I’m attending M.I.T.!!

Well not really.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched a whole new way of learning that could change education forever.  First off, let’s get one thing straight – MIT is one of the most exclusive universities in the country.  They only enroll about 12% of applicants, most of those being certified geniuses.  Recently they launched the MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) program that allows all of their courses, materials and even lecture videos online for free.  This all came about when the higher ups sat to talk about the changing face of technology and its impact on education.  When the OCW was first suggested, the plan was to make the courses and materials available for an affordable price, but it was then realized that this can hurt the exclusiveness of the school.  Well, that’s where the genius comes in.  They decided to put the OCW online for free, but the catch is that you will receive no credit for the courses that you take.  That means that everyone can get a MIT education without hurting the exclusiveness of the school.  Click the link below and see for yourself!

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open CourseWare

LG BL40

I have heard rumors of a “long” touchscreen phone, but always felt that in order for that concept to fly, it had to be done with elegance and an equaled sense of functionality.  If any company could achieve that, it would be LG.  In comes the LG BL40.  It is the forth phone in the Black Label line and if this phone functions anything like the above video, it will be a hit.  It has a massive 4” (800x345) screen that promises to have a Dual Screen UI, which will show two different types of content at one time.  It may be a 3G/WiFi phone, but LG is sketchy with the details.  I’ll keep you guys up to date.

 

Hong Kong Does Maps Right!

I use Google Maps/Earth quite often to map out my routes (I am a school bus driver for those that didn’t know).  One thing that I always thought was cool was the 3D rendering offering in Google Earth.  Well, I came across this 2D pixel-art map of Hong Kong and I just HAD to post it.  The detail is awesome, while still being useful at the same time.  I would love to see a project started on all the major U.S. cities for Google Maps.  Below is the link to the actual map - - ENJOY!!

 

Hong Kong 2D Pixel-Art Map

Samsung Omnia II…Solid & Advanced

With my business taking off, my phone needs have changed and my beloved HTC S620 isn’t cutting it anymore.  I have been doing research and had decided to purchase the HTC Touch Pro 2 UNTIL I saw the gem known as the Samsung Omnia II (i8000).  This the second rendition of the wildly popular Samsung Omnia (i900), which is an incredibly solid phone in it’s own right.  First off is the beautiful 3.7”, 480x800 pixels AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode).  This type of screen tech offers a very crisp, clean and bright display that is thinner than most due to the omission of the usual backlight.  It offers a whopping 5MP camera with dual-power LED flash for wonderful “static” photos.  The camera software allows for panoramic, mosaic and continuous photo capture.  The video can be taken in a maximum resolution of 720x480 pixels at 30 fps.  This is the native resolution for DVDs, so movies watched on this device will be crystal clear.  Having said that, the reported battery life is a whopping 10 hours of talk time and 450 hours of stand-by.  This has been somewhat verified by the many video reviews floating around the web.  The OS is Windows Mobile 6.1 (upgradable to Windows Mobile 6.5), but it is very well hidden by Samsung’s Touchwiz UI 2.0.  It offers three different internal memory sizes, 2GB, 8GB, 16GB, plus it supports microSD cards up to 32GB.  The music/video player hosts a bunch of different file formats, such as MP3, AAC, MP4 and DivX.  Some of the other offerings include 3G, GPS, A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth), WiFi, FM radio and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.  All and all, this phone is a force to be reckoned with!

 

T-Mobile Touch Pro 2

I was recently in the mall and breezed into a T-Mobile store.  I wanted to play around with the MyTouch 3G (which didn’t wow me too much).  As I was leaving, I spied a new full touchscreen phone.  To my surprise, it was the HTC Touch Pro 2!  I have written a post on this phone before, but was surprised to see it in a T-Mobile store.  The casing was different (see pics below), but the most important thing (the screen) was the same size.  The touchscreen was pretty responsive, but seemed dim to me.  This may be due to my new love, the Samsung Omnia II (post coming soon).  The price point for the phone was $350.00 with a two year agreement (not bad).  Other carriers are expecting their versions of the phone, but this is a shot in the arm to        T-Mobiles smartphone lineup.

 

 

iPhone 3GS is ON FIRE!!

