T-Mobile MyTouch HD Specs Leaked

TMONews has an interesting slide describing the upcoming MyTouch HD, the follow-up to T-Mo’s popular MyTouch series. Here we find the pertinent specs:

Woof. Video chat over Qik, eh? I guess that’s one way to do it. Anyway, expect this to drop before the holidays.

3.8” display
Swype enabled keyboard
5MP camera with VGA front camera
HSPA+ capable
Video Chat over 3G or WiFi via Qik
Screen share feature, “Broadcast your HD pictures, videos, and movies to your HDTV”
“Genius” button
4GB internal storage with 8GB external SD included, expandable to 32GB
1 GHz Dual Processor

Woof. Video chat over Qik, eh? I guess that’s one way to do it. Anyway, expect this to drop before the holidays.

New Currency? (Not Android Related)

A site I found going by paybox.me is currently on it's way up there. They claim to be trying to bring a new form of E-Currency into the world close to that of a USD. They're currently in the "EarlyBird" stages, in which I guess it's more of a beta version of the website. All in all it looks pretty cool, there's surveys and job offers on the site etc.

From what I can tell you get 50$ for signing up, and an additional 20$ a day. (Not currently usable but from what I can tell it'll all be usable soon) If you're interested at all simply go to:

http://www.paybox.me/r/zoltrix


Check it out and tell me what you guys think?

Android 2.2 Finally Starts To See Wide Adoption, Now On 28.7% Of Handsets

Slowly but surely, Android users are getting their first taste of Froyo, the latest version of Google’s mobile OS, which was announced in May and began broadly rolling out to select handsets (namely, Google’s Nexus One) in June. The OS includes a number of key new features like Flash and big speed gains, but has only been available on a tiny fraction of Android devices for months. Now Google has just updated its Platform Versions chart which shows there has recently been a surge in the number of devices running Android 2.2: it’s now running on 28.7% of handsets.

That may not sound like much, but it’s a huge gain over the 4.5% Google’s dashboard was showing just a few days ago. The reason for the surge? Some of Android’s most popular phones, including the Verizon Droid, have been upgraded to 2.2 in the last month.

Still, there’s a long way to go. Over 70% of handsets are now running Android 2.1 or higher, which is a major improvement over five months ago when that figure was only 27.3%. But carriers and handset manufacturers are taking their sweet time in rolling out upgrades, which leads to frustrated users (and developers who can’t leverage the latest-and-greatest features because many handsets can’t use them yet).

Good Riddance: Cincinnati bans texting while driving

If you know anyone who makes a habit out of texting while driving in Cincinnati, Ohio you might want to give them a heads up: it’s illegal now. If you know anyone who makes a habit out of texting while driving anywhere else, you might want to give them a heads up, too: it’s stupid.

I’ll spare you guys the lecture (I’m sure you guys are all wonderful people who don’t text and drive, anyway). The ban only extends to the Cincinnati city limits, though there’s massive support for a state-wide ban. If such a ban passes, it’d make Ohio the 31st state to outlaw texting while driving. Is yours one of the other 30? Check out the full list after the jump.

• Alaska
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Georgia
• Illinois
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Nebraska
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New York
• North Carolina
• Oregon
• Rhode Island
• Tennessee
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Washington
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Google's Android leapfrogging over iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows

By the end of this year, Google's Android smartphone operating system will in a single year have leapfrogged competitors like Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry and Microsoft Windows phones in global popularity, and will challenge Nokia to become the world's most popular mobile OS by 2014, research firm Gartner said Friday.

In its annual global smartphone forecast, Gartner said the explosive growth of Google's mobile operating system will give it 17.7 percent of worldwide sales by the end of 2010 -- up from 3.9 percent at the end of 2009. Google says it is currently seeing more than 200,000 Android phones activated every day.

With manufacturers like Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Motorola planning to offer budget Android phones this fall, Android will become a mass market technology that by 2014 will have double the global market share of iOS, Apple's mobile operating system that powers the iPhone and the iPad, Gartner said.

Android's rise to the No. 2 smartphone operating system in terms of global sales by the end 2010 is two years sooner than Gartner predicted a year ago.

"It's a matter of Android really going more into the hands of the mainstream user," Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a telephone interview from London. "The iPhone will remain focused toward the higher end of the market, while through the end of this year and into 2011, all that growth you see in Android will come from the fact that most of the vendors who are backing it will release cheaper smartphones."

By the end of 2014, Gartner says Android and Nokia's Symbian operating system will each account for about 30 percent of global smartphone sales, while Apple's iOS will be third with about 15 percent of the global market, and RIM will be fourth with about 12 percent. The projections account for Gartner's expectation that Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, will begin to sell the iPhone in coming months, Cozza said.

