LG Neon 2 Slider Phone Is Now Available At Rogers

Rogers adding the LG Neon 2 Slider Phone on their lineup. The handset only costs for $19.99 with a 3-year contract agreement or $174.99 with no term. The LG Neon 2 features a 3-inch 240 x 400 touchscreen display, a 2-megapixel camera with video recording, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 42MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot (up to 8GB), an FM radio, an MP3 player, Bluetooth and supports quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) connectivity.

Via: http://www.gadgetsholic.com/

Popularity: 2%

Gmail Phone Calls – call phones right from Google!

Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”

Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.

Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception.

If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions).

We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re using Google Apps for your school or business, then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly – so stay tuned!

For more information, visit gmail.com/call.

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Popularity: 12%

R&R Refrigerator 2 Absorbs Your Interest With An LCD TV

Slapping a miniaturized telly on a fridge isn’t new, but the people at R&R Associates do the competition one better with the Refrigerator 2 concept, a ‘smart’ fridge that has a 14.1 inch LCD TV.

The TV is compatible with cable or satellite and is ideal for watching your favorite programs plus surfing online for recipes. Of course, it also plays your favorite DVDs and music for a soundtrack to your pizza party.

But wait, can you and your friends play videogames on it? We honestly can’t say because the press material left this bit out.

In case you forgot, there’s a refrigerator behind it that packs a load of cutting edge tech to keep your food fresh (or at least microwaveable) and ice frosty. Throw in temperature controls, ice dispenser, sensors and water filters galore.

To cite the official specs, there are 26 cubic feet of space for your eggs, milk, butter, veggies, leftover pizza and uneaten takeout. It’s child-proof too.

Since most kitchens have displays these days of one sort or another, this makes perfect sense though I wonder, won’t the heat from the LCD melt the freezer contents? Well, if they work that kink out, the only thing that’s needed is staying away from the fridge while dad is watching his morning news.

SOURCE: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/

Popularity: 1%

T-Mobile will release Motorola Jordan Soon

Motorola Jordan is the newest mobile phone which will be released by T-Mobile soon, This Motorola Jordan is a rugged category of an android smartphone. The smartphone schedule to be released on November 2010, We don’t have further information about the product but at least we heard that the phone is waterproof and can work 10 meters underwater. The smartphone also protected against shock, dirt, and dust that’s why we call it a rugged phone.

SOURCE:  http://www.gadgetsholic.com/

Popularity: 2%

Apple testing iOS 4.1 alongside next-gen iPod touch, iPad and ‘unknown’ product

Apple is internally testing the first material update to its iOS 4.0 mobile operating system against a handful of new devices, including next-generation iPod touches, an iPad revision, and an “unknown” product, AppleInsider has discovered.

According to people familiar with the matter, the latest beta of iOS 4.1, due to ship in the coming weeks, includes three new “Configuration Descriptors” within its USB configuration files — all of which pertain to devices that list “Apple, Inc.” as their “manufacturer” — as can be seen in the screenshot below.

The first product, a fourth-generation iPod touch, is referenced within the code as “iPod 4,1.” That particular identifier indicates the device will be the first iteration of a fourth-generation device, rather than a revision to the touch’s existing design, which would have been denoted as an “iPod 3,2.”

For Apple, this represents the fourth consecutive year in which the company will deliver a significant internal or external design change to its flagship iPod, preserving a tradition that has seen the media player’s adopt the architecture of iPhones that hit the market a few months earlier.

As such, this year’s iPod touch family calls for models akin to a slimmer iPhone 4, equipped with dual cameras, FaceTime support, Apple’s custom A4 processor, and high resolution Retina Display. For reference, the first three generations of the iPod touch were identified as “iPod 1,1,” “iPod 2,1″ and “iPod 3,1,” respectively.

The second unreleased product referenced in the USB configuration files is “iProd 2,1.” All indications are that this device represents a material update to the company’s iPad, as the inaugural version of the device released this past April was similarly listed in configuration files as “iProd 1,1″ prior to its announcement.

Finally, and most intriguing, is a previously undiscovered mention of a mysterious device listed only as “unknownHardware.” Although the configuration files tag this device with a unique Apple product ID of 20547, it’s textual descriptor is similarly listed as “Unknown- Add device descriptor info for this device.”

