Report: No matter the carrier, U.S. 3G service is nothing to shout about

AT&T is the favorite whipping boy for spotty 3G coverage, but according to a new survey, there's plenty of blame to go around when it comes to slow or non-existent 3G service in the States.MocoNews has the details on the survey, which found that the average 3G download speed in seven major U.S. cities—San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, and New York—was just 245Kbps, a figure that's "closer to dial-up" than blistering bullet train of broadband that the big carriers promise in those slick TV commercials. The fastest download speed recorded: 645Kbps, still well short of the average speed you'll get out of a so-so broadband cable connection.

MAG Premiere Gameplay Trailer

JBL Creature Speakers

original JBL Creature speakers were released seven years ago, Apple's designs have (d)evolved into metal bricks. But that doesn't top JBL from selling the sci-fi-inspired Creature III exclusively through Apple channels. The original Creature speakers are recaptured in the $130 Creature IIIs, though the latest edition features a more compact subwoofer than Creatures of yore. Does the design hold up all these years later? You tell us.

Tech gifts for the geek with everything

Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Mini- A nifty speaker and iPod/iPhone dock that's a sort-of miniaturized version of B&W's beautiful full-size Zeppelin. Never mind that it doesn't actually look like a zeppelin at all... it's still a very cool gadget. $400

LoSafe Disaster-Proof Hard Drive- Your external backup drive does you no good if your house burns down. IoSafe drives are fireproof and waterproof and start at $149, not much more than a standard external hard drive.

Moshi Voice Control Alarm Clock- A travel clock with a twist: You set the time and alarm via voice... and you can even snooze it by command instead of pushing a button. Just $20, it makes a great stocking stuffer.

Jabra Stone- A strange and unique Bluetooth headset, the latest Jabra sinks into a smooth pebble-like device for charging and storage. A conversation piece, to say the least. $120

Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements8- $100 gets you slimmed-down and simplified versions of these industry-standard photo- and video-editing applications. Get your friends and family off of Windows Movie Maker and Paint and into something legit.

Livescribe Pulse Digital Pen- Perfect for your hyper-organized student, the Livescribe Pulse records audio, transfers handwritten notes to your PC, and even plays Hangman. $200

ICON Rogue Flashlight- A distinctive and bright LED flashlight, powered by a single AA battery. $40

TomTom GPS for iPhone- If your loved one already has an iPhone, there's no need to bother with a standalone GPS receiver. The TopTom app is the best iPhone GPS navigator that I've tried to date, with complete text-to-speech voice nav features. $100

Boggle- Because everybody loves Boggle. $19

Adults-only app store for Android open for business

Android phones are going to have apps only for adults such as show girls.

Apple wades into AT&T-Verizon feud

The last week or so's been pretty rough for AT&T. First, its request for an injunction against Verizon Wireless and those "There's a map for that" ads was brushed aside by judge, and then it faced a wave of ridicule for its hastily produced "Let's compare" commercials starring a haggard-looking Luke Wilson.So perhaps it shouldn't come to a huge surprise that Apple has come to AT&T assistance with a series of new ads touting not just the iPhone itself, but also AT&T's network—and specifically, AT&T's ability to handle both voice calls and data at the same time. AllThingsDigital has both of the new ads(slated to run during "House," "The Daily Show," and "Dancing with the Stars," among other shows) embedded in this post, and both feature the familiar white background, friendly music, and a finger tapping away on the big iPhone interface. In one of the spots, the voiceover says: "Say you're on a call, and your friend wants to know..." (cue the friend) "...what time's the movie?" The finger taps up movie showtimes on the screen, and the voice returns: "You can tell him ... all without ever leaving the call." In another example from the second ad: "Say you're on a call with a client, and he asks..." (here's the client) "Did you get my e-mail?" The finger taps to open the message, and the voiceover says, "You can say, yep, got it right here." After a few more examples comes the capper: "Can your phone and your network do that?" Cue the Apple and AT&T logos. The new Apple ads come just days after AT&T's widely mocked commercials from last week, in which an unshaven Luke Wilson stood in front of a big orange comparison chart, giving points to AT&T its ability to let chatters "talk and surf at the same time" and having "access to over 100,000 apps," while Verizon only got credit for "name that starts with the letter 'V'." But while these latest Apple spots are certainly more polished than the Wilson ad (which, as I wrote last week, was at least a better idea on AT&T's part than its misguided lawsuit was), they still pale compared to Verizon's devastating "Map for that" ads, which feature twin U.S. 3G coverage maps: one practically bathed in red for Verizon, the other patchy blue for AT&T. And besides, while it's nice to be able to make calls and surf at the same time, it's not much use if your calls keep getting dropped.

