IBLOG SPACE

Earlier this month the network behind the popular Blackberry messaging service was out for days leaving users of Blackberry smartphones with no access to email, IM, and web surfing. RIM admitted at the time it had no idea what was causing the outage, but hacking was not the cause. After the service came back, RIM tried to soothe angry customers with free apps. Free apps may have made some users feel better about the long outage, but for others free apps weren’t the answer. Reuters reports that RIM has now been hit with a class action suit over the extended outage. The suit was filed Wednesday against RIM in a court in Santa Ana, California. The suit was filed on behalf of all Blackberry users in the US that had a service agreement for BBM services during the outage. The suit alleges that RIM breached contract and claims negligence and unjust enrichment. A similar suit was filed in Canada on behalf of all Canadian Blackberry users. I suspect that we will see similar suits filed in o

Back early in October we mentioned that Microsoft was leaning on HTC and Samsung to dig deep into the marketing budget to promote their Windows Phone smartphones. It doesn’t seem that Microsoft had to do much leaning at all to get Nokia to dig deep to market its new Windows Phone packing Lumia 800 and other devices in the series. Nokia plans to kick off a marketing blitz that will make it hard for consumers to not know about its smartphones. Nokia has unveiled the interesting Lumia 800 smartphone this week and the device looks really good. It will launch next month in Europe, but it will be early 2012 before the smartphone hits the US. Elop has said already that Nokia plans to spend big on marketing. According to Elop, Nokia will spend three times as much marketing the Lumia series launch than it has spent on other launches. CCS Insight London analyst Ben Wood has said that consumers won’t be able to “turn a corner, look at a TV or surf the web” without seeing an ad for Nokia. It m

Google’s Street View section of Google Maps has landed the search giant in hot water on more than one occasion. Not only have some taken offense to what they deem privacy issues with putting the photos online, the Street View fleet was also grabbing unsecured WiFi data in some areas. Google has added a new service to Street View in some areas. The new service allows the users of Street View to trek down the streets as usual and some businesses along the way have had their interiors photographed. This allows the user to go from the street directly into the inside of the business and look around. Google isn’t just sending its photographers into random stores to take photos though. The business has to sign up to have the inside of their store photographed. Google also asks the store to warn customers that photos will be taken on that day. Google also notes that it will blur faces or just not put the photos up if people are in them. Some fear that the photos will make it easier for cri

Netflix may be losing subscribers and trying to decide on renting games to its customers, but the service still consumes a ton of bandwidth on the internet. A new report that was published recently called the 2011 Sandvine Internet Phenomena Report found that the streaming video service gobbles up a full 32% of the peak internet bandwidth. That is a lot of bandwidth despite losing 800,000 subscribers. Other than Netflix, the top four largest internet services in North America combined account for 64.4% of all network traffic online. Those services include Netflix, HTTP, YouTube, and BitTorrent. VentureBeat reports that the video streaming service portion of Netflix alone consumes 28% of all bandwidth used across the US. Along with some details on the bandwidth consumed by Netflix also comes the note that internet traffic is rapidly shifting from desktop devices like PCs to web connected devices like the set top box, game consoles, smartphones, and tablets. Today only 45% of interne

One of the coolest Android phones to surface in the last few months is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. If you are wanting to get your hands on one as soon as you can you need to hop over to Verizon and hit the Galaxy Nexus sign up page. Once registered Samsung will send you emails about the smartphone telling you when the phone will be available. Verizon is going to be the exclusive provider for the Galaxy Nexus smartphone. One interesting fact about the Galaxy Nexus is that this will be the first of the Samsung Nexus smartphones to be offered on Verizon. There have been some details leaked about the new phone already and one of them points to a price of $299 with a new contract. That will make it one of the more expensive smartphones out there. The device will be the first to pack Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich inside. Hardware features include a 4.65-inch 720p Super AMOLED screen, a 1.2GHz processor with dual-cores, and support for 4G LTE networks. That 4G LTE support was confirmed las