SOURCE: http://www.appleinsider.com/

Popularity: 6%

Hangman’s hardest word discovered

What’s the hardest word to solve in Hangman?

If you guessed some freak of linguistics like “onomatopoeia,” “dybbuk,” or “benzodiazepine,” you’re barking up entirely the wrong arboriform growth.

Take it from Jon McLoone, director of business development for Wolfram Research, the company behind popular mathematical modeling tool Mathematica. McLoone was inspired to investigate the English language’s hardest-to-guess word after his six-year-old daughter asked him how she could beat her Hangman computer game.

To find out, McLoone wrote a program that would play Hangman with all 90,000 words in the dictionary, attempting to guess each one in a semi-random way similar to a method a good human player might use. In total, he simulated some 15 million Hangman games, tying up several office PCs for a weekend in the process.

“Difficult,” for example, isn’t very difficult to guess at all, taking on average 3.3 wrong guesses per game — not even close to losing. Contrary to his expectations, McLoone found that shorter words were harder to guess than longer words, and the fewer pieces you use in your Hangman drawing, the truer that gets.

And the hardest of all? “Jazz,” which topped the rankings in all the variations of the basic game he tried.

McLoone also lists the top 25 hardest Hangman words, according to his program. Words with double Zs or Fs, like “buzzer” or “faff” rank high, but he suggests players pick longer words to fool their opponents.

“You can’t beat “powwowing,” “bowwowing,” and “huzzahing” for entertainment,” he suggests.

Popularity: 2%

Report: China Unicom To Sell iPhone 4 Starting Next Month, iPad Soon

Telecom giant China Unicom, which exclusively carries the iPhone in China today, will be selling Apple’s iPad in the world’s largest mobile market starting very soon, an unnamed company insider told Chinese media company Caixin.

That is in line with earlier reports, which foresaw an August launch for the tablet computer in China, although admittedly a definitive launch date for the iPad in China has not been announced yet.

According to Caixin’s source, China Unicom will be the sole distributor of Apple’s iPad in China, which had a total of 776.9 million mobile subscribers at the end of March 2010, the largest number of any country on the planet.

The carrier is also reportedly scheduled to carry a WiFi-enabled model of the iPhone 4 in early September, although no definitive launch date was detailed either.

China Unicom, which services a staggering 315 million subscribers, has the exclusive right to distribute the iPhone in China, where it is the second-largest carrier after China Mobile. Just recently, the carrier kicked off sales of the WiFi-enabled iPhone 3GS in the country, which is unequivocally a major growth area for Apple.

Until recently, the Chinese government did not allow the sale of WiFi products altogether in an effort to promote an alternative WAPI wireless networking standard, but recently decided to lift said restrictions.

In related news, Apple’s South Korean distributor KT Corporation earlier this week said it would start taking pre-orders for the iPhone 4 in the next couple of days, before its official launch next month. Apple has sold more than 850,000 iPhones in South Korea since its introduction in the local market nine months ago.

It will be interesting to see how big of a deal its sales efforts in the Asia-Pacific region will become for Apple’s bottom line, but my educated guess is that it won’t be negligible.

Popularity: 6%

“Facebook Places”Facebook Has Been Working On This Location Feature For 8 Months

Today at an event at their headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, Facebook unveiled their new Places product — their location/check-in solution. Obviously, their entry in this space has been rumored for a long time — a very long time. But during the Q&A session, someone asked how long Facebook has actually been working on this Places product. Since December, one of the engineers in charge of the product replied.

But he also revealed that there have been other “skunkworks” projects internally at Facebook surrounding location long before that. The past 8 months have just been specifically focused on what is now called Places. CEO Mark Zuckerberg stepped in to say that Facebook was focused on the question of “what is a good set of features and a good product?” He noted that they wanted to make sure they were building something different than what everyone else already had built.

Zuckerberg specifically called out the tagging aspect of the product as being unique. With Places, you can actually tag friends when you check-in.

“There was so much to do before we launched this,” Zuckerberg said with a smile on his face. He said that what they’re focusing on at launch is a solid core. The three main things they’re focusing on is helping people share where they are, helping people see who is around them, and helping people seeing what’s going on. The basics.