Wal-Mart Black Friday deals hit the web

Some of the consumer electronics highlights include:

> A 15.6-inch eMachines laptop with 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, AMD CPU, and Windows 7 for $198 -- a new low for notebook prices.

> A 42-inch Emerson 720p plasma TV for $448. A 50-inch Sanyo plasma will run you $598.

> A 46-inch Sony 1080p LCD TV for $798.

> Nintendo DS Lites for $98.

> Rock Band Special Edition (with all the instruments) for just $50.

> PlayStation 3 Slim with two games and a Blu-ray disc for $299.

> A 320GB Western Digital external hard drive for $49.

> A 10.1-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot camera with 3x optical zoom for $79. Or get a 12-megapixel Kodak for just $69.

> TomTom GPS units as cheap as $59.

Link your Ps3 to Facebook

Now you can link your ps3 to you facebook account. it tells people what your playing and what trophies you got.

Christopher Null: The Working Guy * Blog * Bio * Email add to My Yahoo! rss Email Alerts Best Buy Black Friday deals leaked

You already know about the $250 Acer Laptop that Best Buy is offering. Now the mammoth retailers additional Black Friday post-Thanksgiving discounts have been leaked online, with some pretty amazing deals to be had for the savvy tech bargain hunter.

According to copies of its circular ads now available, here's some of what you can expect come next Friday:

> A 50-inch Samsung plasma TV for $898.

> A 42-inch Samsung LCD TV for $548.

> A 15.5-inch Sony laptop With Windows 7, a Pentium CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 300GB hard drive for $400. Add an internal Blu-ray drive for another 80 bucks.

> An external 500GB Western Digital hard drive for $80.

> Canon's high-end T1i DSLR camera with lens for $700.

> Huge discounts on GPS units, as little as $90 for a Magellan SE 4.

> Samsung Instinct, Sony Ericsson W518a, Motorola Rival, LG Chocolate Touch, and BlackBerry Curve 8330 cell phones are all free with two years of service.

> Sony PS3 Slim with two games for $300.

> DVD movies will be available for as little as $4 each, with Blu-ray discs for $8 and up. A Sony Blu-ray player will hit $150, inching closer to that magic $99 price point.

MW2-AMAZING Knife Throw- Modern Warfare 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudCajMNRM0&feature=popt00us02

MW2-AMAZING Knife Throw- Modern Warfare 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudCajMNRM0

MW2-AMAZING Knife Throw- Modern Warfare 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudCajMNRM0&feature=popt00us02

MW2-AMAZING Knife Throw- Modern Warfare 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudCajMNRM0

Wireless "power mat" charging options on the rise

Powermat was perhaps the first company to enter this space, and it's still going strong with a sleek charging pad and fairly good device support. Like all such mat-based charging systems, you can't just take any electronic device and drop it on the pad to get it charging. You have to add a sleeve or adapter of some sort to your phone or other device in order for it to be able to work with the plug-less charging system. Users generally leave this sleeve affixed permanently to their phones. In the case of the Powermat sleeve, it adds a bit of bulk to the handset, with a small square piece jutting out the back of the phone. Powermat is not alone: Duracell's new myGrid offers much the same type of charging solution, again with a sleeve setup that lets the base unit interface with the handset directly. A single mat can charge four products at once. There are even specialized charging systems available for specific devices, like Energizer's mat designed to wirelessly charge your Nintendo Wii controllers.

Modern Warfare 2: Domination -AC130 New Killstreaks-

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 Commentary - Commentary: Favela Map Flyby

The Beatles finally go digital—on a USB stick, that is

you can snap up official digital copies of the remastered Beatles catalog ... but only on a USB stick that sits in a big, green apple. the official Beatles store is offering a limited edition "Beatles Stereo USB," a 16GB USB stick that doubles as a removable stem in a big, green apple stamped with a "Beatles" logo. Set to go on sale Dec. 8 in the States, the USB stick will contain all 14 of the Beatles' newly remastered stereo albums, from "Please Please Me" to "Let it Be" and "Past Masters," along with the 13 "mini-documentaries" and digital versions of the original art, photos, and liner notes included in the CD box set.

