Seize the mouse.
Hardware
Beats by Dr. Dre Solo HD
Sep 2nd
These are some of the highest quality headphones on the market, competing with Bose. Here’s a full review of the headphones.
Design
Attractive and minimalistic design
The Beats Solo HD are some stylin’ headphones. They boast a very well put-together minimalistic design that will make skullcandy jealous. It features a tri-fold design so that it can easily be stored into the soft case.
The headphones detach from the cable so that Monster didn’t have to mess around with cable management in their case.
The Beats by Dr. Dre Solo HDs are on-ear headphones so they rest on your ear instead of going over your ear. This does a good job of keeping the music from leaking out, so you won’t bother the others around you.
The ear cups of the headphones pivot to cover your ear more evenly and comfortably.
These headphones are very lightweight and feel light on your head. They are great for people on the go with a busy and on the move lifestyle.
Sound quality
Sound is the most important aspect of headphones. If there is no sound, then what’s the point? The Beats by Dr. Dre series is all focused on sound quality, but these headphones are a broken link in the chain of sound satisfaction (like what I did there?). Compared to many headphones on the market they are above average, but some of the bose headphones really come out on top with this one. The sound from the headphones has quite the emphasis on bass. The bass tends to drown out everything else, which tends to take away from the value of these headphones.
Value
These headphones sell for $220 MSRP which is a bit expensive for headphones of this quality. These headphones seem like $100, and $220 is a lot to ask for for the sound quality these headphones deliver. I’m afraid I’ll have to mark these as a DNB, or Do Not Buy unless you can find them for under $150.
The new iPod nano and why I don’t like it
Sep 1st
So today apple announced a chutzpah of new stuff (as expected) including a new apple tv, a new iPod touch, a new iPod nano, and a new iPod shuffle. I’ll cover those in a later post, but for now I want to talk about the nano.
What apple did with this design really stood out to me, and not in a good way. First of all, they got rid of the buttons and replaced it with this extremely tiny excuse for a touchscreen, and got rid of the camera and curved edges and put a clip on it. So basically, it is an iPod shuffle with a touchscreen. But my big problem is the clip…
So lets say you have it clipped to your shirt like that picture. If you want to change the song you either have to bend your head over to see the screen and look like an idiot or you have to unclip it and attempt to hold the awkwardly shaped thing to change your music. So then why don’t you just put it in your pocket? Why include the clip? The only other function is to show EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD what music you are listening to at the moment. But to tell you the truth, nobody really cares what you listen to other than you. So that eliminates the clip. And what’s with the form factor of this thing?! It is a square that barely fills the palm of your hand, and it doesn’t look like it would be very fun to try to hold.
Oter than the clip, the other thing is how they tried to make it an iPod touch-like interface with homescreens. But instead of having apps, ou have things like albums, playlists, genres, etc. Why?! This interface might be cool if you wanted to use apps on it, and if you want apps go get yourself an iPod touch. it is 1/3 bigger (and is so much more confortable to hold) and boo hoo, you can’t tell the world what you are listening to. Oh, darn. That’s too bad.
I mean, nobody really cares about your music! It’s nice to know you are currently listening to the black eyed peas (I guess that explains why you, sir microsoft employee, are line dancing in the middle of your stores [traitor using iPods, don't worry I won't tell. ;-J ]) but nobody cares at all! It’s just an iPod shuffle with a screen. A smaller, less functional iPod touch. Something along those lines.
If you disagree or have anything more to add, comments are welcome. 
How-to: Install Android 2.2 (Froyo) on Droid Incredible
Aug 6th
NOTE: I DONT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR LOSS OF DATA ON YOUR PHONE!
Thank you droid life, you have a build of froyo for droid incredible. Cool!
The only problem is that you have to be rooted. And from what I hear that is a command line disaster. Here I’ll show you how to root and convert to android 2.2 simply and easily. You’ll have to have a USB cable and an SD card in your phone. Sadly I can’t give you screenshots for the whole process as this can’t be undone. But I’ll give all of the screenshots I can. So here goes!