The research firm IDC is also forecasting strong growth for Android relative to Nokia's Symbian operating system, although not quite as strong as Gartner's prediction, saying that Android smartphones will comprise 24.9 percent of global smartphone in 2014, compared to 32.9 percent for Symbian.

Both Gartner and IDC agree, however, that Android is rapidly eating into the market share of Nokia and RIM.

"That flood of Samsung handsets, HTC handsets, LG handsets, Motorola -- it's just this sort of irresistible wave," said Will Stofega, a mobile analyst for IDC said of the growth of Android smartphones. "It's difficult to say that they are not going to become more and more dominant as time goes on."

Google declined to comment on the reports.

Analysts say there are always a number of issues that could derail Android's growth. Those include Oracle's recent federal copyright lawsuit against Google charging that the Android operating system was built on Oracle's Java software without permission, "fragmentation" concerns about the different versions of Android being sold, and questions about whether Google will be able to maintain amicable relationships with the variety of manufacturers and wireless carriers that support Android phones.

But Stofega said there is little doubt that Android's rapid growth and its popularity with software developers who build smartphone apps contributed to Apple's uncharacteristic decision this week to loosen its grip on control over software development for iPhone and iPad. Google said there are now more than 80,000 apps available to download in the Android Market, still much less than the Apple App Store, but more than double the number available this spring.

"The developers tell us they love Android. It's easier to learn; it takes less time, and one of the complaints we hear quite a bit about is (Apple's) app certification process as a real thing that costs them time and money," Stofega said. Developers figure "why not go to Android and make a bet there? Get on the wave and see what happens."

ReadyForZero Wants To Help You Get Control Of Credit Card Debt

Credit card debt is a undoubtedly serious issue for many Americans. Defaulting on credit card bills can result in damage to your credit score and even bankruptcy. Y Combinator-backed ReadyForZero is launching today as easy to use web-based platform to help guide consumers out of credit card debt.

The site asks you to import your credit card information, including what types of cards you have, the amount owed, and will then walk you through the same steps a trusted financial advisor would give you. Based on your minimum payments, salary and balance, ReadyForZero will figures out an optimal
strategy for what to pay and when. The site will send you reminders and you can track your progress online. While you cannot actually pay your bills directly from ReadyForZero, the startup will eventually allow users to do this directly from the site.

ReadyForZero is trying to help those consumers who are having trouble paying their debt off, as opposed to those who are already in collections or bankruptcy. Essentially the site is trying to help people be able to eventually not carry any balances month to month. The company says that in the US alone there are 100 million people with revolving balances, meaning they carry credit card debt from month to month. Combined they owe $900 billion to banks and credit card companies.

The site will eventually pull in additional data for users such as credit scores and even facilitate lending. In terms of revenue, ReadyForZero could make money in lead generation by recommending budget-friendly cards from credit card companies who charge lower interest rates.

Of course some credit card companies and banks offer financial planning and advice on how to manage credit. But ReadyForZero is taking a more hands-on, web-based approach to helping people control their debt. And the site provides assistance via phone and live web chat. There’s no doubt that consumers need more information when it comes to credit counseling and financial planning; ReadyForZero is definitely a interactive yet informative way to manage your debt.

Android Users Can Now Check In To Foursquare By Using Their Voice

Thanks to a partnership with Vlingo, owners of Android 2.0 or higher-equipped phones can now check in to Foursquare and update their status on Facebook and Twitter simply by speaking into their phones.

To try it out, download the free Vlingo app to your Android handset.

Using your voice, you can then update your location status on Foursquare by saying “check into Logan Airport”, locate your friends with commands like “where are my friends?” and “who’s nearby?” as well as send shout-outs to your buddies (e.g. “shout at Logan Airport waiting to board a plane to San Francisco”).

That’s not all though. The latest version of the Vlingo app also lets users share the service with their friends with the click of a button and also update their status on Facebook, Twitter and/or Foursquare at the same time by saying “social update” and speaking the message.

Previous Vlingo features remain, too: you can still use the app to send text and email messages, search the web, use Google maps and more.

As for BlackBerry, iPhone and Nokia S60 users – they’ll have to be patient for a while before they can start updating their status and locations with their voice.

Vlingo says it plans to roll out this functionality to other supported platforms in a future release but didn’t mention specific dates.

Do you consider voice-driven applications to be an ideal way to interact with mobile apps on your phone? Why (not)?

