IBLOG SPACE

Apple’s iCloud and MobileMe services are under fire in German courts, with each looking likely to fall foul of a Motorola Mobility patent. The European patent, “multiple pager status synchronization system and method,” is said to be infringed by Apple’s cloud services, FOSSPatents reports, with Motorola securing a February 2012 hearing with a court that apparently seems indisposed to hearing Apple’s arguments that its rival hasn’t been specific enough in claims. Part of the confusion is that Apple switched from MobileMe to iCloud at WWDC 2011; Motorola filed an amendment to its  original pleading , suggesting that the change was pretty much one of name, and that MobileMe had basically just been rolled into iCloud. Apple’s legal team argues that Motorola is insufficiently detailed in its claims of infringement, but the Mannheim courts were uninterested. “The presiding judge made it clear that if an injunction is ordered, it will relate to the infringement of a particular patent by whate

If you are an Android fan that has a smartphone you really like, but have lusted after the cool gaming controls on the SE Xperia play you will appreciate this. A company called Gametel has unveiled a new gamepad add on that will plug into an Android smartphone. The game pad is about half as large as a normal smartphone. That means it will add some bulk to your device. It clips onto the side of your smartphone. It’s wireless so you can play without hooking it to the smartphone too. The geeks over at TechRadar went hands on with the device and say it works pretty well. When hooked to your smartphone it’s balanced pretty well and isnt uncomfortable to use. If you like to play games like shooters or side scrollers that have virtual d-pads this thing might be perfect. You can pick one up for devices on Android 2.1 and up for £49.99.

If you are the sort that has a bunch of crap laying on your beside table or desk, but you want an iPhone or iPad alarm clock this one might interest you. It’s called the Stem Innovation Time Command Mini. This is one of the smallest iPhone and iPad docking alarm clocks I have seen. It’s barely wider than the iPhone and will still dock the much larger iPad. The clock interfaces with the iPhone and iPad via the Stem:Connect app. The app automatically transfers the time and alarms form your iOS devices to the clock. The docking connector pivots to work with iPhones and iPads in cases or without cases. Being able to dock with a case on your phone is a big deal. The little clock has speakers for playing your music too. It allows you to pick your alarm source from audio from your docked device or normal alarms. It also plays sounds to help you fall asleep. The Time Command Mini sells for $79.95. You can pick one up in Apple retail stores today.

In the tech world it’s not, uncommon to see firms touting their device is the lightest this or that and often there are caveats to their claims. A group of researchers has invented a new material that has no caveats. It’s simply the lightest material on earth. What’s it going to be used for? No one knows at this point. The material is comprised 99.99% of air alone and is a microlattice cellular architecture that is made from nickel. Apparently, the material can be made from other materials as well. However, nickel was the easiest material to use. The composition of the lattice is 90% nickel. The chunk of the material you see in the photo is so light it sits atop a dandelion and doesn’t crush the weed. The scientists are studying exactly what to use the material for. Some thoughts are things like impact protection and various things in the aerospace industry. Apparently, the material floats down like a feature if you toss it in the air and takes ten seconds to reach the ground when drop

AT&T’s HSPA+ network is the carrier’s iPhone 4S trump card, according to data speed analysis in the US, delivering websites twice as fast as CDMA rivals like Verizon. The fifth-gen Apple smartphone bested competing carriers on page rendering, uploads and downloads, analysts Metrico Wireless found in their testing of the iPhone 4S, though Verizon proved slightly more stable when it came to connecting – and not dropping – calls. However, while AT&T’s GSM network has long been lambasted for its shonky iPhone performance, a common source of complaints across the lifespan of the first four Apple handsets, Metrico found that the carrier had much improved. Voice quality, with a 2.8-percent call failure rate, was only slightly behind that seen on Verizon’s version, at 2.1-percent (Sprint lagged in third place, with 3.7-percent) they report, while AT&T’s lead in data speeds was considerably more impressive. The average AT&T page load on the iPhone 4S took 1.29s, less than half t