WARNING: THIS PROCESS MAY OR MAY NOT BE REVERSIBLE. THE ONLY BUG I’VE FOUND IS THAT GPS NO LONGER WORKS. DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU USE THE GPS FREQUENTLY (HOWEVER AN OFFICIAL RELEASE WILL NOT HAVE THAT PROBLEM SO IT SHOULD BE RESOLVED IN A FEW MONTHS)!
Step 1:
Download this zip. Once it has started downloading proceed to step 2.
Step 2:Backup all of the photos and videos from your phone. This process will indeed wipe out your whole phone and make it brand new. I am not responsible for anything that happens to your data!
Step 3: Download THIS application for mac, and THIS application for windows. These are the unrevoked.com reflashers.
Step 3a: Open the reflash application on your Mac or PC. I will show the process for mac as I assume that it is similar for Windows.
Step 3b: Plug in your phone to your computer with the USB cable.
Step 3c: On your incredible go to settings>Applications>Development and enable USB debugging.
There’s no turning back now, as things will start to happen. Your screen will be flashing terminal commands and all this crazy stuff that I couldn’t explain. Once it is done you should be shown a screen like this (if not, you should be on a white page with skateboarding android logos and select recovery from that list, and if not that, boot up while holding the optical trackpad button and select recovery from that list, and if not that then select bootloader then recovery to get to this list):
Step 4: You are now rooted! At this screen scroll down and select nandroid. from here click backup and let it run. When it is over reboot. I’m *pretty sure* that it should just reboot into 2.1. using nandroid backs up all of your data just in case something goes wrong so you can restore.
Step 5: Your download of the zip should be complete by now. Plug in your incredible to the USB cable (if it isn’t already) and set the USB mode to disk drive. Then copy that zip over to the SD card (NOT THE PHONE STORAGE! to figure this out your phone storage will be 8GB, the other mounted drive is the SD card!). Copy it to the root not under any other subfolders.
Step 6: Turn off your phone and reboot while holding the optical trackpad.Select bootloader from the list then select recovery. Then select Install zip from SD card.
Next, select choose zip from sdcard.
Then, scroll down the list and select the zip that you downloaded.
It will begin to install android 2.2, and this could take a few minutes.
After, reboot and you should see this new boot animation
followed by this red eye.
It may hang at the red eye for a few minutes, so don’t freak out (like I did)!
After it boots you will be introduced to android 2.2 with sense. Congratulations! To prove it, go into settings> About Phone> Software. It should say 2.2 under the firmware! Enjoy!
Le Trackpad de Mágico! (Magic Trackpad)
Jul 30th
I have no idea why but this has been requested by numerous people.
Along with the launch of the new and improved iMac, Apple released the Magic Trackpad. It’s basically a larger bluetooth MacBook Pro trackpad. Their tagline is “why do notebooks have all the fun?”
I find it useful even tough I already have a MacBook Pro, because when I need gestures like exposé It is right there, not a reach across the desk to get to my MacBook.
Setup
The setup is very simple. First step is to update your software. Do that by going to the apple menu and clicking Software Update. This will then download the drivers for the Magic Trackpad.
Once you have downloaded the update and restarted, press and hold the power button on your trackpad until the green light starts flashing.
Once that is working, go into System Preferences and click on Trackpad.
Once in the pane, click on Set Up Bluetooth Trackpad in the bottom right corner.
Make sure the light on the trackpad is still blinking (if it isn’t just press the power button once) and you should see a window appear. After a few seconds it should look like this.
Once it looks like that^^^ click continue and your wireless trackpad will be setup! In the pane that follows you can configure a bunch of cool options.
Review
The Magic Trackpad is a good addition or replacement for a mouse. The large surface is convenient because you will rarely have to pick up your finger, however having it so large does make it feel a little bit awkward.
I think that if you are getting (or have) an iMac or other Mac desktop then you may prefer this over the Magic Mouse for it’s multitouch gestures. For MacBook and PacBook Pro users I find this only useful if you are already using an external keyboard and mouse because you can get the gestures right where you need them without reaching out across your desk to get to your MacBook’s Trackpad. It’s aluminum design fits in perfectly with the Wireless Keyboard and is even the exact same height. I’m thinking that apple should create a Magic Keyboard that has a Magic Trackpad on the side of it.
