The digital age has brought the death of many older industries and technologies as constant progress has brought about new methods, processes, products, etc. Perhaps one of the most publicly known and widely talked about issues regarding dying industries is that of the newspaper industry. While some will argue that newspapers aren’t dying (right), or that there is nothing wrong with the industry itself and it is merely going through a period of increased “leaching” by smaller news outlets and blogs, the newspaper industry as a whole isn’t doing so hot. NPR however seems to have found a solution…actually embracing technology.

In what can be a sad revelation and truth to come to terms with, the U.S. of A. is not as steadfast in their “free internet” beliefs outside of home grown soil. While the internet in the U.S. is uncensored, and hopefully will remain that way for…..ever, it seems we have different motives elsewhere. When you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, the west *that’s the U.S….among others* is one of the top providers and supporters of internet censoring software and tactics outside of U.S. borders. Surprised? I was. So how exactly has the U.S. aided such anti-American tactics abroad?

When you’re in a hurry and have to leave someone a message on their voicemail, you want to do it right this second, not 15, 20, or 30 seconds from now. Another reason for the quick message is not only because of time constraints but more importantly to save a few pennies. Those precious seconds you’re stuck on the phone listening to some stupid recording when you could be yapping away yourself costs against your minutes, and if you’re over your minutes they go on your bill as nasty overages. Pretty shady huh!? But there is a hope for us mere mortals yet.

If you’re into the world of tech, gadgets, electronics, and politics, especially politics pertaining to technological issues, the ongoing battle the Associated Press is waging on pretty much the entire internet just goes to show you how terrible and outdate some businesses really are. Instead of embracing the internet for what it is and what it can help you achieve, companies such as AP are instead trying to make the internet conform to outdated business practices and policies used on older business models. Such mashups simply won’t work. It really is quite stupid and revolves around AP’s claims that everyone else steals their news. (In reality, news is not a single person’s property — heck it isn’t the “property” of anyone. We all know this. Except the AP seems to think they’re in their own little world where they rule all). One with even a sliver of intelligence would think that they would see how beneficial DRM has been to the music industry (extreme sarcasm) and learn from their mistakes. Obviously we assume too much.

If you have ever spent a few billing periods with either company, you know how expensive their entertainment packages can be. In some areas, you don’t even have a choice as Comcast has either paid someone to be the exclusive provider in that area (apartments), or other providers simply haven’t made it there yet. Still, in the year 2009 one would like to think that competition in on the uptick, especially with the economy so low. Why with the economy in the gutter and the assumed competition, the consumer should be saving a boat load right? Not to mention, with the growth of the internet, almost unlimited amounts of new technologies and services are just waiting to be discovered. The only problem is, the industry doesn’t want to discover. They want to recapture the monopolistic past.

With the race for alternative energy sources to replace our dependence on non-renewable sources grows more intense, scientists are looking for more exotic and unique ways of supplying energy to our gadgets and electronics. Moving past carbon based fuels, wind, and solar power alternatives, biomass seems to be taking the favoring eye of the military. Biomass doesn’t must mean “plants”. Do little and big military robots who are on a mission to kill and eat humans sound like the sort of cute little Johnny 5’s you want running around the planet?

The World Wide Web is quickly becoming the one stop shop if you will for everything in our lives. Everything from cooking classes, to how-to mechanic videos, to live concerts. Online video, whether it be in the form of movies, live events, or other forms, are becoming the biggest draw to the internet. All of the new found love in video over broadband connections is making broadband providers sweat. Why? Are tiered plans really all they’re cracked up to be?

Blackberry users who enjoy a “deeper-than-average” weather forecast on their addictive devices will find that BerryWeather, while not perfect, brings a lot to the table. Is it enough to part with $10 of your hard earned money? If you can live without a dedicated radar and a few inconsistencies between the in-app temperature/condition current forecast and the homescreen icon’s display of temp/forecast, you’re already winning half the battle. BerryWeather while not perfect has a lot to offer. Is it your next app purchase?

The Logitech MX Revolution is an outstanding mouse that cuts the cord and ends a valiant quest that has stretched on for many months. Finally I can declare the search over as the MX is by far the best mouse for the money.

HDMI cables aren’t exactly the most resilient connector in the cable world as they are easily knocked loose meaning you will spend many minutes of your life plugging a cable back into your device over and over again. For some, they don’t really care, but for others, that’s where the locking HDMI cable by PPC comes in. Built specifically for the home video enthusiast who needs a strong and reliable yet good quality cable, the locking cable by PPC will surely suit your needs.