Samsung’s tablet workaround in Germany has made it into stores and into reviewers’ hands, with the Galaxy Tab 10.1N bearing a new bezel design to bypass Apple’s injunction. German would-be tableteers hoping for a slice of Samsung’s original Galaxy Tab 10.1 had been frustrated, after Apple managed to secure a preliminary sales injunction based on claimed design similarities between it and the iPad. Now the new variant has gone on sale. German site  NewGadgets  wasted no time in picking up the workaround tablet and highlighting the differences in a video review (which you can see below). The big difference is the bezel: Apple claimed that part of the iPad’s distinctive appearance was the edge-to-edge glass and minimal metal seen around it. Samsung has thickened the metal section on two of the edges, as well as pivot the stereo speakers around to face more forward than sideways. The end result is arguably more attractive than the original, and probably sounds better too. Samsung also took

I would love to think we might find life of some sort on a planet or moon inside our own solar system. Many think that one of the bodies in our solar system most likely to harbor life of some sort would be Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. Scientists have conjectured that under the icy surface of Europa there are lakes or oceans of liquid water. A new report published recently by scientists predicts that small lakes might exist only 3 km below the surface of Europa. Scientists have long though that as far as 100 miles below the surface of Europa heat and forces inside the planet might have created an ocean of liquid water. The problem with sending a probe to test the theory is that at 100 miles beneath the surface of ice, getting to the water is impossible. The new paper suggest that Europa might have small lakes as close to the surface as 3km. These small lakes would be much easier to reach in some future mission. The idea is the warmer water might be making its way up from deep within

We have talked on several occasions about the DARPA hypersonic test gliders that have been in testing for a while now. So far, DARPA has lost both of its test vehicles with no explanation as to what happened. It seems that the US Army has been more successful than DARPA has. Yesterday the Army conducted a test flight of its new hypersonic weapon that can travel up to five times the speed of sound. The weapon was launch from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. The vehicle is a glider like the DARPA device that is lofted into orbit and then glides to reach its target. According to the military, the weapon would be able to navigate and avoid flying over other nations on its approach to its target. The Army calls the weapon the Advanced Hyper Sonic Weapon. The test was to collect data on the tech that boosts the vehicle and then allows it to glide. At speed, the AHW was able to cover 2,300 miles in less than half an hour.

RIM hasn’t found the success that it expected with the Playbook tablet in any way shape or form. I think most will agree that would be because the tablet was overpriced for the machine to lack the basic features that tablets are expected to have today. HP has been trying to sell its failed TouchPad tablet at a discounted price of $149for a while via some resellers. The catch with these TouchPad sales is that they have been with some catches. To get the TouchPad for $149 you had to buy a qualifying HP notebook or desktop. RIM is reportedly set to launch a Christmas special on the Playbook that it hopes will spur the moving of some of the stock that locations have around the country. The price for the Playbook is said to be dropping to $199, $299, and $399 for the 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB versions. That $199 price puts the Playbook in direct price competition with the TouchPad deals but the Playbook buyer doesn’t need to get a notebook as well. The catch is that the Playbook is still very fea

If you are a big fan of SlingBox and tossing content all around to wherever you want it from your home while you are on the road you will like the latest development. The SlingPlayer for Facebook has landed. The announcement comes by way of Slingbox and the app is on Facebook now. The app you need to grab if you want to sling your content over to Facebook is called the SlingPlayer app using the Facebook search bar. The install instructions are easy to follow and once installed you are good to go. The Facebook service will only work with the Slingbox Pro-HD or Solo boxes. We don’t have all the details on the new Facebook integration right now. It would seem that the deal here would be that you could watch your content via your Facebook page rather than having to be on a computer where you can install a plug-in. That would allow you to watch at the office or a web café or on a friend’s computer. I wonder if you can share the content with friends and comment on it while you watch.

Web statistics are sort of like beauty in that it’s all in the eye of the beholder. One person can look at stats and think a website is doing great and another can look at the same stats and determine that the website is actually not doing well at all. This is exactly what has happened this week with the latest stats that have been published by Experian Hitwise. The stats show that during the week of September 10 to September 24 Google+ had a massive spike in the number of users on the service. That spike in users drops significantly during the week to September 24 to October 8 though and then balanced out with a bit of an uptick during the week of November 12. Search Engine Land sees this as the third biggest week since the Google+ service launched making the huge spike a good thing. The LA Times on the other hand looked at the same spike and then quick fall off and concluded that Google+ is fighting fading user interest. According to the Times, the new data shows that Google+ as been

