Archive for June 26th, 2009

Right after its launch, we noted the sundry problems reported by new iPhone 3GS owners, but this is the first time we’ve heard tell of this specific one… and it seems like a doozy. It’s unclear exactly what caused this, but what is apparent is an unattractive, brownish / pinkish discoloration on the above handset. The user claims it was caused by overheating during a period of using the GPS and 3G of the phone. Either way, it looks pretty crummy now, doesn’t it? What about the rest of you with new, white iPhones? Anything to report? One more shot of this looker after the break.

Continue reading White iPhone 3GS reportedly overheats, turns a browner shade of white

Filed under: Cellphones

White iPhone 3GS reportedly overheats, turns a browner shade of white originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Far be it from us to make fun of people for their favorite pastimes — that would, in fact, be the pot calling the kettle black (considering that we’re both addicted to gadgets and quilting, we have little room to point fingers). However, it’s possible that you might be a serious nerd if you’re caught gabbing on your iPhone in the midst of a hike during a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. Good sir, we salute thee!

Laura: “Are you telling me I’m not eligible for an upgrade until 1865!?”
Joe: “North and South could both agree that lack of Flash support was a grave oversight”
Thomas: “Robert E. Lee!? I thought you said rob a 3G”
Josh T: “What? I said ‘what’s so civil about war anyway?’”
Nilay: “An app store divided against itself cannot stand.”
Don: “Scurvy? Nope, not an app for that.”
Chris: “Yeah, I mistook it for a piece of hardtack last week, just came back out this morning. Works great!”

Ross R.: “I like that it runs Merrimac OS X.”

[Thanks, Ethan]

Filed under: Cellphones

Caption Contest: Civil War reenactment + iPhone = ubernerd originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the last few weeks it hasn’t been unusual to see AT&T among Twitter’s trending topics — following its disappointing performance at WWDC and the activation issues with the iPhone last week, the carrier hasn’t exactly been garnering positive reactions from its legions of Twitter-using members. Today, it’s reached the top spot on Twitter once again, and, once again, AT&T is the target of waves of contempt.

The source of the recent flurry of AT&T tweets is Adam Savage of MythBusters fame, who tweets that for “a few hours of web surfing in Canada” he was charged a whopping $11,000. AT&T is apparently claiming that Savage managed to download 9 gigabytes in Canada using his USB data connection (which he calls “frakking impossible“). What’s worse, the customer service rep Savage was dealing with was apparently a bit loose with their decimal points, telling Savage that “data is charged at .015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb”. Read that again — there’s a couple orders of magnitude difference there.

A couple of days ago we wrote about Facebook’s new Live Stream Box funtionality. Ustream was the first to offer a live video solution for users with Facebook Pages. But the sign up for the free option is limited, and the white-label version carries a one-time fee of $15,000. Enter Stickam. It’s offering live video via its StreamAPI service to anyone. And there’s no set up fee and no monthly fee. But it will still cost you.

The StreamAPI solution is pay-as-you-go, with live video costing you 45 cents a gigabyte. That includes support for HD video, customizable solutions (with no Flash knowledge required) and analytics. It’s a similar approach that Stickam takes with its regular StreamAPI product.

Yes, that’s the one and only MJ to open the podcast — this one was recorded just shortly after the Engadget crew had learned the news. Join Josh, Paul, Nilay and special guest Chris Ziegler as they deny the Nokia N97, get angry at the HTC Hero, bargain with Windows 7, depress themselves over the fate of the netbook, and finally learn to accept the Zune HD’s Tegra processor. We won’t lie — Engadget Podcast 152 was a struggle, but in the end we all learned a little something about life, love, and forgiveness.

Update: Any further tasteless MJ jokes will be met with a swift ban. Be nice!

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller
Guest: Chris Ziegler
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Song: Billie Jean

Hear the podcast

00:02:26 – Nokia N97 review: a tale of two bloggers
00:26:28 – HTC Hero running Android and Sense UI leaks from HTC’s own website (updated, official, video)
00:30:28 - HTC Hero hands-on: Flash, keyboard and ruminations (updated!)
00:48:09 – Windows 7 official pricing announced, limited pre-orders start tomorrow
01:03:40 – HP Mini 5101 cleans up nice, shows the serious side of netbooks
01:05:15 – HP ProBook 4310s hands-on
01:10:25 – Entelligence: Netbooks, R.I.P.
01:22:50 – Zune HD has a Tegra processor, confirms official Zune podcast

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[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace

Download the podcast

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Contact the podcast

1-888-ENGADGET or podcast (at) engadget (dot) com.