Nokia has reconfirmed that it has no plans to launch either the Lumia 800 or Lumia 710 in the US, despite the new low-end Windows Phone making an appearance on the company’s US site. Speaking to SlashGear on day two of Nokia World 2011 today, Nokia execs reiterated that the company plans an entirely distinct line-up of Windows Phones for the US market, expected to launch in Q1 2012. Speculation about the company’s handset intentions in North America had begun after the Lumia 710 made an appearance on the Nokia USA site, complete with the tagline “Designed for you.” However, rather than being a teaser for a surprise launch of the mid-range Windows Phone, Nokia described the site change as an “error”: it had intended to post product pages of both Lumia devices, though only to give US consumers “an idea of what they could expect,” and indeed the Lumia 800 product page should go live on the US site sometime today. Instead, US would-be Nokia supporters will have to hold out for the new

Like many geeks today, we have a soft spot for tablets. Not just any tablet mind you, only tablets that are cool. The new Asus Transformer Prime tablet is certainly cool and the tablet has turned up in some new pictures. The new pics show the tablet with a new keyboard dock. We don’t have all the details on the Transformer Prime at this point, but we do have a bunch of rumors about what the tablet will have inside. The Prime is expected to sport a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip inside and run the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS. The tablet has an aluminum frame and the big feature is the keyboard dock that turns the tablet into a notebook so you can type faster and more comfortably. The keyboard the dock uses appears to be your standard Asus fare with chicklet keys and an irritatingly small right shift key. Other things about the tablet include a 10-inch screen, audio ports, micro-HDMI output and a microSD card slot. The official announcement and full specs of the machine are expe

YouTube is one of the most heavily visited video streaming channels on the internet. For a long time YouTube has been working hard to get more professional content on its site to help attract more advertisers. One of the ways it has done this so far is by getting streaming movie and music video deals in place with movie and music makers. YouTube is also looking to make video channels on its site and according to people familiar with the matter; the video streaming site is “close” to announcing the video channels. The source claims that the video channels could be announced as early as next week and that several partnerships for content on the channels are in place with media outlets and well-known personalities. The WSJ reports that some of the partners that are expected to be supplying content for the channels include IAC/InterActiveCorp Electus, FreemantleMedia Ltd, and ShineRevellie. Other personalities said to be supplying the channel include Tony Hawk, Anthony Zuiker (the crea

Apple is a company that has been so successful in the technology realm that it’s hard to believe just how well the company has done over the years. One of the most successful products that Apple has produced in a very long time is the iconic iPad. The iPad is by far the most popular tablet in the world today and according to the biography of the late Steve Jobs, he first wanted Intel to power the iPad. According to the book in the early days of the Intel partnership that saw Intel’s chips land in Apple notebooks and desktops, Jobs had planned for the Atom processor to power the iPad. Jobs was apparently set for a time on the Atom processor for the tablet even though Apple exec Tony Fadell thought that Apple should go with an ARM chip for its tablet. ARM chips power most smartphones and tablets today thanks in part to their power sipping nature whereas the Atom chips are still not as power efficient. Eventually Fadell’s ARM point of view won Jobs over. Jobs according to the biograph

Sony has bought out Ericsson’s stake in Sony Ericsson, giving the Japanese company sole control over the smartphone manufacturer. The deal, worth €1.05bn ($1.47bn) in cash to Ericsson, will see Sony bring the smartphone business in under its networked consumer electronics umbrella, a shift which the company describes as “a logical strategic step that takes into account the nature of [the mobile market] evolution and its impact on the marketplace.” Sony’s intention had been leaked earlier this month, with the deal then tipped to be worth between $1.3bn and $1.7bn for Ericsson. The two companies will continue to work together, planning to set up a joint initiative designed to promote wireless connectivity. However, Ericsson’s overall “focus is on the global wireless market as a whole” Sony says. “The transaction gives Sony an opportunity to rapidly integrate smartphones into its broad array of network-connected consumer electronics devices – including tablets, televisions and persona

