Time Warner no longer pursuing tiers/caps, still cutting service for “over usage”…on “unlimited” plans..

When I said the last post was the last post about Time Warner…I lied.  Sorry.  Forgive me.  But as you know the only way to get something done in this country is by mass force.  The mass being the people, and the force being those people dropping their worthless TW service.  The latest chapter in the ongoing story with TW and their stubborn refusal to flat out dump caps, tiers, and kicking people off of the unlimited accounts for actually using them deals with just that.  Ryan Howard of Austin, Texas found out first hand that Time Warner’s caps are still being enforced even though they publicly announced that they were backing down for now to “re-educate”.  The “announcement was nothing but a PR move.  So what Time Warners exact strategy?  

49 reasons to travel the world with the Blackberry Storm

While I am not too particular on the Blackberry Storm myself (I don’t really like the touchscreen on it), it is no doubt a monumental step for RIM. With the Storm, RIM entered a new market that was devoid of their signature feature, the keyboard. While the whole click screen wasn’t my favorite, their are many people who have fallen in love with the combination of the whole touch and “clicking” idea. Because of the Storm’s obvious focus on the touchscreen, it has time and time again been compared to the iPhone, often coming in behind Apple’s jesus phone. Because of that, you won’t see many reviews or articles about the many benefits of the Storm and all that it has to offer. For those of you who are looking at purchasing a Storm but need a small push over the mental edge, check out this article on Vodafone’s blog that gives some honestly good insight on the Blackberry Storm. While some will argue it is biased because it is an article on a product straight from a carrier that is selling the same product, each of the 49 reasons are valid reasons that any Storm user can appreciate.

Chipotle app…Where art thee?

Lets take a short break in the craziness that is life and crawl through the depths of your mind.  Ok, we aren’t really going that far back in you mind…January ’09 to be exact.  Do you remember a particular app that was made by the popular restaurant chain called “Chipotle”?  It was available for a whopping few hours before being yanked because the servers literally melted into the ground.  Do you remember their claim that they would relaunch the app within a couple weeks?  Well, three months later here we are, appless and still hungry.  What gives?  Well I wanted to know that very same answer too so I gave Chipotle some contact love by way of phone and email as many different aliases.  Right inside is their answer.  

Blazing fast Z-Drive’s from OCZ….*FAST*

Solid state drives have yet to become mainstream in the computers of the present.  While they are very much easily available, and while we have many several options when choosing a solid state drive, they aren’t quite perfect yet.  The two biggest complaints regarding the stationary storage devices is that they are both slow, and their lifespan isn’t as long as most spinning drives if you are a heavy user.  Well science is making strides on both fronts daily in the quest of eventually replacing spinning drives with the solid state variety.  OCZ is upping the speed ante today with their Z-Drive line of PCI-express SSD’s.  Actually, the Z-Drive’s are a grouping of four SSD’s strapped to a RAID controller all on top a PCI-express card, meaning no more SATA bottlenecking and giving you up to 2x the performance of standard single SSD’s.  Super!  The juicy numbers: 510MB/s read and 480MB/s write mean this drive will definitely please the more performance oriented individuals leaving them with big dumb smiles stretching from ear to ear.  Sizes?  Prices?  Right inside…

4G coming to Finland by way of 1800MHz

Finland natives rejoice as the path to 4G righteousness is upon your distant neighbors doorstep.  TeliaSonera, Elisa, and DNA have recently picked up quite a bit of space in the 1800MHz spectrum in order to develop and deploy their 4G networks in the next couple of years.  While the move to go with the 1800MHz frequency instead of the much more popular 2.6Ghz frequency used by many other European nations might seam a bit foolish as it will contribute to more radios having to be stuffed inside of each handset meaning meaning the possibility of slightly higher costs per handset, as well as “exclusive” models for certain frequencies, the benefits of going it alone will come by way of a “cheaper” roll out.  How so?  Well, the 1800MHz frequency will travel further distances as well as penetrate walls further than the 2.6GHz frequency will.  Because of this, the carriers implementing the 1800MHz frequency will be able to theoretically use less towers meaning lower upgrade costs to the 4G network.  While it is a joyous announcement, do realize that it is still a year or two before we will begin to see new 4G handsets making their way to market.  Until then we’ll just have to wait, and wait we will.

Source: Engadget Mobile, LVM.fi

Mobile Payments *slowly* gaining momentum. 2012 the year of mass acceptance?

If there is one thing people like, it is taking ten different objects and turning them into one multi-function power house.  For the digital minded, that is why we have smartphones.  Calendars, address books, web browsers, email, etc. are all at our finger tips meaning we don’t have to carry each one of the mentioned and unmentioned objects with us seperately.  Remember, there was a time when we did, but now with technology and mobile devices becoming so much more widespread, smaller, and more capable, it is almost hard to even remember back to that time, even though it was just a few short years ago.  Mobile payments have the ability to greatly shrink the size of our wallets and purses and make us overall lighter.  No longer will we have to fumble around with various pieces of plastic just to for our purchases, instead we’ll just wave our mobile device over a scanner of some sort and all will be taken care of.  Would you believe that technology has been around for years, hoever, the U.S. just might start seeing it in the near future. Excited?

Cupcake *Officially* coming to T-Mobile Germany in May?

If you haven’t already picked up a copy of the Android 1.5 SDK (you rebel you), good news as you won’t have to wait much longer, if sources are correct that is.  The Android 1.5 update a.k.a. “Cupcake” has been given a May release date thanks to T-Mobile Germany compliments of their website, which features a page detailing the goods that are on their way.  For those of you who aren’t quite familiar with the whole Cupcake deal, it will be a very liberating release to say the least, with the following features:

• Onscreen keyboard (Finally!!)
• Video recording/playback
• One click Picasa and YouTube uploads
• Auto orienting screen for vertical/horizontal use
• Bluetooth Stereo headset support

Yes, Cupcake/Android 1.5 is going to be sweet indeed.  The more straight laced individuals who eschew all of the “leaked” downloads and pre-release hype you definitely have patience.  Soon it will be well worth it, I promise.  U.S. G1′ers, expect a States release soon after our german brethren.
Source: Into Mobile, Talk Android