Allerta inPulse Smartwatch for BlackBerry available for pre-order

You may recall a small rant I posted last week about the Allerta inPulse BlackBerry smartwatch. At the time, it was nothing more than a rumor documented by a couple of mock up renderings. It appears that it was in fact real and will soon be available for nerds everywhere. The one nagging question that kept pinging my thought process was the price. Being as that you need a stand alone BlackBerry for this watch to work, any price I assumed would be relatively cheap. Now that the inPulse watch is available for pre-order for $149, we can see that while affordable, it isn’t exactly cheap. If I were a BlackBerry user looking at either renewing my wireless contract and getting a new Berry or expanding the usefulness of my current Berry by ordering this inPulse BlackBerry watch sidekick thing, I can tell you that the $150 would certainly go towards a new Berry. To each his own. Though at $149, the inPulse isn’t exactly an impulse buy. Perhaps a $99 price point would spur more sales? The 150mAh that powers this thing may seem puny, but remember, this is a watch. According to the manufacturers, the inPulse will last roughly 4 days per 30 minute charge — pretty promising in the battery department I’ll admit. Still, we’ll have to wait and see how many units freeupyourhands.com moves. Look for actual shipments to start headin’ out the door in February/2010. How do you think they’ll fare?

Specs:

• 1.3″ OLED display

• Bluetooth v2.0+EDR

• Glass lens w/ full metal body

• 150 mAh lithium-ion polymer battery / microUSB port for charging

• Vibrating motor

• Over-the-air firmware updates

• Requires BlackBerry OS 4.3+

Find out more about the inPulse at getinpulse.com
BerryReview
CrackBerry

Is Samsung’s “Needle Thin” LCD too small?

At what point does thiness cross the line from novelty/cool to being “too” thin/small. While I know that one day, TV’s will be a mere film sprayed onto any surface we want, current technology isn’t quite there yet. The next best thing of course being super slim variations. I also understand that you have to start somewhere. But the the needle tv isn’t anywhere near my “gotta have it” list with a disappointing 5,000:1 contrast ratio. At least the 120 Hz refresh is promising. Again, I know that within even a year, a TV of this size will boast specs 2-3x as good. So why buy this one? As much as I like being able to be a part of the elite few with the latest gadgets and electronic toys, there are times when it’s just not worth it. Spray on TV’s that I mentioned above are still a ways off as is the technology that would allow any device to automatically detect these “video films” and allow them to broadcast to the respective TV films. Now that that is a cool slim TV.

You see, being on the cutting edge of “thin” isn’t necessarily the cutting edge for those who actually use each respective device to their fullest potential. Case in point: the thinnest computers are never top performers when specs are concerned. Instead, they are often “pretty” looking or mere bragging points for manufacturers to claim their device is a whole .00001mm slimmer than the competitor, thereby giving them an excuse to charge an extra $100. I don’t hate thin. In fact I want gadgets, tvs, and electronics as a whole to shrink and morph into all kinds of objects. My head runs wild with the possibilities. We’re just not quite there yet.

Anyone else feeling the same or is this near-invisible-when-viewed-from-the-side-TV blocking your rational thought?

Image Source

iPhone problems? Could it be because AT&T doesn’t know how to configure their own network?

Many iPhone users on AT&T in the U.S. usually spend at least a small part of each day rationalizing why their coverage or network performance sucks so bad. Everything from hardware to network problems cross their minds as they desperately seek an answer. Many will claim that AT&T simply needs to add more towers as increased network load from increasingly dense cities puts an ever increasing load on each tower. But is that really the answer? Could be something as simple as an improperly configured network? Surely they must have that part down…right? Maybe not.

According to Brough Turner, a telecommunications employee since 1983, AT&T does in fact have an improperly configured network sighting examples of how ping times on AT&T are most often either really good or really bad with no real middle ground/grey area. More specifically, Brough Tuner states that “misconfigured buffers in their mobile core network” are the sole reason AT&T’s network sucks. Further supporting his hypothesis, IntoMobile states simple facts regarding population density in Shanghai whom back in 2007, had a staggering average of 13,400 people per square kilometer. That’s insane! Even still, Shanghai was only ranked as the 10th most densely populated city. Now take into account that a bulk of AT&T’s problems in the US occur in large cities where densities are sky high. Sky high on a national scale however, as globally speaking, the most densely populated U.S. city is that of Los Angeles with a paltry 2,700 people per square kilometer and a ranking of 90th place when population densities are concerned. As you can see, the problems here in the U.S. are a fraction of what China goes through, yet they somehow manage to keep their networks up and running without the ridiculous problems that plague us stateside.