Sorry for the NBA Jams throwback, but I couldn’t resist.  We wrote before about the overheating issues the new iPhone 3GS was having, but this is a little extreme!  Pictured below is what an overheating iPhone 3GS did to some dudes car.  The dude in question is named Pieter and he lives in the Netherlands.  He left his iPhone 3GS (which was in a Belkin case) on the passenger seat of his car.  When he returned, his car was filled with black smoke and his phone was on fire.  The weird thing is that it wasn’t on the charger, but was in StandBy mode.  Both Apple and T-Mobile (the exclusive mobile carrier of the iPhone in the Netherlands) refuse to take responsibility for the incident.  Sucks to be Pieter!

 

BIG features in a small package

Pictured above is the Asus EEE Keyboard PC.  This is what happens when a keyboard eats a PC.  All the usual suspects are here, but the 5 inch, 800x480 pixel touchscreen is what blows me away.  This keyboard was made to work with your TV being the main screen.  It runs Windows XP and has 1GB of RAM.  It is equipped with either a 16GB or 32GB solid state (no moving parts) hard drive.  You would think that this would be thick in order to pack those features.  Think again.  The hardware that’s used is very similar to those of Asus’ EEE notebook (the $200 laptop).  It has WiFi, Bluetooth, VGA/HDMI-Out and a couple of USB ports.  Imagine watching Hulu.com shows in HD (yes, it wirelessly sends that signal to your TV) on your TV while surfing for more content on the touchscreen.  Price point is between $400 and $600.

A Keyboard to DIE for

Pictured above is the Optimus Maximus from Russian designer, Artemy Lebedev, that I came across while compiling my Custom PC list.  You might be saying, “So, what’s so special about this keyboard?”  Well, every key is equipped with a tiny OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screen.  This allows for total customization of the keys.  From different languages to say, pictures of the different Photoshop tools!  It houses two extra USB ports and a SD card slot for the 32MB card that holds the configurations for the keyboard.  It carries a hefty price tag of $1692.31, so it is safe to say that it won’t be part of my collection for quite some time!  Here is another pic of the keyboard in white.

---------------UPDATE---------------

This concept art for the next rendition of the Optimus Maximus, called the Tactus.  It is a fully touchscreen keyboard.  The board is TOTALLY customizable and is even able to show video.  The first thing that I thought of when I saw this was that it can be programmed to do the same thing an electronic art tablet does.  This is a designer’s dream and I can’t wait for it to drop.  Below is a pic of the concept keyboard showing video!

Google Chrome OS

There has been exciting news coming from Google’s blog.  In light of the success of their operating system, Chrome, they have decided to move forward with constructing an operating system.  The open source OS will initially be rolled out on notebooks and netbooks, but there is no reason to believe that it won’t hit desktop computers.  Notebook/netbook manufacturers, HP and Acer have already stated that they are on board, but Dell is contemplating their decision.  I, personally, am looking forward to this.  The only snag would be giving up certain programs that are OS dependant, such as Office 2007.  Google reports that we should see it’s OS the end of next year.

Knowledgeable Media Pick…HTC Touch Pro 2

 

Recently, I have noticed that HTC has slowly gained momentum in the mobile market.  The HTC Touch Pro 2 will definitely help them cement themselves.  The first thing that catches your eye is the beautiful 3.6” WVGA resistive screen.  It can easily be mistaken for an iPhone, that is until you slide the screen up to reveal a spacious QWERTY keyboard.  This addition alone was enough to get me excited.  The keyboard was one thing that I definitely felt was missing from the Touch HD.  The keys are offset (like the keys on your PC keyboard), so it feels a little more natural while typing.  If that wasn’t enough, HTC brought back the tilting screen from the TyTN II (Tilt).  Turn the phone over and your presented with a massive speaker (pictured above).  It uses two mics, which help filter out background noise.  The speaker is crisp and loud.  Now on to the software!

