Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile, Computers, Netbooks, Wireless If there’s one thing we can all agree we hate about cell phone contracts, it would have the be the Early Termination Fee. The ETF has long been the bane of anyone who cannot stick to a single phone or carrier for any extended period of time. Up until now they’ve ranged anywhere from about $175 to $200, but for some Verizon Wireless customers that’s about to change. Starting November 15th, Verizon Wireless will be raising the ETF for devices like smartphones and netbooks to $350. That number will decrease by $10 for every month or service, so even if you want out of the contract at month 23 you’ll have to pay $120. The reason for the change makes sense for Verizon, smartphones and netbooks cost much more than feature phones do. Verizon subsidizes the phones, and makes it’s money back through the monthly payments. A smartphone that costs the buyer $99, like the BlackBerry Bold or upcoming Droid Eris, is paying much less than what Verizon paid for the phone, so this is really just Verizon trying to make that money back. No matter how much business sense it makes, the change won’t make consumers any happier. The ETF is already frustrating enough, and there are those who don’t want to be stuck with the same smartphone on the same network for two years. Especially not Verizon’s network which until the Droid has had fairly poor choices of smartphones. Of course there are those who don’t mind having the same phone on the same carrier for two years who won’t be affected. It’s likely this give customers even more reason to stick with their plans until they run out, or just not use Verizon. Read [USA Today] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Smartphones  When the CEO of Packet Focus decided to test the security of the top three smartphones, he was shocked to discover they all failed miserably. Joshua Perrymon sent a spoofed phishing email made to look like it was a LinkedIn invitation from Bill Gates to users of the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Palm Pre and found his message got through 100% of the time. Perrymon says smartphones simply have no protection against phishing attacks.
"What I found on the Palm and BlackBerry is [that there is] no protection to any type of phishing attacks. The Palm runs on Linux, so I SSH’ed into it and looked around. The email client is built in JavaScript and made to download emails from a server - POP, IMAP or Exchange. So if the hosted server doesn’t pick up on the email, then the phone gets the attack delivered."
Perrymon sent the results of his experiment to RIM, Palm and Apple but none of them responded. He said he hopes that they will eventually address the issue and hopefully issue a fix of some sort. Just last month RIM fixed a flaw in their browser that would have allowed a hacker to send a malicious link via text message. The flaw prevented the browser from properly warning the user that the URL and the site certificate didn't match. This would have allowed the user to easily fall for a phishing attack. To help combat this, a company called Deepnet Security has introduced a new app called MobileID that will allow banks, retailers and online service providers to offer authentication protection. This will insure that customers data is protected and phishing attempts are blocked. It’s available for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and the iPhone. Norton offers a security suite for smartphones that can also provide protection. Norton Smartphone Security helps keep your phone free of spam and malware and can protect against phishing attempts by allowing to to block texts from unknown senders. It’s available for $29.99. Read [SCMagazine] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, HDTV, Computers, Laptops, Gadgets / Other, Gaming, Console 
What’s better than a Black Friday sale? A desperate Pre-Black Friday sale in hopes to get all the dollars you would have spent on the actual Black Friday. Wal-Mart delivers with a sale this Saturday, Novermber 7. The deals look worthy of making a special trip. From the Xbox 360 reduced to $199 and includes a $100 gift card, to a 46” Panasonic Plasma HDTV (I love mine) at just $788, $149 for a Sony Blu-ray player and $298 HP 15.6 laptop. Both the Xbox and the HP laptop are guaranteed to have 10 units per store, according to our friends at bfads.com. The Panasonic’s lowest price on Google Checkout is $830 and it looks to be a full 1080p, nice. Walmart says the sale starts at 8:00am on the 7th. Read: [BFads] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle If you travel for business then you agonize over one gadget in every single hotel room: the alarm clock. Many seem straight out of 1976 with peculiar buzzer/sound settings, incorrect time and who knows if it works. Enter Moshi mini, the alarm clock that uses a bit of smarts to understand spoken commands. The Moshi mini is a smaller version of the original designed for traveling. Simply set an alarm by push the one button and speak a command, like “set alarm”. Users simply say the time they wish to create an alarm for and Moshi understands it. They’ve simplified setting the time, setting an alarm, even getting current temperature. As a traveler who has a (healthy?) fear of foreign alarm clocks, this one looks mighty appealing especially after a night of fighting with airlines, loosing baggage, being delayed and rerouted. At just $24.99, it is priced well for a peace of mind gift. Product page: [Moshi] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile Yesterday I posted on the Verizon Droid and what appeared to be the carrier charging more for Exchange access. It looked ridiculous and it turns out it is. If you are getting a personal line for the Verizon Droid, you can pay the $30 data plan and enjoy all the Exchange you wish. The confusion looks to have stemmed from the definition of business. Carriers consider you a business customer if you use a business credit card and purchase from their business department. If you are just doing business on a phone in your name, then technically from the carriers point of view, you are not business. Thanks to Sacha Segan for sorting this out for us. Read: [GearLog] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile  LG had unveiled the GW620 in mid-September and at the time, at least according to the press release it was noted as being headed to "select European markets." Of course, that did not stop some from hoping to see it become available with AT&T here in the US. Well, in a little bit of good news and bad news, the GW620 did launch somewhere else. In fact it will be coming to North America—but not here in the US.