When the front and back of your popular smartphone is made from glass, you can bet that there will be a bunch of those devices that get shattered in a short drop. Even using Gorilla Glass wasn’t enough to prevent buyers of the iPhone 4 from crying foul when the front and back of the smartphone could shatter. A patent has surfaced that shows that Apple is hard at work creating a smartphone that has glass that won’t shatter when you drop it. The patent outlines some interesting stuff that shows how Apple plans to add a sort of buffer behind the glass panels that would allow the glass to give rather than shatter in a drop. The shock system would separate the glass from the rest of the smartphone. Another method of protecting the glass sounds complex. It involves drop sensors in the phone that would partially retract the glass into the body of the phone when a drop was sensed. We have also seen patent apps in the past that showed a system usingairbags to protect the glass. I think the shoc

Back during the summer, Google decided that it has the OS wrapped up with Android and wanted to add hardware maker to its bag of tricks. That meant that the search giant went looking for a mobile device maker to gobble up. Google ended up going with Motorola and offered to buy the mobility side from Motorola for $12.5 billion. The offer was accepted at the time by the Motorola board, but it still had to be approved by the various government regulators and by the shareholders. Google and Motorola are one-step closer to the buyout being complete with the shareholders for Motorola Mobility approving the merger with Google. Motorola says that its shareholders voted overwhelmingly to the tune of 99% of those at the special session agreeing to accept the merger deal. Those that were at the special voting meeting represented 74% of all outstanding shares of Motorola stock. Motorola and Google expect the deal to close by the end of 2011 or early in 2012. The expectation is for early 2012. Ther

After the tragedy that happened this year in Japan with the flooding and tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear reactor to leaked radiation, many countries in Europe including France are working to test their nuclear reactors. The tests are to be sure that the plants could withstand a natural disaster without leaking radiation. The French were testing their reactors for the ability to resist flooding, earthquakes, power outages, and the failure of the cooling system. The final results for the testing will not be offered until June. However, a preliminary report says that the French need to add a layer of protection mechanisms in reactors to safeguard the reactor’s cooling functions and electric power. One thing the findings urge is an extra diesel generator placed out of the way so it can’t fail in the event of a strong earthquake. The older French reactors were built in twos on the premise that nothing would harm both at once. A massive natural disaster like the one in Japan could

I can remember years back when AMD was the processor to have for all out performance in your desktop. One year Intel put the smack down on AMD with a line of processors that was well beyond anything AMD had for pure performance in the desktop world and it’s as if AMD threw in the towel and has been the runner up ever sense. It looks like AMD missed its chance with Apple sometime last year. Semiaccurate reports that it has learned that an AMD-powered MacBook Air with a Llano processor inside rather than Intel was very near production ready roughly last spring. This is at the point when Apple and Intel weren’t happy together. At what was apparently the last minute the mild Air update we saw last time we reviewed the Airwas tossed out onto the market and the reason it didn’t change much is reportedly because it was plan B. Plan A would have been the first AMD processor under the hood of the MacBook Air. The chip is said to have provided the machine with many times more graphics performanc

Generally, if you are using a search engine to search flights you will be looking for a flight that is taking off or landing. You would get nothing other than a list of flights with departure and arrival times. WolframAlpha has a new sort of flight search app that is very cool and would be lots of fun to use for kids and adults. The new WolframAlpha flight search service that has just launched. If you see a big jet shining in the air above you at 36,000 feet you can ask WolframAlpha what flights are overhead. The search engine will use your location and tell you literally what flight that plane you see overhead is. If there are multiple flights in your area, it will give details on all of them. The cool part is that it can tell you what altitude the flight is at and at what angle the plane is from you so you can find it. It also has details on the flights that show the type of plane along with the airline and flight number. The new “flights overhead” search query works on the desktop v

Nintendo has created two life-sized Mario Karts, intended to celebrate the launch of Mario Kart 7 on December 4, and a lucky gamer will get the chance to drive one of them away in a huge giveaway. The two electric buggies – one for Mario and one for Luigi – were constructed by West Coast Customs, and members of GameStop’sPowerUp Rewards program stand a chance of winning one of the iconic vehicles if they make a purchase or trade in December. Check out the video of the Mario Karts in action after the cut. West Coast Customs produced two of the better-known models for Nintendo’s promotion: the classic Mario Standard kart, with its glider attachment, and the Luigi Bumble V kart, with a rear propeller for underwater navigation. Unfortunately they won’t actually fly or allow you to explore submarine depths. “When I saw the Karts, I put out a big ‘woo-hoo’” says Nintendo CEO Reggie Fils-Aime, a quote which the exec may come to regret almost as much as “my body is ready.” An episode of  Insid

