the dry Squidarella

Like much of the country, West Texas has been experiencing a wetter than usual late winter. Rather than snow, we have had rain … nearly 6″ in some parts of my county alone. Due to the weather, I’ve found myself reaching for an umbrella more times in the last couple of weeks than I had in the last few years. And since my umbrella has basically become a regular accessory, I can’t help but wishing that it was as colorful and interesting as this one.

Urbantrim has just launched a new collection of color changing umbrellas. “The umbrellas start with a black and white design, but each drop of rain that falls will reveal the bright colors underneath until the whole design is transformed. Its produced by a London based design team (SquidLondon) and we are bringing it to the US for the very first time.

The technology behind the ink, which is responsible for the color morphing, has been painstakingly developed and is truly one of a kind.  We will hopefully be launching a whole range of products over time.

Squidarella, as we call them, have been picked up both by the Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.  In fact the MoMA is currently commissioning a new line of umbrellas featuring the NY City skyline.”

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The Gear Diary Store is a great place to find software and accessories for your Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian, iPhone and Palm OS devices; together with our partner MobiHand, we are working to bring you one software deal a day. You’ll get a great price while supporting Gear Diary, no special codes necessary. Are you ready to save?

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The Gear Diary Store is a great place to find software and accessories for your Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian, iPhone and Palm OS devices; together with our partner MobiHand, we are working to bring you at least one software title deal a day. You’ll get a great price while supporting Gear Diary, no special codes necessary. Are you ready to save?

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Speck has been covered extensively by Gear Diary, and with good reason – their products are well made, they protect the devices they are meant to hold, and they look great! While at CES I visited the Speck booth, and one of the many things that impressed me was that Speck makes a cover for my 17″ laptop — it seems like accessories for this size are rather rare. Fast forward to last week when I received a SeeThru Satin Hard Shell for my 17″ MacBook Pro, and my laptop has not been naked since. Dan just recently reviewed this same shell for his 13″ MacBook Pro, So I am going to use this post to give Speck a tip of the hat for taking care of my 17″ and tell you all five things I like about the SeeThru Satin Hard Shell … and one thing that I don’t.

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photo credit: brianbutko

Don’t forget to get in line on Tuesday, Feb. 9, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m, as Denny’s Restaurants once again give away free Original Grand Slams as part of their Super Bowl promotion. You’ll probably want to get there early, as this will likely be a very popular event … again.

But that’s not all. You can also enter to win one free Grand Slam a week for a year by registering February 1 through February 14 online at www.dennys.com or in your local restaurant. If you are one of the first 500,000 people to sign up for the new Denny’s Rewards program online, you’ll receive a free burger and fries, and as a capper – Denny’s is now offering free refills on french fries and pancakes at participating restaurants nationwide. Crazy!

Add this to the Original Grand Slam Denny’s already gives away to customers on their birthdays, and you can see why Denny’s is such a popular all-day breakfast spot.

via Consumerist

Mobile World Congress will be kicking off in about a week, and the new device frenzy has already started. One of the items shown will be the Inbrics M1, an Android-based mobile internet device (MID) with a “3 screen plus” media convergence platform”. We’ve been hearing about the M1 since late last year, and it also made a CES debut. Now what some have called “possibly the ultimate Android device” may be that much closer to actually being available for purchase.

The M1 has everything you could want in an MID, including Wi-Fi 802.11, an AMOLED touch screen that slides to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, Bluetooth, 3G or WiMAX, a 3-megapixel camera on the back, a VGA camera on the front, 16GB of internal memory and a MicroSD card slot.  The device also serves as a conduit or controller that pushes all of your digital “stuff” (pictures, videos, music and more) to other devices in your home (TV, laptop, etc) via Wi-Fi.

I like the M1’s inclusion of Android, a sliding keyboard, a largeish AMOLED screen in what looks to be a nicely sized and stylishly done mobile device. According to a CES press release, “The company plans to introduce the MID M1 in the U.S. through cable companies and both fixed and wireless carriers. It will be available in the U.S. in 2010 or early 2011.”

I think that if they can get a carrier for it in the US during 2010, they might have a shot at doing well.

The Inbrics M1 Mobile Internet Device

Not long after Julie Strietelmeier and I reviewed their Kindle & Kindle2 covers, Oberon Design announced that they would be releasing a Kindle DX version. I found this news particularly welcome, because shortly after we completed the review I purchased the DX. Of course, moving to a larger Kindle meant that the case I loved would definitely no longer work, and for the longest time my DX went case-less, wearing only a Decal Girl skin. It was several months before I had the chance to review one of Oberon Design’s new DX covers, but when the opportunity came I was eager.