We got a glimpse at the upcoming Dell Latitude ST earlier this week, and now the company has outed the juicy hardware details for all. Like the rest of the Latitude line, the ST tablet is aimed at business users, even if a 10.1-inch tablet is something we’re not entirely used to in that space. The slate runs a full version of Windows 7 with enterprise-class customizations and some targeted accessories, detailed in the official pics below. Resolution is a roomy 1366 x 768 on the small screen, and the tablet runs on a1.5GHz Atom Z670: economical, if not particularly brawny. 2GB of DDR2 RAM is about the minimum needed to run Windows 7 effectively, but an SSD that maxes out at 128 gigabytes should make for some speedy boot-ups and load times. WiFi comes standard, and Dell says that they’ll release a 3G version at some point. Dell is claiming 8 hours of battery life, and the tablet has dual front and rear cameras. Dock and keyboard accessories will launch with the tablet, and expandabilit

Here’s some strange bedfellows: Mozilla and Microsoft. The developers of the open-source favorite have released “Firefox with Bing“, a modified version of Firefox 7 that features Microsoft’s branded search engine integrated into its services and interface. Current Firefox users who want to “upgrade” their experience can download a Bing add-on that does the same thing. Long-time Firefox users may feel a little strange using the different version. The browser’s “Awesome Bar” and search bar has defaulted to Google for years. Mozilla’s contract with Google, which pays the open-source developer a minute amount for every search that originates from the search bar, is up for renewal next month – maybe they’re looking for a little leverage. For Microsoft’s part, they seem thrilled to offer their services: “We are excited to make it even easier for members of the Mozilla Firefox community to use Bing,” said employee Tor Steiner. If you’re at the intersection of the Bing/Firefox Venn diagram

We’ve all been there. An all-night session of Team Fortress 2 or Borderlands. An epic raid in World of Warcraft. A no-holds-barred, winner take all showdown in Yu-Gi-Oh Online. If you’re in the bad habit of spilling your over-caffinated gaming fuel all over your expensive inputs, then AZiO’s Levetron Mech4 keyboard might just be for you. Its spill-proof drainage design is a lot like high-end Lenovo Thinkpads, allowing you to power though a Level 4 Sprite disaster and keep racking up the headshots. A resistance to all things liquid isn’t the only brights spot for the Mech4. Its mechanical Cherry MX Black keys give that satisfying click-clack that gamers are so eager for these days, and a modular design allows you to configure the number pad and a removable 6-key macro board to your liking. Lefties will appreciate the either-or style, and the sliding rail on the top of the function row matches the Picatinny mounting system on your favorite Battlefield 3 rifle. The keyboard doesn’t just

According to a report from Japanese publication Weekly Famitsu, the web browser on Sony’s next-generation portable gaming device, the PlayStation Vita, will not support Adobe Flash at launch. It will support cookies, JavaScript 1.7, and some HTML5, but Flash didn’t make the list. Also not supported are Game Archives that include classic PlayStation One games. The lack of Flash support at launch isn’t too surprising since Sony’s PSP also did not support flash initially. But that device did not get an update to support Flash until over a year after it launched. With the current anti-Flash movement, the Vita’s Flash support may come just as slowly in the form of a firmware update, if at all. The PS Vita was first unveiled at E3 2011 and features a 5-inch touchscreen display along with an additional touchpad control on the backside. The device sports dual cameras, dual analog sticks, GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi. It’s set to go on sale in Japan on December 17, launching with 26 game titles

Adidas has unveiled a new fitness tracker called the miCoach SPEED_CELL that can capture information from motion in every direction. This feature will make it useful for athletes in all types of sports, beyond just runners. At the moment, most fitness trackers such as Nike+, are geared towards running with one-directional metrics. The miCoach SPEED_CELL is designed to help improve individual performance for athletes in a broad range of sports, including soccer, football, basketball, tennis, and running. It lets each user track their unique stats such as average speed, maximum speed, number of sprints, distance at high intensity levels, steps, and strides during play. Up to seven hours of data can be stored onboard the SPEED_CELL to be wirelessly transferred later to a smartphone, tablet, or PC. The device fits in a specially designed cavity in the outsole of compatible Adidas footwear. The company intends to introduce a full range of compatible sneakers for basketball, football, an