When asked about checking-in to watching television shows or the like, Zuckerberg joked, “there’s a lot of stuff we’re not doing.”

Popularity: 34%

Twitter’s “Followed By” And “You Both Follow” More Useful Than “Mutual Friends”

On Friday Twitter started a mass roll out of its “Followed By” and “You Both Follow” features, which we covered in more detail in June (It seems as though Tlists, a feature which allows users to see what Twitter lists you are on, have yet to launch full force).

While Facebook and Foursquare have had “friends in common” social graph features for awhile, it’s been more difficult to directly convert these concepts to Twitter because the concept of “friend” v.s. “follower”/”followed” is hard to parse.

But, after playing with the new features for a couple of days, they have proven to be incredibly useful. They’re as or if not more useful and definitely more grammatically correct than “Who To Follow. And they’re especially more useful than Facebook’s “Mutual Friends,” despite the fact that Twitter allows for one-way relationships whereas Facebook is by design two-way, where both parties have to agree on the relationship to connect.

Mapped out on the above chart, the “Followed By” feature shows you which of your friends (labeled as “Connected”) is following a user. Implicit in this feature is the fact that following someone is the equivalent to an endorsement, which makes it valuable to see which other people you follow have “endorsed” the person you are currently examining. In the case of @meowmeowbeat (the user I’m considering following or “Examined” in this exercise) it’s @parislemon, who I know to be a stand up guy.  Maybe he’s onto something?

Thus is also the case with the  “You Both Follow’ feature. If you’ve landed on the Twitter profile of someone whom you’re evaluating whether to give credence, a delineation of their taste in people, or who they have endorsed that you have also endorsed might be the tipping point as to whether or not you should follow. @meowmeowbeat seems to be well connected in the tech reporting community, so the account is probably worth a follow in my case.

The infinite chains of possible one way connections leaves Twitter with the leeway to launch many more features based on their complex directed social graph, hence the hypotheticals above. While someone who “Follows Both Of You” might just be a spammer, the “People They Follow Who Follow You” connections might be a lot more telling about a user’s social caché. In any case, a user which you have deigned worthy of polluting your Twitter stream (whether or not they follow you back) may say a lot more about you then the fact that you’ve accepted your junior high lab partner’s friend request on Facebook. Would you follow that same person on Twitter?

Because of an inordinate amount of friend requests accepted from old college roommates and (at least for me) social media consultants, people seem to care more about who follows them on Twitter than who they’re friends with on Facebook. And Twitter’s decision to roll out these displays of a more intricate Twitter social graph is leading to better connections. Facebook’s “Mutual Friends” on the other hand now looks somewhat limited, in Twitter social graph terminology the degrees of separation of a mutual friend on Facebook would be, “Person who you follow, who follows you back, who also has this same follow/follow back relationship with the person you’re currently looking at.”

Popularity: 2%

Google Buzz Gets A “Who To Follow” Feature Too

After your initial surge of people connecting to your social graph what do you do to strengthen it? Launch a “who to follow” feature. It worked for Facebook. It’s working for Twitter. And now Google Buzz is going to give it a try.

As they announced tonight in their Buzz feed, the next time users load up the Buzz tab in Gmail, they should be greeted with a box suggesting other people to follow. Google says these will be based on people you frequently email and/or chat with. It also depends on your social connections on other networks (aka your social circle), and activity on Buzz. Only people with public profiles will appear as suggestions, Google says.

If you find a person you like, you can click a button to follow them. Or if you don’t like a suggestion, you can click an “ignore” button and they won’t show up again. Pretty standard stuff at this point, but it works. What was so great about Twitter’s implementation of this a few weeks ago was that it was front and center on Twitter.com. I started noticing a huge uptick in people following me, and I found a lot of people to follow that way as well. Of course, they still need a way to collapse that box so it doesn’t always have to be in your face. It looks as if Buzz’s box will have a close (and “Done”) button.

Buzz’s implementation may be slightly more controversial because once again they’re looking at your email/chat habits to suggest people to you. Sometimes these aren’t people you necessarily want as friends on social networks. But the ignore button should work fine there.

Popularity: 1%

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