CrunchGear

CrunchGear Week in Review: Squid’s Meal Edition
Rock Band For iPhone Hits The App Store
Verizon Launches Direct Attack Against The iPhone With Ads For The Motorola Droid
Verizon Droid Is The Real Deal
Some dude has some kind of earth-shattering confession about Balloon Boy’s Dad
Sunday CrunchWord Puzzle!

CrunchGear Week in Review: Squid’s Meal Edition

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 01:16 AM PDT

Hey, Google: Check out this ultra-fast book scanner
Observe these delicious ravioli sponges
Hamburger keeps your mousing hand warm
Kodomo No Nomimono: Beer for kids
What "on-demand" media really means and why your cable company should be scared

Rock Band For iPhone Hits The App Store

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 09:38 PM PDT

The much anticipated and hyped Rock Band for iPhone and iPod Touch is out! We first scooped the news of the launch of the app a few weeks ago. Shortly afterwards, Rock Band for the iPhone/iPod touch was officially announced by Electronic Arts. The app costs $9.99. The game features a multi-player mode (via Bluetooth), allowing up to 4 players to rock out on the go. While you can also play via single-player mode, you can use the integrated Facebook Connect to invite your friends to join in.

Verizon Launches Direct Attack Against The iPhone With Ads For The Motorola Droid

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 06:42 AM PDT

Over the last few weeks there has been an increasing amount of buzz about an unannounced Motorola smartphone due to come out some time between late October and early December. Rumored specs include a powerful OMAP3430 processor, 5 megapixel camera, slideout QWERTY keyboard and touch screen, all housed in a super-compact package and running Android 2.0. A handful of potential names have swirled around, included the Sholes and the Tao, but tonight Verizon has made it perfectly clear what the upcoming phone will be called: Droid. And Verizon is positioning it to be a direct threat to the iPhone in a new advertising campaign it launched at the site DroidDoes.com. Verizon isn't holding any punches: it calls out basically every major weakness on the iPhone, from its inability to run background applications to the App Store's walled garden. The site kicks off with a stream of things that the iPhone can't do, mimicking the black text-on-white background commonly seen in Apple ads but replacing it with statements like iDon't run simultaneous apps.

Verizon Droid Is The Real Deal

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 06:39 AM PDT

Verizon and Motorola finally lifted the curtain on their new Droid Android phone yesterday. Make no mistake, this is Android's flagship product, and the first phone that will pose a significant threat to Apple's iPhone. And it will be available very soon, possibly as early as the end of this month. MobileCrunch has been tracking the phone, which has also been called the Tao or Sholes, for some time. Just about anyone who has come in contact with the phone can't stop talking about it. And from what we hear, they have good reason. The phone is a three-way effort between Motorola, Verizon and Google. It looks a lot like the iPhone, and may even be as thin or thinner than the iPhone 3GS. It also has two key advantages over the iPhone - a slide out physical keyboard, and use of the Verizon network. Unlike previous Android phones, the Droid is rumored to be powered by the TI OMAP3430, the same core that the iPhone and Palm Pre use, and which significantly outperforms Qualcomm 528MHz ARM11 based Android phones that exist today (Engadget has a great overview article on mobile CPUs).

Some dude has some kind of earth-shattering confession about Balloon Boy’s Dad

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 06:35 AM PDT

So Gawker has some huge exclusive thing on the Heene family paid for, presumably, by Lord Denton in order to slam the loud glare of truth on a family of fametards. I didn’t really read it but I skimmed it. It’s a Sunday morning. We all have better stuff to do.

I did find stuff like this in it:

But he was motivated by theories I thought were far-fetched. Like Reptilians — the idea there are alien beings that walk among us and are shape shifters, able to resemble human beings and running the upper echelon of our government.

And this:

Richard’s story doesn’t add up. He is saying he thought Falcon was in the balloon, and that Falcon ran and hid as a result of Richard yelling at him. I’ve spent a lot of time with them, and Falcon is, first of all, not afraid of his father. I’ve never once seen Richard’s children afraid of him — and I’ve definitely never seen Falcon go hide. He was one of the most social of the three children.

Also, someone found Heene positing about the existence of the Richard Geere Gerbil

Apparently his goal is to become an A-List celebrity by faking a UFO landing. Heck, if Orson Welles could do it, why not some dude outside of Denver who was on Wife Swap?

What we essentially learn that the whole thing was either a convoluted flight gone wrong (1. Dad yells during balloon test. 2. Kid hides. 3. Dad thinks kid is in balloon when he can’t find him. 4. Profit!) or a ham-handed attempt at gaining publicity (1. Balloon escapes/is let go. 2. Dad tells kid to hide. 3. World watches balloon race. 4. Profit!). Either way, this whole story stinks and I think we should stop encouraging this strange man and his family.