Tiny computers you can fit in your pocket aren’t new – they’re called smartphones – but FXI Tech reckons there’s also a place for its PC-in-a-thumb-drive, the “Cotton Candy” stick. Toting an HDMI plug on one end and a USB on the other, with an ARM Cortex A9 dual-core CPU, ARM Mali-400MP GPU, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 and a microSD slot sandwiched in-between, the Cotton Candy hooks up to displays and other computers and loads up its own Android OS for easy cloud access. As with other thin-client style devices we’ve seen before, Cotton Candy is intended to work around the limitation of small screens on small gadgets. You might be able to remotely access your work PC from your phone, for instance, but you may not be able to see much of it on a phone-scale display. Bluetooth is used for peripheral support while the dongle is plugged into a TV, and your smartphone can hook up wirelessly to act as a mouse or keyboard. When hooked up to a Windows, Mac or Linux computer, meanwhile, Cotton Cand

SwiftKey X and SwiftKey Tablet X has been updated, with the predictive Android keyboard alternative now taking advantage of multitouch for faster typing. Meanwhile, there’s new language and keyboard layout support – up to 35 languages in total now – including the ability to quickly change between up to three different layouts by sliding the spacebar. Arabic and Hebrew are the new languages, while there’s also full language localization for Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. SwiftKey has also thrown in a number of new keyboard layouts, including DVORAK and COLEMAK in this version, and you can change the key heights to suit what phone or tablet you’re using SwiftKey X on, and the size of your fingers. Finally, the actual prediction engine running inside the app, Fluency, has also been tweaked, with the promise being improved performance and faster corrections. You can download SwiftKey X here and SwiftKey Tablet Xhere.

European automobile giant BMW is scheduled to debut its initial lineup of “i Cars”, the completely electric lithium-ion i3 “megacity vehicle”, and the plug-in hybrid i8 high-performance car, for the first inaugural time in North America at the Los Angeles Automobile Show this week. From the looks of the initial concept art, these are some sweet, sweet looking concept cars. BMW really has outdone themselves again on the these “i Cars”, even though they’ve long been known for cutting-edge design. Rich Steinberg, manager of electric vehicle operations and strategy at BMW of North America states the following: “[The i3 and i8] are both sort of bookends in terms of the ‘Born Electric’ concept. The i3 is … a relatively small platform: four doors, four seats, pure-electric drive, lithium-ion battery technology. The i8 is on the other end of the spectrum … extremely high performance yet at the same time having an extremely low carbon footprint.” – Steinberg That said, the i3 and i8 are the lat

Looking for a cheap way to get a brand new smartphone this Black Friday? If so, then you’re in luck. AT&T has announced a full-on Thanksgiving weekend of promotional sales. Starting at 12:01 a.m. on this year’s Black Friday in a couple weeks, AT&T’s website will reveal some impressively affordable deals on sales on touchscreen devices, including tablets. Furthermore, new electronics deals will gradually roll out each day through the following Monday. Take note that all deals come with several clauses. They require a two-year activation service plan, the smartphones require AT&T voice and also the minimum $15 monthly data plan, and messaging devices are to be bought with a minimum $20 monthly text messaging plan. Not a bad deal, considering that you’re getting some pretty nice phones for, well, literally a cent. The rest of the AT&T-packed weekend will feature these phone deals: Saturday, Nov. 26  – All Windows 7 and certain Android devices are available for one cent. S

Even with all the steadily surging amount of tablet competition out there as of recent, Apple’s iPad has managed to snag almost 90% of global web traffic for tablets. According to a just released report from the Royal Pingdom, The iPad has reached 87.6% of all global tablet web traffic. Now that’s something that any tablet manufacturer not named Apple should be concerned about (Yes, I’m looking at all you Android tablet manufacturers out there). And there are quite a few of those. In addition to the global usage report, comScore reported in October 2011 that 95.5% of all tablet web traffic in the U.S. comes from the iPad. This is despite the emerging ubiquity of competing Android tablets from companies like Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Blackberry’s own Playbook tablet, as well as the emergence of smaller manufacturers that make lower-end tablets. However, the market share of Apple’s iPad versus Android tablets sales is harder to quantify in numbers, as Apple reports its sales clearly in its

