, a tissue-thin hint isn’t the same as an open confirmation.
So I’m wishing LongBox well. And I hope that this deal with Apple is, in fact, more than just a busload of wishful thinking from a comic book geek with a tech column. An alliance with Apple would benefit everybody in the comix [sic] industry. It would kickstart digital sales through a single, united storefront the same way that Apple’s alliance with record labels kicked off the digital music industry in 2003.
To be sure, LongBox will want to get its app onto as many platforms as possible. And there is no lack of choice. Amazon’s Kindle is in its second iteration and was recently made available outside America. Barnes & Noble’s brand spanking new Nook is making waves, too. And there are plenty more e-readers on the market, with more on the way.
Amazon's Kindle offers hundreds of thousands of titles, but ultimately, it's a one-trick pony
While devices like the Kindle have established online stores with hundreds of thousands of titles on offer, they remain single-purpose machines. Sure, most e-readers can store photos for viewing on their grayscale e-ink screens, and the Sony Reader even offers MP3 support to boot — but none of the readers on the market today can offer wider multimedia capabilities.
Apple’s fabled tablet is expected to ship with some flavor of the iPhone OS and feature a full color capacitive touch screen. But more importantly, it’s expected to make full use of the iTunes store and all that it makes available to its millions of active users. So add music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, games and apps to the yet-to-be-launched e-book category. That’s content that works across all your computers and your phone, too. None of the other e-readers on the market even come close to competing with that sort of functionality.
For that reason, I barely use my Sony Reader, and have bought only a handful of books for the thing and have resisted the (sometimes rather strong) temptation to buy a Kindle. And believe me, I’ve been tempted; I have long-harbored a quaint desire to sit in my conservatory on a sunny, peaceful weekend morning and enjoy a long, slow coffee while catching up on the news. But I want my reader to do much more that simple news feeds.
I haven’t made a serious effort to read comic books for a long time (years, in fact) but I used to love them. I don’t bother now because I don’t like reading them on my monitor and I don’t like buying the dead-tree editions (it’s a personal preference — I simply don’t like buying literature on pressed wood-pulp any more).
So I’m holding out for next year when the Tablet is released because I know that not only will I be able to fill it up with books, all my other content from iTunes will work on it, too. And when that happens, I might just start buying comic books again.
In Q3, NewNet focus turns to business models and search. Read the, “NewNet Q3 Wrap-up.”
Hey, remember Hulu.com? It was a Web site that sort of came out of nowhere, and offered streaming TV shows from NBC and other networks. It was ad-supported, and free. People liked it. And then, one day, in October, 2009, a completely bonkers TV executive all but killed it with one sentence: “It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online.”
Those are the words of News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey, uttered at some sort of broadcasters pow wow.
The idea that News Corp. (and the other broadcast execs) expects to be paid for something that travels through the air 100 percent freely, and has for decades is, that’s right, ludicrous. And I’m referring only to broadcast content here. Shows like The Office and The Simpsons, and not Curb Your Enthusiasm or Weeds. Ads pay for the broadcast shows, and that anyone expects us to pay for those shows again! Ha!
It’s like this: Hulu already runs ads. I’m not gonna pay for access to the site when there’s already ads on there.
Never mind the fact that people only put up with the ads because the site is a convenience. “Sure, I’ll put up with a few ads so long as I can watch 30 Rock in between CrunchGear posts.” Otherwise, yeah, I’ll head right back to alt.binaries.multimedia and start downloading away. No ads there, and in 720p!
I mean, was I stealing all those Seinfeld reruns or 24 (aka the Jack Bauer Power Hour) when I had an HDTV antenna hooked up to my TV? I don’t recall paying to watch those shows; that’s what the ads were for!
In essence, charging for Hulu is a one-way to Irrelevant Town. I don’t care either way, seeing as thought I really haven’t watched TV for several years now (outside of live sports).
