Tour with trackpad and WiFi (Essex/9650) seen in Sprint garb

The BlackBerry Tour is by far the best CDMA BlackBerry yet. It has style, power, and sophistication. But one glaring omission — WiFi — fails to earn it a “buy” rating in my book. Remember, no matter how good your carrier, there will always be dead spots. The Tour 2/Essex/9650 is no secret. It’s been rumored about and talked about for many months. In fact, shortly after (as in days) after the original Tour, talk of an updated model with WiFi and a trackpad were heard.

Now that actual pictures have emerged CrackBerry users all over can feel confident knowing that help is on the way. If you held off on the original Tour congrats. The updated model while not really all that different save for the two additions already mentioned will no doubt bring a smile to countless Berry users. Who’s planning on upgrading from their original and who waited it out?

CrackBerry

HTC to release widgets for non-HTC devices?

After my colorful rant voicing my displeasure for HTC’s move to C&D LevelupStudios and their “Beautiful Widgets” which mimicked the Sense UI widgets, I was mad, sad, and frustrated. But a few obscure, hidden gems on AndroLib highlighted by one eagle-eyed Phandroid commenter digs up some dirt that could very well make me eat my words.

The three test applications in the picture above show nothing more than a “test” application put forth by HTC themselves. Awesome, what’s the significance? The HHHTest app in particular was given a deeper glance by that eagle-eyed commenter and was found to house the following verbiage:

com.htc.rosiewidgets.sample

On the surface it doesn’t look like much. But if you recall waaaaaay back in June, prior to the Sense UI release, Sense UI was actually called by it’s internal code name — “Rosie”. So “Rosie Widgets” as highlighted in the sample HHHTest widget would lead a cognitive mind to speculate that HTC is close to pushing out HTC widgets for non-HTC devices. Consider me intrigued and excited.

If a price tag is attached, hopefully it’s not something too absurd like $4.99 for the popular weather + flipclock combo. Although, even with Beautiful Widgets last version — weather animations and other refinements — it wasn’t quite as good as HTC’s variant. Perhaps $2.99 or $3.99 would be a better approach.

Oh HTC, you sure do toy with my emotions…

Android Central

For the Android die-hard fan: Android T-Shirts

Ya I’m pretty much head over heels for Android. I’m not blind however and know there are several areas (market, fragmenting environment, better hardware) that need some TLC. Still, I find myself drawn to Android much like an Apple fan is drawn to the whole Apple culture and image. Branded clothing for something like a mobile OS is rather rare and not exactly something you’ll find at your local shopping center. Such expressions of the geek culture often require specialized stores. Todays such store would be The Google Store.

For $21.25 I can rock two super cool, super geeky Android shirts. With as much as you can find t-shirts for these days, $20 for a twofer sounds amazing. Hurry up, Christmas is almost here!

• Purchase an Android T-shirt for $10.75 a piece: The Google Store

  Geeky-Gadgets > Journal du Geek

Making road construction faster, easier, and completed on time: The Road Printer

I can certainly appreciate the hard work that most road construction workers do. Rain or shine, hot or cold, those guys and gals are out there in elements that most of us simple hate, doing hard physical labor. But as technology advances, we’re going to find more mundane and physical jobs taken out of the mix, replaced with robotic counterparts. Such is the scenario the “Road Printer” depicts.

The nifty thing about this little space lander-esque device is that it packs everything inside needed to go all artsy on the streets. With local paint storage, big buttons — so big you could push them with your boot in fact — and a big solar panel atop it’s head, the Road Printer makes quite a case for itself. The solar panel in particular is a nice touch, making it fully autonomous and self suficient. Well, that is until the paint runs out and the skies go dark.

When we eventually see such a device, look for bigger cities and those with plenty of excess cash to pick these up first with smaller towns falling in somewhere down the timeline. You know, even though I’m not part of any street department or local municipal services, I wouldn’t mind getting a Road Printer and doing some crafty things on my driveway. A modern Picaso I am…

Ubergizmo > YankoDesign

Samsung’s Bada OS takes a walk, flashes us all.

Best choice of words for a title? Eh, debatable. But it’s not relevant. What is relevant however are screenshots of Samsung’s new in-house Bada OS. When you see the pictures above, what impressions do you get? I’ll admit that it’s actually pretty nice looking. Much better than Symbian’s refresh so far. But such things are best being left for judgement by the actual end user (read: you). So go ahead and give it a through ocular shakedown. After which, continuing the path downwards to the nicely organized boxes below. Spill your guts below.

IntoMobile

Zune Twitter app goes the China/Apple-net-nanny route. Censorship now standard! [Update]

**Update: Microsoft pushed out an update for the Zune Twitter app. It’s f****** fucking great. Get it while it’s hot!

Oh joy. Don’t you love it when some company, software developer, or hardware manufacturer decides what is and isn’t suitable for your senses to consume? I know I sure do. Mmmmm censorship and net nannies how I love thee.
/sarcasm

Blatant sarcasm aside, having the Zune team tackle the whole net nanny is rather disappointing. Kids may see vulgar content in live, user generated content. That’s life. Get over it. Censoring the world won’t stop such things from reaching children. They just become annoyances to the rest of civilization and reasons not to buy a particular product. The obvious option would have been to install a password (read: parent controlled) on/off feature that would block/censor vulgar content. An all out *** buffet is stupid. Oh well, maybe ver. 2.0….

Besides the hand holding, the app actually looks pretty good visually speaking though users in various Zune forums are offering up their own two cents. According to them, the app is just “ok” as bugs currently persist. But as is usual with all 1st gen/ver. 1.0 products, bugs are expected. By the time the next version is pushed out I’m sure Microsoft will have gotten around to fixing them.

Any Zune users currently having their socks rocked? Or are your socks more like knee highs reaching towards those sky-thigh-high running shorts? We’ve just gotta know.

Mashable

US Military using unencrypted video feeds on unmanned aircraft?

Unmanned aircraft are one of the greatest tools the US Military currently has in their arsenal. The humanless aircraft are able to go into remote regions and zones that would otherwise be too dangerous or inhospitable for human engagement. The only human interaction with the aircraft comes by way of a guy sitting behind a little TV screen controlling a few buttons and joystiqs. Easy. Safe. Simple.

The data captured by these drones is as one would expect, highly classified as the usual missions for these bodiless wonders often consist of spying with an ultimate focus on be covert. Not being physically seen is good and all, but this is the 21st century. The world is becoming increasingly digital, opening up new doors for all kinds of bad guys and attack methods.

With that said, would it shock or surprise you to know that the US Military is having feeds from unmanned aircraft “hijacked”? According to the WSJ, insurgents abroad are basically pointing their satellites up into the sky and using a widely available $25 piece of software (aka: network snooper) to hone in and download the drone/unmanned aircraft’s video feeds sailing through the wireless airwaves. Naturally, this presents a fundamental national security problem. What good is sneaking up on the enemy with a drone if the enemy can see exactly where it’s going?

The question that comes to my mind first and foremost: Why is the US Military of all people using unencrypted video feeds in such a volatile area? You’d think given the insurgents insatiable appetite to blow us all away would make the US Military a tad more careful with these sorts of things. Any admission of this story whether an actual admission or flat out denial will never mean anything. Regardless, if they are in fact running drones around the world with any link in the system unencrypted, we’ll never know. It will ultimately be labeled a “false rumor” for all eternity as the military will deny deny deny.

Scary stuff.

CrunchGear

[Image Source]