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Never fear, Blackberry Tag isn’t another fail-laced tablet or other device coming from RIM. Tag is a new tech that users of Blackberry smartphones will be able to use to trade and share data with other Blackberry users. Tag will be coming in BB7 and is the name of the NFC sharing tech RIM has been working on. It’s worth noting that Tag is subject to network certifications. That would mean a chance that Tag is on some networks and not others. Tag will allow the Blackberry user to share all sorts of information by tapping their Blackberry and others together. The information that can be shared includes contact information, documents, URLs, photos, multimedia and other content. Tag will also allow the instant addition of one users contact information to the others list. Tag uses NFC tech that is already in some new devices like the Bold 9900/9930 and Curve 9350/9360/9370. The APIs to use Tag will be left open to devs so that they can make use of the tech in apps. “BlackBerry Tag is

We have talked quite about over the last few weeks about the Samsung Nexus Prime. It looks to be a very nice Android smartphone that will be coming soon. We all know that before the smartphones can hit the stores around the US; the device has to make the obligatory trip through the FCC’s mitts. That has now happened with the Prime spotted coming through the FCC. The phone that the FCC tested was operating on the frequencies used by AT&T and T-Mobile. You can bet money it will hit AT&T first. We had thought that the smartphone would be a Verizon exclusive, and now we have proof that isn’t the case. The smartphone the FCC laid hands on had no CDMA radio. The Prime also has no HSPA+ support it seems so it won’t be using AT&Ts faux 4G network. As is typical with Android devices, they tend to hit carriers with different names so perhaps we will see other version of the Nexus coming through the FCC in the near future. The Nexus Prime was thought to be debuting this week, but

Samsung really wants to sell some tablets and appears to be trying to offer a model for every need. It was only days ago that the Samsung Galaxy Tab Plus went official. Samsung offered up the specs we wanted to hear when the tablet was unveiled, but said nothing about pricing leaving us to wonder. The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has now surfaced for pre-order at J&R with pricing in tow. The tablet is up for pre-order in two styles. One has 16GB of storage for $399.99 and the other has 32GB of storage and is $499.99. Other than the storage, the two tablets are the same. Both tablets are gray in color. The listings have no indication of when the tablets will ship. We don’t know the thing will go out all around the world later this month so early November is a decent guess. The tablet has a 7-inch screen, 1.2GHz dual core processor, HSPA+ connectivity, and a 3MP rear camera and 2MP front camera. Power comes from a 4,000 mAh Li-ion battery. This isn’t the first sign of pricing we have seen

Windows Phone handsets running dual-core processors and packing 4G LTE are in the pipeline, Microsoft’s smartphone chief has confirmed, but none will arrive until software, chipsets and batteries are up to the challenge. Currently the Windows Phone platform isn’t set up to capitalize on multi-core chipsets, Andy Lees told AllThingsD, while Microsoft and its partners took a conscious decision to hold off on 4G until the power/performance balance was addressed. Until then, though, Lees is confident that even single-core devices can hold their own against rival dual-cores. “[New Mango devices are] all single core, but I suspect that they will be faster in usage than any dual-core phone that you put against it, and that’s the point” Lees insisted. Currently dual-core processors are common among Android handsets, while Apple’s recently announced iPhone 4S is the first smartphone from the company to pack a multi-core chip. As for 4G, “the first LTE phones were big and big [users] of the

If you ever find yourself stranded in the wilds packed with a bunch of mirrors, wood, and some chicken that needs burning we have the outdoor cooking tool for you. This thing you see is called the solar Cookup200. It looks like some sort of satellite frying doohickey. It’s actually a device for focusing the sun light that hits it to cook up food. It also looks like if you stand just right and miss the pan you might fry your own eyeballs. Here is the crazy part. Apparently, you can actually buy this thing and use it for camp outs or living off the land cooking. I bet it would cook a squirrel right up. The tray you see in the center is where you place the food. You can arrange the cooking section into the right position by placing the rod though a different hole in the side. I wonder how long it would take to cook up some burgers on this thing. I guess it would depend on the strength of the sun. In Texas, you could cook on the sidewalk in the summer so your outdoor feast may burn to

London’s Convent Garden Apple Store has been the victim of a smash-and-grab robbery today, with thieves on mopeds or motorbikes breaking one of the glass windows and making off with iPads and other tech. The break in took place in the early hours of this morning, ZDNet reports, with police pursuing at least one of the vehicles involved and then arresting two men believed to have taken part in the raid. However, that still leaves plenty at large: police say they believe around seven bikes were used, with each rider having a passenger, meaning as many as 12 could still be at large. Details on the two currently in custody have not been released, bar that they age 16 and 21. “Although two men are in custody on suspicion of burglary, the inquiry continues and other persons are sought,” the detective sergeant leading the investigation has said in a statement today. “It is essential that anyone who saw the smash-and-grab, or the suspects making off, contact us as soon as possible.” As i

