Last week saw quite a few big events — including big Steve’s public return, a new video camera enabled iPod Nano, refreshed iPod Touch, and iTunes 9. Unfortunately, there’s still no Beatles on iTunes, but the Fab Four did get their own Rock Band game and released their entire remastered CD catalog.
Google’s Android platform had a few announcements of their own with new Facebook and Pandora apps, as well as being a major part of Motorola’s return to the fold with the new Cliq of major mobile handset manufacturer’s (as well as essentially becoming a mobile software company with their customized Android user interface known as MotoBlur).
Palm snuck in their new WebOS phone, the Pixi. AT&T announced the A-List calling plan coming September 20th, where subscribers can make free calls to 5 domestic numbers (if you have a family plan, you can have up to 10 numbers for free calls). Then Sprint followed-up with the Any Mobile Plan, giving their subscribers the ability to contact any mobile number on any network free.
Whew! Oh, but that wasn’t all, folks. Keep reading after the break to see just a few more of last week’s big events…
Judie’s immersing herself in learning Spanish and has completed the second week of the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Program. You can keep track of Judie’s progress for the entire language learning series.
Dan announced that he and his wife are now both BlackBerry converts (don’t worry, he’s still using his iPhone as well) — joining the ranks of many folks who have opted to be dual-device users.
Carly started the discussion on one of technology’s most fervent topics: Fanboys. Do Fanboys help or hurt the products they support? You decide (in the comments).
Wayne attended Electronic Arts Blogger Day, and even showed us how the Sims get the gift of speach.
Google Voice was updated to forward SMS text messages to your Gmail inbox, as well as allowing users to play their Google Voice voicemails directly in Gmail (instead of having to access the separate Google Voice site).
Finally, Larry ran into yet another problem with iPhone case maker Rebel Scholar. Take a look at the Twitter update Rebel Scholar sent out when Larry wanted to purchase two cases that Rebel Scholar was re-releasing to profit donate proceeds to charity for 9/11. Larry returned home from a 24-hour firefighting shift to find out that Rebel Scholar refunded his money for the purchase without any reason, then submitted the following twitter notification (tweet). Classy. There seem to be quite a few iPhone accessory manufacturers out there. As customers everyone gets to choose which companies get their money. That seems like a concept that some companies, unfortunately, do not seem to grasp in how they communicate to — and treat — customers.
You can see the entire series ordeal where Rebel Scholar is essentially blacklisting Larry for writing an honest review about one case.
