One of the best Android phones out there, Samsung Galaxy S III and Blackberry’s new Z10 square off this Superbowl I’m not a big football fan, I find it fun to watch, but I don’t go out of my way to watch it until the Superbowl. Why? With the added excitement of the game I have the added excitement of commercials pushing the envelope. I still have fond memories of the Budweiser frogs! Anyway, this years lineup of commercials was… sad. Nothing really stood out or made me laugh out loud. Two commercials in particular were ones I was looking forward to seeing. Blackberry and Samsung’s spots. How did they play out and did they do the job of grasping their audience.
Feb 05
Jan 31
Did I get your attention? Good, because RIM isn’t dead, just the name. RIM, creators of the Blackberry line of smartphones, has now dropped their business name for simply “Blackberry”. The change makes sense, since most people, when talking about RIM devices, reference them as Blackberry anyway. This announcement was the first of many in a big press event yesterday to celebrate Blackberry 10 release. What is Blackberry 10 and what else did they show off? Learn more after the break!
Jan 30
After the dust has settled from the new development involved with a decade old DMCA law, we can take a closer look at what the ending of the unlock exemption means for everyone with a new or used cell phone. Upon it’s announcement people cried foul of the DMCA’s over broad definition of what is protected under copyright law. That any circumventing of factory installed software to get media is considered a breach of copyright. This is overly broad because you may just jailbreak a device to test your own programs, or unlock because you travel abroad often. But because you COULD use these processes to get to media that you typically wouldn’t, it is illegal under the DMCA. So why did this happen and how?
Jan 28
Unlocking your used cell phone may be illegal thanks to a strict anti-hacking law called DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) passed last year, with folks online pretty upset with it’s broad stroke of power. This didn’t really hit the public’s eye until recently though, with the closing of a short window of legality allowed by the librarian of Congress. Back in October it was decided that, under the DMCA, unlocking your phone was illegal. The Librarian of Congress allowed a three month window for people to unlock as many phones as they wanted… that window closed this past Saturday.
Dec 21
A Vimeo user by the name of alversae caught a UPS delivery man stealing his daughters Christmas present off their porch using their front door security camera. The Christmas present was an iPad Mini, which was probably easy to surmise by the delivery man from the size of the package and where it was coming from. The video, shown below, shows the Fedex guy find a pre-signed document for delivery, scans the package, and then drop it off. A while later, around 1pm, the UPS driver drops off his own package and sees the Fedex package. He leaves for about a minute, only to return, take a close look and appear to “scan” the device, and then walk off with it.
Mar 19
This may not work so well
It can be a scary world out there sometimes, and with the growing population of cell phone users, higher price tags and quick turn over it is no wonder cell phone theft is on the rise. Not just theft out of someones purse or when you leave it on a table. Straight grabbing it from your hand and running down the street theft. Blatant theft that is on the rise in places like Philadelphia. Last yea there were over 400 cell phone thefts reported on Philadelphia’s mass transit, up from 182 in 2008. What can you do to avoid being one of those numbers?
