Saturday

Nokia 6255i Cell Phone review


Nokia continues to provide a high quality and much desired product in their cell phone offerings and their 6255i flip top model does not disappoint. If you want a cell phone that is lightweight, attractive, and comes with scads of features, then this baby is for you. Amongst flip phones, the Nokia 6255i is certain to be noticed by cell phone afficionados. No bare bones model, the 6255i comes loaded with the following standard features:
  • Camera with flash and digital zoom
  • Video recorder
  • Streaming audio and video
  • MP3 player
  • Bluetooth wireless connectivity
  • Voice dialing
  • Oh, yeah, the 6255i can also be successfully used to talk with someone too! This is almost an afterthought when you consider its terrific features. Because of its popularity, no less than twelve service providers have signed on to sell this 4.4 oz wonder. Therefore, your choices of carriers are excellent; shop around and compare the best plans. I have seen the 6255i offered for as low as $49 after rebates when a two year plan is purchased. Not bad when you consider that the model retails for as much as $299 when purchased separately. You may be able to find an even better offer when shopping online. Other leading Nokia flip top models worth a look include the 6170 featuring a camera, video, and voice capabilities; and the 7270 featuring GSM capabilities. In all, Nokia remains a formidable competitor in the ever growing cell phone marketplace and the 6255i is a strong entrant.
    Sunday

    Oscar.com offers 'all access' pass to the Academy Awards, for a cost


    You're Invited: Get the All Access Pass for the Oscars?

    Beverly Hills, CA (February 18, 2011) – Movie fans, your "All Access" pass for Oscar Night? is now available on Oscar.com (www.oscar.com/all-access), the official online home of the 83rd Academy Awards?. This new interactive feature will provide an experience to the online audience during the live Oscar? show never before available.

    Beginning at 3:30 p.m. PT, Sunday, February 27, all Oscar.com visitors will experience Oscar's red carpet through multiple camera positions capturing celebrity arrivals, glamorous fashions, and press activity. During the telecast, users may visit the show's control truck, check out the backstage "Thank You Cam" at which winners continue their acceptance remarks, and watch and listen as the winners take questions from the world's press in the interview room.

    For a premium Oscar Night experience, users may register ($4.99) for additional, exclusive viewing opportunities. Multiple "360 cams," a groundbreaking technology that users control with the click/drag functionality of the computer mouse, will be positioned throughout the red carpet, the Kodak Theatre and the Governors Ball, the Academy's celebration immediately following Academy Awards. On the red carpet, users will be able to watch Oscar nominees and presenters mixing and mingling as they enjoy the pre-ceremony champagne reception. Inside the Kodak Theatre, viewers will see the presenters' hair and makeup area, watch the guests interact during commercial breaks and see the Academy's official winner portrait area. The access continues at the Governors Ball, where users will be able see Oscar winners arriving at the party and having their statuettes being affixed with nameplates.

    Designed to be perfect companion to the Oscar telecast, over the course of the evening "All Access" users will have the ability to choose from more than 24 strategically placed cameras throughout the venue.

    iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users can also get their own ultimate insider's view with the new Oscar Backstage Pass App. Available for download at the App Store (www.itunes.com/appstore) for $0.99, the Oscar Backstage Pass app includes the same features as "All Access" without the "360 cam" technology.

    Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2010 will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center?, and televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.


    View the original article here

    T-Mobile continues campaign against iPhone 4 with new 'State of the Smartphone' infographic


    By Vlad Savov posted Feb 28th 2011 2:45AM T-Mobile cares about you. It cares so much that it's spending all its advertising dollars lately making sure you know full well that the iPhone 4 can't do "4G" the way its own phones can. The latest salvo in this crusade of enlightenment includes the above graphs showing just how much faster and further your money can go if you ride along on the Magenta network. It conveniently ignores the fact that AT&T and Verizon offer other phones besides Apple's iPhone, some of which can handle speeds above the 3G threshold, but such is the price you pay when you want to have a really pretty and eye-catching chart. Hit the source link to soak up more of T-Mobile's priceless wisdom.

