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Review: Aerial7 Sound Disk Beanie headphone-hat »
Short Version : The audio is only passable (at least at speed) and the fit questionable, but hey, these do just what they set out to do: put some headphones in a decent hat. Feels a little weird to plaster my face all over the front page like that, but hats without heads in them are even less photogenic than I am. Features: Several styles to choose from (this review is for “Cotton T Black”) In-line mic for iPhone/Blackberry Low-profile headphone drivers Regular 3.5mm jack Pros: Hey, they work Hat is decent quality, fairly warm Easy to set up and remove (handy for washing) Cons: Sound quality not so good White cable not so hot against black hat, or going to non-iPod device Tight fit can make headphones press against ears too hard Full Review: I have to say that when I first tried these out, biking about a mile over to the Central District, I was pretty disappointed. I found the fit too tight and the sound tinny. But a friend tried the hat on and pronounced it perfectly comfortable, and on the way back I played a different playlist and found that they really didn’t sound so bad after all. I mean, let’s be honest here. You’re going to be walking, running, biking, or skiing while listening to these, and if you can make out the lyrics over the wind rush, that’s better than nothing. And while they weren’t beating my eardrums with their bass or allowing me to marvel and their crisp highs, they did sound clear enough once I got the alignment right. The hat itself is a plain cotton, quite decently made, with a red patterned interior that showed as a sort of rim. It fit snugly — almost too snugly for me, but I tend to prefer looser knit caps. Why I didn’t review a knit one is beyond me. But this one was a bit tall and narrow for me; it fully covered my ears and still had a little poof at the top. Not Smurf levels of poof, but enough that I felt I had to pat it down. I wore it during a cold snap a while ago here in Seattle and it did all right, though it took forever to dry out when I got rained on. The headphones themselves are touted as having a flat design, which is true, but then again so do most headphones once you take the padding off. Yeah, there’s no padding on them at all except for the millimeter-thin material making up the inner lining of the headphone pockets in the hat. That can be pretty rough on your ears if you have a helmet pushing on them or if they’re just not aligned over your ears just right. In the next generation of this product I’d really appreciate a little bit of padding in the headphone pocket. The sound is what you’d expect from a plain pair of traditional headphones — something you’d pick up at a drugstore for $15-20. They’re loud enough if you want to push them and I didn’t hear a lot of distortion, but there wasn’t too much clarity either. But the fact is I could hear my music perfectly well while zooming around on my bike, so really, mission accomplished there. I’m not expecting a high-fidelity audio experience while trucking down to the coffee shop. Conclusion : I think $60 is a little steep for what they’re offering. However, if you do spend a lot of time on the slopes, for instance, or riding your bike around, and want to listen to music or talk on the phone, this is definitely a simple and workable solution. I’d go with the knit version, though. Product Page
How many times do you have to be burned by BlackBerry to consider your options? »
What’s the phrase? Oh, yeah: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. BlackBerry went down yesterday across North and South America. Users couldn’t send or receive e-mail, and some complained that they couldn’t connect to the Internet. It’s the second time in a week that BlackBerry has failed. Considering how important the service is to some people—I dare you to go to Wall Street and not see everyone using the device—you really do wonder: how long will people tolerate this shoddy service? It also raises the related question of, How wise is it to rely on “the cloud” to host all of your important data? Surely you wouldn’t leave “mission critical” information in the hands of someone else, someone who’s unsettling opaque when it comes to explaining outages?
Viliv N5 clamshell to be revealed at CES ‘10 »
Viliv is on a steady roll releasing hot portable computers and in just a couple of weeks at CES, we’ll see the company’s next creation dubbed the N5 with the already announced S10 . I can’t wait. UMPCPortal has the initial specs and they seem solid: 3G modem WiFi GPS 1024
iPhone Now The Most Popular Phone In The US »
Ranking cell phone companies is a tough thing to do. Some of these companies have a bunch of popular handsets, whilst others have just one or two yet manage to sell as many or more. Rank the companies by cumulative sales across all of their lines and the results will swing one way; rank them model-by-model, and they might look completely different. Such is the case with the iPhone, according to the latest numbers from The Nielsen Company. While RIM’s marketshare with their BlackBerry line is still nearly double that of Apple’s , the iPhone has now surpassed everything else to become the most popular phone in the US. The iPhone’s lead is fairly tight, coming in at 4.0% of all mobile phone owners while the BlackBerry 8300 series follows closely behind at 3.7%. The rest of the list is made up primarily of feature phones, outside of appearances by the BlackBerry Storm and the BlackBerry 8100 series in 7th and 10th respectively. As the iPhone 3GS doesn’t make an individual appearance on the list, we’re assuming that they’ve combined the 3G and 3GS into one product line. A few more interesting tidbits gleaned from the Nielsen report: The most popular reason people pick pre-paid phones isn’t because the lack of contract — that’s actually #4 — but because the plans are more straightforward. It’s followed by “No monthly bills” and “Emergency use only”. 21% of households now use mobile phones only, with no land line to call their own. This is up from 15% in 2006 15% of households now own at least one smartphone Crunch Network : TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
PayPal Rolls Out Send Money App For BlackBerry »
PayPal is finally extending its money transfer system to the BlackBerry, with a new, free Send Money app for the Blackberry. The app will let you access your PayPal account and easily send money to a recipient. You can find on the BlackBerry App World here. The app will also tap into your contact list on the phone making it simple to choose a recipient to send money too. Users can also access their recent PayPal transactions and monitor their account balances directly from the app.