More DroidX Custom Roms Starting to Emerge

For those who follow the android world, you all know that Motorola decided to make it 
impossibleharder for custom ROM developers to create custom ROMS for the Droid X as well as making itimpossible slightly more difficult than normal to root the phone. Well since then the phone has been rooted, and a recovery method was put in place to allow people to flash new ROMS and test the vulnerabilities of the Droid X without fear of permanently damaging the phone. This recovery fallback has allowed ROM development to speed up a little bit and now the first totally custom ROMS are available for people to flash (they are froyo2.2 based). Sapphire was the first to be released but now the other developers are starting to trickle in with their own versions. The process to flash the phone is quite a bit more difficult and time consuming than other phones such as the eris or the nexus, but it is finally possible to bypass that pesky eFuse that Motorola insisted on using to taunt developers with. Below is a video of one of those roms running froyo on the DroidX



For those of you who own a Droid X and want to try out the new roms you can go to the xda-developer forums for the Droid X and read up on it. Be careful though, the process isnt a walk in the park, it does take some work.

Google Offering Programming Courses for Free Including Android Developement Course

I was just messing around on googles code site trying to find some open source code for a few apps so I could see how they were done because I would like to get into Android Developement when I noticed something amazing that I had never heard of before. I stumbled onto a page where Google was offering a bunch of different programming courses on different languages like C++ and Python. At first this didn’t seem like a big deal because Ive seen C++ and other language tutorials all over the place. As I was looking around I noticed something that would be very usefull to anyone trying to learn Android Developement, google is actually offering two courses in android programming, the first one is a beginner course which is actually a legitimate course that was taught as a 10 week course at California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo.

The course includes power point lectures, assignments, and lab activities that go through making an Android program step by step. The second lesson is more advanced topics like resource management and things like that.I took a look at the actual material and this stuff is amazing, they go through everything about making an android program including which IDE’s to use and lots of practical examples. For anyone who is interested this thing is amazing and definitely worth checking out. There are also quite a few other classes, some examples include classes on C++ and Python, and there are numerous video lectures on more specific topics. They even have a section dedicated to web development and web security. I can only say that I wish I knew about all this stuff much sooner, I am surprised that more people do not know about this because this came as a total shock when I let my friends know what I found.

You can find all of lectures on the main google code university page

Gmail Priority Inbox Sorts Your Email For You. And It’s Fantastic.

Email overload has finally met its match. Tomorrow, Gmail is rolling out a new feature calledPriority Inbox that is going to be a Godsend for those of you who dread opening your email. In short, Google has built a system that figures out which of your messages are important, and presents them at the top of the screen so you don’t miss them. The rest of your messages are still there, but you don’t have to dig through dozens of newsletters and confirmations to find the diamonds in rough.

The beauty of the system lies in its simplicity — it’s nearly as easy as Gmail’s one click spam filter. There’s almost no setup: once it’s activated on your account, you’ll see a prompt asking you if you want to enable Priority Inbox. You can choose from a few options (the order of your various inboxes and if there are any contacts you’d like to always mark ‘Important’) but don’t have to setup any rules or ‘teach’ Gmail what you want it to mark important. It just works, at least most of the time.

The system uses a plethora of criteria to decide which messages are most important: things like how frequently you open and/or respond to messages from a given sender, how often you read messages that contain a certain keyword, and whether or not the message is addressed solely to you or looks like it was sent to a mailing list. If you come across a message that’s been marked important when it shouldn’t have been, you can hit an arrow to tell Gmail it’s messed up. Likewise, if a message that should have been flagged gets sent to the ‘everything else’ area, you can promote it. Through these actions Gmail gets progressively smarter, so the system should work better over time.

I’ve been using the service since late last week and have found it to work very well. Occasionally messages that shouldn’t have been marked ‘Important’ are flagged, but I’ve yet to encounter an urgent message that slipped into the ‘everything else’ section. My colleague MG Siegler, who has also had the feature active, has had similar success.

It’s great. I love it. But it isn’t perfect.

My biggest gripe so far is the fact that there’s no way to tell why a given message has been deemed important. Oftentimes it’s obvious — emails from my coworkers are generally given the golden arrows, as are messages from PR contacts whom I frequently communicate with. But occasionally there are oddballs that have been marked important for no apparent reason.

Sure, it’s easy to tell Gmail that ‘this message is not important’ and strip its golden badge. But what if the message was marked important for a reason that is usually sound (perhaps it contains a reference to TechCrunch Disrupt, for example)? It would be nice if I could tell Gmail something to the effect of “this sender is never important”, but not to start frowning on whatever keywords the message contained. Still, it’s a great start.

