Are Our Wireless Providers Actually Providing, Or Are We Taking It In The Butt? (In A Metaphorical Sense)

Wireless providers have failed to match the prowess of their Internet brethren when it comes to signal quality and strength, the New York Times reports.

To head-up these complaints, money-hemorrhaging Sprint has released the Airave (watch out—therein lies a stupid video), a $99 machine that supposedly beefs your cellphone signal to the levels of a jacked leather daddy. But before the butt-party begins, you must prove you're having difficulties with your signal, and then you gotta pay $5 a month.

So ... why not get a landline instead? They're cheaper than the free condoms and subsequent broken hearts in a gay club restroom.

Must we be handcuffed to our $500 battery-sucking quasi-computers? Has the landline become as stigmatized as the Zack Morris' 12" dildo of a cellphone?

My psychic powers tell me that as articles and complaints such as these proliferate, more and more companies will release hard-to-prove-they're-working glorified Wi-Fi towers that'll take the torque of three, four, five, twelve simultaneously functioning phones at once. And we'll eat it like so many quarts of Astroglide.

All this, so wireless providers can sneak out the fire escape when it comes to actually doing their jobs.

Alternative: we could start writing letters again. Just gayin'.

Microsoft Wants Zune Exclusives, Probably Doesn't Understand Its Own Inadequacy

Here's a lesson for all y'all: exclusives are out, universalism is in.

Take Dead Rising, for instance. This Xbox 360 game came out with XBOX EXCLUSIVE written all over it. Now it's on the Wii. Soon it'll be on the PS3. Sure, neither system can hold a candle to the Xbox 360, but it goes to show that in this world, there are no such things as exclusives anymore.

So when Microsoft announced they were seeking exclusive content for their not-so-hip MP3 player, the Zune, they seemed to have ignored everything they should have learned.

These supposedly Zune-exclusive offerings come in the way of video, mostly. It'd be too difficult to get artist labels to sign directly with Microsoft, especially since Apple has a 70% share in the MP3 player market.

But videos ... hmm. I don't watch videos on my iPod. And I had to be reminded last weekend that music video still exist, given that MTV is a gonorrhea-fest of reality television and is practically shunned by all that is decent and right in the music community.

Besides all that—gimme a fuckin' break. I don't think the Zune will ever be successful, especially since recent Apple patents suggest the Zune Social (admittedly a cool idea) might be traversing to the iPod.

Thoughts? Diapers?

Supermarket Of The Future: Paper Or Plastic?

"Paper or plastic?"

These three words may soon be eliminated from supermarket transactions. IBM filed US Patent No. 7,407,089 which will store a customer's preference on a card.

Paired with nonexistent price tags and social networked shopping, this stands as another step forward in achieving the Supermarket of the Future.

However, it must be said: with our world turning green before our very eyes, shouldn't supermarkets universally support reusable shopping totes instead? Shouldn't "customer preference" instead be "Fascist demand customers use reusable totes or paper bags embedded with sensors that track whether or not said shopper recycles"?

IBM Granted "Paper-or-Plastic?" Patent [Slashdot]

iPhone/Touch OS 2.0.1 Sees The Light, Smoothes, Soothes

Some of the clunkiness of the iPhone was eradicated yesterday with the release of OS 2.0.1. The meaty, mealy download clocked in at 249.2MB. Some of the improvements:

• Drag app icons across multiple pages in one fluid motion
• More responsive contacts
• Quicker backups
• Quicker keypad loads
• Smoother screen rotation transitions via the onboard Safari Web browser

I'm especially pleased with the first update: I've been trying to drag those bitches ever since I laid my hands on the phone.

Also reported:

• More nimble user interface (UI)
• Increased performance when switching between applications on the home screen
• Quicker sync times

But that's not all! OS 2.0.1 also supposedly kills the Pwnage Tool for all those law- and phone-breakers out there. I'm not nearly ballsy enough to unlock my iPhone, but if you out there have done so, does 2.0.1 kill it for you? What other improvements have you seen? What are we lacking?

Apple's iPhone 2.0.1 software update kills Pwnage Tool [The Tech Herald]

P.S. It's nice to be back.

Scrabulous = Dead

After a long and difficult battle, the mega-popular Facebook application Scrabulous is officially dead. Log on, check it out, smile at this stock "sorry" from Facebook:

Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

The link goes to an e-mail alert service sign-up in case you're clinging to hopes that Scrabulous--or some iteration--will return.

We knew this was coming. Hasbro has done everything in its power to shut Scrabulous down, including but not limited to starting it's own version of the program.

What are your thoughts on Scrabulous's demise? Personally, I stopped using it months ago because it was sucking the productivity right out of my day job.

[via Today@PC World]

Yahoo! Unlimited Music To Be Severely Limited And By That I Mean Dead

DRM claims another: Yahoo! announced it was shutting down its Unlimited Music service on September 30, 2008 and that you'd better burn your tunes on a CD or else you're royally screwed.

They clearly learned nothing from Microsoft's DRM abortion: PlaysForSure, which Microsoft kindly repealed. It's about time Gates n' Co. bought Yahoo! and kept them from making errors like this.

