Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) will be reporting earnings after the bell today. Street estimates for this quarter are EPS of $1.28 on $4.31 billion in revenue, though the whisper number is a bit higher at $1.31 per share.
TradeKing CEO Don Montanaro Jr. was nice enough to grant Benzinga.com an exclusive interview as part of our ongoing coverage of the online brokerage space.
J.P. Morgan analysts Imran Khan, Lev Polinsky, Bridget Weishaar, Shelby Taffer and Vasily Karasyov reiterated their Overweight rating for shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), with a price target of $180.
The J.P. Morgan analysts said that Amazon.com remains one of their top investment picks.
Jim O'Shaughnessy, founder of Stamford, Connecticut based quantitative investment manager, O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, was just interviewed on CNBC. He said that according to a study that he did on bear markets, the best performing shares in the three year period after substantial market declines are high dividend paying stocks.
Fast-food giant McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) announced today that it plans to double its presence in China over the new few years. The company plans to increase the number of franchises from 1,100 this year to 2,000 by 2013.
I am seeing some action today in the ProShares UltraShort S&P500 (NYSE: SDS) ETF today that suggests the overall market could be due for a pullback. Nearly a million shares were purchased in the ETF followed by selling of the June $40 calls for $0.44; this was done 10,000 times, suggesting that both trades were linked.
According to a report by Barron's, smart money is on Viacom, Inc. (NYSE: VIA.B) as the company is substantially undervalued at the moment. The company is seeing some fresh interest from investors.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is seeing some bearish call activity this morning with the April $30/31 call spread sold 5,000 times for $0.22. The April $30 call has continued to pick up volume throughout the morning and has now traded over 21,500 times, much of the volume is coming in the form of sales.
The SPDRs Select Sector Financial ETF (NYSE: XLF) is trading at the best level in 18 months as investors realize a double-dip recession is highly unlikely. Even though the ETF is up 160% from the March 2008 low, it must more than double to reach the 2007 all-time high.
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In all honesty, I don’t think the DSi XL is part of Nintendo’s standard line-up. It’s a reaction to the popularity of the Wii in retirement centers and is aimed at a much older – and much different audience – than the new 3D DS, aptly named the 3DS. Older folks who may have been put off by the DSi’s small size and “kiddie” features will be able to handle the XL just fine. crun CNBC is hand-wringing a little about the launch of the DSi XL being hampered by the announcement of the 3DS. This is a lot like worrying that bocce ball sales will go down because a new soccer ball has been announced – the two items are so different, and aimed at such different audiences – that the connection is dubious at best and ludicrous at worst.
Then you have this line: “The larger screen size will also let people see the games, rather than just the device.” I don’t have any idea what that means.
Anyway, as Dave noted in his review, this is a Nintendo for Moms and Dads, not kids. The obsessives who have to have the latest and greatest will pick up a 3DS. The old-timers will keep picking up the DSi XL for years to come.
The Logitech Harmony 300 might be the last Harmony remote released for a while. It seems the Logitech has refreshed nearly the entire line with the 300 being the latest. It doesn’t offer anything new per se, but rather a simple universal remote with the Harmony magic sans LCD screen. This configuration might be kosher for some setups, but be careful if you have anything more than a cable box, TV, and DVD player.
The LCD screen serves two purposes. One, it displays the AV setup’s special functions. Like when in TiVo mode, the TiVo button, thumbs up, thumbs down, and the aspect ratio. Then when switched to DVD player mode it can display the menu buttons and such. Most of these functions can be done with a dedicated button on the remote.
The second, and more important, function of the LCD screen is to display all the functions of a given device. For instance, every function the TiVo or AV receiver or DVD player can preform. This usually isn’t a big deal everyday but once in a while you’ll need to perform a certain function and this allows you to do it. But it also isn’t a big deal to keep all the device’s remotes in a drawer somewhere either.
So for $50 you get a very basic Harmony remote or you could snag a Harmony 600 on sale for a few bucks more.
Buffalo announced a slew of new SSDs [JP], HDDs [JP] and NASes [JP] in Japan today, all of which might soon be available outside this country, too. Available with 32GB ($160)/64GB ($230)/128GB ($440) and 256GB ($840/build-to-order) on board, the four 2.5-inch SSDs are part of the Buffalo SHD-NSU2 series (pictured above). All of these SATA devices support Windows XP/Vista/7 andMac OS X 10.5, are equipped with 64MB of DRAM cache and come with a USB 2.0 interface.
