IBLOG SPACE

T-Mobile is now offering a micro-SIM card for customers wanting to use unlocked iPhone 4 handsets on its network. This move shows that T-Mobile is not only embracing unlocked iPhone 4 users, but may also be getting ready for the upcoming iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 that’s rumored to be available to the two major carriers that have so far been without an official iPhone deal. There are more than 1 million unlocked iPhone handsets on the T-Mobile network, but mostly older models that use full-sized SIM cards. When the iPhone 4 introduced micro-SIM cards, it became more of a hassle for customers as they’d have to trim down their full-sized T-Mobile SIM cards to fit. Now, the carrier is directly offering micro-SIM cards as a solution and even listed them for free if ordered online. They are otherwise $9.99. However, the unlocked iPhone 4 only works on T-Mobile’s GSM and 2G EDGE networks, its 3G and 4G HSPA+ are not supported. But that may change soon, as rumors have been ongoing that Apple’s nex

Apple’s MacBook Air left many mobile users with a difficult decision back in late 2010. The unibody ultraportable was certainly beautiful, but its ULV processor left some wary that OS X might not be able to keep up with their lifestyle. The new 2011 MacBook Air fixes that, slotting in Intel’s latest Core i5 and i7 chips and adding other niceties such as a backlit keyboard. Is this the best ultraportable on the market today? Read on for the full SlashGear review. Hardware

The GSMA, who represents mobile operators worldwide and is known for hosting the largest annual wireless conference in Europe, has just named Barcelona to be their very first Mobile World Capital from 2012 to 2018. This means the next six years’ Mobile World Congress and various GSMA-organized mobile events will be taking place in the beautiful city. Mobile World Congress is always one of our favorite events and we were just in Barcelona for this past MWC 2011, bringing you news on the latest mobile gadgets heading your way. The four-day event attracted more than 60,000 attendees from 200 countries, including 3,000 CEOs, government delegates from 131 countries and over 2,900 media representatives. However, starting with MWC 2013, which is slated for February 25-28, there will be a venue swap to the cutting edge exhibition center, the Fira de Barcelona Gran Via. As the chosen one, Barcelona will also host GSMA’s Mobile World Centre and the Mobile World Festival. The Mobile World Centre

What you’re about to experience is a trip down the rabbit hole with Mac OS X Lion, Apple’s newest desktop operating system. With yours truly you’ll be both exploring and judging the way this nearly radical new system is set up and what it means to you, the consumer and me, the tech news publisher. What you’re going to find is Apple’s most innovative release since the original Mac OS X, the first big departure from the known paradigm inside the Mac world. In one gesture, (literally one gesture, as seen in section 2 of this exploration,) Apple has both bridged a gap between what’s been called mobile OS, (or in their case, iOS), and desktop OS, further turning what it means to own a computer into what owning a computer will or does mean to you.

Microsoft has sent a Happy Birthday message to the Linux Foundation, congratulating them on turning 20 years old. The video, created by the Microsoft Germany team and shared on the Linux video site, documents the past twenty years of sniping and rivalry between the two platforms, though suggests that the end for such arguments might be in sight. Titled “Microsoft vs. Linux” the video shows a cartoon penguin and a geeky looking guy who may well be Bill Gates as they struggle to understand each other. Linux ideas “seemed too childish to Microsoft” the video suggests, as Tux rows across the internet seas and Microsoft watches in blissful ignorance from the shore. “There is no truce in sight” the video claims, but then follows it with “Or is there?” Microsoft Germany uploaded it with the message “Warm wishes for your 20th Anniversary. Be prepared for your birthday cake :-)” on July 13.

Acer chairman JT Wang has accused Apple of starting a “patent war” but claims his company is ready and willing to fight, despite having watched as fellow Android OEMs have been hit hard by the Cupertino legal crusade. According to Wang, DigiTimes reports, Apple’s goal is “money or market influence” and that “any related losses” should be considered “as costs of doing business.” Wang pointed to HTC’s ongoing battle in the courts with Apple, where the two companies each allege that their rival has infringed on various patented technologies. Most recently, HTC was judged by the ITC to have violated two of Apple’s patents, though the Taiwanese company protests otherwise and has promised to appeal against the judgement. Apple is also heavily involved in patent struggles with Samsung, claiming the Korean firm has copied the iOS and iPhone design language for its Galaxy range of phones and tablets. According to the Acer chairman, patent trading is likely to become more common as the various p