Some particular strings of code uncovered in Apple’s iOS mobile operating system by iOS developer John Heaton hints that Mac OS X’s popular iChat client could come to iOS devices in the near future, namely the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. Well, this is certainly interesting news, especially to an iOS user like myself, since the current iMessage app found in iOS 5 is somewhat limited to sending only text messages. Though the code doesn’t explicitly refer to iChat in particular, it does include strings related to third-party services AIM and Jabber. Not to be confused with the iMessage application found in iOS 5, which only allows text messaging, but does not connect across various messaging platforms such as AIM, Google Talk and more. Furthermore is the fact that the “IMService” code in iOS 5 refers to both the iMessage and FaceTime services. At the moment, iMessage and FaceTime are completely different applications in iOS 5, with the iPhone dishing off FaceTime duties to the ph

We know you’re all dying to get your hands on a Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich that you can all your own, but in the meantime since we have the beautiful phone right here we’ve recorded another quick demo. First, look over our hands-on and unboxing, followed by a detailed Ice Cream Sandwich hands-on. That should hold you over, but while you wait enjoy the video demo below. In our hands-on demo video at the end of this page we go over the brand new active voice dictation introduced in 4.0 ICS as well as the face unlock, unlock to camera option, and even facial recognition. We’ve been loving this phone so far and without a doubt the active voice dictation is one cool feature. Active voice dictation Android had voice capabilities before that were actually quite good, but now it’s at an entirely new level. You’ll clearly understand after watching the video. Not only does it follow and type out what you say with your voice, but now it follows along in real time. If you pau

Just as Google affirmed with their announcement yesterday, their music service is “opening up to a broader audience and that it will integrate with the music store on Android Market to make music discovery, purchase, and sharing easy and fast.” Well, the Google Music App has just launched right now for the Google TV, as well as the Android Market now opening up to music purchases to select Android smartphones. So for all you Android and Google TV users out there, feel free to start downloading and listening to your favorite tunes. The Google Music for Google TV app syncs in the cloud with your Google Music account, removing the need to stream from a computer or download tunes to the TV. In a few easy steps, simply download the Google Music app for Google TV from the Android Market, log in to your Google account, and start enjoying your entire music collection through the system of your choice. These are the instructions: go to music.google.com on your computer, sign up for the free

While the Galaxy Nexus and its international release complete with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich aboard are easily the biggest news surrounding the release of Google’s newest mobile OS, it would seem that Google is already ramping up its efforts to show off the tablet-based capabilities of the system. What you’re seeing here is an official Google-made render of two devices, one looking rather similar to the Galaxy Nexus, the other looking much closer to a Galaxy Tab, though both have slight smoothings out of detail that make them instead simply rather well made renders. Google is likely to release this image imminently on one of their home pages. Meanwhile you can take comfort in knowing that Ice Cream Sandwich wont look all that different from what Honeycomb looked like on the tablet, complete with the three buttons in the lower left (updated to reflect the change in icons now) as well as the slightly more cyan-colored accents. Icons sit on the first homepage as they would otherwise,

Kodak is struggling to stay afloat and as part of its efforts to raise enough cash to turn things around, the company may sell its online photo-sharing business called Kodak Gallery. Kodak has already licensed out itsprojector patents and sold its image sensor unit to generate cash in recent months. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the WSJ says that Kodak has approached photo-sharing websites, competitors, retailers, and private equity firms about purchasing its Kodak Gallery unit. According to the source, Kodak is seeking “hundreds of millions of dollars” for the unit, but its declining user base isn’t justifying the asking price. Kodak is aiming to sell about $200 million in non-central assets to help raise $1.3 to $1.4 billion in cash by the end of the year. The money is needed as part of its planned turnaround to transition into selling printers. The company has warned that it could go out of business by next year if it doesn’t gather up enough cash for the next 12 months.

When it comes to releasing new devices, Samsung and the rest of the manufacturer bunch doesn’t always aim for the top of the ladder – case in point, the Samsung Captivate Glide, a dual-core smartphone with a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a slide-out keyboard. This device is being released on AT&T’s 4G network (not LTE, mind you, just regular ol’ 4G) and is currently one of the only dual-core smartphones with a keyboard on the market. If we turn away from the keyboard for a moment and focus on the rest of the device, I think you’ll find that while this handset certainly doesn’t seem to be up to the task of beating down the very top of the pack of smartphones out today, it’s certainly a wrestler for the dual-core lovers of you out there in AT&T Land.