Let’s be honest for a second here: unless we’re talking about the Motorola Droid, which should be on Verizon Wireless within a few weeks, we might as well not be talking about Motorola. It’d be like talking about Real Madrid and only mentioning Granero or Drenthe and not Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaká. (Good, making references that all of 11 people will understand.) But we’re going to that such a thing right now in talking about the Motorola Aura Diamond Edition. It’s £3,500, which converts to, roughly, $5,700. Yeah…
On Thursday, October 21st, students, parents, and educators from the Washington, DC, area joined Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for a screening of an episode of the animated series Sid the Science Kid. Hosted at the Department of Education, event attendees watched Sid and his classroom friends as they learned about the flu and visited the school nurse to get vaccinated for influenza.
(HHS Photo by Chris Smith)
Just like Sid, government-wide efforts to prevent flu are all about the science. And, according to the scientists, using prevention measures, such as washing your hands and covering your cough, and getting a vaccine are the most important things you can do to stay healthy this flu season. Visit Flu.gov to learn more about H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines and view additional resources for parents and children, including a number of Sesame Street PSAs that are available in English and Spanish.
The "Getting a Shot: You can do it!" episode was developed as part of a collaboration between Department of Health and Human Services and the Jim Henson Co. The episode will premiere on PBS Kids on Monday, October 26th, but here’s a preview of one of the songs:
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Nothing says “I’m a plugged-in, cool guy with lots of money and charm” like a small RFID-capable dongle that you can rub against your friend’s RFID dongles to pass pertinent information. With that hypothesis in mind, we’ve teamed up with Poken to offer 10 CrunchGear branded Poken Pulses for you and your friends. Here’s how to win.
To enter, simply tell one of your friends to read CrunchGear and tell them to comment introducing themselves to the site. When they comment, you need to reply to their original comment. We’ll pick 5 pairs of winners – one goes to the new reader and one goes to the person who told them about CrunchGear. You can invite more than one person but you have to comment after each new person. You can also, feasibly, put a fake name so you get two Poken for yourself but you won’t because you’re not a douche.
See below for an example in comments.
We’ll close this contest on noon Monday. Special thanks to Start Poken to and their new service, Pokenize, a B2B customizing service that helps companies extend their social reach by connecting with Poken users.
You may recall last year that the head of Warner Music Group, Edgar Bronfman Jr., demanded that music video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Bandweren’t paying enough for the music they used in the games, saying that the success of such games was “entirely dependent on the content we own and control.” As we mentioned at the time, this is the usual fallacy of the entertainment industry, to assume that the entire value of the product is in the content itself, rather than other aspects of it — such as the gameplay. It looks like the initial sales results of the massively overhyped Beatles Rockband is helping to prove this point. Despite all the attention and press and the fact that this was the Beatles’ music being offered in such a game for the first time, reader Eric alerts us to the news that sales of the game have massively underperformed expectations. Sales were less than 60% of what most analysts expected, and some of the quotes from people suggest why:
“[It] felt like an expansion to me, not a full release… [It was] cool, but not quite enough to be a stand alone game ($60) purchase.”
That’s just one quote, but others have expressed a similar sentiment. The music… that’s nice, but you can get Beatles’ music all over. It’s the game that makes this worth buying — or not worth buying. And just adding new music to an old game wasn’t nearly as exciting as many people hoped it would be. This isn’t to say the music is “worthless.” But it does suggest — yet again — that the entertainment industry overvalues the contribution of the content itself.
One of the highlights of Apple’s recent flurry of product releases was the arrival of its Magic Mouse — a sleekly designed, wireless, multitouch mouse that allows you to drag a finger up and down the middle of it to scroll. At $69 it’s expected to be a hot seller over the holidays. Not everybody can find it in their local Apple Store yet, though, but Olly Farshi found one in Helsinki and he provides an interesting video demonstration of it here. It looks cool.
More details today on the Dell Adamo XPS. Nothing official of course, but leaks happen and we’re finally getting to see exactly what’s hiding under that very flashy exterior.