The new external USB HDDs, all part of the HD-CXTU2 series (pictured above), will be available with 500GB ($130)/1TB ($180)/1.5TB ($240) or 2TB ($310) on board.
Buffalo also unveiled two new NASes today, one storing 2TB (LS-Q2.0TL/1D for $500), and the other with 1TB capacity (LS-Q1.0TL/1D for $350). The 2TB model is pictured above.
Buffalo plans to ship all of these storage devices in Japan next month, but hasn’t said anything yet regarding an international release.
Well, it looks like XFX packaging is going to be a little more secure then the stuff that Amazon uses. You’ll have to be careful leaving the store with this stuff, XFX appears to be packaging their version of the ATI HD 5970 in a replica of a H&K P90. Catchy, but hopefully they don’t lose any customers to gunfire.
We don’t know a whole lot about the HD 5970 yet, but if the buzz is true it’ll be the fastest single GPU card available on the market. NVidia holds the current title for the fastest GPU solution. Hopefully the brains at ATI will come up with something to challenge NVidia on that front as well. Of course, the new cards aren’t available for sale yet, but you can pretty much assume they’re going to run about $100 more then the “standard” HD 5970 cards.
If you’re like me, you get a little.. obsessive about checking your email. Wouldn’t want to miss that important message after all. So when I see a project like the email count t-shirt, I start to get a little twitchy. It looks like it could be a DIY project, but I’m not sure I have the necessary skills. Like sewing.
Made by couple of hackers using an Arduino Lilypad and a bluetooth dongle, the shirt will show your current unread email count on your chest. Of course, it’s not commercially available, but you can look here for the details on how they made it.
I like Amazon’s “frustration free” packaging. When I ordered my copy of Command & Conquer 4, it came in that easy to open package, and it makes sense: why put a dvd in a box with a bag of air, and waste all that shipping? Would I trust a hard drive to that packaging? No way in hell.
Apparently Amazon thought it’d be ok though, because they’ve been sending out hard drives using the packaging. The bad news is, the packaging may be frustration free, but dying hard drives aren’t. Purchasers were reporting to Amazon that the drives were either DOA, or dying off shortly after arriving. Amazon has since quit using the convenient shipping packaging. Moral of the story: be careful what you decide the have packaged for your convenience.
The price of early adoption is well-known. Just talk to all the people about to receive iPads… in six months, when they release the iPad Video. Electric cars have it just as bad. The EV1 was aborted, the Tesla is expensive as hell, and pretty much everything else has such low production numbers that you could call them limited editions.
You’ll need to buy the $2200 ($1100 after gov’t rebate) charge adapter (oy, accessories) with the Leaf, and at 100 miles per charge, it can’t go quite as far as the plug-in hybrid Volt, but for city driving, the Leaf could be the easy choice. If you’re counting the pennies, you should consider what electricity costs in your area — here in Seattle we’ll probably have public charge stations, and our electricity is dirt cheap to boot, but we’re an exception. The charge should cost “less than $3″ according to Nissan, which puts it a ways in front of gas (assuming $3 and 30mi per gallon), but only time will tell whether the 100mi/charge estimate really works, and whether the car is any good to begin with for that matter.
I look forward to finding out. I wonder if it will make a UFO noise?
The maze he’s been running around in for 30 years must be the size of the solar system! And the dots — Asteroids? Another connection! And the ghosts — Space Ghosts! My god, it all makes sense!
Short version: Nintendo’s new DSi XL is aimed squarely at the older generation of casual gamers. People that appreciate something that’s a little easier to read. The people who wear their reading glasses while they sit down for their morning glass of fiber and read their copy of the AARP Journal. And heaven help me, I like it.
Features:
A larger screen
Full size stylus
Comes pre-loaded with Brain Age Express: Math and Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters
MSRP: $189.99 (regular DSi is $169.99)
Pros:
Large screen is easy to read
Games still look great
Case size easier to hold
Cons:
Large size reduces portability
Nowhere to put stylus
Uncomfortable for people with small hands
I like Nintendo’s portable gaming consoles. I had a Game Boy, Game Boy Color, DS phat, and a DS Lite, but I never saw the point in the DSi. So when Nintendo sent me a DSi XL to review, I was pleasantly surprised by the functionality. Would I buy a DSi XL to replace my DS Lite? Probably not – but I do like the DSi XL, and would recommend it to someone looking to get into portable gaming.
