Verizon BlackBerry Tour users: How’s that OS 5.0 rollout treating you?

Today is a wondrous day for Verizon BlackBerry Tour users. For today, OS 5.0.0.91 is being pushed out OTA-style as we speak. Some have already received it while others will have to wait a little while longer. Once all is said and done however, various improvements spanning media, UI, bug fixes, and several added features will all add up to make your 9630 overall more enjoyable. If you’ve already installed the update, let us know how it went and your initial impressions so far. If you’re still waiting, come on back later and report back. While uncommon, occasionally the manufacturer or carrier will slip in something small that doesn’t quite make the spec list but is interesting none the less. Let us know what you find!

Browse the Apple App Store through Facebook.

Because 3/4 of the world practically lives on Facebook, we’re bound to miss important information from time to time. More recently, Facebook greatly opened up it’s API allowing 3rd parties to better tap into the potential that Facebook integration could allow. Today, Facebook land get’s one of it’s best features/widgets/applet yet in the form of an App Store widget.

As you’ve probably already gathered, the widget of sorts lets you browse through App Store all within Facebook. Now, going through 100,000+ apps by itself within iTunes is daunting. Through a Facebook widget seems even more daunting. Alas, the creator of the widget, Vitrue, has designed it so you only dive into the “featured apps” for the respective categories, reducing clutter and hopefully improving overall enjoyment.

For App Store junkies and Facebook-a-holics, nothing is more perfect than calling this a match made in heaven. For family and friends of already addicted people, it’s best you get use to seeing the back of that person’s head even more.

Tried the new widget out? How’d you like it?

Gizmodo > Mobile-ent

Sprint CEO get’s $12million+ for bringing Sprint into #1….jk. Failure is apparently the recipe for reward.

It used to be that you only were rewarded if you actually accomplished something worthwhile. The better you did, the more compensation. Nowadays however, we live in the age of bank bailouts, auto bailouts, tax cuts for those who don’t need it and so on. Failure is the best business as it gets you the most money. Sad really.

Along those lines, when we hear the name “Sprint”, failure is generally an accepted word that follows quickly soon after. In their defense, Sprint has managed to at least slow down the bleeding of customers over that last quarter or two. But losing customers quarter after quarter is hardly a reason to celebrate, much less reward the CEO for “performance”.

So what exactly is the price of failure? In Sprint’s case — $12.3 million. Now, it’s important to note that isn’t an outright cash amount but instead the total amount of compensation when all things are taken into account. Things such as 401(k) contributions, private jet flights here, there, and everywhere, security services, etc., etc. It’s also worth highlighting that while this compensation for performance is still grossly high, it is down from the previous year to the tune of 13%. Progress, but still a long way to go.

Why highlight this? There’s no real need actually. But I figured since we still here offhand comments about various bailouts around various different industries, why not highlight an exchanging of cash that in much the same as the other examples, is a ridiculous case of lost priorities.

Think ‘ol Hesse should have been paid so much for failing to convince millions of people to jump on board with his company, much less even retain the customers he he currently has?

Cellular-News

The all-knowing milk jug

Many of us like to dream of flying cars, force fields, invisibility cloaks, and levitation as true signs that we’ve arrived in “the future”. But life is often full of little surprises here and there. It is those little things which go unnoticed that often make up the fabric of our everyday lives. Case in point: milk jugs. No, not the slang translation of the word meaning well gifted female chests. I’m talking about honest to goodness, straight from cow, fresh off the farm milk jugs.

How exactly can such a simple and un-techy thing be futuristic? Simple: the milk jug of the future will know when it’s good, bad, and when you shouldn’t even attempt to salvage even a small taste from it. Because, there are sometimes with the smell/taste test just won’t work.

For the jug above, a simple PH sensor gives it that special spacial awareness we’ll one day come to expect from common household items. For me, it’s just another thing to add to the list…

TechFresh > TechChee

What exactly will the iPhone 4 bring to the table. Pick a rumor, any rumor.

As much as “industry insiders” would love to actually know what the next iPhone will include, it’s so far looks like nothing more than common sense info is being “leaked”. Kind of like a trip to the psychic really. We’re not really learning anything we don’t already know. Bigger screen — given. Front facing camera — rumored since 2nd gen. Mutli-tasking — ditto. Hardly the kind of “breaking news” I would expect to follow the bolded and in many cases, italicized words. But if we must — iPhone 4.0: 960 x 640 or more display, front facing camera, at least 5-megapixel rear camera, multi-tasking support for 3rd party apps, yadda yadda yadda. Feel better? See, anyone can do it. Go ahead, give it a shot. Let’s hear what you’ve got.

Do you want to “bang” it? Microsoft’s *almost* naming snafu with Bing

Microsoft hasn’t always released the coolest, most “hip” consumer oriented products. Nor have they even gotten as far as choosing a clever and catchy name that didn’t sound dorky or “pushed too hard”. Lucky for us, they did alright with their search engine Bing, for it was almost “Bang”. Now being the somewhat mentally unstable person that I am, hearing of a search engine named “Bang” has failure written all over it. Take these few light hearted examples:

1. Don’t know much about Mrs. Obama? Bang her.
2. No idea on the true size of a fully grown female water buffalo? Bang it!
3. Need a splendid new apple pie recipe for Easter? Bang it!

Yes, Bing could have been Bang and all hell would have broken lose. Just think of all the money Microsoft would have thrown in the trash if they actually went forward with Bang, only to have to re-educate people once they renamed the search engine so it’s verb could actually be used in church. Good job Microsoft. You avoided the but of our jokes for the day.

AlleyInsider

Palm: “Don’t fix our half-baked attempt at a smartphone. “Buuuut, we won’t crucify you if you do”.[Overclocking]

Generally speaking, pushing your hardware past it’s “factory limits” is seen as a big no-no by the manufacturer. It makes sense though. If the manufacturer only tests the hardware between variables 1-10 and you take it to 13, anything negative happening rests solely on your shoulders. With Palm’s announcement today, speaking against users going down the 800MHz kernel overclocking route, I can say I honestly see both sides of the story. Yes, overclocking is bad news if you care about the warranty. At the same time, it makes the Pre enjoyable for the tech inclined few curious (and brave) enough to venture down the OC route.

The fact of the matter is, Palm is doing the right thing here by playing it safe and merely “suggesting against” overclocking. The worst thing they could do would be to go all Apple on the ever talented developer community and seek to constantly block/outlaw overclocking and other hardware/software related hacks. It is those hacks alone that are keeping the webOS platform alive and relevant. The only reason such crackdowns work for Apple is because they appeal to such a mass populous. Palm does not.

Frankly, Palm should take any and all sales/press/hacks with stride. They’re not exactly in the position to be choosey with whom they “allow” to own their devices and what they allow said users to do with those devices. Just don’t go crying to Palm when your 800MHz Pre+ melts into a brick Albeit a nicely rounded, sculpted brick.

PhoneArena