Instead, Rogers has just listed the GW620, which is also the first Android handset to come from LG. As of now, the handset is listed on the website and is priced at just $49.99 with a three year agreement. Additionally, you can also grab it contract free for a pretty reasonable $399.99. Sadly though, as of now, the GW620 is still listed as being out-of-stock. Feature wise, the GW620 will offer users a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3-inch touchscreen display, a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus and video capture, Wi-Fi, GPS, an accelerometer, Bluetooth and support for 7.2Mbps HSDPA connectivity. Additionally, the handset will also ship with a 2GB microSD card. And of course, it is running the Android OS, but the listing does not confirm which version. All things considered, Rogers seems to be shaping up quite nicely as an Android provider. They are already offering both the HTC Dream, err G1 for us here in the US as well as the HTC Magic. Product [Rogers] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Email / IM, Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Web Apps, Websites Wish there was a web app that brought together your email, twitter and Facebook into one, easy to deal with place? Threadsy is the answer. I’ve been using it for over a month and it keeps getting better. Today, I’ve got invites (500) thanks to the fine folks at Threadsy. The service is still in beta but operation is far better than it was just 30 days ago. The team is working fast and seems very responsive. Here is quick recap on how Threadsy works:
Inbound In the left pane, email is displayed along with @me Twitters and Facebook messages. The idea is to have only the stuff that was specifically directed to you be in your inbox. You can choose to view all of this or just the incoming mail from individual providers (like just Twitter). Users can search through messages and this search was surprisingly fast. Emails can be composed as either quick replies right from this screen or open and reply seeing the full message. Unbound In the right pane (which users can control its width), are the streams you follow from Twitter and Facebook. As with the Inbound pane, you can choose to filter just Facebook or Twitter streams or view them all. Another tab on top allows you to access GMail chat, which is very handy.
What’s better? By bringing Twitter, Facebook and my mail together, I get instant context in reply to friends. Let’s say I get an email from Gadgetell Editor, Robert Nelson. Threadsy shows me his latest status updates from Facebook, his bio and his latest Tweets in the right hand pane. I know what he is doing, how he feels, making my reply that much better. It is very handy and very powerful. Incidentally, this is the idea behind Motorola’s Blur UI for Android. It is a winning idea. I really like the way Threadsy lets users hover over a message and select delete, archive or quick reply without opening the message. I am able to work through my GMail much faster. What’s not? Notifications on Chat is less than alerting. The other big thing missing, for me at least, is how GMail handles attachments. I rarely download anything anymore thanks to “preview in html” and that is missing from Threadsy. For me, these are small trade-offs for keeping on top of my communication (or at least believing so). Check it out and let us know what you think, below is the special invite link just for Gadgetell readers. Invite link: [Threadsy] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile  Despite my fanboy like affection for the Pre, and my desire for it to be a perfect phone, there are still some complaints coming from users. One of which that is often heard mentioned is dealing with sluggishness in webOS. Of course, to be fair, I would say webOS is not the only to hear complaints about that.
However that may soon be corrected, because according to statements from Ben Galbraith and Dion Almae of Palm; “On ease of use, multitasking has been great; UI latency is still an issue even though the hardware is comparable to 3GS. The problem is the path to the GPU didn't exist, but now with CSS transforms, that will be solved in the immediate future.”
Overall that sounds like a good bit of news, after all what can be better than “immediate.” That said, we are still going to have to sit tight and wait for some more details because we are unsure which update this will be coming with. We already know that the Palm Pixi is getting ready to launch soon, and we are expecting version 1.3 soon. But we are not sure if these speed UI enhancements will be coming with 1.3 or in a later update. Bottom line, immediate sounds good, but it will be nicer when we have some firm details as to when. Via [Everything Pre] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile 
Just yesterday we saw the introduction of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 with Rogers. And at the time, the Bold 9700 was listed for $299.99 with the now older model Bold 9000 at a slightly lower $249.99. Not much of a difference in price, but thankfully the BlackBerry Bold 9000 is now much lower in price, its down to $99.99 on-contract. Of course, that contract is three years. Additionally, Rogers has also listed the once rumored white BlackBerry Bold 9000. And as you would expect, the white model is priced the same at $99.99 on-contract. Product [BlackBerry Bold 9000 (white)] Product [BlackBerry Bold 9000 (black)] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, Video Providers  Physical media is slowly dying, or so it seems, and we all know it. The retailers know it, too, and some have been striving to find a way to survive if/when the transition finally happens. One of those retailers, Best Buy, has just inked an interesting deal with CinemaNow that it hopes will help.
The partnership between Best Buy and CinemaNow includes both physical and digital media. More particularly, the deal will allow consumers to buy DVDs from Best Buy, then watch the same movie through CinemaNow on their computers, smartphones or Blu-Ray players. It’s almost like buying a DVD and getting a digital copy on the second disc, but now you require just an Internet connection rather than the digital file. The exact details of the partnership have yet to be revealed, but it’s expected the service will launch in early 2010, just as soon as some studios jump on board. Getting studios to jump on, historically, has been difficult, but this might be different. Best Buy’s plan will require a DVD to be bought, but there’s no guarantee that the DVD will stay with the buyer, or that the stream will. If it does work, however, it will add yet another streaming service to our media boxes. As it stands with Netflix, Amazon Video, Blockbuster OnDemand, Hulu among others, we already have quite a few. When it all settles down, hopefully we’ll be down to just one or two major companies doing movie streaming/downloads. That will make it much simpler to decide who to pay every month. In the meantime, its a good idea from Best Buy, but it wouldn’t be all that surprising if it doesn’t work out all that well. Read [Electronista] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
More Recent Articles | 
No comments:
Post a Comment