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photo courtesy of Sony Ericsson Product Blog

Talk about trying to sneak one in under the radar! Sony Ericcson is announcing a new device, the Aspen, today in the UK. According to the Sony Ericsson Product Blog,”This phone is targeting a business user or the consumer who is really into messaging. With both touch screen and QWERTY keyboard it really ticks all the boxes for fast messaging. It will run on Windows mobile 6.5.3 which delivers a really finger friendly touch experience.” The Aspen is the first phone that I am aware of that is using Windows Mobile 6.5.3, which “will deliver incremental improvement between major releases.” These improvements include:

• Ease of Use
  • Capacitive touchscreen support
  • Platform to enable multi-touch
  • Touch controls throughout system (no need for stylus)
  • Consistent Navigation
  • Horizontal scroll bar replaces tabs (think settings>system>about screen)
  • Magnifier brings touch support to legacy applications
  • Simplified out-of-box experience with fewer steps
  • Drag and drop icons on Start Screen
• Browser Performance
  • Page load time decreased
  • Memory management improved>
  • Pan & flick gestures smoothed
  • Zoom & rotation speed increased
• Quality and Customer Satisfaction
  • Updated runtime tools (.NET CF 3.5, SQL CE 3.1)
  • Arabic read/write document support
  • Watson (error reporting) improvements and bug fixes

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Apple may or may not give us the ability to run applications in the background when the iPhone OS 4.0 is released sometime in the coming months. If they do, much of the criticism of both the iPhone and the upcoming iPad will be removed. If they don’t, people will continue to complain — and for good reason. There is no question that the iPad can more than handle having three or four applications running at the same time. In fact, (as the jailbreak app Backgrounder proves) there’s little doubt that the iPhone 3GS would be able to handle it just fine already.

If they don’t add background apps, it isn’t the end of the world. (Yes, it makes the iPad far less attractive for many but let’s not go there today — okay?) The truth is, Apple’s push notification system works quite well. It isn’t the same thing, but it DOES work.

That doesn’t mean, however, that there are ways in which it could significantly be improved. Here are a few thoughts.

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I’ve always enjoyed reading Clinton Fitch’s reviews and articles, because not only is Clinton a friend, he is also an extremely knowledgeable and well-spoken (err, written) mobile device reviewer. I’ll go ahead and say it, though — I never felt like his site was easy to navigate or quite the proper showcase for his considerable talent. The old site used a lot of drop-down menus, and it was more old-school web 1.0. That is no longer the case.

Clinton has completely redesigned the site; it is now uncluttered, easy to navigate, tagged, includes a mobile version, and it is optimized for your social rebroadcasting pleasure. If you enjoy reviews and news covering everything mobile, then you will want to be one of the 24 million and counting who have visited ClintonFitch.com.

Congratulations on the new site Clinton; it looks FAB! 


Clintonfitch.com

One of the devices that I most enjoyed seeing demonstrated at CES was the Nokia N900. This pocket computer’s impressive specifications, its solid build, its multitasking capabilities, a web browser that looked like it could take on the iPhone’s, and yes, I’ll admit it — the cool little widgets on its personalized desktops had me intrigued. But what I really wanted was to spend a bit of time getting to know one on my own.

My contact at Nokia promised that she would send a review unit, and two days ago “mine” arrived. There was a bit of a FedEx snafu — the N900 was left inside a plastic bag (to protect it from the freezing rain that was falling) and tied to our front gate overnight — but fortunately the contents inside the box were undamaged.

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If you run a small office/home office, then you know that there are certain things that you must do to make it competitive, and there are also certain tricks which will make your business (at least) appear larger, better organized, and more successful. One of the first things most SOHOs will do is add a fax machine and an 800 number; some will add a call forwarding system for their mobile phones, and some will even go so far as to hire an answering service. Adding all of the necessary equipment and services can get expensive, especially when you are just starting out. RingCentral believes that they offer a better solution.

RingCentral Mobile is a Web-based telephone and fax service for professionals and small businesses. It provides a toll free or local phone number and advanced features not found in traditional phone systems.

[You can] give additional toll free or local numbers to employees, departments, branches, or set one up as a dedicated fax number. All will be linked and tracked through your online management tools and real-time Call Controller.

RingCentral always offers a free trial and plans that start at $9.99 a month; right now you can also get 50% off your first three months of service after the trial period has run out. Click this link to get started, and keep reading if you would like to know more about the service.

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It seems to be a never-ending issue for me, having more devices that need charging than I have outlets available. The Callpod Chargepod touts itself as a “charging device that allows you to charge multiple cell phones, PDAs, headsets, and most other mobile electronics with a single power cord.”

Without tripping a breaker or messing something up? This I’ve got to see …

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Across the blogosphere, millions watched with bated breath today as Apple unveiled their latest — the obviously (yet unfortunately) named iPad — to a crowd who seemed to be enthusiastic and yet instantly critical of the ~10″ tablet.

Gorgeous UI, large vivid screen, the ability to run existing iPhone apps, and a new iBook store are huge selling points for some. The absence of a camera and multi-tasking are among the possible deal-breakers for others. Not immediately obvious are exactly who the iPad’s intended customers might be — other than users who don’t mind carrying yet another device.

Join Dan, Larry, Carly and me, with guest commentary from Patrick, as we dive into our first impressions of what Steve Jobs is calling, “a magical and truly revolutionary product.”

music credit: Lean on Me (Solarstone’s Afterhours Remix)

Yes, we’re counting down to the big announcement/ announcements. Judie, Larry and I (along with just about everybody else) will be listening in as Apple (likely) once again transforms computing.

We’ve just installed a live blogging system (Yeah Judie!!!) which will make it possible for us to not only to post the news in real time as it is announced but to also add some of our commentary along the way.

Watch this space starting at 1PM EST for the first Gear Diary LiveBlogging Event!

(Also, we will be recording our second podcast shortly after El Jobso finishes. Look for it later tonight.)

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