Prove you’re the ultimate nerd: Museum of Science and Industry holding “Month at the Museum” contest. 30-day stay, $10k, and tons of gadgets!

When I was a kid (a whole decade ago), I was simply fascinated with the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. There was so much stuff there to wrap my head around, more than could ever be crammed into one day. Even today as an adult (somewhat…) I still find myself wide-eyed when I walk in there. If you’re like me, now is the time to prove just how geeky you are as their is a special competition involving the museum currently going on.

If you can prove yourself worthy, the Museum of Science and Industry is running a contest that will see one lucky sole winning a solid month (October 20th – November 18th) inside the Museum. And when I say inside…I mean inside — sun up to sun down and everything in between. The lucky winner will be a temporary experiment of sorts, going on to showcase various exhibits and small scale experiments to museum guests. But there’s more. That lucky human experiment will also net themselves a full $10,000 for the month-long ordeal as well as a smorgishboard of gadgets (Wo0t!) and complimentary MSI lifetime membership.

I don’t know about you, but such an experiment sounds almost like the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of. Definitely “the” contest to enter if you’re a nerd. Will you enter?

Massive mobile app store inforgraph breaks down the competition.

Who doesn’t like to compare stuff? Yeah, that tag line isn’t exactly a “Hey! Read me!” type of hook is it? Nonetheless, with all the banter about who’s app store is bigger (we all know it’s Apple’s) or who’s app store sold the most this month (again, Apple), it’s actually pretty neat to see the competition all compared. Hop inside for a monster-sized inforgraph breaking down the mobile app sphere rather neatly. Go on…

DRM gets a fresh face: Ultraviolet.

Ask any tech competent person about DRM and they’ll correctly tell you it’s useless — unless of course you goal is to piss off someone and neuter their experience with legally obtained content. The image that has attached itself to DRM isn’t going away. So, content creators have to get crafty every now and then. (Too bad they can’t put that creativity into creating actual legitimate business models that don’t fuck over consumers…) Meet the latest face in DRM: UltraViolet.

The aim of UltraViolet is to be a digital, cloud-based locker of sorts that will “just work”. The claim to fame is that no matter the destination, whether it be gaming console, smartphone, tv, computer, DVR, etc., UltraViolet will allow playback of your content without hiccup. Though of course, that was the original claim of your standard DRM scheme. And we all know how that played out. Not to mention, a cloud-based account signals to me that an internet connection would be required to authorize/de-authorize devices to play your content. For a fair chunk of users, that wouldn’t be a problem. But alas, not all of us have internet. What are those people going to do? Everyone involved managed to get one thing right though — it’s free.

There’s plenty of big name media partners, physical, and digital retailers jumping on board, so DECE UltraViolet looks like it may stick around for a little while. Let’s just hope it goes better than the last dozen and a half DRM it-always-works schemes. Anyone remotely excited? Or would you rather keep playback across devices in your own hands, manually, and without a needed internet connection? Ya…me too.

Motorola working on portrait slider “mini-Droid”?

Oh Mr. Blurry Cam how we love thee, for you bring us the latest in tech with that oh so lovable fuzz. Tonight’s Mr. Blurry Cam showcase is this mini-Droid looking device. It’s easy to see that it comes from Moto’s labs, red eye and all. The portrait sliding keyboard is my favorite. Though the only phones that have ever really won me over as far as portrait keyboards are concerned are newer BlackBerries and the Palm Pre Plus. But if Moto can shake out a properly spec’d portrait slider of their own, I may perhaps overlook their nannyish/bootlocker lock down ways.

…Nah, who am I kidding. The screen looks like it barely makes it to the 3″ mark if that. I’m sorry, but a sub-3″ smartphone display will not work. Especially not with the requirements that modern apps and games put on the user. The touchscreen is one of the most important smartphone parts these days and as such, needs to be perfect. Somehow I don’t think this mini-Droid would be very useful. But I could be wrong. Either way, I would love to give it some one on one time just to see if I’m right. You?

Hop inside for some 360 shots also complete with complimentary fuzz…

LauncherPro Plus launches. Lineup of widgets planned.