So far I’ve highlighted bands that are in the mainstream and enjoy wide success in multiple countries. Again, we all know one of my loves is that of gadgets. And now, you all know a second is music. Building on that love for music is the love I have for the drums. [...]

The glossy “Aqua” style of Tiger and Leopard isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. iLeopard will appeal to those users by toning down the gloss and glare giving Leopard a new, darker lease on life.

If you are the type of peson who finds the Blackberry shortcuts merely adequate or even insufficient for your needs, you my friend have an addiction. An addiction that modern science and medicine cannot cure. So what is a person to do? You could always set time limits for your Berry usage. You could give it up all together (thought that is a bit extreme). Lastly and more importantly, you can make use of a great little tool…”ShortcutMe”, an amazing, easy to use shortcut application that allows you to set practically limitless (as there aren’t /that/ many BB apps) shortcuts. So what exactly can you do with shortcut me? How can this shorcut app make your life with your Berry even more productive and easier?

A weather nut and Crackberry lover knows that finding a good, robust, and fully featured weather application for Blackberry is no small chore. The market is flooded with them (no pun intended). However, with all of the choices to choose from, the results so far (in my search so far), are proving to be more elusive and difficult than I believed. My next stop in the Blackberry Weather application scene took place using eMobile Weather.

Since I’m stuck with an 8320 until the Onyx/Magnum come out, I decided to try and track down that Verizon vendor theme that I once had on my 8320 (before I switched to an iPhone). At the time of the 8330’s release, the Verizon theme was one of a few bottom dock themes for that series of device - hence the hype surrounding it. While true hardcore Blackberry users who have an eye for candy generally switch to 3rd party themes, some people prefer the fast and simple interface the stock vendor themes provide. Have you been searching for the stock Verizon vendor theme for your non-CDMA device?

So far I’ve highlighted bands that are in the mainstream and enjoy wide success in multiple countries. Again, we all know one of my loves is that of gadgets. And now, you all know a second is music. Building on that love for music is the love I have for the drums. [...]

The highly customized, tuned, and expensive Alienware style can now be had for you berry. Give it that sleek “stellar” look that is out of this world!

Blackberry users who like to show a tad bit of flare and sophistication will find idBerry’s latest theme, MacBerry, to be quite the flare flinging theme. This eye gusher features a top “dock”/bar with 8 user customizable icons and a bottom dock with 5 fixed icons. The cool part with the bottom dock is that they are modeled after iPhone icons (cool if you’re into that sort of style I guess). Even cooler is that flipping between each bottom dock icon will automatically change the wallpaper. A nice touch indeed. I wish I had a Bold or 8900 to try this theme out on because it sure looks pretty sweet. I’m curious to see how it performs and if that slick bottom dock controlled wallpaper flipping action slows down the devices at all? (Feel free to let me know.) $6.99 and a trip to the Berry Review Store are all you need. Get downloadin’!

Bring the much loved style of the iPhone to the Blackberry Storm…Have the best of both worlds. With the iBerry Bottom Dock theme you can have Beauty and Brains.

If you are the type of person who can’t stay in one place too long and has to have change in their lives, the “Cities of the World” theme for Blackberry is just for you. Featuring rotating backgrounds of some of the worlds most popular cities including: Chicago, Berlin, and Rome just to name a few of many.

Bring the city life to your Blackberry with Elecite’s Urban theme. Featuring a unique corner oriented “ribbon” that slides between 8 icons, to 10 rotating wallpapers of the most breathtaking cities around the world, your concrete jungle fascination is sure to be pleased.

If that quesiton above has been bouncing around the hollows of your head for days on end if not years, I have the answer to your most sought after question. The picture above depicts the “Rosetta Disk” - 13,500 pages of data in an astonishing 1,500 different languages all crammed on to a solitary nickel (talk about eagle eyes). Speaking of which, you will need a 500x or greate microscope to read any one page…not to mention the know how of the language. Sooo…anyone know where the table of contents is….?

Perhaps one of the greatest accomplishments of any geek anywhere is that of the home experiment or mashup if you will. Taking two seemingly objects that absolutely no relation to one another and then somehow combining them often makes for rather unique creations. Case in point: the Rocket Board.