The photos you see here are supposed to be the Lenovo IdeaPad 7. I say supposed because the photos have apparently been altered to hide something according to Engadget. The photos are also very grainy and blurry, as are most spy shots we see. Still, there is a chance that these are the first legit pics of the new Lenovo Android tablet. We have a few rumored specs to go along with the pics too. The tablet is supposed to have a 7-inch 1024 x 600 touchscreen. The machine is powered by a TI OMAP3621 processor and has a Broadcom GPS unit inside. That processor is the same that the Nook Color uses so presumably the tablet will have similar performance. Other rumored specs include a 3G modem with a SIM card slot and a slot for a microSD card as well. The tablet has front and rear cameras but we have no indication of what resolution those cameras have. The tablet is expected to run Android 2.x when it lands.

Apple has quietly retired Front Row, its media center interface for Macs, which has disappeared as of OS X Lion‘s release earlier this week. Added back in October 2005, Front Row was arguably Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s Media Center builds of Windows; today, it seems the Cupertino company would rather you just bought an Apple TV since, as Macworld notes, hitting cmd + esc in Lion no longer brings up the familiar sofa-friendly interface. Among the suggestions made for the demise of Front Row, a growing shift to baking digital media directly into the OS seems the most likely justification. Lion is all about streaming, the cloud and the iTunes ecosystem, with the imminent arrival of iCloud and iOS 5 only adding to that. Many users never used Front Row and, indeed, didn’t even know the functionality was present; the Apple Remote no longer being included in the box with Apple notebooks (in 2008) and desktops (in 2009) shifted emphasis away from media center duties. Of course, that leaves

I don’t think any of us are surprised in the least by the fact that the iPad is stomping the Android tablets in the enterprise realm. The iPad is stomping all tablet comers in every realm right now. Android is mounting a push to compete against the iPad more though and the lower priced tablets expected from Amazon expected before long. The latest report from Good Technology shows that the iPad is really putting a beating on Android tablets in the enterprise market. According to the recent survey from Good Technology 95% of the tablets in the enterprise setting are the iPad. Good also reports that the number of Android tablet activations dropped 3.1% during its last quarter. Good attributes the big disparity between iPad and Android tablets to the fact that many of the big enterprises have their workers bring their own devices. Most people buy the iPad so there would be more iPads in the enterprise market.

A team of medical researchers is working on a really cool way for people that need to track certain vital statistics about their body. They are working on a system that uses an iPhone to monitor things like the sodium in the blood, blood glucose, or the amount of oxygen in their blood. The modified iPhone would work in conjunction with a nanosensor “tattoo” on the person’s skin. Heather Clark and a team of scientists in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Northeastern University are working on the project to make the tech work. The process includes the injection of selected nanoparticles under the skin. The particles leave no mark on the skin that is visible, but they fluoresce when the particles are exposed to a target molecule like sodium or glucose. The modified iPhone can then determine the level of florescence and can then determine the amount of sodium or glucose present in the blood. This method of reading glucose is particularly appealing to those that have diabetes be

Yesterday we posted up the iFixit teardown of the MacBook Air that launched this week. The teardown was cool and let us see inside the notebook without having to risk killing ours. iFixit also took the time to rip open the new Mac Mini as well. I am always impressed by how small the Mini is and how packed in the parts are inside the rig. The new Mini is about an inch and a half thick and has a tiny little fan that should be very quiet. The geeks taking the machine apart found the Broadcom BCM4331 WiFi chip inside along with a BCM20702 single chip Bluetooth 4.0 processor that supports BLE. It’s the same part inside the MacBook air as well. On the bottom of the mainboard are a bunch of other chips. On the bottom, you find the Intel BD82HM65 platform controller hub, the Intel processor, the USB 2.0 hub controller and a lot more. The RAM slots are also on the bottom of the board. On the top of the mainboard are the Intel Thunderbolt controller and a Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet and memory car

I have seen a bunch of Gerber multitools over the years and I have even owned a few of them. I tend to lose them though. Everyone has a digital camera today and a bunch of people carry those little digital cams with them everywhere and a tripod would come in handy in many instances. The Gerber multitool has a new feature in some of the latest versions. The new version is called the Steady and it has a pop-up tripod screw that will hold a small digital camera onto the top of the tool. Each side of the tool has little gray legs that flip down and flare out to prop the front of the tool up making the multitool into a little tripod. The Steady will make it much easier to shoot group photos and self-pics wherever you roam. The tool has a bunch of other implements in it too with a knife and 12 other tools. The Steady will ship in 2012 sometime and will cost $65. This would be a great thing for the hiker or camper that wants to photo themselves roughing it.