We like robots around these parts and one of the latest little bots to surface is called Romo. As you can see in the photos, the little bot has a smartphone on top of it. That smartphone controls the robot and gives it the face of what appears to be the creature from Cut the Rope. Romo will officially work with the iPhone and the iPod touch. The project has until November 21 to reach its funding goal of $32,000. So far, it has racked up $27,195 so it should have no issues hitting that main goal. If you want the Romo for yourself, you need to pledge at least $78 to the project. The bot appears to be a kit you build and has an acrylic base that lets you see the parts inside. The electronics connect to the iPhone or touch via the headphone port. The Apple devices are specifically mentioned as compatible with Romo, but the company behind the product says any smartphone with the correct signals will work. What the correct signals are I don’t know. The bot has multiple modes of play and

T-Mobile USA has outed a pair of 4G Android tablets, the 7-inch T-Mobile SpringBoard With Google and the HSPA+ enabled version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. While the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is familiar, the SpringBoard is less so; a rebadged Huawei MediaPad, it has a 7-inch HD display, Qualcomm 1.2GHz dual-core processor and a 5-megapixel main camera with 720p HD video recording. There’s also a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls, an SD card slot for up to 32GB cards, and GPS for navigation – either via Google Maps or T-Mobile’s TeleNav GPS Navigator subscription service. Preloaded are BLOCKBUSTER on Demand, Netflix and T-Mobile TV, while the HSPA+ supports up to 14.4Mbps, network depending. As for the Samsung, that’s the 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 Galaxy Tab 10.1 we know already, running a dual-core 1GHz processor and offering a 3-megapixel main camera, 2-megapixel front camera and now HSPA+ for mobile connectivity. Obviously there’s all the usual Android Honeycomb apps and acc

T-Mobile may not be getting the iPhone 4S, but it isn’t letting that stop it bulk up its smartphone range. Instead its Android coming to the rescue, with the HTC Amaze 4G expected to play a significant part: taking the Sensation XE as its starting point, the Amaze 4G throws in 42Mbps HSPA+ support and a full 1GB of RAM. It’s fresh to the SlashGear testbench today, so check out our first impressions after the cut. It’s not hard to see the Amaze 4G’s lineage, though that’s no bad thing. The Sensation XE is a solid device, and T-Mobile’s version keeps the 4.3-inch qHD resolution display – bright, broad viewing angles and solid contrast – and 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video support, along with HTC Watch and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera. What’s new, though, is some of the software. Galaxy S II vs Amaze 4G: 1080p recording and audio quality HTC has built a new camera app, including a special composite photo mode which can fire off five shots in rapid succession and then glu

Back when I was a kid, the only way to make your bike cooler was to put a bent card of some sort in the spokes so you could sound like a motorcycle. The Mini Monkey Light would have absolutely blown my 10-year-old mind back in the day had it been around. This is a device that attached to the spokes of your bike and when you ride, the light spins and makes some cool graphics. The graphics are 8-bit and look like video games from back in the day. There are different things that it can make on your spokes and the graphics are made in color. You can choose from 15 different light designs and my favorite is the space invader graphics. Available graphics include things like fireballs, skulls, hearts, saw blade, robots, and there is a bunch more patterns. The cool Mini monkey Light will help keep people that ride at night safe and if you pre-order on Kickstarter you get to help choose the final patterns the device will show. The only downside to this is that the device requires a 20-inch

 Samsung and Micron have joined forces to create the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC), promoting a new ultra-dense memory technology that promises to be faster, more efficient and cheaper than existing DRAM. Hybrid Memory Cubes (HMC), so the duo claims, would mark a significant departure from both current DRAM architecture and performance: 15x the speed of DDR3 memory, 90-percent less space taken up compared to current RDIMMs, and demanding 70-percent less energy per bit. Potential applications include smartphones, tablets, graphics cards and anything where the power/performance/scale balance is vital. To achieve what Samsung and Micron insist is a “complete paradigm shift” the companies have developed a brand new memory architecture, pairing high-speed logic process technology with a memory through-silicon-via (TSC) bonded memory die stack. That will allow memory to keep pace with the Moore’s Law progress of CPUs and GPUs, which are increasingly using multicore technologies that

Amazon has launched a French-language version of its Kindle ereader, along with a French Kindle Store to accompany it, the first time the retailer has offered a dedicated language option for the country. Priced at €99 ($133), it’s the basic entry-level E Ink Kindle (complete with WiFi but no 3G or touchscreen option) Amazon launched in the US and elsewhere earlier this month. French readers will find a choice of more than 35,000 French-language ebooks – including all 28 L’Express best sellers, Amazon is keen to point out – along with “hundreds” of graphic novels and ore than 4,000 free classics in French. They’ll also have access to a catalog of English-language ebooks, while French authors will be able to use the Kindle Direct Publishing tool to put their titles up for sale as well. The Kindle hardware itself misses out on the keyboard of its third-gen predecessor, making do with a potentially-fiddly D-pad control system to navigate an on-screen keyboard. However it’s also lighter