Of course, this introduces a new dynamic to the way a lot of people are going to be reading email. Email intros will become ever more important, because you’ll want to ensure that your message gets marked with coveted ‘important’ tag.  It also has much broader implications. Increasingly, content will be displayed to you based on its importance rather than its time stamp — not just when it comes to browsing email, but for social networks and other content as well.

Priority Inbox will be rolling out to Gmail and Google Apps users alike over the course of the week.

HTC Desire Tips n Tricks - Cellphone News

HTC Desire, the flagship smartphone of the Taiwanese manufacturer is one of the most versatile Android-based devices launched on the market. It can be customized in so many ways, rooted and unrooted, as long as you know a few tips and tricks.


Here are some of these tips that will make your experience with the Desire more enjoyable.

The often use of the optical track-pad can make your life easier when browsing the Internet, sending an email or simply editing a text.

Even though many people think that the track-pad is useless and that HTC could've made the screen larger instead of including this item, I still think it saves a lot of time when it's used for specific tasks.

For example you can easily use it for precise cursor placement when you're editing a text. Also, it's perfect for going back to correct a block of text.

To select a certain text in text editing, just place the cursor where you want to start your selection and long-press on the optical track-pad to bring up the context menu.

Then tap “Select text” and use the optical track-pad to fine tune your selection. Further, you will then be able to cut or copy the selection, by long-pressing on the optical track-pad to bring up the context menu and choosing one of the actions.

While in the browser you can use the track-pad to jump between links, which is very useful in case the links are very small and hard to pinpoint with your finger.

There's also an interesting feature that enables you to open the link in a new window, when you long-press on the optical track-pad and choose the action you need from the context menu that it displays.

Feel free to add more of these tips, especially if you're an advanced Android user.

How to run programs on startup when login into GNOME - Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

How to run programs on startup when login into GNOME

• System -> Preferences -> Sessions
• Sessions

Startup Programs Tab -> Add/Edit/Delete

How to turn on Num Lock on GNOME startup - Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

How to turn on Num Lock on GNOME startup

sudo aptitude install numlockx
sudo cp /etc/X11/gdm/Init/Default /etc/X11/gdm/Init/Default_backup
gksudo gedit /etc/X11/gdm/Init/Default

• Find this line

...
exit 0

• Add the following lines above it

if [ -x /usr/bin/numlockx ]; then
 /usr/bin/numlockx on
fi

• Save the edited file

How to restart GNOME without rebooting computer - Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

How to restart GNOME without rebooting computer

• Save and close all opened applications

Press 'Ctrl + Alt + Backspace'

or

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

or

If these tips did not help read #System requests (What to do if your system is unresponsive)

How to enable smooth fonts - Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

How to enable smooth fonts

gedit ~/.fonts.conf

• Paste in this text:

<?xml version=”1.0” ?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM “fonts.dtd”>
<fontconfig>
<match target=”font”>
<edit name=”autohint” mode=”assign”>
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

• You’ll have to log out and back in to see the difference.

How to enable lame for FFMPEG - Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

KINO FLVs silent? You need to recompile FFMPEG with LAME enabled. FFMPEG can be installed via apt-get as a package, but is not able encode MP3, which is the audio stream in FLV video (like Google & YouTube).

sudo apt-get build-dep ffmpeg
sudo apt-get install liblame-dev libfaad2-dev libfaac-dev libxvidcore4-dev liba52-0.7.4 \
liba52-0.7.4-dev libx264-dev checkinstall build-essential gcc

• Download and extract FFMPEG source to current working directory

sudo apt-get source ffmpeg

• Compile FFMPEG from source

cd ffmpeg-*
sudo ./configure --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-vorbis --enable-libogg \
--enable-a52 --enable-dts --enable-dc1394 --enable-libgsm --disable-debug \
--enable-mp3lame --enable-faad --enable-faac --enable-xvid --enable-pthreads \
--enable-x264

maybe try instead = 
sudo ./configure --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-libvorbis --enable-libogg \
--enable-liba52 --enable-libdts --enable-dc1394 --enable-libgsm --disable-debug \ 
--enable-libmp3lame --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-xvid --enable-pthreads \
--enable-x264


sudo make
sudo checkinstall [accept defaults, set version to 3:0.cvs20060823-3.1ubuntu2]

If an application you are using employs FFMPEG to encode FLV, it should now work properly. You can also call FFMPEG directly from the command line. The extension/suffix of the outfile tells FFMPEG which audio or video format to encode to.

ffmpeg [-i infile] [outfile]