Twitter App for the Zune HD: It works, but it’s buggy and censors tweets (not any more) »
Update: The app no longer censors tweets. Good, because that was the most ridiculous thing ever. Oh now this is exciting. Microsoft released a Twitter application for the Zune HD a few moments ago, and I’ve been tasked with testing it out for your edification. Spoiler: it works, it’s buggy, and I can’t see the sense in using it. Installation was not easy. Oh, sure, loading up the Zune software and navigating to the appropriate section was simple enough, and syncing the application was as expected, but my Zune HD wouldn’t connect to the Internet for whatever reason. An error message popped up saying “Disconnect your Zune HD from the computer before trying to connect to a wireless network.” To that effect, at least. (Strike one.) Well, Mr. Zune software, I’m holding the device in one hand and the USB cable in another. The Zune, in fact, is disconnected from my PC. This is not how to get on my good side, especially as I was interrupted watching Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk I to test you out. Moving on. Once the Zune HD stopped freaking out, I was greeted by a simple username and password screen. You log in there. Up top there’s four icons: a little man which gives you your timeline; an @ symbol that threw up the error “Oops, something went wrong. We can’t load this data due to an external error. Please try again shortly.” (Strike two.) It loads all the tweets that mention your name; a heart icon that I don’t know what it does because it says “Unfortunately, there is nothing to display here.” (Strike three.); and then a mail icon for all your DMs. Along the bottom there’s icons for writing a tweet, searching tweets, and for fiddling with the application’s settings. Let’s see what happens when I try to send a tweet. Well, the tweet went out, but once again I ran into the “external error” happened. (Strike four.) (External to what, by the way?) On twitter.com, all my tweets read “from Zune HD,” which links to zune.net. Usability: limited. I can’t type for beans using the Zune HD’s onscreen display, but that could well be a function of me exclusively using the device as a music player and I’m not used to it. T9 tries to help you out but it can only help so much. I don’t understand the point of the app either, other than to say, “See, we have a Twitter app!” But since the Zune HD only connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi, how is it any more useful to use the clearly glitch Zune app to tweet when you can, I don’t know, use a real computer or one of those iPhone or BlackBerry or Android apps? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Oh, and it censors tweets. (The tweet in the main photo up there is supposed to read: Bret Hart is coming back to WWE according to dave meltzer fuck yes!) No bad words to be found on the app, and there’s no setting to uncensor tweets. Why? How many little kids use Twitter (on a Zune HD, no less) that Microsoft had to go out of its way to censor tweets? Dumb. In conclusion: it’s buggy and there are far more practical ways of accessing Twitter.
Avatar online ticket sales taking over »
So it’s sounding like Avatar is going to be breaking some records (shocking, I know). What record is pending you ask? Online ticket sales. Ok, maybe it’s not biggest movie ever, or most special effects, but it’s still pretty damn impressive. The previous record holder is New Moon , of course. The good news is that 3D ticket sales and a largely male (instead of Twilight mom) audience is expected to push sales over the top. The numbers are huge; Movietickets.com is reporting 70 percent of their sales for this weekend are going to Avatar , and Fandango is reporting 87 percent. Here’s a few more statistics to give you an idea of how much of a marketing beast Avatar is turning out to be: 75%-89% of all Avatar ticket sales are for 3-D or IMAX 3-D screenings 68%-78% of ticket buyers are male 76% consider themselves fans of James Cameron Will Avatar dominate the weekend box office? I’m going to guess yes, since the James Cameron movie machine does kind of have that reputation.