The Magic Trackpad is currently available at your Local Apple store for $69.
Palmpad?
Jul 19th
You have to be kidding me.
So a few months ago, you may have noticed that palm was dying in the dust, and one of the most unexpected things happened: HP bought palm. When you look back on it, it was smart. The Windows 7 slate wasn’t performing well at all, and palm was a dying company with some really great technology.
We all knew that a slate with webOS was on it’s way. But what I’m trying to point out is it’s physical appearance and the name. It seems like HP might just be copying apple.
First, look at that picture. How can you tell me that doesn’t look much like a sideways iPAD? It just happens to be running an interface identical to Palm’s webOS.
Second, the name. Another PAD?! It seems like this:
iPhone–>iPad
Palm Pre–> Palmpad
But there’s one difference: Only one of those pads was an original idea, not a copycat.
But I’ve asked about the slate before. I had a chat with the CTO of HP, Phil McKinney and I joked that I had almost brought in my iPad to take notes (that would have been a lolz), and I also said that I would have brought my slate. He confirmed to me that the launch would indeed be in 2010. And I was definitely curious when people said that the slate was vaporware. Also, Phil had never said a thing about Palm. That came as a complete surprise. But here we have it, the no-longer vaporware previously known as Slate, now known as the Palmpad. I’m still a little unhappy about the name because it is a complete copycat…
Well, back to making fun of Microsoft
Jul 16th
Unless of course you live under a rock, you have heard about the terrible antenna problems the iPhone 4 has been having. Basically, if you put your hand over the left black line, all of your signal drops. Apple was having a PR disaster, but today Apple held a press conference and it seems that the truths were revealed.
But I must say, Apple wasn’t playing fair here.
First, Steve Jobs ponts out how all of the smartphones antennagate. He showed test videos of many popular phones including the BlackBerry Bold. This is simply putting down the competition and saying “we can’t go against the laws of physics… yet.” [Steve Jobs]. Fine.
So I got curious and asked I wonder if my phone does this…
Well, I gutters its back to making fun of microsoft…
Swype
Jun 23rd
These days, to type on a keyboard, you press the touchscreen. This usually requires thumbs, which can get VERY tired after a lot of typing. It can also take a while…………
Swype is a way to replace typing by instead of touching the keys you swipe over the letters on the keyboard to create the word instead of typing them. It has already broken the world record for fastest typing speed.
Luckily, Swype is allowing beta users on Android. And thanks to my Droid Incredible I got the chance to try it out.
As you can see, it may take a little bit of practice, but there are other videos where people are much faster than me. I’ll probably be able to swype a bit faster when Im not in japan, as here it is so humid my screen fogs up and becomes sticky.
Swype is rolling out on many new phones and the beta seems to work just as advertised.
To get swype, you need to have an android phone, an internet connection (which it looks like you have), and an email address.
Just go to beta.swype.com and register. Make sure you can access that email address on your android phone. After registering, check your email on the phone and click the link. You will need to allow third party installations, which the process varies depending on your phone. Once it is downloaded, open it and login with the information you entered into the swype website. Continue through the rest (it is quite self explanitory) and once it is done installing, just long press any text field, select input method, and select swype. Tada! You’ve just installed swype on your android phone.
New betas are always on the way, and there are numerous tips for Swype here.
iPhone 4: Not as exciting as iPad
Jun 9th
Today, the iPhone 4 was released. Of course it’s exciting, but it’s much less exciting then the iPad.
Why?
Because compare this picture from Gizmodo from 2 months ago:
Gizmodo's iPhone, April 19th
To this one on the apple website.
Apple's iPhone, Jun 7th
I think they’re pretty similar.
And that’s why the news of it during WWDC was.. well… almost outdated. Everybody had already seen the fourth iPhone, just unofficially. So nobody was in for much of a surprise today.
But for the iPad, nobody had a clue. People were sure it would run Leopard, have a CD drive, USB ports, and they gave us this whole different idea. Not a tablet per se, but this thing that just made sense. And who knew!
But everybody knew about the iPhone. I didn’t walk home that day grinning because of excitement like I did during the iPad announcement. Because I had already seen the thing. And I’m pretty sure you all have as well.