25 kill streak in modern warfare2 nuck bomb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKHJIzZ42wg

Modern Warfare 2 perks

borderlands gameplay

It's official: Netflix streaming coming to the PlayStation 3

PS3 is going to have Netflix. its coming out next month. you can watch some movies immediately.

Modern Warfare 2 comic

Modern Warfare 2 guns

New Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer Gameplay on Highrise

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Game Trailer)

HP jump-starting Compaq brand with ultra-cheap machines

Hewlett-Packard acquired the venerable computer company way back in 2002, but it's kept the name alive as a secondary brand ever since, mainly relegating Compaq to overseas markets and as second-tier PCs sold on the cheap at warehouse-style stores. Today the company is announcing the rollout of a line of ultra-inexpensive PCs, both laptops and desktops, with extreme budgets in mind.Compaq CQ61z (pictured), a 15.6-inch laptop with an AMD Sempron CPU, 2GB of RAM, DVD burner, 160GB hard drive, and discrete graphics. Running Windows 7 Home Premium, the machine costs a nearly unfathomable $399. That price point probably sounds familiar -- it's the usual cost for your average netbook, which in comparison offers a tiny screen, minimal hard drive, and an ultra-low-power Atom CPU. With the $400 laptop's arrival, Compaq wants potential buyers to ask: Why not jump up to a much larger and more capable system for exactly the same price? I'm having a hard time seeing any reason not to. Seriously, it even has a numeric keypad. The attractive Compaq Presario 4010f has similar specs (with a 250GB hard drive) and starts at just $309 after a $100 rebate.

Analysts: Slimmer, cheaper PS3 outsold both Wii, Xbox 360 in September

According to Joystiq, EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich believe that about 400,000 PS3s were sold last month, compared to 375,000 Wiis and 370,000 Xbox 360 consoles. Meanwhile, Kotaku quote gaming analyst Michael Pachter, who's predicting that the PS3 topped 410,000 consoles sold, versus 390,000 for the Wii and 350,000 for the Xbox 360 (which also got a recent price cut).
If the numbers hold up (and we'll find out next week, when the NPD Group releases its monthly tally), it'll mark the first time that the PlayStation 3 has been the monthly top-selling (non-portable) gaming console since the console's launch in November 2006.

Ballmer finally confesses: Vista sucks

This week, who made some remarkably candid comments (for Microsoft, anyway) about the failures of Windows Vista and his hopes for the future. In new comments, Ballmer referred to the Vista debacle as having been an issue of "some uneven reception" because "we made some design decisions to improve security at the expense of compatibility."

Did Apple lay an egg with iPhone firmware 3.1?

The complaints about iPhone software 3.1, which added such features as Genius song mixes and App Store recommendations, have been piling up since its release early last month. The first thing that many iPhone users—myself included—was a huge hit on battery life. An 89-page thread on Apple's support pages is packed with users complaining about iPhone batteries that die after just a few hours of use, or lose big chunks of their charges while merely sitting in standby mode.

new modern warfare 2 campain trailer

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Beta

new vehicles in red alert3

Trailer: Red Alert 3: Uprising

Game console price cuts cause sales explosion

As holiday shopping season gets started, Sony is already celebrating. Its $100 price cut on the PlayStation 3 (and the flood of advertising that was launched along with it) has sent sales soaring, with unit sales up 300 percent in the three weeks prior to September 1. Sony's move has of course sent other console makers scrambling to react. The Xbox 360 Elite received a $100 price cut just days after Sony made its move, and now Nintendo is about to follow suit, cutting the price of the Wii for the first time by $50 to $199, beginning September 27.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Game Trailer)

PS3 Games of Fall 2009

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/102/1025864p1.html

Apple rises in "Best Global Brands" ranking

Apple has risen in rank on Interbrand's 2009 list of Best Global Brands. The company rises four spots to number 20, and is ahead of other electronics companies like Sony and Nintendo.

Coca-Cola, IBM, and Microsoft occupy the top three spots. Other top ten entries include McDonald’s, Google, Toyota, Disney, and Intel. There's remarkably little change in the top 10 compared to 2008. Some positions have shifted (most notably Google, hopping up to 7th place from 10th).

Interbrand bills itself as the world's largest brand consultancy. The company produces its Best Global Brands list annually, where it ranks what it considers to be the 100 best corporate brands in the world.

Interbrand’s method for determining global brand value combines financial analysis with and equation they call “Branded Earnings,” a figure of how much brand influences consumer demand at the point of purchase. The company also considers the brand's ability to secure ongoing customer demand and other factors to determine the brand’s ultimate rank.