While most of things that pass my eye and make their way onto the front page of Gadgetsteria have some sort of electronic circuit in them or aid something with an electronic circuit in them, this particular innovative geekified object was too good to pass up. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been in the situation when the light was a little lacking, your bowels are screaming for mercy, and there is not bathroom/port-a-potty/soft grassy patch behind a tree in sight? For many nomads and campers, this is a daily occurrence. For others, such a scenario is practically a death sentence. But it doesn’t have to be. How so? Thank the inventors of glow in the dark toilet paper.

We’ve seen some pretty unique uses for lego in the tech world such as the Lego Flash Drive, the Lego USB hub, and even a Lego MP3 player. The latest use of Lego’s, while not quite “gadgety”, is none the less cool and unique. Instead of having electronic circuits inside the legos, they themselves become literal building blocks, supporting aging wonders of architecture.

If you think your novelty calendar was cool, I have news for you. It isn’t. In fact, it’s complete and utter crap when compared to the new title holder of the world’s coolest calendar — The Ink Calendar. How does it work, what does it do, and why is it sooooo cool? You’ll just have to hop on in and find out!

Have you ever wondered aimlessly through town staring down at your cellphone screen wishing it were smarter to the surrounding area? Instead of you having to enter in the criteria for places of interest the phone itself will show you in real time what is cool and what is not. Time to celebrate folks as it appears the future hopped on the time machine and decided to pay us a visit. Layar, an innovative and revolutionary new program developed by SPRXMobile is aiming to redo navigation and discovery like no other app has before.

We’ve all been there - you see a new phone or gadget that you have to have as long as it comes in some other color other than charcoal black. Your dreams and aspirations are crushed however when the sales guy comes back and announces to you that charcoal black is indeed the only color. You think to yourself of all the great times you and that gadget would have had. Such unpleasant and life altering occasions will soon be a thing of the past thanks to Kent Display’s new “Electronic Skin”. What does this Electronic Skin do for you the user? I’ll give you a hint: “Rainbows”.

The WSJ is one of the most widely read and highly regarded newspapers in the world. Because of their global success, the subsciption costs that are required to read said paper don’t deter many as it is again a very established and well respected newspaper. As far as actually spreading news and getting the word out there, having subscription costs and paywalls aren’t exactly the greatest method for Google popularity or subscribers as the people receiving the subscription payments are the only real beneficiaries. In order to be more indexable by Google, a sweet little back door is now open allowing anyone and everyone the ability to read any WSJ article online for free. While more technologically less intelligent people won’t ever stumble upon this wonderful backdoor, I’m letting you fine people know about it in order to “spread the open flow and movement of news”. Want to know how?

So far I’ve highlighted bands that are in the mainstream and enjoy wide success in multiple countries. Again, we all know one of my loves is that of gadgets. And now, you all know a second is music. Building on that love for music is the love I have for the drums. [...]

Everything in life can assume multiple roles. Technology and gadgets often have very short life cycles and are always being replaced by newer, faster, and smaller products. When the unfortunate time comes and your hard drive fails, instead of throwing it away, do something useful with it…make it a clock!

If there’s one thing about Mac fanatics it’s that they love eye candy. That love spreads to others areas than just the immediate Mac operating system. For those Mac readers who want to give Google Reader a bit of Leopard flare this how-to is just for you.

For many, MP3 player is synonymous with iPod. However, in terms of audio quality, the iPod is far from the top of the heap. Back when hard drive mp3 players were big, units such as the Rio Karma, iRiver iHP-120 (my favorite…mine still works), and Cowon’s X5 were the real kings of audio when actual audio quality was considered - something that seems to have fallen by the wayside today. If you want to bring some new school love to an old friend, in this case an old Cowon X5, reinvent your dying love with some new compact flash goodness.

When you’re in a hurry and have to leave someone a message on their voicemail, you want to do it right this second, not 15, 20, or 30 seconds from now. Another reason for the quick message is not only because of time constraints but more importantly to save a few pennies. Those precious seconds you’re stuck on the phone listening to some stupid recording when you could be yapping away yourself costs against your minutes, and if you’re over your minutes they go on your bill as nasty overages. Pretty shady huh!? But there is a hope for us mere mortals yet.

If you are a Crackberry user but aren’t too kosher with mixing and matching the Blackberry OS files Crackmem makes it drop dead simple to edit your Blackberry OS to your little hearts content.