    [Thanks, Ramon]


    View the original article here

    AdvanceTC's 4.8-inch tabletphone runs Windows 7 on a 1.6GHz Atom CPU


    It may not sound like the most practical combination, but we've got to hand it to AdvanceTC -- it's shoehorned telephony into a Windows 7 tablet, fulfilling our dark desire for a spiritual successor to the xpPhone. Yes, that's not Windows Phone 7 you're looking at above, but rather full desktop Windows running on a sizable quad-band GSM brick, whose insides hold a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 32GB SSD, a 4.8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a chunky 3200mAh battery to power the whole thing. Calls are handled via AdvanceTC's custom UI layer and there's some software trickery to keep that battery in check, as the device can automatically wake from sleep when it detects an incoming call or text message. We doubt we'd much enjoy navigating Windows 7 on a screen that small, but AdvanceTC also gives the Atrix a nod, claiming that the device can act like a full nettop PC when connected to an HDMI dock. We'll let you know if the company gives us a price, release date, or any indication that it will actually hit retail at all.

    View the original article here

    Saturday

    PlayBook Android app support mentioned during demo at MWC, old BlackBerrys show up in ShopSavvy's Android logs


    As far-fetched as it may seem, rumors that RIM is working on some sort of Android app support for its QNX-based PlayBook tablet have persisted in various forms for months now -- and they've turned up once again in a video posted by development community MobileMonday's Rio chapter taken at MWC earlier this month, where a RIM rep seemingly says "we will also support Android apps" after talking about Java-based offerings. Of course, this could've been staged by some rabble rousers or a rep could've simply been echoing back the rumors he's seen on the interwebs -- but regardless, it adds fuel to the fire. Follow the break to see the video of that.

    But it gets weirder. ShopSavvy -- which makes versions of its app for iOS and Android -- has started turning up a couple of older BlackBerry devices in its Android build's usage statistics on Flurry: the Curve 8300 and 8520, to be specific, along with an 8600 model that doesn't exist (at least, not yet). The 8300, in particular, is pretty ancient at this point and we're having a hard time wrapping our brain around RIM's game plan in porting Dalvik (or a Dalvik-like) VM and associated libraries over to it; if anything, Flurry could be confused. Then again, a next-generation full-touch BlackBerry that just happens to run a full suite of Android apps in a sandbox could be a pretty compelling product, indeed.

    [Thanks to everyone who sent these in]


    View the original article here

    Gmail accidentally resetting accounts, years of correspondence vanish into the cloud? (update)


    By Sean Hollister posted Feb 27th 2011 6:13PM If you've got a working Gmail account, you might want to back it up every so often -- as many as 500,000 Gmail users lost access to their inboxes this morn, and some of them are reporting (via Twitter and support forums) that years worth of messages, attachments and Google Chat logs had vanished by the time they were finally able to log on. While we haven't experienced the issue personally, we're hearing that the bug effectively reset some accounts, treating their owners as new users complete with welcome messages. For its part, Google says that the issue "affects less than .29% of the Google Mail userbase," engineers are working to fix the issue right now, and that missing messages will be restored as soon as possible. We'll soon see if this is a momentary setback... or a lengthy wakeup call.

    Update: No fix yet, but Google's revised its estimate as to how many users might have been affected by the issue -- "less than 0.08%" -- which means we're probably looking at closer to 150,000 individuals, rather than 500,000. We're assuming that the revised estimate means that the initial count wasn't precise, and not that customers are ditching Gmail in droves.

    Update 2: Google's provided promising but terribly vague guidance on when the situation will be resolved: "Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change."

    [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]


    View the original article here

    Fisker Karma enters production on March 21st, our future shortly thereafter


    By Vlad Savov posted Feb 28th 2011 4:09AM It's been a long road for the Karma to reach production, but now it finally has an end in sight: March 21st. That's the date Fisker promises to start rolling its gorgeous PHEV off assembly lines, with deliveries to the first humans to reserve one coming up in April. The price for the 2012 Karma remains a mighty $95,900, though if you ask our brethren over at Autoblog, that's a bunch of pennies well spent. Fisker expects to start producing 1,500 Karmas per month starting in October and to then sell 15,000 a year from 2012 onwards.

    View the original article here