Anyway, since your Unlimited Music is all encoded with DRM, and the servers that reauthorize music purchases are shutting down, there's no way for you to do keep your tunes. See, you can swap them from computer to computer. And you can't upgrade your computer, because that requires re-authorization, too. Gotta burn 'em, baby.

Now you're wondering why I put the iTunes logo up there. Mostly because I can't image anyone who doesn't use iTunes, therefore cannot fathom anyone reading this article will be personally effected by Yahoo!'s tumble down the stairs of shame.

Yahoo: Burn Your DRMed Tracks to CD Now [PC World]

Creative Zen Gets Creative Redesign

Who's Creative? And what's this Zen thing? Apparently it's an MP3 player that isn't an iPod. Who knew such a thing existed?

Their new design—what was the old design?—cops off the mosaic tableau and adds an unnecessary "z" to the proper spelling. It actually looks quite nice and shows a great deal of aesthetic sensibility that isn't often seen outside of a screen. See, the iPod Touch and iPhone all have pretty screens and menu designs, but the bodies remain somewhat ... bland. But this new gadget is pretty and if I weren't already an iPod owner, I'd definitely probably maybe almost think about buying it.

The Mozaic comes in 2, 4 and 8GB packages, and run from $80 to $150. I tried comparing this beaut to the iPod Nano but couldn't for the life of me find Mozaic's dimensions. Its screen is 0.2 inches smaller than the Nano's—that's all I got.

Product Page via CNET

(Watch out: the music on the product page is real annoying.)

Google Might Buy Digg, Create A Monster

Rumor is—and has been—that Google is inching toward social bookmark giant Digg.com, hoping to get its monstrous claws into the mega-popular website and take over the whole friggin' world.

The price floating at the moment is $200 million. PC World says, "Wha? Why so low?" To which I say, "Why so high? It's just a website for God's sake—or, even less, it's a phenomenon, a buzz-generating collection of people, and not really something that can held, stroked and loved."

I've never really paid any attention to Digg (mostly because my site has never been Dugg ... but it's been Stumbled Upon a bunch!), and there's a lot of controversy surrounding its fickle nature and the ... ahem ... general intelligence of the powers that be. To that I say, "Whatever. Buy it up. Clearly there's no such thing as too many monopolies."

Will Google Gobble Up Digg? [Today@PC World]

Firefox 3.0 Extension WikiLook Makes You Smart On The Fly

Sick of typing "def: wicked awesome" into Google? Really want the definition of "crunk" right away? Wait no longer: the new Firefox 3.0 extension WikiLook grants you access to Wikipedia instantly.

The process is simple. Download WikiLook from the Firefox Extensions page. Locate the word you need defined. Hold down the Shift key and lightly graze the word with your mouse pointer—think of it as petting the word lovingly, like a soft purring kitten. Wait half a second and a green window should pop up, handing over your definition.

The process takes a little getting used to and may be unnecessary for wicked awesome people who know everything already.

[Download Page via Lifehacker]

Craft The Creepiest Garden In The World, See Your Guest List Drop To Zero

I have no clue why this video is 5 minutes long, since nothing—literally nothing—happens besides some creepy Eyes Wide Shut music and smoke drifting lazily from the mouths of the dead, but it's super cool.

Using incense and creepy Eyes Wide Shut music, you too can have specters of the undead haunting your garden. Bring the young un's outside and tell them if they don't respect Daddy, they'll become lawn ornaments, too.

Pair this with the Zombie Lawn Ornament, and you're sure to never have guests over ever, ever again.

Oh, and don't forget this.

The Watch Of The Future

Created for a prototype competition celebrating Timex's 150th anniversary, this Nail Watch may be the future of digital time-telling.

Right now it's called the TX54, which is an utterly craptacular name. I'd like it be to called The Gouger. Anyway.

The Gouger Nail Watch would be disposable, available in multiple colors, and activated by clicking the tip of the fingernail. But like the fake nails you wear to funerals, The Gouger Nail Watch would probably pop off with any sort of pressure or when, true to its name, you try gouging someone's eyeballs out.

I hate watches. I can't wear them. My OCD forbids one arm to be heavier than the other. But if I can pop one of these suckers on my thumbnail, I totally would. What would the price be? $15 for a set of two? $100 for a Family Variety Pack?

I'd also like to see a holographic digital projection of the time accessible by tapping your right temple like Cyclops from the X-Men. How cool would that be?

Nail watch: The future of telling time? [Crave]

YouTube And TiVo Slip 'Neath The Sheets Together

Starting today, TiVo subscribers will be able to stream YouTube video clips onto their living room television sets. That means all the viral junk you've been straining your eyes to see on your computer—or trying to view at work, only to have the friggin' site blocked—can now be watched at your leisure at home.

This announcement—TiVo's first foray into streaming online content—comes mere days after the makers of the Netflix Roku set-top box announced the possibility of streaming Hulu content.

You'll need a TiVo Series 3 or TiVo HD in order to stream YouTube content.

Some industry heads are wondering if YouTube's invasion of television could jackknife regular programming. After all, YouTube streamed 3.8 billion videos in May alone.

[via: Hollywood Reporter]