BlackBerry Slider seen with AT&T branding. (Blessing/Curse?)

How about another look at the well known about BlackBerry 9800 Slider? Compliments of Engadget, this early exclusive runs through the full gamut of hardware related things and even touches on the OS 6 running underneath. Speaking of which, OS 6 on this latest piece of hardware has subtle (read: very subtle) UI tweaks. They didn’t jump out at me the first, or even second time through. We’ll see if your eyes are more eagle-like than mine.

On the hardware front, globe trotters will be happy to know that quad-band 3G is supported making this a bonified world traveling phone. And the keyboard — well, it’s a BlackBerry so it’s bound to be pretty close to awesome.

The carrier is either a blessing or a curse depending on where you live, how densely populated your city is, and how many planets are aligned at the time of your call. If that wasn’t clear enough — AT&T.

What do you guys think? Hop inside for a couple more pics or head on over to Engadget for the full show.

Activsion “weary” of Microsoft Kinect. Slow support from the start.

Are you in love with the Wii’s out of your chair gaming? Were you stoked when Microsoft revealed the Kinect, bringing motion-based gaming to the world of Xbox 360? Like it or not, Microsoft is attempting to jump head first into this whole interactive/motion gaming thing. From what I’ve seen on various posts, comments, and emails is that people are sort of 50/50 on the Kinect.

One somewhat surprising revelation is that Activision is one of “those” people still sitting on the fence, unsure of what to make of the Kinect. During the Microsoft E3 keynote, Activision COO Thomas Tippl highlighted the Kinect’s and Move’s high price points as the company’s reasons for not pressing forward at full speed.

I can’t say I blame them — being cautious and all. But only time will tell if Activision’s hunch saves them money or ends up costing them millions. What do you guys think? Is Activision taking a dangerous risk by not fully embracing the Kinect fromt he get go? If it does take off, Activision is putting themsevles in a bad position, one in which they may not be able to catch up.

iPhone 4′s yellow band/spot screen woes disappear after a few days of use, caused by still drying screen bonding agent?

Take this with a grain of salt folks, but the increasing reports of yellow banding and spotted iPhone 4 displays may not be as bad as it seems. The claim: the iPhone 4 yellow display issues will go away — this according to an Apple Insider forum poster, “austingaijin” whom claims to have helped pitch the retina display’s glass bonding agent to Apple.

Supposedly, it has to do with the retina display’s glass bonding agent, Organofunctional Silane Z-6011. OSZ-6011 has a set time it takes to fully cure or evaporate. With iPhone 4 demand through the roof, deadlines are going to be pushed, and such things as curing/evaporation times for glass bonding agents is going to get stepped on, resulting in the discolored displays we’re seeing now.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is in fact true or not. Any iPhone 4 yellow screeners care to go through the 2-3 day process and let us know if the discoloring screen issues go away?

Put that 27-iMac to good gaming use: Belkin AV360 adapter

Now that Steam has been ported over to work with Mac OS X and after ATI, Nvidia, and several other hardware manufacturers have promised increased focus on the Mac platform, it’s only a matter of time before Macs become legitimate gaming machines. But until then, you can put that iMac of yours to good use with the Belkin AV360 adapter.

This handy little box of magic will allow you to plug in your Xbox 360 or PS3 in via HDMI, turning said signal into a usable mini Display Port for use with your 27-inch (only) iMac. The only caveat (and it’s a rather big one) is that the Belkin AV360 only accepts up to 1080p signals. A bummer given the iMac’s display is 2560 x 1440 pixels in size. Even more disappointing however is that the output of the AV360 is even lower — 720p.

So half-HD is about as good as you’ll get. But those pinching pennies will no doubt take what they can get by way of larger-screened displays for their gaming needs. Speaking of price however, the AV360 will set you back $150. Pretty steep (and a bit overpriced I’d add) for something that can’t even output true HD quality signals. But I digress. Would this work for you?

Human TV made out of tri-colored lot of 750 students

Giant displays of choreography and geekiness are always something fun to spend a few minutes watching. The preparations that must take weeks to months factors into the awesomeness. So just how cool would it be to see a “human TV” of sorts with actual people acting as individual pixels?

In South Korea, a High School 750 students strong did just that in support for their country’s soccer team. To pull it off, each student wore a jacked with a separate color on the front and back. Removing the coat also revealed a third color giving it that TV-like effect. Put the three colors together in random unison and the result is pretty awesome. Hop inside to see the video in action…

RIM: “We’re falling way behind the competition, so what do we do? Go after theme makers for BB OS 6 knockoffs.

You’d think that a company whose mobile operating system is becoming less and less relavent with each passing day would be focusing all it’s resources on improving their offerings. However, if you’re RIM, you cast such trivial things by the wayside and instead threaten lawsuit on a BlackBerry theme maker for making an OS 6 BlackBerry theme before OS 6 is officially released.

Clearly, their mindset is anywhere but focused on improving the BlackBerry platform…

Droid X is official!

And the Android news keeps on a flowin’. Let’s get right to it: Droid X. It’s arguably the hottest Android device on the market right now with it’s 4.3-inch 854 x 480 display. And now, thanks to Verizon’s Droid X coming out party, we know the full shebang.

And here we go: Android 2.1 (Froyo/2.2 available as an update later this summer), new skin atop Android, 1GHz TI OMAP3640 processor, 8-megapixel camera w/ dual LED-flash and 720p video recording, 8GB of onboard storage w/ support for up to 32GB via microSD (16GB microSD card included with phone), and HDMI out. Whew! Quite the contender there, isn’t it?

Moving past the hardware side of things and jumping into the month-to-month sacrifices looks a little less “exciting”. Your standard 2-year commitment is present, complete with $199 sale price. Where it gets interesting is the WiFi hotspot feature. It’s $20/month extra on top of your $30/month data plan. Crap, but no different than any other carrier out there.

Where it starts to suck though is in the data cap and overage limit — 2GB cap w/ overage charges looking something like $0.05/MB. Yes, folks. We’re counting by MB’s. Verizon is slipping back into 2001. I’ve already voiced my opinion on AT&T’s oppressive 5GB cap on tethered devices. Verizon’s isn’t anywhere near “better”.

To be fair, data sucked down through the phone itself with no devices tethering is still being considered “unlimited”. So VZW’s got a leg up over AT&T on that front.

Last but not least — the skin. How do you guys feel with the new Android theme laid on top? What about the Droid X overall?