Is that chicken dipped in gold? No, but it sure looks like it is, and because it was sprayed that way with what The Deli Garage calls Food Finish, it’s completely safe to eat, too. Ever wanted the Midas touch, and not just with your household appliances, with all of your tasty treats as well? That time has come, ladies and gentlemen, and although you can’t quite buy this spray here in the USA yet due to some sort of shipping regulations, you can sit in wait while the spray gains popularity internationally. This spray is amazing, comes in several lovely colors, and is both without odor and without taste. Food Finish is what it’s called, and it was developed by a group called The Deli Garage in collaboration with a small food factory that generally specializes in high-quality fine pastries with otherwise also-odd food colorings. And before you ask – yes, more than likely if you spray this stuff on a wall, it’ll wash off if you lick it. But don’t quote me on that. The Snozberries taste

Ahead of the holidays, Sony has announced a new Special Edition of its popular game title LittleBigPlanet 2 with PlayStation Move support. It’s offering the Special Edition game on its own as well as in a bundle that includes the Move add-on and controllers. As announced back at E3 2011, we should be seeing many other popular titles get Move support as well. The Special Edition version of the game will feature whole new adventures with five new levels plus seven mini levels. It is designed to take advantage of the capabilities of the Move controller and lets you create your own Move games, record fluid motions, paint stickers, and do all sorts of fun creative stuff in the game. Also included are five new levels and two mini levels along with other goodies for the Disney/Pixar Toy Story game titles as well as $35 worth of DLC content. The PlayStation Move bundle includes all the good stuff from the Special Edition game plus the Motion Controller, the Navigation Controller, and the P

When technology giants like Samsung get it in their minds that they’ve got a mission to save the world, one might expect such epic wins as this Solar Powered Internet School to come to fruition. That’s just what’s happened this week as Samsung notes its first Solar Powered Internet School unit is currently undergoing pilot testing at the Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy in Boksberg and will be shipped out to other regions within months. Ship em all! Samsung isn’t simply doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts, but it’s nice to see initiatives like this appear to be so close to real action in the world. This project is in place as a result of CSR requirements — Corporate Social Responsibility, that is, and thus far the project is set for greater Africa. For the betterment of Africa too, if I do say so myself. This project will yield units that are both easy to transport to remote areas and able to withstand inclement weather. The first version of this project’s uni

D-Link’s Boxee Box has gotten an update to version 1.2 today for its iPad app, adding new playback controls. The set-top box has also recently integrated Spotify and has now updated the service to allow Premium Spotify users to be able to access the service from anywhere in the world. The app was previously only accessible from certain countries. The Boxee Box for iPad update now shows a new remote control at the lower right hand corner of your screen that lets you control videos you send to your Boxee Box from your iPad. The process of sending media files to your Boxee Box will also now resume where you left off for any files you played through the Boxee Media Manager. Additionally, the Boxee Box service now has an option to select video quality when you stream files. This is helpful for those with bandwidth issues and provides more consistent streaming when you’ve got a weak WiFi connection.

Apple has begun offering a new ship-to-store or in-store pickup option for its online customers in the San Francisco area. The program allows customers to place an order online to have the item shipped to their local Apple retail store for pickup, saving shipping costs for customers. The program also provides pickup customers with Personal Setup service of any new Apple product. When you go to checkout on Apple’s online store, you’ll see a new delivery option called “Pick up.” The program is only limited to the San Francisco area stores but will eventually be rolled out to other Apple Stores in the US. You can pick up products within an hour if they are listed as “Available now,” and you can designate someone else to pick up your order. Additionally, Apple retail stores will also begin accepting returns for online orders. This saves customers from having to ship items back to Apple and cuts down on the return process. These new services should roll out to all stores in the US in ti

The LG DoublePlay smartphone has gone on sale at T-Mobile about a week earlier than expected. The device sports a slide-out split QWERTY keyboard, but is most unique for its dual touchscreens. The second screen is smaller than the main display and sits between the split keyboard, making it easy for you to browse and chat at the same time. The device features a 3.5-inch main display with a second 2.0-inch screen. It sports a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash and support for 720p HD video capture. Inside, it’s powered by a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread with a customized LG interface on top that lets you use the two screens to display parts of the same app or two different apps at the same time. Originally thought to go on sale in early November with a debut today at the National Texting Championship, the LG DoublePlay is instead available immediately at T-Mobile. The device is priced at $99 with a new two-year contract aft