                                                            

The operating system is Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which is masked by HTC’s TouchFlo 3D UI.  The resistive touchscreen is very fast and responsive and TouchFlo 3D is wonderful at keeping important things at your fingertips.  It doesn’t hurt that the hard working geniuses over XDA Developers are working hard to port Windows Mobile 6.5 over the Touch Pro 2.  They have successfully done so with the Touch HD (including TouchFlo 3D) and there have been ROMs floating around with the second edition of HTC’s UI, TouchFlo 3D 2.  It has all the regulars that you would expect from a high-end phone.  WiFi, Bluetooth, SMS (text) & MMS (pic text), GPS (works wonderfully with TomTom 7, pictured above), G-Sensor (accelerometer), as well as EDGE network speeds are included, but sadly no 3G support.  It houses a 3.2 MP camera on the back with a VGA CMOS camera on the front, for video calls.  Battery life is substantial at 510 minutes (8.5 hours) talk time and 500 minutes (8.3 hours) standby.  It supports a number of video and music formats and makes playing YouTube videos playable with a dedicated program.  Mini USB and expandable storage via a microSD card round out the myriads of features offered by HTC.  With a price tag around $650.00 (lowest I’ve seen), the phone better be worth it!

iPhone 3GS is hot, hot, hot!

Right now, there is a bit of a touchscreen war going down.  In my opinion the key companies in this brawl are Apple (iPhone 3GS), HTC (Hero), Palm (Pre)and Nokia (N97).  Each camp has very strong handsets, but we all know that the iPhone is the phone to compete with.  This being said, there has been some uneasy claims in the iPhone 3GS community recently.  Some have been complaining that their iPhones have been getting “unusually” hot, to the point that they leave marks on the skin when left in a pocket.  Specifically, white iPhone 3GS users have been dismayed at the fact that the back has been discoloring because of it (see pictures below).  This news won’t break Apple, but it may shun some of those who are undecided on which handset to get, away from Apple.

pic courtesy of NoWhereElse.fr

Archos 9PCTablet…Impressive

Archos.  The name might not sound too familiar to you, but after spending some time on the site, I realized that it had some pretty nice products to offer.  Pictured above is a portable PC that caught my eye, specifically the fact that it will be running Windows 7.  It offers an 80GB HDD, Bluetooth and 2 antennas (one for receiving DBV-T TV (Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial).  All and all, the handset seems pretty solid.

Crazy Animation from France

Sigg Jones from Asterokid on Vimeo.

I came across this video recently and fell in love with the animation.  The video is from three students, Douglas Lassance (Asterokid), Matthieu Bessudo (McBess) and Johnathan Vuillemin (Motraboy). They all attend the Supinfocom Animation School in France.  What really caught my eye was the kicks the two characters had on.  Sigg Jones (the black wrestler) is wearing a pair of Puma Slipstreams in a special color.  The agent starts out with a pair of low black & white Nike Dunks, but after some pink health juice, they transform into some pink Nike Vandals with Celestial Wings!

Galactic Mail from Asterokid on Vimeo.

This is another video from the trio that bought you Sigg Jones.  It’s a futuristic space battle, rugby style, between FedEx and UPS.  Quite entertaining!

SideBar – Other videos from Supinfocom students can be found HERE!

A Hero is Born

I know it’s been a while since you heard from us, but we have a logical explanation.  We have been doing research.  There has been a sort of lull in the mobile market, or so we thought.  Recently, I was looking at some of the features of the iPhone 3GS, but in doing so, it got me interested in the HTC Touch HD.  When comparing the two phones, the only thing that the iPhone has over the Touch HD is slightly quicker response (which can be fixed with a shiny new TouchFlo 3D 2 Rom).  The Touch HD has far more tech goodies, not to mention a bigger screen.  I went searching for some other contenders and stumbled across HTC’s YouTube channel, which debuted the HTC Hero (video below).  It runs the wonderful Android platform, but with a new UI on top, called HTC Sense (kinda like what TouchFlo 3D is to Windows Mobile).  The phone design is better than the G1 (except for the fact there is no QWERTY keyboard).  It’s a beautiful phone with well thought out programs, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Knowledgeable Media Verdict - I think it does what the iPhone has been trying to do since it’s “birth”, handle both the WORK and PLAY parts of your life.  Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is the phone to contend with, but that is no reason to overlook it’s shortcomings.  It has all the features of most touchscreen phones of late – GPS, WiFi, Accelerometer and Digital Compass.  The 3.5 Audio Jack and 5.0 MP camera (2.0 on iPhone) are a definite plus.  No 3G, which is rather odd though.  Price and drop date coming soon.

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