Luckiest 13-year old in the world wins Apple’s billion app download contest

If you are any type of an Apple fan, I guarantee that you want to be Connor Mulcahey, a 13 year-old from Weston, Conn.  This lucky kid has offcially been named the winner of the billion app download contest by Apple and as promised will recieve a $10,000 iTunes gift card, a 32GB iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a new unibody Macbook Pro.  *Speechless…and drooling*  Enjoy your free bounty dear young child.  You are the envy of many.

Source: Macworld, *Image Source: Zcache*

Is posting “home footage” of a sporting event illegal?

I hope to god not.  If so, I sould/would have been in jail quite a while ago.  I myself in the few short years that I have had a phone with video capability have shared countless numbers of videos I shot at various professional sporting events.  To any normal American  here in the States, we rightly assume that since we were allowed to take our phones in to the venue, and take short clips of the events, we can do pretty much whatever we want with said clips because we own them.  Apparently they roll a little differently in the UK.  Does a sporting arena/leagure have the right to allow you to capture content and then claim copyright ownership?

Save a few dollars with T-Mobile UK’s annual Blackberry plans

Are you the type of person who can’t stand dealing with the annoyance of monthly bills from here and there and wish you could pay lump sums once a year?  Why you frugal saver you.  If in fact that is you, T-Mobile UK is rolling out a new plan that really isn’t that bad at all.  For $265 per year, you get unlimited data, web access, and email, plus a Blackberry Pearl 8110.  For the less than capapble human calculators that equates to roughly $22/month for data access.  A pretty sweet deal in most necks of the woods in the jungle that is the world.  Of course, minutes, texts, and MMS messages are still payed monthly on top of your annual data payment.  But still, once the big payment is out of the way, you monthly bills are substantially cheaper.  Now if only we could get slightly more updated Berries for that plan, then we’d be talkin’.  Montly haters, will this annual scheme win you over?

Source: Engadget Mobile, Opt Development

Orange Vegas: Making touchscreens more affordable

UK mobile phone buyers in the market for a cheap “feature phone” that eschews traditional and clumsy buttons in favor of a touchy feely screen will have a nice little option starting now.  The device, the “Orange Vegas”, is a new low cost offering from Orange UK that is the latest phone to claim the title of cheapest touchscreen phone.  Now we all know that cheap doesn’t really ever mean better as features get cut and specs get lower in proportion to the price.  However, the Vegas isn’t all that bad.  Available in black or pink, the Vegas will give users features such as:

• 2.4″ touchscreen
• dual-band GPRS
• 1.3 megapixel camera
• FM Radio
• MP3 playback
• 128MB internal memory
• Support for up to 4GB microSD cards
• weight: 84 grams

The best parts are: the price, £48.50 (or $71 USD for you dollar users), pay-as-you-go plans, 300 free texts with any £10 top up,  £10 credit and unlimited access to popular sites such as Bebo, Facebook, and MySpace.  The services aspect of the Vegas is definitely the bread and butter of this little wonder device.  Orange users, is this affordable touchscreen the phone of your dreams?  Feature wise it isn’t that hot.  But hey, not everyone needs the world in the fingertips – really!  At least it looks pretty cool and expensive.

Source: Boy Genius, *Image source: IT Tech News*

Amazon Kindle build cost = $185….Not quite

The last several days have seen many people talking up the fact that Amazon was making a pretty nice porfit on the Kindle.  iSupply, a company notorious for tearing gadgets apart and then calculating the  price to build each respective gadget, came up with a fbuild cost of $185.49 for the Amazon Kindle.  The price Amazon charged: $359.  So where is that extra $174 going?  Well, while iSupply is usually pretty spot on and accurate in their estimations, their figure for the Kindle doesn’t include things such as shipping, manufacturing, or marketing costs among others meaning the true cost is most likely well north of $185.  Even iSupply themselves say their numbers aren’t 100% and of course don’t take in to account the previously mentioned costs.  So if you were one of the new Kindle adopters who were getting all hot and bothered with the insane amount of profit that Amazon made thanks to you, you can now relax.  While they did make some profit, it isn’t nearly as high as was being reported.  *exhale*

Soure: Alley Insider

WiMax gets another setback by way of a lawsuit

WiMax sure is having a tough time coming to fruition.  While not the first setback/speed bump the Sprint partner, Clearwire has had, the latest is yet possibly another sign that maybe they just aren’t meant to be.  Seems as if people aren’t exactly thrilled with the coverage and speeds they’ve been experiencing over Clearwire’s network.  The plaintiffs claim Clearwire’s network of often falling short of their own claims of reliable service at broadband/DSl speeds that slow down and crawl at dial up speeds – that is if they even have working service at all as it apparently also goes down quite often.  Further complicating the issue for Clearwire, the plaintiffs are also claiming that the ETF for the service is unlawful and void.  Clearly, Sprint/Clearwire/WiMax are having some major growing pains that if not ironed out relatively quickly and to the publics liking, will pretty much signal the end for WiMax.  Sprint, you might want to start looking for some new 4G technology.  If the whole Clearwire/WiMax thing goes under leaving Sprint without any near term 4G service options, I think it’s safe to say we can pretty much write off Sprint as a national carrier.  Thoughts?

 
Source: Into Mobile, Cellular News *Image Source: Dvice*

Obama coming into 2007…finally getting his Gov’t approved 8830

Count this as a win for Crackberry followers everywhere.  It seems as the President’s long standing declaration on his personal Blackberry usage, as well as his refusal to give it completely up has paid off.  Instead of having to carry around that god awful Spectera Edge which is a monstrosity of epic proportions, word is that Obama will be getting a high security version of the Blackberry 8830 World Edition.  You may ask, “Aren’t Blackberries already high security?”.  Well technically yes, but not “Government secure apparently”.  The revelation in this digital addiction story came thanks to Gensis Key’s security and encryption software, “SecureVoice”.  It is also being reported that Obama’s closest top aides as well as his special First Lady will also be getting a copy of the super high tech and secure Blackberry.  Couldn’t they have at least given him something a little better looking such as a Curve?  Ok…camera = bad.  What about the 8820?  Give the man some WiFi love for crying out loud.  The security agency must be Verizon fans….   At least it’s better than that Spectera Edge/Blackberry horse and pony show combo that he was carrying around.

Source: Phone Arena, Blackberry Cool, Washington Times, *Image Source: Harvey Nash*