An Apple patent application has surfaced, revealing one of the ideas the company has in mind for creating crack-resistant glass screens for its iPhones and other portable devices. The invention involves the use of a tunable shock mount which acts like an airbag between the glass screen and the body of the device. The shock mount would be designed to instantly inflate when the device senses a drop as determined by its accelerometer. This would be used in combination with stronger glass materials such as alumino silicate glass, also known commercially as Gorilla Glass, or with sodalime and borosilicate materials that are resistant to thermal shock. The shock mount itself would be made of a polymer, foam, gel, silicone rubber, or other viscoelastic material and could be filled with a special fluid as an inflatable bladder or airbag. The idea sounds almost as whacky as the patent filed by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos for smartphone airbags, springs, and compressed air thrusters. Both aim to pro

Nikon has release its iP-PJ Transfer App for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch that works with the company’s recently launched Coolpix S1200pj digital camera, which sports a built-in projector. The app lets you use the Coolpix S1200pj to project and share images and documents saved on your iOS device. This app extends the capabilities of the Coolpix S1200pj beyond projecting photos and videos stored on the camera itself, which features a 14.1-megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom, and supports ups to 720p HD video recording. The camera also features a 3-inch LCD viewer and began shipping back in September for $429.95. The built-in projector has 20 lumens of brightness and can project on to a 60-inch screen. However, it’s not clear whether it can only project still images and documents or if it can project whatever is on the screen of your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Also, its native resolution is 1024 x 768, so images will be scaled down.

Whenever you talk to a Nintendo fan, there are two topics that are absolutely off-limits: Nintendo ditching its portable-gaming devices and the company bringing Mario to the iPhone. Upon even bringing up those topics, you can expect to be dealt some serious name-calling (“idiot” is usually a favorite) and a slew of reasons you’re wrong. But when you cut your way through all those reasons, they usually all come back to one simple fact: Nintendo and its faithful fans believe portable game devices and Mario are synonymous with the brand, and therefore, the strategy surrounding them should never change. "It’s about time Nintendo gets out of the portable business entirely" Not to stir up a hornet’s nest, but I think that argument is nonsense. In fact, I think it’s about time Nintendo gets out of the portable business entirely and starts offering games from its many popular franchises, including Mario and Zelda, on smartphones. Let’s first start out with the obvious reason Nintendo

The  Samsung Ga glaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has surfaced at the FCC today with HSPA+ bands in tow that suggest it may soon be headin to AT&T. The WiFi-only version of the slick 7-inch tablet has already begun shipping here in the US from major retailers such as Best Buy and Amazon starting at $399. But if having a cellular connection for your Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is important, you likely won’t have to wait long. The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus features a 7-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution touchscreen, 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. It also runs Samsung’s proprietary TouchWiz UI on to of Android 3.2 Honeycomb and comes in either a 16GB or 32GB model. For more details on the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus WiFi version be sure to check out a full review here. The version passing through the FCC today shouldn’t see much change in specs except for the addition of an HSPA+ radio and support for 850MHz and 1900MHz GSM bands. S

The folks at Signal Snowboard have a deal called Every Third Thursday where they take time out of their busy board-making day to create something utterly strange, awesome, or otherwise never having been done before – and this week they’re bringing the heat with a custom iShred snowboard with built-in iPad in tribute of the recently deceased Steve Jobs. What they do here is to start with the raw materials, cut down some ABS for the top with an iPad hole, add an aluminum base, and away they go! All of this is done with CNC machines to precise cuts all around – but will the tricks they perform once the board is done have the iPad surviving the falls? In the bottom of the board is a beacon that lights up, and unlike some boards, this one has no additional edges, just the aluminum base. The light-up logo in the base is what you might recognize as a wi-fi signal, but in fact its the non-text version of Signal Snowboards own mark, and yes, it does light up just like the Apple does on the back

Modern Warfare 3, the latest game title in the Call of Duty franchise from Activision, has set a new sales record, selling more than $775 million worth of copies in the first five days. Not only does this figure crush rival EA’sBattlefield 3, which had set a record of its own, but it has also managed to outsell all entertainment records including major movie titles. The game’s day one sales already set a record with more than $400 million worth of retail sales, surpassing its Black Ops release last year, which debuted selling $360 million. At this rate, Modern Warfare 3 would certainly hit the billion-dollar mark, with the entire franchise having already exceeded $6 billion in revenue overall. Activision’s Call of Duty titles continue to crush the competition although EA really stepped it up with its Battlefield 3 title that came out last month. Battlefield 3 grossed more than $300 million in its first week. Although less than half of what Activision scored with Modern Warfare 3, it is