Build quality is as you would expect it to be. Nintendo knows these things are going to be knocked around, and build them so they can take it. The unit I was sent is the bronze color, with the majority of the device having a matte finish. The top of the cover, however, is glossy and picks up finger prints. Not fingerprints like you’d see on a PSP but they are present.
I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here as far as reviewing the DSi functionality. Yeah, it’s a DSi, only bigger. It’s designed for the older crowd that play those little $10 blackjack games from Radio Shack, and if they market it properly it’ll be huge. I have large hands. I like the DSi XL because I like the larger form factor, and the larger screens. My wife isn’t as much of a fan. She’s got smaller hands and found that the DSi XL made her left hand start to cramp after playing Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for about 30 minutes. I saw another review mention issues with screen clarity. I definitely didn’t notice this issue. I love playing RTS games like Civilization Revolution, and if the screen was fuzzy I’d definitely notice it. The screen was crisp and clear, and it didn’t feel like the games were designed for a smaller display at all, which was one of the things I was concerned about when I first read about the DSi XL.
Should you buy a DSi XL? Sure, if you don’t already have a DSi. I’d just suggest that you check one out at your local game shoppe first to be sure that the size won’t be an issue. Is it a reasonable upgrade from the DS or DS Lite? Absolutely. Should you buy one for your mom for Mother’s Day? Only if you are a huge geek and you’re sure she’ll like it.
The new 1001PX from Asus isn’t particularly noteworthy spec-wise. 250GB hard drive, 1.66GHz Atom processor… you know the drill. But it’s got a matte screen! I really don’t understand why people want these glossy screens so bad. Just give me the option, whether it’s cheaper or more expensive — I’m tired of staring into a mirror-like surface whenever I’m trying to write. Now, if they could just put this on the much-sexier 1005PR…
The second half of SGU’s first season starts this Friday. We already know it should be a good one thanks to the MGM teaser showing off that ugly baddie. But some crazy fans might hold off until June 13 when the Blu-ray is released sans all the commericals and probably with high-quality picture and sound. But that’s not me.
Nope, I’ll be there, 24 oz Coors Light in hand ready for some fresh Stargate action on Friday about 30 minutes after it starts. So my TiVo can build a nice little buffer I can fast-forward, you know. And then I’ll probably buy the Blu-ray, too.
Short version: There’s lots of mass produced, low quality, netbook sleeves and bags out there. Generally speaking, you get what you pay for. But what about something made by one guy, his sewing machine, and a dream? Can a home made product sold on the internet hold up to the same standards as products made by Crumpler, or Timbuk2? Can the little guy be competitive in the market with companies that spend more on staples than what he spends on materials a year? I say: yes.
Features:
Military grade fabric and fasteners
TSA checkpoint friendly
Triple stitching at stress points
Made in the USA
Basic version $25 – Price as reviewed $63
Pros:
Customizable based on your requests
Polar fleece lining
Made to order
Cons:
Made to order (it can take a while to get your product)
Customizing adds up fast
In the interests of being honest, I feel it’s important to share the fact that the maker is a personal friend of mine. He did not know, however, that the bag that I ordered was going to be reviewed. I got it off his website just like a regular customer.
Now, a little back story on this product. The creator of the Psyopper bags is a computer enthusiast named Brad, and after buying a Dell Mini 9 a few years back he was looking for a quality netbook sleeve in which to carry it. After going the cheap route, and reading about the complaints and problems that other people were having finding something that would last – he took things into his own hands. After many attempts, the first version of the netbook fitted sleeve was born. Being an active part of the Dell Mini enthusiast community, Brad started offering his products for sale a little over a year ago, and has made a few changes based on customer response. He’s currently on the 3rd generation of his basic product.
That brings us the product that I have today. Since I needed a case for my Dell Mini 10v with a 6-cell battery, the case that I ordered is customized to that particular design. The stitching is extremely well done, and it obvious even by holding the bag that it’s quality. All of the Psyopper products are custom made, of top-shelf materials. This means the shell is 1000 Denier coated cordura nylon, the lining is high quality polar fleece, the straps are Milspec webbing, and the velcro could probably hold a car door shut. You can also order Psyopper’s products with a PALS grid (which is currently used by the military). Now, it’s important to note that my particular bag is customized to fix the Mini 10v, with the extended life battery. As such, it will only work with this particular netbook, however if your order your bag to fix a standard 9 or 10 inch system it should fit with no problem. In fact, Brad tells me that his sleeves have be used successfully with Acer and Asus products, with no problem. And speaking of that customized fit, the bag holds my netbook very securely. I carry my netbook with me quite often, and at no point have I ever felt that it might be in danger of falling out of the bag, or not properly protected.
