Up for review is a pair of Audiofly AF78 earbuds, a refreshing departure from the the overloaded bass that seems to be the current trend in audio. I’d rather hear a balanced, rich, detailed sound, and I got it from these earbuds. The AF78 is Audiofly’s top-of-the-line earbud at a healthy $199.95, and it was designed with audiophiles and professional musicians in mind. You’ll notice an interesting shape behind the earbuds, it is tiny, but it almost looks like a speaker cabinet. There are actually two different devices housed in there, and that’s what makes these earbuds unique. There is a balanced armature device for incredible strength in the high end, and a 9mm custom dynamic driver to balance it out at the low end. Having these two drivers gives these earbuds a natural, full range of sound. So I could listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” and hear little bell chimes in the midst of a chorus of singers and an orchestra of instruments and horns. Norah Jones’ “Happy Pills” sounded extra sticky-sweet, and Florence an the Machine sounded like it bouncing off of planets in outer space. I heard things in Of Monsters and Men’s “Little Talks” that I’d never noticed in the previous 36 listens. But back to the bass, I think this is the way it should sound. Maybe it’s just a personal preference (I was called an ‘old soul’ today at lunch), but I want the bass to complement the audio as a whole. I do like it to be strong, but I also want to hear it clearly, and completely undistorted. These earbuds do it all for me. The no-tangle, braided cord feels extremely durable. You also hardly get any of that scratching noise when the cables rub together, and you don’t get a whole lot of it against a collar either. You also get five sizes of silicon ear tips so you can find the perfect noise-isolating fit. All-in-all, if you’re looking for professional studio-quality sound out of an earbud, I think this is one of the best. Trade in some old gear and get a head start on saving up for new earbuds!  
What is the most frustrating part of buying a new brand-name Windows PC? Is it starting it for the first time, expecting a super-quick machine, only to encounter and extremely slow bootup and sluggish performance due to pre-installed software? Or is it perhaps the fact that you might need to spend a couple of hours, if you’re computer savvy, to uninstall all the unnecessary programs that come pre-installed? Microsoft to the rescue! The Redmond giant now offers a $99 service at any of their 16 stores where you bring in your Windows 7 PC and they get rid of all the bloatware that OEMs preinstall, along with 90 days of phone support and access to the Answer Desk, Microsoft’s response to Apple’s Genius Bar. Microsoft has been offering “Signature edition” computers for a while now, PCs without all the crap-ware, for a premium, but now they’ve expanded the “Signature” offering to any computer running Windows 7. So now consumers have the option of buying a low-end, crap-ware subsized computer, then spend an additional $99 to de-crapify it, or perhaps go with a premium brand, such as Alienware or Apple and pay a bit more upfront but they’ll be sure that they get the computer they paid for right out of the box. Via [ZDNet]  
Samsung just released a new Android app which is available for download in Google Play. The app, called Samsung Cares aims to provide you with on the go support which according to Samsung, comes with seamless navigation for online support and service tracking information for your product. The Android app also provides you with FAQ’s, How to Guides, Videos and easy to follow troubleshooting guides – all with the aim of making your Samsung device-owning experience a pleasant one. If the Samsung Cares app fails to provide you with the answers to woes, the app also gives you direct access to Samsung’s Facebook or Twitter accounts as well as a Live Chat facility. Other features of the app include live streaming videos from SPSN and a status tracking system. Check out the Samsung Cares app now if your having problems with any of your Samsung devices. And tell us if the app is indeed as useful as they say it is. Via [Google Play link]  
Dish Network announced a new feature in their latest equipment that will automatically record every primetime show and keep it for up to a week. This seemed like a great idea for broadcast networks, since it allows people to watch shows they didn’t catch live or set to record on their DVRs , until they revealed Auto Hop, a feature that will automatically skip the all the commercials. The top executives at CBS, NBC and FOX spoke about this feature at last week’s upfronts presentation in New York. "How does Charlie Ergen expect me to produce 'CSI' " without commercials? asked Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of the CBS Corporation, in response to questions from reporters on Wednesday morning before his annual upfront presentation. Ted Harbert, the chairman of NBC Broadcasting, struck a similar note at his network's presentation on Monday, calling the Dish feature an insult to the television industry. "Just because technology gives you the ability to do something, does that mean you should? Not always," he said.
Dish Network is moving forward by innovating and creating features that consumers want, even though they might anger the people who provide them with the content they try to sell. Is Dish in the right by providing useful features that people want? Will this feature reverse the cord-cutting trend? Only time will tell. Via [New York Times]  
With the upcoming IPO, Facebook has been in the news more than usual lately. First, General Motors announced that they will be cutting $10 million off their $30 million Facebook ad budget, and now Greenlight, a digital marketing agency, has revealed their 2011-2012 Search & Social Survey, and these are some of the highlights: - 44% of people surveyed will never click on ads (but 13% of those people don’t use Facebook)
- 10% said they click on those ads ofter.
- 3% of those surveys click on ads regularly
- 30% don’t trust Facebook’s handling of their personal data
These findings should be taken with a huge grain of salt; these stats aren’t from Facebook, but from a sample of 500 people, mainly in Europe. Another thing to consider is that you really can’t judge the effectiveness of an online ad by its click through rate. Facebook will allow anyone to display an (approved) ad and either pay per click (PPC) or per a thousand-units of impressions (CPM). Sometimes campaigns targeted for awareness and not necessarily for traffic via clicks. Take for example the ad below: 
It was targeted to me, thanks for my (awesome) taste in music, but does it really matter click on it? It did catch my eye, and it did make me aware that the Dan Band will be performing soon. If I click on the ad, I will be taken to a site where I can buy the tickets, or I could simply buy them buy going to Ticketmaster directly, Stubhub or showing up at the venue’s box office and. Now lets analyze the following ad. 