Several criteria must be met in order for Interbrand to be consider a company for the Best Global Brands list. Publicly available financial data must be available, at least one-third of revenues need to come from outside its country of origin, and the company has to be a “market-facing brand.”

“Apple is the classic example of retaining focus through market cycles,” write Josh Feldmeth and Helen Isakovich in the report. The duo compared Apple favorably to The Gap, which they said has lost focus on the brand.

Apple’s board of directors includes Millard Drexler, whose previous work includes a stint as CEO of The Gap from 1995 until 2002.

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Zune HD Outshines Apple's iPod with an OLED Display

Microsoft rolled outs its Zune HD touchscreen media player Tuesday. Beyond playing music, the Zune targets Apple's iPod with high-definition movie-watching capabilities on an organic light-emitting diode screen that analysts said could reflect the future of mobile TV. Microsoft called Zune HD a significant step forward for portable media players. It features an NVIDIA Tegra HD processor, HD radio capabilities, and new software tools like the Quickplay menu that gives consumers one-touch access to favorites, last played, and most recently added items to streamline content searches. "With today's announcement, the Zune business is growing into a comprehensive entertainment service that's no longer tied to any one screen or device," said Enrique Rodriguez, corporate vice president of the TV, video and music business at Microsoft

Modern Warfare 2 customize kill streak

now you can customize your kill streak. you don't have to stick to 2 specials, you customize is now.

MAG the game trailer

Meet Africa's solar cell phone

Finding reliable power in Africa isn't quite the same as we have it here in the U.S., where we have an outlet available on every corner and get upset if there aren't two.

As such, gadgetry in Africa has had a halting evolution. In Kenya, for example, where virtually all of the country's power comes from hydroelectric sources, electricity is rationed to its citizens, who have to make do with a couple of days of power each week -- or have to travel to remote locations and pay to use a charging station.

Result: A whole lot of innovation when it comes to making do with limited resources. While Kenya may not have a lot of traditional power, it does have a lot of one thing: Sun. And solar power offers immense promise for Kenyans who want to keep battery-powered devices charged in the absence of a working outlet.

The latest innovation: A cell phone designed for the African market with solar charging features built right into the handset. Sure, you can find external solar charging devices like the Solio on the market, but the "Solar ya Simu" is apparently the first cell phone with a solar panel built into the case. When the phone runs out of juice, the user can just leave it in the sun for a few hours: One hour of full sun offers up to 15 minutes of talk time, and a full day in the sun can charge the phone completely.

Kenyans can buy the phone for the Kenyan equivalent of about US$40.

And you know what -- as great as this is for Africa, how about one for the rest of us? Just turn the back of every phone into a solar panel and free us all from the horrors of the grid for good. I'd even settle for a solar-ized iPhone sleeve as an aftermarket product.

iPod Nano to come with video camera

AN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Apple announced on Wednesday that it was adding a video camera to its iPod Nano and cutting prices of its wildly popular music players. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled the video camera-equipped iPod Nano at an Apple media event here during which he made a much-anticipated appearance on stage. Jobs said the new iPod Nano, Apple's best-selling iPod with more than 100 million units sold, would now include a video camera, an FM radio, a pedometer and a microphone and speaker. He said there would be two models -- an eight gigabyte version for 149 dollars and a 16 GB model for 179 dollars. The video-equipped iPod was the product highlight of the Apple event dominated by Jobs' first public appearance since October 2008. Apple also announced it was cutting the prices on various iPods models with the price of an 8GB iPod Touch, for example, dropping to 199 dollars from 249 dollars.

Firefox 4.0 to Arrive Late 2010

Mozilla recently released a product roadmap with a number of new details on what the foundation is hoping to release between now and the end of 2010, including information on when to expect the next major iteration of Firefox.

The report details that Firefox 4.0 is due to arrive in either October or November of 2010 and will bring with it a range of new features, such as a new slick user ubterface and multi-touch gesture support. But take note that this report is currently classed as a 'draft' and could be open to any number of changes.

For those existing Firefox users, a plentiful number of changes can be expected prior to the late 2010 release date of 4.0, with both 3.6 and 3.7 lined up for debut before then. These new releases will offer such improvements and features as faster javascript handling, improved form completion tools, bookmark synchronization and pageload enhancements.

Mozilla also revealed that when Firefox 4.0 does hit, it will take a leaf out of Google Chrome's book, as each tab will function with it's own separate process, reducing the instances of losing your precious browser session.