So here’s what we know. The XPS will be running either a 1.4 or 1.9GHz dual core Intel CPU, integrated X4500MHD graphics, and 4GB of DDR3. You’ll be able to choose from either a 128 or 180GB SSD, and the screen only comes in a 13.4 inch size. There is some bad news (which might be why Dell is holding back currently), the machine apparently comes back with a Windows 7 Experience test rating of 3.3, which is not a good thing.
Additionally, that fancy flip screen thing won’t work if the batteries are dead. Not a huge issue, since I’m not sure why you’d need to open your notebook if it’s got no power, but still a little odd.
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Yesterday Energy Secretary Steven Chu and I had the opportunity to talk to a number of business and government leaders at the White House about how critical it is for America to play a leading role in the clean energy economy.
Despite the headlines that focus on what other countries are doing abroad, little prevents us from taking the lead in the business of clean energy. In fact, much of the energy technology being used around the world has its roots in the United States – but companies in other countries have often taken the lead in bringing those innovations to market.
There is simply no reason why this should be. We have all the smarts and all the resources we need to build light-weight car batteries or find a cheap and effective way to store power from the wind and sun here in America – we just need the willpower to act.
China is investing over $9 billion a month in clean energy and efficiency industries – not just to meet their own domestic energy and climate needs, but to satisfy the energy needs of the entire world.
If we don’t get our act together, we’re going to be watching the capital, the businesses and the well-paying jobs end up in China – rather than in communities across America. We simply cannot allow ourselves to wake up 10 years from now asking how Shanghai became the Silicon Valley of clean energy.
President Obama has asked every cabinet agency to play a role in promoting clean energy. Several agencies within the Commerce Department are playing a leading role in this effort:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is leading the effort to develop technical standards that will be critical to building a reliable and robust smart electrical grid. A Smart Grid will revolutionize the use of electricity – from generation to transmission and distribution to consumption.
And patents and trademarks, issued by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, protect new technology and are a key factor in helping companies move their products into the open market.
Building a green economy isn’t going to be easy, but if government and businesses work together, America can and will be a world leader in clean energy.
SciClone begins a Phase II trial to evaluate how a new drug designed to stimulate the immune system fares against Hepatitis C.
SciClone starts hepatitis C drug trial
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc. enrolled the first patient in a mid-stage test of a hepatitis C treatment.
Foster City-based SciClone (NASDAQ: SCLN) signed up the patient in Atlanta to test SCV-07, a small molecule that stimulates the immune system. In this Phase II trial it’s being tested alone or in combination with ribavirin, another drug.
The technology industry has invested a lot of marketing energy and dollars into getting consumers excited about wireless power, the promise being that it will free us from the size and feature constraints imposed by batteries. There’s a consortium of bigwigs from Nokia to Dell trying to advance a standard called Qi, and Intel and WiTricity are trying to develop an even more compelling technology that will transfer power over the air. But we’re still a long way from cutting the cord.
Consumers intent on living a wireless life have two new options this holiday season — both of which are getting a lot of attention: mats on which they can wirelessly charge their mobile devices. Unfortunately this sounds far cooler than it really is. The two products — the Powermat, which goes on sale Sunday at Amazon, and the Duracell MyGrid, which went on sale earlier this month — use different techniques to charge a device, but both require the mat to be plugged into an outlet, which eliminates the wire to the device, but not the one to the wall.
Moreover, as I explain in a new report over at GigaOM Pro, (subscription required) these products aren’t likely to change the industry much unless consumers really want to shell out $140 or more to avoid inserting a micro USB adapter into the port on their phone. That’s a lot of money for convenience:
Wireless power mats are a lifestyle technology, says David Baarman, the director of advanced technologies at Fulton Innovation and the lead inventor of its eCoupled wireless charging technology. And lifestyle technologies, like Bluetooth, have to be standardized, cheap to implement and dead simple to gain mass adoption.