There have been a few OLED TVs on the market so far. Sony had its OLED a few years back, but the set was so expensive that it never took off thanks to that price. Eventually the cost of the OLED panels will come down and we will see the TVs on the market at prices consumers might be willing to pay. The sets promise better image quality, thinner profiles, and less power consumption. LG has announced that it will be tossing a 55-inch OLED TV onto the market in mid-2012. LG’s CEO noted that the company would not focus on small and medium size OLED screens for the tablet and smartphone. CEO Kwon Young-Soo thinks that the AH-IPS panels currently in use are best suited to those smaller screens. That leaves the OLED for TVs like the 32-inch set that surfaced back during CES from LG. The initial production of the OLED sets will be in the tens of thousands due to the limited production faculties. LG makes the glass sheets that are used in the panels and plans to expand its production to 12,000

Verizon has announced its Q2 2011 financial results, adding twice as many subscribers as AT&T managed and activating 2.3m iPhone 4 handsets. The carrier saw its consolidated revenue hit $27.5bn, up 6.3-percent compared to the same period a year ago, while wireless data revenues rose 22.2-percent and ARPU (the monthly average revenue per user) climbed 3.2-percent to $54.12. However, iPhone 4 sales slowed over the quarter in comparison to Q1 2011. Verizon sold 2.2m CDMA iPhone 4 handsets in the seven weeks of Q1 2011 that the smartphone was on sale, meaning that while more iPhones were sold in Q2, it was at a comparatively slower pace. Sales of 4G LTE devices hit 1.2m units, and Verizon claims that 63-percent of smartphone buyers were new to the segment. Of the 2.2m new connections added in the three month period between April and June inclusive, 1.3m were retail postpaid customers while 890,000 were of wholesale and other connections. The carrier says it is still on track to have 4G

The last crazy looking bike I talked about was that wooden bike made out of black walnut wood. It was a work of art as much as a method of transport. Another new bike has turned up that looks very old school. It looks like something that the Wright brothers might have torn the wheels off to make their first airplane. The bike is called the Epitaph Cruiser. Other than the old-fashioned looks of the bike, the big feature is that it has four wheels. The wheels are touching side-by-side so it still looks like a two-wheeler. The bike is a limited edition with only 12 being made. The bike is built in the US and has a hand crafted leather seat. The rims that hold the dual tires are custom made. The handles and the frame insert are also covered in the same leather. The laser engraved number in the 12-unit run is printed on the seat. If you want your own version of this bike, you can get it for $2,950. That makes it about half the cost of that wooden bike I mentioned before.

Anyone that has a DSLR knows that the lenses of the cameras are very expensive. Especially when you get into the higher end of the lens spectrum. There are two major factions in the DSLR market with those that prefer Canon and those that lean towards Nikon. A couple bored warehouse schleps over at LensRentlas found themselves in a new warehouse with nothing but lenses and a few boxes of tiles. They decided to break out the tiles and made a chess board and then used all the lenses for the chess pieces. I don’t know anything about chess other than it looks rather boring to me. The lenses in white are Canon offerings and the ones in black are Nikon. If you are a photo geek, you can even rent the giant chess set for your next party. The downside is that the cost of renting the thing is $9,221 per week. Lenses are expensive. I wonder if you bought all those lenses what it would cost you. Shipping will pucker your sphincter, $1,100 to $2,400 round trip. You do get a free t-shirt though.

Google CEO Larry Page will face a two hour grilling in the Oracle patent infringement suit, after the judge presiding the case agreed that the exec should answer questions as to whether Android willfully oversteps into Oracle’s intellectual property. Google’s attorneys were warned that the search giant would definitely be looking at paying damages “probably in the millions, maybe in the billion,” FOSSPatents reports, though also saved some scorn for Oracle, which was scolded that ”this [court] is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp.” “Oracle may depose Mr. Page for a maximum of two hours, excluding breaks, solely on topics relevant to the willfulness of Defendant’s alleged patent infringement, and the value of Android to Defendant” Court report The data that Page will take the stand is unclear, but it’s likely he’ll be questioned on a particularly blunt internal email one of Oracle’s attorneys read in court yesterday. “What we’ve actually been asked to do by Larry and Sergey i