Gadget & Tech

Verizon has teamed with Google to bring two Android-powered phones and the Google Voice service to its network, in an effort to fight off the iPhone and its exclusive agreement with AT&T.

“You either have an open device, or not,” Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless, said in a conference call Tuesday. “And this will be open. We expect to bring that… application to market when we bring the first device out.”

Verizon’s new “open” stance is quite a change for the company, which has traditionally kept tight controls over devices on its network. Earlier this year, the nation’s largest wireless carrier said it would create its own application store and, at the time, said it would be the only option available for handsets. Read More

Sony is coming out with 56-inch 3,840×2160 quad-HD display on November 1 in Japan. Priced at 6,825,000 yen ($76,583), this is clearly for pros only, three elements combined within exact color, accurate picture and reliability, thanks to a RGB LED backlit panel built with incredible picture reproduction and exact calibration with included software. Read More

The oldest known fossil skeleton of a human ancestor—a female Ardipithecus ramidus specimen nicknamed “Ardi” (pictured)—has been found, scientists announced on October 1, 2009.
The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.
Announced at joint press conferences in Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the analysis of the Ardipithecus ramidus bones will be published in a collection of papers tomorrow in a special edition of the journal Science, along with an avalanche of supporting materials published online. Read More

Since the v3.0 operating system allowed applications to access the iPhone’s hardware, iPhone photo applications have switched from being after-the-fact processors to full-on camera suites, letting you do everything from capturing images to post processing to (in some cases) uploading to FaceBook and the Twitter.

The latest is the rather appropriately professional-looking Pro-Camera, which can be yours for $3. Pro-Camera offers the self-timer and digital zoom found in other applications, but it brings some rather nice new features, usually found in proper, standalone cameras.

Most successful will probably be the anti-shake, which uses the accelerometer to detect your jitters and stabilize the image. Using a similar method, you can also overlay a horizon line to keep the pictures straight, or display a grid overlay. Read More

Gizmodo has information that Apple has been shopping around the old media haunts for content deals. Now that they’ve conquered music, movie, and TV downloads, the next logical step is print.

Apparently Apple approached the New York Times back in June. They wanted to talk with the paper about putting their stories on a “new device”, presumably the iTablet. Apple also talked with McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press, two major textbook manufacturers, and convinced them to move textbooks over to iTunes. Once Apple is ready, they’ll start selling iTunes textbooks at a substantial discount. Unfortunately, these books will be DRM filled to prevent resale. Read More

The D300s remains a capable, even impressive camera.The D300s retains the same sensor, excellent 51-point auto focus system, fantastic chassis build quality and ergonomics as the D300. Low-light performance is solid on ISO1600. It’s no 5D Mark II or D700, but it still stands up. Color saturation remains top-notch, and it seemed to handle white balance even a bit better than 5D Mark II. Read More here

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration.
A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss
and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

for a first look of Google Wave click here

What’s up with Google’s obsession with UFO mythology?

abducting the second “o” in “Google” and UFO hovering above crop circles that spelled out “Google”?.

Google provided a relatively mundane explanation for its alien fixation. According to a post on The Official Google Blog by site designer Micheal Lopez, the series of cryptic images and riddles was a tribute to science fiction author H.G. Wells, whose 143rd birthday was Sept. 20, 2009. Read More