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Let the holiday season smart phone wars begin!!!

Research In Motion (RIM) has introduced its BlackBerry Storm – with its new tactile touch-screen — that will be exclusively available on Verizon Wireless in a couple of weeks.

Both RIM and Verizon Wireless are expecting the Storm to seriously challenge Apple’s 3G iPhone as the hottest gadget under this year’s Christmas tree or Hanukkah bush.

With a look similar to Apple’s iPhone, the Storm comes with a 3.2-inch screen, preloaded with Facebook, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. The gadget features built-in GPS, a 3.2-megapixel camera, video recording capability, a media player and a removable battery.

Additional applications will be available through a BlackBerry app store. (No surprise there! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

The device is expected to sell for approximately the same price as an iPhone. 

The Storm was introduced in London, where Vodafone, a joint venture partner in Verizon Wireless, said it will exclusively offer the Storm in Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand later this fall.

See more images of the Storm from eWeek here.

Tags: apple, blackberry storm, iphone 3g, microsoft, research in motion, rim, verizon wireless, vodafone

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Original post by nafiz

Must have.

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Original post by Jason

Because we are so, so connected, we think everybody else is too … But a new survey finds a substantial number of households have not crossed the “Digital Divide.”

According to National Technology Scan, a forthcoming study from Parks Associates (an annual phone survey of U.S. households) found 20 million households are without Internet access, representing approximately 18% of all U.S. households.

According to Parks Associates, nearly one out of three household heads has never used a computer to create a document, underscoring the significant digital divide between the connected majority and the homes in the unconnected minority that rarely, if ever, use a computer.

Age and education are factors in this divide — 50% of those who have never used e-mail are over 65, and 56 percent had no schooling beyond high school.

National Technology Scan found just 7% seven percent of the 20 million “disconnected” homes plan to subscribe to an Internet service within the next 12 months. Still, the study reports a steady decline in the number of disconnected households when compared to findings from previous years. National Technology Scan reported at year-end 2006 that 29% of all U.S. households (31 million homes) did not have Internet access, citing low perceived value of the Internet.

Read more about it here.

Tags: Digital Divide, Internet, National Technology Scan, Parks Associates

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Original post by nafiz

Maybe it’s time to get a new telescope or upgrade for the future in another way?

According to a report in today’s New York Times, the skies may be the next frontier in travel, but not even the wealthiest space tourist can zoom out to, say, the Crab Nebula, the Trapezium Cluster or Eta Carinae, a star 100 times more massive than the Sun and 7,500 light-years away.

But those far, far away places and thousands of others can now be toured and explored at the controls of a PC, with the constellations, stars and space dust displayed in vivid detail and animated imagery.

The project, the WorldWide Telescope, is the culmination of years of work by researchers at Microsoft, and the Web site and free downloadable software are available starting today, at www.WorldWideTelescope.org.

In case you wanted to know, the WorldWide Telescope is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope — bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

Here’s CNET’s take on it here.
Happy trails to you …

Tags: CNET, Microsoft, telescope, Web 2.0, WorldWide Telescope

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Original post by nafiz

Do we really need another online storage company?

Apparently, HP thinks so and has launched Upline, a data storage service that lets you put your data in a more secure, online headquarters location.

As we should have learned by now, automatic backup makes securing data simple, not just one time, but as often as you choose. And with any Internet connection you can easily access, share, manipulate and store your data from anywhere.

Three plans -– Home/Home Office, Family and Professional -– are available, all offering unlimited storage and features tailored to meet your needs, whether you are protecting data for yourself, your family or a small business.

The fourth (free) plan offers 1GB of storage, but to get unlimited storage, you must shell out a minimum of $59.

www.upline.com

Tags: data storage service, HP, Upline

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Cellphones, CES, Features

We hit the show floor excitedly looking for iriver’s GSM phone which they showed off earlier in the week, but when we got to their booth, the little guy was nowhere to be found. We managed to wrangle a chat out of some of the company’s product designers and marketing people, and they explained their hesitation at continuing to show the W7-cum-GSM-phone due to the similarities of the phones UI to an all-too-familiar device. According to the iriver people, the iPhone-like interface which was showcased originally was only meant to demonstrate what the phone was capable of, not a finalized version of the OS. Of course, it’s little consolation to us, having seen a brief snippet of the phone, though we’re assured that some new hotness — or hot newness — is on the way from the cats in Korea.

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Cellphones, CES, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Iriver’s been pushing out all sorts of product at this year’s CES, but this is the biggest surprise from the company yet. The “iriver GSM phone” is an iPhone-esque handset featuring a 3-inch 480 x 272 touchscreen, and a Linux-based UI that is practically mimics the iPhone feature for feature. The actual hardware is quite similar to iriver’s own W7. According to PC Mag, the phone has 4GB of flash storage, Rhapsody and other media support, a two megapixel camera (with video, take that Apple), Adobe Flash support, GPS and mobile TV (it’s unclear what type). While we’re not sure what sort of wireless options this has, like WiFi or 3G, and what carriers will support it, iriver has committed to bring this to the States. Iriver’s Owen Kwon promises the phone will be “more affordable” than the iPhone, but otherwise there’s no other info on release. There’s video of the phone after the break.

Continue reading iriver 3-inch touchscreen “GSM phone” headed for the States

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Original post by Paul Miller