An ad to watch a TV concert. No direct buy involved, but the cleverness here is that the click will allow me to “like” the ad, spreading it for free amongst my friends. As technology evolves, so will the ways advertisers will find to get their message heard, and tracking the effectiveness of their ads will become even harder, unless they invent a device that measures intent, awareness and catchiness of a jingle. Via [Greenlight]  
Amazon’s ad-supported Kindles have proven to be successful with customers. The ads don’t get in the way of the reading experience, they aren’t annoying to look at and the ads even provide deals that are pretty good. Amazon may be looking to use that strategy again with the Kindle Fire. According to Ad Age, Amazon is speaking to ad agencies about the possibility of purchasing ad space on the Kindle Fire home screen for at least $600,000. The ads would stay in circulation for two months. Companies could also pay Amazon a cool $1 million to get its ads mentioned as part of Amazon’s PR campaign. Amazon is also internally debating on whether it would serve ads to all Kindle Fire tablets, or only on devices that were purchased after a certain point. This uncertainty has caused at least two ad agencies to turn down the offer. Amazon’s family of Kindle with Special Offers e-readers are cheaper than their non-ad supported counterparts, so it’s likely the Kindle Fire price would be subsidized as well. Via [Ad Age]  
There are plenty of Twitter applications available for Android right now, but few have caught my attention as well as Boid for Twitter. Boid is currently in its alpha stage, and is shaping up to be one heck of a Twitter app. You can download it from Google Play for free. Boid is designed with Ice Cream Sandwich in mind. It adopts the blue on black color scheme, and moves through menus with swipe gestures. Its design is very simplistic and very easy on the eyes. I have also found it to be very smooth and fast. Boid focuses on the core features of Twitter. You can see your full timelines, mentions, direct messages and trending topics. There’s no need to worry about any of the extra clutter that shows up in the official Twitter application. What’s more impressive is that Boid is developed by a small team that is mostly comprised of teenagers. If they keep designing apps like this, these guys can have a very bright future. Like I said earlier, Boid is an alpha build. There are some things that are missing such as push notifications and an autocomplete feature whenever you want to mention someone in a tweet. Still, the Boid team is very open about what their plans for this app are. You can check out their Google Doc that highlights all their future plans for Boid. Google Play Link [Boid for Twitter]  
Google’s plans to buy Motorola Mobility may not happen if China has anything to say about it. They agreed to buy the handset maker last year, and shareholder and other key players have signed off on the deal, but there’s still one more step. China’s antitrust regulators have to approve. That fact could be making Google wish they hadn’t burned a certain bridge. Two years ago, after a fruitless battle with China over their demands search results be heavily censored, Google gave up and moved its search operations to Hong Kong. While experts say China will probably approve the deal, it probably won’t come without certain demands and conditions. The big question is what they might be and whether Google will agree to them. They want Motorola primarily for the nearly 20,000 patents they hold. The situation may get a little sticky for Google because they also recently tiptoed back to China and is waiting for its license to operate there to be approved as well. Things could get very interesting in the next few weeks! Via [The New York Times]  
Motorola has announced and begun rolling out the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for those sporting a Xoom tablet in Canada. The update is available for the Wi-Fi only Xoom tablet and will be coming as an over-the-air update. In other words, keep an eye on your device for an update notification. And while you are waiting for that to arrive, keep reading to check out the full changelog associated with this update. - Updated Browser with faster rendering, zoom and pan Users can also now save pages for offline reading and request desktop versions of websites.
- Swipe to dismiss notifications, tasks, and browser tabs You can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent Apps list, and browser tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.
- Redesigned app launcher In All Apps launcher, you can now simply drag an app to get information about it, immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.
- New System Font for Improved Readability An entirely new typeface (called Roboto)optimized for high resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished feel to the user interface.
- Updated “People” Application Replaces contacts and integrates seamlessly with Google+ and other social networks.
- Improved text input and spell-checking The keyboard now features improved accuracy to make text input faster. It also now includes an in-line spell checker to make corrections easier.
- Type with your voice Now you can simply touch the microphone on the keyboard and start talking to write emails, SMS, or any other text-more than 20 languages supported. Text appears in real time, so there’s no waiting for server processing.
- Richer and versatile imaging capabilities For capturing larger scenes, the camera introduces a single motion panorama mode. Also, you can now take still shots while shooting video just by tapping the screen as video continues to record. You can also launch camera directly from the Lockscreen. When you shoot videos, you can now choose from a number of silly faces and other fun effects which recognize individual facial features so you can give your friends big eyes, squeeze heads, make noses bigger, or change the scenery with background replacement.
- Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor To help pictures look their best, the Gallery now offers a powerful photo editor so you can crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and much more.
Richer, resizable widgets You can expand widgets to show more content, or shrink them to save space.
Via [Motorola] and [MobileSyrup]  
In an ironic twist, controversial bittorent site Pirate Bay, along with WikiLeaks, has been pummeled by DDoS attacks this week, and at one point both sites were knocked offline. It’s not known whose behind the attacks, the reason for them, or if they are connected. Yesterday, WikiLeaks tweeted that it “has been under sustained DDOS attacks over the last 72 hours. http://www.wikileaks.org is good, http://wikileaks.org is flooded.” And later, “We’re mirroring the #WikiLeaks website, in case you can’t reach it. http://wl.wikileaks-press.org.” Pirate Bay, which UK ISPs were recently ordered to block via a court order, has been the subject of criminal investigations and Wikileaks has raised the ire of governments and individuals alike for its whistle-blowing tactics. However, usually DDoS attacks and other hacker activity occur in its defense, rather than being aimed at them. Via [CNet]  | |
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