For real innovation, we’re going to have to wait for Intel and WiTricity to bring their wireless charging over the air capabilities to the mass market (or until solar or kinetic energy harvesting become efficient enough to deliver sufficient power quickly).
More news about The Pirate Bay to bore you all! (Seriously, it’s not like people are still talking about the old Suprnova or Torrentspy anymore, yet the TPB has stuck around.) Some time ago, a Dutch court ordered TPB to delete a number of torrents and block Dutch IP addresses from being able to visit the site. Using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack, yes. Then TPB protested, as it does all the time, saying that it had no idea about the court case to begin with, so it couldn’t make a proper defense, etc. The Dutch court agreed to give TPB a a little bit of time to work out its issues, and has now reached another, similar verdict: remove the torrents, and block Dutch IP addresses. Fun all around, really.
Of course, BREIN is behind all of this. (BREIN is sorta Holland’s equivalent of the RIAA, and has been after TPB for as long as I can remember.) In a perfect, BREIN-approved world, TPB would just go away and never return. That doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon, no here we are.
The Dutch court gave TPB’s owners, whoever they are at this point, three months to comply with the ruling, lest they face a €5,000 (~$7,500) per day fine.
TPB is currently studying the ruling, which they may well appeal. I look forward to more courtroom shenanigans. Then again, I also look forward to the day when Hollywood, and its international equivalents, figure out a business model that clicks with the world in 2009, one that doesn’t involve trying to sue dumb Web sites into the ground. One day!
If you’re a Droid-chaser, you’ve no doubt been hooked to BGR for the past few weeks (more than normal, maybe?). We have our very own Motorola Droid handset, and although the software isn’t final, it’s solid enough where we feel comfortable giving you a nice preview of the unit. Remember, again, this isn’t a final unit and things can and will change for the better. Read on for our Motorola Droid Preview!
P.S. As we have been doing, we’ll follow up on this preview with a review based on a retail unit at release.
P.P.S. I just want to add that this is a Google Experience phone, and my line about Verizon and GPS was a joke. Verizon hasn’t and won’t touch or control any functionality on the Droid. GPS is 100% open, there’s Wi-Fi, Android Market, etc.
Hardware / Build quality:
When the Motorola Droid is released in the coming couple weeks, it will be the most advanced Android device on the market as far as specifications go. Software too, as it’s the only one said to be running Android 2.0 until months from now, but that’s for another section. There’s a 550MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor, separate PowerVR GPU, 256MB of RAM, CDMA Rev A., Wi-Fi, GPS, a digital magnetometer, accelerometer, proximity sensors, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, notification LED, four touch-sensitive navigation buttons, a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port — jesus. In the last year or two, spec sheets really haven’t meant all that much to people. Rational people, that is. What means a lot more is the OS your phone is running since that’s what going to enable you to take bad ass pictures and immediately share them with a close group of friends, or edit work documents on your phone while conducting an online presentation, and so on. But what’s actually pretty funny is, Android devices have been a little underpowered, so the spec sheets do matter, and the Motorola Droid absolutely topples every single Android device ever released as far as the hardware specifications are concerned.
We love the build quality of this phone. It’s mostly metal, and while it’s heavy, it gives you a reassuring quality feel that you just don’t find much nowadays as handsets get thinner, lighter, smaller, and cheaper. It’s practically the opposite of the Motorola CLIQ as far as the physical attributes of the device goes. Really solid and it seems to be manufactured very well. The slider is not spring-assisted, but when you push the metal bezel around the gorgeous display upwards, you get a satisfying click. It does the same when you slide it closed as well.
Screen:
It’s the largest capacitive screen we’ve ever seen and it’s positively amazing. It’s crisp, sharp, vibrant, bright, and really, really responsive. It’s almost iPhone-level in terms of the capacitive touch. We’re not sure if the screen is glass or plastic (we’ve heard glass but it’s incredibly hard to tell), but it doesn’t seem like it would scratch easily regardless of the material. The 3.7 inch display powers a 854×480 resolution image and shows off Android’s true colors. You see what we did there?