So what is AT&T’s problem? It’s anybody’s guess. Does Turner’s hypothesis have any weight? Sure it does. But AT&T will deny any such issue and repeat the same “huge increase in demand line”. While true, you can only blame demand for so long before people begin questioning you as to why it’s taking so long to fix the issue at hand.

IntoMobile > Slashdot > Brough Turner

Image Source

Nerdiest Halloween costume ever: *Almost* Fully functioning iPhone costume complete with working 40″ display.

Clever isn’t quite the right word. Financially gifted? Perhaps. You’d have to have at least some spare cash to create such a costume as seen in the video above. Reko and John have officially created the *almost* most geeky Halloween costume. I highlight the “almost” because while two massive 40″ displays are used to display what each person’s iPhone is displaying, the big screens themselves aren’t touch capable and hence aren’t capable of controlling the iPhone themselves. Still, an A for effort is warranted. If you’re thinking of replicating this nifty costume idea, make sure you can handle the added weight — 85 lbs. — and be comfortable lugging around a car battery. Hey, that TV isn’t exactly a light drinker if you know what I mean. Anyone else think they can top this?

TUAW > MacRumors Forums

Quad-core Macbook Pro’s coming soon, very soon?

Oh the geek inside of me is giddy. News of quad-core mac’s are starting to trickle forth thanks to two new Macbook Pro model numbers referenced in the latest Snow Leopard 10.6.2 build seeded to devs. Such an update isn’t too far from reality as the last update bestowed upon these mobile workhorses was way back in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference. An update must be close if the Macbook Pro’s are to remain near the top of the heap. All fingers point towards Intel Clarksfield chips being integrated (read: Core i5/i7 chips) with better power management, increased performance, and the ability to kick any processor up a few notches when extra peeds are needed. Processors aren’t the only talk of the town though as out goes Nvidia in favor of ATI’s latest 4500 mobile GPU cards which should bring a rather nice increase to mobile graphics performance. It’ll be interesting to see how the use of ATI GPU’s affects the current power/battery saving scheme Apple has crafted by using both an integrated Nvidia 9400 GPU along with a dedicated Nvidia 9600GPU.

None of this has been confirmed yet, but again, such upgrades are highly suspected and are likely to happen relatively soon. Glad you held of on getting those new unibody MBP’s? I know I am. Core i7 equipped 17″ MBP here I come!

AppleInsider

Netflix soon coming to a PS3 near you!

Starting in November, US PS3 owners will be able to take advantage of all the streaming goodness Netflix has to offer. Sony’s closest competitor, Microsoft with the Xbox 360, has had Netflix support for almost a year now. The Xbox 360 wasn’t the only piece of hardware to support Netflix however as many other TV box services and hardware currently feature varying amounts of Netflix support. Because of that, this PS3 adoption is important for continual growth for Sony’s gaming love child. The new service doesn’t come perfectly though. Until a firmware update is issued by Sony, you’ll need to order a free disc from Netflix that will need to be inserted into your PS3 each and every time you want to get your Netflix groove on. A pain for sure but as signals from both Sony and Netflix lead me to believe that this disc based access method is a short-term solution — hopefully not part of some larger, SONY funded DRM scheme. Hey, I wouldn’t put it past them with their countless attempts at such crazy projects in the past. Any movie buffs and PS3 junkies feeling a bit better with themselves today?

NYT

iRiver eschews market trends, treads on with iRiver B30 multimedia player

I know we’ve said it multiple times, but we’ll say it once more for those who may have missed it: Smartphones are hot. Because of that, dedicated media players such as iRiver, iPods, Zunes etc. are seeing decreased sales as people look to consolidate all of their needs to one gadget. iRiver pushes on however with their latest media player, the iRiver B30. By now, you can expect fairly average specs from a player in this category — 2.8″ 280 x 320 display, WOW earphones, and an integrated DMB Tuner. As far as supported formats go, back in the day of my iRiver iHP-120, practically any and every format including OGG (and FLAC if Rockbox’d) were officially supported. As media players have proliferated, with the masses only using a few popular formats such as MP3, AAC, WMA and WAV, support for many of those more obscure, niche formats has unfortunately been dropped. Supported video formats include MP4, DivX, XviD and H.264.

Storing all of your digital collection can be done with either an 8GB model or higher capacity 16GB version. Thankfully iRiver allows end users to further expand their libraries via microSD card as 8GB and 16GB just isn’t what it used to be. Rolling back to that DMB tuner, if you happen to live in a country that supports the technology, take comfort in knowing that mobile TV is but a few button presses away. Sadly here in the states the technology just hasn’t quite caught on.

To rehash, since smartphones are gaining ground so quickly these days, do dedicated media players such as the iRiver B30 have much draw for you? Or are you looking on to bigger and better things?

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