If there’s one thing I like about Halloween, it’s the ability of ordinary every-day inventors to create designs that not only work, they fit on their person. That’s what’s happened here with a dude named Tyler Card and his fully functional custom-made camera costume. Photos go in the front, photos get displayed on the back. Is this the ultimate all-time best-ever camera enthusiast costume? Or is it just super neato? What we’ve got here is an LCD display from a Dell laptop computer connected to an actual Nikon D3 camera which is mounted on the inside of the barrel that makes up the camera costume’s front. Not only has Tyler created a video to show you how it works, he’s made a making-of video that also includes quite a few photos he’s already taken at a pre-Halloween Halloween party with the costume itself. First have a look at the costume in action here: Also note that at the top of the camera costume, above Tyler’s head, are some Alienbees strobe lights which act as a flash, also

When it comes to gadgets, its not often that one will catch your eye for its softness, but that’s just what designer Takaaki Oguchi has done with this one – it’s a light up pillow. Without a doubt the most comfortable bit of technology I’ve seen all week, Oguchi’s “inSoft” LED light pillow has the ability to light from within without making your ear go “ouch!” Through a combination of cool-burning LED lights and padding that’ll allow just so much light to travel through it surrounding the light module, Oguchi may well have created the nightlight every kid is staying awake at night screaming about. This isn’t a completed project, kids, I’m sorry to say, but it is on its way to becoming one. This is what’s known as a conceptual industrial design, one made by the designer without as much regard for the final product as one further down the production line would have. It is through projects like these that the most innovative concepts are brought to life – and of course, to light. Soft e

So your car would like to be part of one the most famous auto-racing games in the history of the home arcade, yes? Sony today announces that opportunity. What the fine folks at Sony have done today is to announce that the ninth annual Gran Turismo Awards will be held right alongside the SEMA show (Specialty Equipment Market Association.) In this show, awards will be handed out to a variety of vehicles, the best of which will be chosen to be replicated for the next Gran Turismo video game. The several categories Sony and SEMA have in mind are best SUV, best hot rod, best domestic car, best European import, and best Asian import. Amongst each of these there will only be one, one car to appear in the next installment of Gran Turismo series. Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi will be the one to select the car that will receive the Best in Show award and that car will be playable in the next game’s installment. These awards, sadly, will not be open to the general public. If you’re g

The vast expanse that is Verizon’s USA-based 4G network is reportedly ahead of schedule, LTE taking the heads of 185 million American residents by the end of the year – and more. That 185 million customers goal was set by Verizon earlier this year, and they’re reporting this week that they’ve already well surpassed that goal. Verizon aims to open up a total of 13 more markets inside November as well, this bringing the number of markets with 4G LTE from Verizon to a fantastic 178. The number of devices that can access Verizon’s LTE network are ever increasing as well, the group working now with not only smartphones, but mobile wireless modems as well. By the end of 2011, Verizon aims to have 15 LTE capable devices on their network, devices such as the LG VL600 USB modem and the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Nexus. While it’s possible that devices other than modems and Android-enabled devices will be running on the network in the future, thus far groups such as Apple have decided to stick wi

While we know good and well it’s more about the full package than it is about any single specification on the device, it’s always interesting to compare one hero device to another. That’s why what we’re going to do here is to take Apple’s current best in class, the iPhone 4S running iOS 5, and compare it to the Lumia 800, the newest Nokia hero running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, also Microsoft’s newest mobile OS. Will this device that looks RATHER similar to what we’ve seen in the Nokia N9 MeeGo device be able to run Windows Phone successfully enough to take a cut into the iPhone’s mighty market share? Both the Nokia Lumia 800 and the iPhone have rather unique looking casings going on. With the 800, you’ve got a solid piece of polycarbonite and a single piece of curve-edged glass up front on top of a 3.7-inch display and the three standard Windows Phone buttons. With the iPhone, you’ve got a 3.5-inch display covered with a single sheet of flat glass, glass on the back of the device as w