What’s interesting is this whole touch-button phase. On the HTC Desire/Predator/Your face, it also features touch-sensitive buttons just like the Droid does. The great part about the Droid’s implementation is that there’s haptic feedback when you press a button and to be perfectly honest, we don’t mind them at all. Would we prefer physical keys? Yeah, sure, but these work just fine and we haven’t come across any problematic occurrences.
Keyboard:
Everyone is bitching over the keyboard. Well, it’s probably better than you’d think, but it’s not perfect. As has been discussed ad nauseum, the unit we have has two blank keys. They don’t press in at all, so it’s not just like there isn’t anything written on them, they are just flat. We had initially been told this was because the keyboard design wasn’t finalized, and if you’ve been Droid-chasing for a while you’ll have noticed many different keyboard revisions. Love it or hate it, this keyboard design is actually final and will be on the device you buy from your favorite Verizon Wireless store. As far as the actual ‘board goes, there isn’t as much feedback as we’d have liked from the keys, but since the phone is so darn thin, there had to be compromises somewhere. People have asked why Motorola didn’t just make the phone into a keyboard-less version, and our answer would have to be: they are. We like the keyboard on the Droid and we’re really anal about keyboards. The directional pad on the right is a little weird at first but it doesn’t hamper your typing too much, but there isn’t enough tactile feedback to make it perfect. Something that’s a little annoying is the proximity of one key to another key, but all in all we’ve been able to bang out emails, texts, and other forms of text entry very efficiently on the hardware keyboard very quickly after using the device. It’s not the best, but it certainly isn’t bad, and it’s definitely better than the T-Mobile G1’s keyboard.
And oh… a ton of people are asking, and we’re not sure why you wouldn’t assume it already, but you can indeed use the on-screen keyboard in portrait as well as landscape mode.
Phone calling / speaker / call quality:
The Droid sounds great as a phone. Calls with the handset over Verizon’s network sounded clear and the phone application itself performed really well. It’s speedy and there weren’t any hiccups unlike some other Android devices we’ve fooled around with. The dialpad is pretty standard and if you’ve used an Android device, you should be right at home as this is a straight Google affair after all. Google Voice obviously works flawlessly (we’re not sure why it wouldn’t, unless you’re talking about the animal sacrifices Verizon makes to disable GPS on the phone…) and the phone application is quick! That’s probably what we love most about it… number dialed. Call connected. Have a nice day.
OS:
Ah, Android 2.0. We’ve detailed it quite a bit, but we can definitely explore it a little more for you… I personally never liked Android 1.0. Well, that’s not true completely. I liked it, but I just didn’t see it being the OS we expected. It wasn’t polished, it wasn’t fluid, it offered very basic functionality — not a good way to start. What has happened between Android 1.0 and 2.0 is that a lot of missing functionality has been added, the UI has been made a little bit more streamlined in some places, and it generally brings the OS up to speed with other mobile platforms. Out of the box Exchange compatibility is our absolutely favorite new feature, but we’re sure people will appreciate the new unified email Inbox, voice commands / search, a new Google Maps, better multimedia support, a new browser, and the list goes on and on. Once you have a chance to use Android 2.0 on any device, whether it’s HTC or Motorola or Samsung, we think you’re going to love it.
Battery:
This might come as a shock to many, but the Motorola Droid has the best battery life out of any Android device we’ve ever tested. It completely smokes the Motorola CLIQ — obviously it’s not constantly pushing as much data, but it’s not even a fair comparison. With push Exchange configured, Facebook, and a linked push Google account (Gmail, contacts, etc.) we had no problem lasting through a whole day of usage. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were disabled, but it’s still a pretty amazing performer as far as the battery is concerned. Yes, it has a user-replaceable battery, but it’s probably good enough to be sealed up to be honest. Motorola recently made a boo boo and let the Droid appear on their website, and official battery times are: 6.5hrs of continuous usage (phone + web + email + anything else, continually) or around 270 hours of standby time.