This week the folks at Apple have sent out an update to Apple TV users everywhere that they could have the newest build that addresses several issues found in the version released right alongside the iOS 5 release this October. Apple TV version 4.4 is now updated to version 4.4.3 which is indeed the third update since the original 4.4 release. For those of you still on a pre-4.4 release, note that everything newer adds several features like Wall Street Journal Live, National Hockey League Content, Photo Stream, AirPlay Mirroring support, and iTunes Trailers. The exact details on what this newest version contains aside from bug fixes has not been revealed quite yet, but we recommend you go ahead and move on up to it one way or another. Late October was the last update (to 4.4.2) and it contained a fix to an issue a few users were having where they were they had to be connected to iTunes in order to complete any kind of update. The horror, the horror! Of course users should also note if

When it comes to high fidelity audio, who better to trust than the musicians that create the music you’re listening to – that concept kept alive here again today by none other than rapper 50 Cent with a few new headphones appearing right on time for the holiday season. There’s two main models, one being SYNC by 50, a pair of wireless headphones, and STREET by 50, wired headphones so you don’t loose em while you’re out on what the name suggests, the street. Both pairs of phones are up for pre-order now and will be shipped by December 5th, 2011. What you’re going to get here with the SYNC by 50 are a pair of custom-acoustically tuned headphones that are able to deliver what the team at SMS by 50 call non-compressed CD-quality audio. Inside is Kleer technology offering you 16-bit digital sound as well as long batter life, low to no interference and next to no feedback. Both SYNC and STREET have undeniably high-quality audio blasting through the earpieces, but the Kleer makes that sound wo

Finding something the whole family can agree on at Christmas is usually a nightmare, but it seems as long as what’s in giftwrap is rectangular, has a 9.7-inch touchscreen and an Apple logo, then kids, teenagers and adults will be happy. Market researchers Nielsen claim Apple’s iPad is the most coveted gadget, rating the highest for buying-interest over the next six months in both the 6-12 and 13+ brackets. Non-Apple tablets, meanwhile, languish behind in fifth place. Younger people seem to be Apple-holics, in fact, with their top three must-haves being from the Cupertino company’s stable. For the older people surveyed, a new computer or a new ereader took joint second place, while a new TV is in fourth place. Gaming hardware, perhaps more traditional holiday fare, has drifted down the charts considerably. The stats are particularly interesting when viewed alongside recent suggestions by analysts that Apple wouldhave to resort to iPad 2 price cuts if it wanted to maintain buoyant sales,

There’s a company out there by the name of Strobe whose main goal is to help HTML5 web app developers push their apps to the web, the Android Market, and the iTunes App Store, and today we’re to understand that Facebook has acquired them fully. Strobe founder Charles Jolley noted this morning that though Facebook has acquired the service, it will continue to exist in its Beta form for the time being. He also mentioned that his other progect which has to deal with JavaScript framework SproutCore will remain an independent project. What does this mean for Facebook, you might ask – Jolley will be joining the mobile engineering team, for one. The tale of what Strobe is all about essentially tells the story of how Facebook will expand with them attached. Jolley notes that as Strobe has been a “fantastic adventure” so too will it continue to be exciting to continue to work with those who’d supported the team in their pre-Facebook form. His note, signed The Strobe Team, reads as follows, in p

Enjoy this video song in the soothing voice of Sonu nigam and Shreya Ghoshal from Love Breakups Zindagi movie starring Zayed khan, Dia Mirza, Tisca chopra, Cyrus Sahukar, Satyadeep Mishra, Umang Jain. These beautiful lyrics are penned by sought-after lyricists javed Akhtar while music is given my music duo Salim Sulaiman

Song: Ooh la la tu hai meri fantasy remix song Singer: Bappi Lahiri & Shreya Ghoshal Movie: The Dirty Picture Starcast: Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Tusshar Kapoor and Emraan Hashmi

Song: Jalwanuma Starcast: Shiney Ahuja, Sayali Bhagat Movie: Ghost Music Director: Sharib Toshi Music Label: T-Series Jalwanuma is the song of upcoming horror , thrilling flick Ghost starring Shiney Ahuja, Sayali Bhagat in lead roles. This song is sung by Sharib Toshi, Akram Sabri. Music of this film is by Sharib Toshi.