Twitter: @joshuatopolsky @futurepaul @reckless @engadget

Filed under: Podcasts

Engadget Podcast 152 – 06.26.2009: The Day the Music Died 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Energy-saving monitors are hardly anything new, but Philips has taken things a bit farther than most with its new 22-inch Brilliance LCD, which packs a built-in infrared “PowerSensor” that can detect when someone’s sitting in front of it. If it finds that it’s been left by its lonesome, it’ll dial down the brightness and cut power consumption by 50% — all of which operates independently from the PC, so there’s no compatibility issues to worry about. As a monitor, however, things are a bit less exciting, with it boasting a 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, a 5ms response time, and the usual VGA and DVI inputs. No word on a release ’round here just yet, but it looks like folks in the UK will be able to pick this one up next month for £170, or about $280.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Filed under: Displays

Philips debuts PowerSensor-equipped Brilliance monitor originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few years ago, Max Levchin—of PayPal and Slide fame— told me there were two kinds of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley: Those who work tirelessly and are great at execution, and those who are visionary and truly create new ideas—and sometimes new markets. Levchin put himself in the former category. Indeed, a lot of Slide’s success has just been the result of doing a better job ripping off ideas from competitors like RockYou. He put Evan Williams of Blogger and Twitter in the latter. At the time, Twitter was only a techy phenomenon, but Max noted that unlike a lot of other Web 2.0 companies, Twitter was one of the only ones doing something untested and new.

With all the hyperbole about Twitter today, if I asked you whether the executor or the visionary would wind up being more successful, nearly everyone would say the visionary. But—as Levchin no doubt knew when he made this point—the visionary is usually the one that gets the shaft in Silicon Valley.

It’s obviously a bit hard to put too much faith in Zune HD rumors when even Steve Ballmer himself can’t keep things straight, but someone claiming to be a Software Engineer at Microsoft (who has also dropped Zune HD tips in the past) has now spoken at some length with Neowin.net, and provided plenty of speculation fodder in the process. The biggest of those purported details is word that the Zune HD will run between $249 and $280 for the base 16GB model, and that Microsoft is also apparently considering a 64GB model for further on in the model year in addition to the planned 32GB model. Other tidbits include word that the Zune HD will boast full support for 720p movies though its HDMI out and that, as we had heard before, it’s supposedly on track for a launch in early September.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Zune HD rumor mill: $249, 720p movies, 64GB model down the road? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If there’s one thing we can decisively say about iPhone users — and everyone else, for that matter — it’s that they shouldn’t see naked people, even if they want to. Ever. Apple agrees, and it turns out that they were responsible for the removal of the Hottest Girls app after all, contrary to a statement by its developer that the app had tapped out his server which supposedly forced him to ask Apple to pull it while he ramped up capacity. Apple released a statement today confirming this, but here’s where it gets interesting: the company says that “the developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed” — in other words, the guy pulled a bait-and-switch on Apple by serving different content to his app after it had been approved using more PG-rated content. Look, we’re all for filling our iPhones with gigabytes upon gigabytes of stuff that would make us especially anxious to trigger the Remote Wipe feature if we were to misplace it, but we’ve got to admit — the dude went about it the wrong way here, Apple caught him, the world keeps turning. Come on, it’s not like you don’t have thousands of naughty pics in a folder cleverly named “recipes” that you can just sync anyway.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Apple behind removal of Hottest Girls iPhone app after all originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When you’ve just gotten laid off, the last thing you want to hear is that you can’t cash your last check because of one final payroll screwup. But that’s apparently exactly what’s going on over at MySpace, which laid off over 30% of its staff (or around 480 employees) earlier this month. The company has just asked many of its laid off employees to refrain from cashing their checks due to an error in calculating how much they should be receiving. Employees are getting voicemails from FIM notifying them that the company has issued a stop payment on their checks, and that they can expect an updated check next week.

This isn’t the company’s only blunder during this sensitive time. We’ve heard that that last day for the terminated MySpace employees was chaotic and poorly planned, and that the company hasn’t been very tactful regarding treatment of laid off employees. In the press release announcing the layoffs, CEO Owen Van Natta called the company “bloated”, displaying a surprising lack of respect towards the terminated workers. It gets worse: MySpace has been holding a number of meetings for staff who are still at the company, during which they’ve referred to the recently terminated employees as “fat”. Unfortunately, some of these “fatty” employees have been present at these very meetings — the company has kept a number of terminated employees onboard through the duration of their contract, creating a group of so-called “walking dead” who are being insulted to their faces. Classy.