Fans of Android no doubt have discovered the joys a 3rd party launcher can provide. While Android’s stock launcher isn’t bad, there are certainly better options out there. As of late, ADW and LauncherPro beta have been the top dogs as far as options and performance goes. Not to mention, both give users options to have that Froyo look that so many people apparently are seeking. But tonight, LaunchPro developer Federico launched a new LauncherPro Plus. What exactly does the “Plus” tag gain us? Widgets! Initially, there’s only a single “People” widget available. But over the next few weeks, the exclusive LauncherPro Plus widgets will increase in number…

• People: Contacts on the homescreen. Plenty of options to configure.

• Bookmarks Widget: Browser bookmarks

• Friends Widget: Twitter and Facebook status updates as well as ability to update your own accounts

• Calendar/Agenda Widget: Calendar and day planner widget that gives you at-a-glance month overview all the way down to a single day’s events.

• Messaging: This one is one of my more favorite — drill through SMS in bulk or one by one, combined with the ability to respond, delete, or ignore.

Overall, it easily catapults LauncherPro one step ahead of ADW. **Sidenote: I personally have been more of a LauncherPro fan than ADW as I find the latter slower and overall less refined. This is but one more reassurance I picked the right home replacement app. Though if there’s one thing I could add, it would be a weather widget. No, not a copy of HTC’s weather widget. To be fair, HTC’s flipclock weather widget is stylish and clean. But it’s old and frankly, long in the tooth. Beautiful Widgets, even with it’s huge list of custom skins, isn’t really that stylish. Most of the skins are just so-so. But if Federico can come up with his own weather widget, it would be another tool in the belt.

One thing that will immediately catch some off guard is the lack of any LauncherPro Plus in the Android Market. Unfortunately, Federico doesn’t live in a country that currently supports paid Google/Android apps. So purchasing LauncherPro Plus will have to be done old school — via PayPal. **Make sure you use Skyfire as the stock Android browser does some funky things with .apk’s downloaded OTA. After that, install it and you’re good to go. Hopefully Google will add support for paid apps in Federico’s country soon. Regardless, it’s a minor inconvenience.

If you’re looking for a home screen replacement app, don’t even bother looking elsewhere. LauncherPro Plus is where it’s at!

LauncherPro

webOS tablet coming? HP’s “PalmPad” trademark application signals yes.

It looks like HP is already planning great things for their recently acquired IP, Palm. At first, HP’s announcement that Windows 7 and Android tablets weren’t going to be as important as once projected was a little disheartening — that is, until HP announced some pretty lofty goals for webOS. WebOS is a great piece of software with tons of potential. And now that there are some deep HP pockets (and talented developers) behind the new initiative, some pretty interesting stuff is bound to happen.

Welcome the “Palmpad”. A fresh of the press trademark application has the new name running ’round the web this afternoon pretty much guaranteeing that we’ll be seeing a webOS tablet of some type in the not too distant future. If Palm/HP plays their cards right, we could see some PalmPad contestants in this portable tablet game as soon as the 1H of 2011 (speculation for now).

I’m pretty stoked because I really liked webOS but felt it was still too immature for a full-fledged, daily mobile OS. Perhaps HP’s muscle and monetary power will change webOS’s outlook for the better, no? Anyone else excited?

This is not “leaps and bounds”: Leaked Storm 3 keynote slide reveals little change.

Is the Storm 2 a little long in the tooth for ya? How about some leaked info on the Storm 3? I hate to break it to you — if you were hoping for the Storm 3 to be a radical refresh/departure from the Storm 1/1.5(really 2), this isn’t your phone. According to the leaked slide above, the biggest improvements on the new handset will be a new 5-megapixel camera, WiFi 802.11n support, WiFi hotspot, 512MB of RAM (double the old 256MB), and OS 6.0. Good stuff for sure. But compared to even Android handsets six months ago, there’s not much to be too excited about here.

If you ask me, it doesn’t exactly follow RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie’s comment a few weeks back that the latter half of the year would see RIM releasing products that were “quantum leaps ahead” of the competition. Where’s the completely revamped BlackBerry (hardware and software) that is supposed to “wow” me? I’m sorry RIM, but a slightly refreshed Storm is not going to cut it. Next please.