Identify this thing, win a $50 gift card »
What is it? I thought a thorn or something at first, but now I’m thinking… bee leg? Well, one thing I can say for sure is that it’s a scan by that desktop SEM machine we mentioned a few weeks back. They’re running a contest to win a flash drive and an Amazon gift certificate; all you have to do is go over there and comment what you think is pictured above. Not exactly a gadget, but I’ll be glad if a CG reader takes home the fitty.
Twitter App for the Zune HD: It works, but it’s buggy and censors tweets »
Oh now this is exciting. Microsoft released a Twitter application for the Zune HD a few moments ago, and I’ve been tasked with testing it out for your edification. Spoiler: it works, it’s buggy, and I can’t see the sense in using it. Installation was not easy. Oh, sure, loading up the Zune software and navigating to the appropriate section was simple enough, and syncing the application was as expected, but my Zune HD wouldn’t connect to the Internet for whatever reason. An error message popped up saying “Disconnect your Zune HD from the computer before trying to connect to a wireless network.” To that effect, at least. (Strike one.) Well, Mr. Zune software, I’m holding the device in one hand and the USB cable in another. The Zune, in fact, is disconnected from my PC. This is not how to get on my good side, especially as I was interrupted watching Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk I to test you out. Moving on. Once the Zune HD stopped freaking out, I was greeted by a simple username and password screen. You log in there. Up top there’s four icons: a little man which gives you your timeline; an @ symbol that threw up the error “Oops, something went wrong. We can’t load this data due to an external error. Please try again shortly.” (Strike two.) It loads all the tweets that mention your name; a heart icon that I don’t know what it does because it says “Unfortunately, there is nothing to display here.” (Strike three.); and then a mail icon for all your DMs. Along the bottom there’s icons for writing a tweet, searching tweets, and for fiddling with the application’s settings. Let’s see what happens when I try to send a tweet. Well, the tweet went out, but once again I ran into the “external error” happened. (Strike four.) (External to what, by the way?) On twitter.com, all my tweets read “from Zune HD,” which links to zune.net. Usability: limited. I can’t type for beans using the Zune HD’s onscreen display, but that could well be a function of me exclusively using the device as a music player and I’m not used to it. T9 tries to help you out but it can only help so much. I don’t understand the point of the app either, other than to say, “See, we have a Twitter app!” But since the Zune HD only connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi, how is it any more useful to use the clearly glitch Zune app to tweet when you can, I don’t know, use a real computer or one of those iPhone or BlackBerry or Android apps? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Oh, and it censors tweets. (The tweet in the main photo up there is supposed to read: Bret Hart is coming back to WWE according to dave meltzer fuck yes!) No bad words to be found on the app, and there’s no setting to uncensor tweets. Why? How many little kids use Twitter (on a Zune HD, no less) that Microsoft had to go out of its way to censor tweets? Dumb. In conclusion: it’s buggy and there are far more practical ways of accessing Twitter.
Beejive for BlackBerry 2.0 Released »
If you’re a BlackBerry owner who’s looking for something small to get themselves this holiday season, this might help. Earlier this morning, Beejive released version 2.0 of their BlackBerry IM application – and just in time for the season of getting .. awkward family dinners .. giving, they’ve lopped 50% off the price tag. The new features: * Facebook chat: Chat with your Facebook friends while on the go, and see a record of your chats on facebook.com. * Clickable Twitter usernames: Click on a Twitter username in a chat to launch Twitter. * Refined and responsive UI: Take advantage of BeejiveIM’s custom-written user interface, offering speedy and responsive controls and a modern look-and-feel. * Voice notes: Instantly record and send voice messages to your IM contacts. Voice notes are perfect for on-the-go chatting, such as when you are walking down the street or need to get information to someone quickly and don’t have time to type. * GPS location: Send your current GPS location with a link to Google Maps, taking advantage of your BlackBerry’s location features and adding a new location-aware element to your chats. * More chat styles: Customize your chat styles and colors and set different backgrounds and wallpapers. * File transfers with all IM services: Easily send, receive, and review file attachments, and see previews of images right inside your chat. * Push notifications: Whether running in the foreground or the background, BeejiveIM will always notify you of new instant messages. * Improved Battery Life: Staying in touch with all your friends is now far gentler on your battery. * Support for the 5.0 OS and Storm: BeejiveIM supports all BlackBerrys running 4.2.1+ and 5.X operating systems, including the Storm and Storm 2. From today until January 1st, a one-device license will set you back $9.95 (usually $19.95), while a swappable license will come in at $14.95 (usually $30). If you’re not ready to jump in just yet, there’s always the 30-day trial . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0