Accessories:
There’s a really cool accessory that we’re told will be available at launch and it’s a charging dock/multimedia station. It turns your phone into an alarm clock/weather display/music player by using a magnet to control and launch the corresponding application. We discovered that by putting the phone in our BlackBerry 9700 holster in a certain position, Car Home would launch.
We then moved the magnet and the multimedia mode launched, so we’re guessing there’s going to be some sort of car cradle/dock/thing that will be available as well in addition to the above station.
Conclusion:
You know how we roll at BGR, we don’t hold anything back — if it’s hot, it’s hot. If it’s not, it’s not, and we’re not afraid to call it like it is. The Motorola CLIQ was a pretty big disappointment for me personally, but oh man does the Droid make up for it. Sure, there’s a little hype sprinkled in because this is the first Android 2.0 device I’ve had the pleasure of using, but once you move past the initial “wow” factor, the Droid really delivers. Whether it’s Verizon’s ad campaign or Motorola’s that pits the Droid against the iPhone it doesn’t matter. The Droid isn’t an iPhone competitor because nothing at this point in time is an iPhone competitor besides the new iPhone. And things don’t have to be right now. Everyone can eat. So will the Motorola Droid be successful? Absolutely, we think. It will eat in to BlackBerry sales, Windows Mobile sales, and positively murder any lingering Palm Pre sales. It’s that good. Did you notice how Verizon still hasn’t announced the BlackBerry Storm2?
We really enjoyed using the Motorola Droid and think you’re going to love it. It’s not as straight forward as an iPhone and a little more involved than a BlackBerry, but if you’re up for the challenge, so is the Droid.
Hello, gorgeous! What a nice way to wake up on a Friday morning. You roll out of bed to make yourself some eggs, hop online to start the daily rituals, and bam! Shots of the unreleased, Android-powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 are sitting in your inbox.
Danny Sullivan has an excellent analysis of some of the more ridiculous statements from WSJ managing editor, Robert Thompson, trashing pretty much everything online. Most of Sullivan’s analysis focuses on how ridiculous it is for Thompson to claim that Google makes news readers “promiscuous,” so I won’t address that again (though, you really should read Sullivan’s writeup). Instead, I wanted to focus in one little bit that Sullivan mentions, but doesn’t explore too much (other than to mention how insulting it is). Thompson declares that there are “three types of people” online, starting with:
There are the net neanderthals who think everything should be free all the time.
Pretty scary that someone who’s the managing editor of the most well known and well-respected business newspaper out there thinks this, huh? First off, I don’t know anyone who thinks “everything should be free all the time.” People are more than willing to pay for scarce goods of value. Where they fundamentally have issues is with being charged for content that can be made free at no additional cost. And that’s not “neanderthal” thinking, it’s good old classic economics — the kind we thought the WSJ supported.
And, of course, this also shows Thompson fundamentally not understanding the debate. For many, many years there’s been plenty of “free content” in the terms of “free to the consumer” but which is supported in other ways. As Sullivan points out, News Corp., which owns the WSJ, also owns Fox — which delivers free content, over the air, to consumers, but supported by advertising. Is that a Neanderthal opinion?
It really makes you wonder what they’re thinking over at the WSJ or what sort of business smarts they have when they both consider Google to be a problem and think that basic economics on content pricing is “Neanderthal.” It should call into question their thinking on other business topics as well. And, remember, this is the same company that is lashing out at “aggregators” like Google News, at the very same time that it’s offering its own aggregator as well. If Thompson thinks Google News makes people promiscuous, why does his own site offer something similar?
Oh man, yet another “élite” phone for us to look over and never be able to afford. It’s the Mobiado 350 Pioneer. It looks sort of like an Indiana Jones relic (note: I’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie), and is part of Mobiado’s Grand Line.
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