I chose a few add on options for my bag, including a shoulder strap, front pocket, and a USB key holder. This did add to the price, but is well worth it since I now have enough room to store the power supply for my netbook in the case, as well as my trackball. I actually use the USB holder to store a card reader, since my netbook is primarily for when I’m out taking pictures. The basic version of the netbook bag starts at $25, and from the order screen you can choose the closing type, the internal lining color, the trim color, etc. This is for the basic bag, with a velcro patch to hold it closed. After you work out the basics, it gets a little dangerous. For example, when I ordered my bag I included an additional pocket (for $10), a carry handle ($5), dual USB stick holder ($10), and a 1″ detachable shoulder strap ($8). I also needed to add the 6-cell battery feature, which added an additional $5 to the cost. I’ll admit, I went a little crazy, the cost of my bag came to a total of $63 when it was said and done. Was it worth it? Absolutely. For $63 I got a bag that’s custom tailored to fit my computer, with all the features that I want, and without extra stuff that I don’t.
Conclusion: The cottage industry is not dead. I would feel comfortable comparing Brad’s Psyopper products to anything from Crumpler, or Timbuk2, and I think his product would come out ahead. In this day and age of mass production, it’s good to remember that there’s still the little guy out there. In fact, when you compare the features the Psyopper product is very price competitive with the big guys.
A few years ago, I was in Paris during the summer, and it was so intolerably hot that I needed to stay in for the middle of the day. My friend Mike, whose family I was staying with, was also there, and just as tired of the heat. We resolved to put our MacBook Pros on an ad hoc network and play through Quake — you know, instead of visiting the Louvre or something. And I recalled then just how awesome that game is.
We played through most of the original episodes. Some years before that, I had played through Quake II during a lull in real releases. And of course I played Q3A when it came out. Now that I think of it, I seem to have played the entire series in reverse.
Anyway, the point of all this is that the Quake series is really, really awesome in the classic-FPS sense. No stupid invisible walls or mission objectives. It’s just you versus a legion of reanimated dead and terrifying Shamblers. Seriously, you’ll enjoy every second if you haven’t played these already, and you can get them all on Steam for $15 at the moment. You can play them original style, or you can get Tenebrae or another mod and play those suckers in HD.
Before we begin by announcing the winner of the T-Mobile HTC HD2, let’s pour a little out for the smartphoneless. We feel for you. We do.
We went through a whole lot of tales of woe. Lots of people literally deserved phones for the trouble they’ve been through and I’m going to encourage T-Mo to go through the comments to address some of the T-Mo customers who feel they’re being unfairly treated. However, we had to pick one and we picked a young man with a sad phone and an even sadder tale of woe. He wrote:
My laptop was stolen three weeks ago.
I subsequently got food poisoning at Red Lobster.
Also subsequently, I was rejected from my transfer college of choice.
This week my iPod classic committed suicide from inside my car and leaped onto a major road. Needless to say, it is very, very dead.
My phone has no outer shell. It broke last year. I have a skeleton.
Congratulations to Alex. The fact that you even ate at Red Lobster is a testament to outside forces assailing you from all sides. That’s him, above. We are sorry for your loss but hopefully this makes up for it.
Special thanks to T-Mobile for the giveaway and thanks, as always, for reading.
Proving once again that duct tape is capable of almost anything, here’s a little DIY project for you. It looks fairly simple to build your own projector, even if it’s not particularly aesthetically pleasing.
The parts list is a little esoteric though, but check it out: a 12v LED array, Fresnel lens, an LCD screen from a spare monitor, and a magnifying glass used as a focusing lens. You might want to take a little time to build a nicer enclosure then this guy did, but it’s more important that it works, right? Go here for the step by step, and if you build one, send us a picture of it, ok?
The most inexpensive camera in this week’s roundup, the XP10 is no slouch when it comes to specs. In fact, it beats the Casio in terms of video, and is freeze-proof to boot (if you care about that). Its price shows in its build, however; it isn’t slim and sexy like the Casio or bulky and reassuring like the Olympus.
My little field tests showed that at the very least, it can handle being thrown over your shoulder a couple times, and it had no problem at all underwater. Here’s the video:
I’ve also put it in the freezer while I’m writing this, so we’ll see how it likes that. [30 minutes later] Yeah, it turns on all right, and apart from a very foggy lens and LCD screen it seems to function fine. There is a very alarming clicking noise going on inside, though. We’ll see if that fades.
