Save an old iMac. Save a hamster.

I’ve often heard that gadgets/electronics are a waste. They venture into obscurity and irrelevance at alarmingly quick rates and are a real pain to recycle after their useful life has passed. Some people mod said gadgets into a new uber creation. Others simply save hamsters and give them a home. What kind of person are you?

LauncherPro update brings bug fixes, new features, and Facebook/Twitter “Friends” widget.

Time to get excited Android users: LauncherPro Plus has a new update waiting to be picked up by your eager hands. Some of the more meaningful additions (besides bug fixes of course) include increased homescreen swipe sensitivity, customizable homescreen icon grid size, and a new “Friends” widget for Plus users. This widget takes your Twitter and Facebook feeds and smashes them together. A handy widget for the social butterflies of the bunch.

If you want more info, check out the changelog over at LauncherPro.com. Otherwise, hit up that market and get your download on!

Best iPad Case ever: Etch-a-sketch

Originality is something that excites me. If I had an iPad and an Etch-a-sketch case, I’d be excited x2. That’s how it works. If the knobs actually did something it might have even been x3. Oh well. I’d still spend $39 on one.

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BlackBerry 9570 another yawner from RIM. (RIM wasting resources on too many hardware variations?)

I’m really getting depressed about this whole BlackBerry thing. I used to wait on the edge of my seat for new BlackBerry news. Now I’m reclined back, snacking on chips, and having a beer. (Read: I don’t care.) Take the 9570 as reason for my worry. The specs look like this: Same as Storm 2 with 512MB of RAM, 5MP camera, and OS 6. That’s it. There isn’t any radical hardware/software change or innovation to be had. Rumor on the streets is that it’s nothing more than a Storm 2 refresh instead of the Storm 3 which many a Crackberry are anxiously waiting for. Granted, I’ll give them some of my excitement too — the Storm 3 is supposed to feature LTE, a 1GHz processor, and be the death of that terrible clicky screen.

But this isn’t it. So we wait. In the meantime I’d offer up to RIM to stop wasting their time on product refreshes when the original product is less than a year old. Instead, put all of those resources to the next big milestone — in this case the Storm 3.

Wasted opportunities?

“Awareness” iOS app plays back outside noise in your headphones so you don’t die…

Blunt? Perhaps. But it kinda-sorta feels like a Friday. What does that have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is not getting plastered by a truck when you’re rockin’ out to your beats and struttin’ your stuff through the city. It seems like a day doesn’t pass without some newspaper publicizing how some poor sap get his face reconstructed by a car because he couldn’t hear them coming, all because he was blaring Lady Gaga too loud on his headphones. Apparently, humans have forgotten we have these wonderful devices called…eyes…*Gasps!* that allow us to search our surroundings for dangers — You know, like a big freakin’ truck! — before preceding. Nevertheless, technology has come forward to save us from technology.

Introducing: “Awareness”. This app is compatible with iOS 4 and runs in the background while you listen to music. When you start it up, it picks up the outside noise via microphones on your iPhone and then plays that noise back at the “standard/default” level on top of your music. Basically, you’ll get the effect of open headphones even if you’re wearing a pair of noise-reducing ear-canal phones like Shures, Etys, Ultimate Ears, etc., etc.

Thankfully, the developers have added a few helpful features that ensure this novelty is actually useful. First, the end user can adjust how loud the background noise is. Second, a feature called “Ducking” turns your music volume down as outside noise increases should you choose to prefer the latter over the former. Unfortunately as of writing, a bug in iOS is causing Ducking Mode to fail. A fix is in the works, however, and should be submitted to Apple for approval within the next few days. The gist of the story is this: If you want to not die, listen to headphones, and roam the streets, you need Awareness.

$5 in the App Store. If you want to see Awareness in action before plopping down the required cash, step on through for a helpful video…

Samsung and MetroPCS beat Verizon, AT&T. Ship first CDMA/LTE dual-band phone.

Verizon is currently boasting of having LTE live in “30 NFL cities” by years end. AT&T is equally as proud, though admittingly behind Verizon, have stated that they will have some form of LTE network go live mid-way through 2011. However, both Verizon and AT&T have already mentioned that they won’t have any LTE phones in consumers’ hands until 2011 is several months old. With that said, a “little guy” is beating the big guys to market in one big way — LTE hardware.

SprintPCS currently has an operational LTE network in Las Vegas, while Samsung is finally getting around to releasing that RCH-r900 they showed off many months back. In case you missed it, the r900 is a mobile beast. It packs literally every wireless spec you can think of inside it’s tiny body — CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. 0, LTE, AWS band 1700/2100MHz, WiFi, and GPS. The CDMA/LTE/T-Mo loving 1700MHz AWS band is a hot combination that I haven’t seen come on a US-bound phone yet. It should hint that the r900 will be a multi-carrier phone here in the States. (Well…we can hope.) Although, without LTE or any type of 4G tech dropping anytime soon on T-Mo, the luster is sort of lost as it’s “just another phone”…

“Kids are free”: T-Mobile now giving you 3 extra lines for free through 2012!

As the battle for your mobile dollar gets more and more intense, a couple of carriers are promising data caps, raised fees, and overall less friendly/pro-consumer services. T-Mobile is taking a different approach. Instead of screwing you, their devoted customer (or potential customer), they are giving you up to 3 extra lines for free through the end of 2011. On top of the 1st and 2nd lines already being $0/month, T-Mo is giving you the 3rd, 4th, and 5th lines also.

If you’re got a bunch of people on your wireless plan or are looking to add a few youngsters, T-Mo looks to gunning for your top spot. It may not seem like much, but $10/month per line equals $30/month you’re saving. Check out the details here, on T-Mo’s website. Anyone interested?