So its ruggedness has been established; what of the camera? Well, I went ahead and took sample shots for all three cameras at the same time. They’re here in this Flickr set — feel free to poke around. Here’s the drift, though: the Fuji performs at or about the quality of the Olympus, and not quite as well as the Casio. Its underwater shots were perfectly clear, though, perhaps even the clearest.
The $200 price point seems to show in the quality of the lens; it’s not bad, but when you get in close you can see that a lot of fine detail is lost compared with the Casio shots. It has a reasonably close focus, though I wouldn’t call it macro. Its lens was nice and wide and the zoom is quick and focused fine at 5x. Color seemed accurate, though none of these cameras excelled particularly in that area. Overall, I don’t take issue with the image quality.
Video was similarly acceptable, if only in comparison to other cameras of its class. 720p is smeary and slightly choppy, as any “HD” camera under $300-400 will be. Chroma noise is apparent in greys and exposure is rather slow to adjust, but not terribly so. Edges are completely lost to compression, as Here’s a still:
To be honest, it’s a $200 camera and you can’t expect amazing image quality. It shoots just fine.
My issue with the camera was the design, though. I think it’s a bit ugly to begin with, but that’s a matter of taste. There are a number of problems with the functional design, though:
Rear buttons are difficult to press
D-pad is difficult to use without resorting to fingernail
Feet on bottom of camera and asymmetrical shape make it unstable
Tripod mount is all the way on one corner of the camera, making tripod unstable
As you can see, I didn’t exactly find it a joy to use. Personally, I would consider these problems are a deal-breaker. I have to compliment Fujifilm on the unlocking mechanism, however. It took me a second to figure out, but it really does prevent any accidental opening of the SD card/battery compartment.
Conclusion:
For $200, it’s actually a bargain to get a 5x zoom, decent image quality, and rugged/underwater capability. I’d recommend it to people who don’t want to invest much or who have a good camera already for serious shooting. But if this is to be your main camera, save yourself some trouble and upgrade.
Tunes 9.1 just went live. I’m digging through to see what’s new in this version, but iTunes just updated to 9.1. It seems you actually have to go to the Apple.com/itunes site to download it because my System Update and the Update Software command in iTunes didn’t catch it.
As we suspected, it’s very iPad oriented with the following list of updates:
What’s new in iTunes 9.1
iTunes 9.1 comes with several new features and improvements, including:
• Sync with iPad to enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, books and more on the go
• Organize and sync books you’ve downloaded from iBooks on iPad or added to your iTunes library
• Rename, rearrange, or remove Genius Mixes
You can see the KB article here. Interestingly, the icon for Audiobooks has turned into “Books” but all audiobooks still appear there. I was also able to change the Genius mix names.
Soldats, je suis contents de vous! EA and DICE just released the second VIP map pack for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I take it I’m the only person on Planet Earth to buy the game strictly for the single-player mode, but go ahead and have fun without me!
I’ll keep this short and to the point, if only because I’m sensing the “outrage” surrounding DRM has sorta died down. The movement ran out of fuel, I mean. Anyway, gamers in Australia have been unable to play Settlers 7, which uses that silly DRM nonsense that requires you be to constantly connected to the Internet, because Ubisoft’s servers have been unreachable. Who saw this coming? Oh, right: everyone but the Ubisoft executives in Paris. /Le sigh.
Ubisoft did offer this bit of helpful advice:
Apparently this problem is especially common in Australia – we will try to get to the bottom of this
That message went up on Thursday of last week, and Aussie gamers are still having issues.
Plainly, this is what happens with this kind of DRM regime. You cannot expect a system to work if it requires the Internet’s terrible infrastructure to always work all the time.
I don’t know, there has to be some sort of compromise between this Ubisoft DRM regime (INSANITY) versus no rules whatsoever (ANARCHY), something us PC gamers could at least live with.
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Well, it looks like XFX packaging is going to be a little more secure then the stuff that Amazon uses. You’ll have to be careful leaving the store with this stuff, XFX appears to be packaging their version of the 
I like Amazon’s “frustration free” packaging. When I ordered my copy of Command & Conquer 4, it came in that easy to open package, and it makes sense: why put a dvd in a box with a bag of air, and waste all that shipping? Would I trust a hard drive to that packaging? No way in hell.
