Early J&R Black Friday Sales Weekend Launched

Topic: Black Friday 2009

Starting today, J&R is again offering an early Black Friday sale this weekend.
Besides various electronics deals J&R also features a Black Friday DVD blowout sale.
Find a list of available early J&R Black Friday deals below.
Read more

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:00 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Bheestie Bags Reverse Water Damage

Topic: Technology News

About a month back I was at a giant party in the woods, camping with a bunch of musicians, artists, and fellow tech nerds. It started to rain, and then it started to pour. After two straight days of rain, even our tents started to give in. People were soaked but, more importantly, iPods and smartphones and all sorts of other PMPs were soaked. If only we'd had some Bheestie Bags then...

Traditionally, you take your sodden piece of tech and set it out to dry for a couple of days. Then you pray for the powers above to have mercy on your poor, innocent PMP. If you're lucky, they will, and you won't have to pay for repairs. If not, your gadget goes off to the shop.

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:59:17 CST | by Robert Evans

Motorola Motus: Coming to AT&T?

Topic: Macworld Expo 2009

If you're an AT&T customer and you don't want to use an iPhone OR a BlackBerry, some help may be en route courtesy of Motorola. Boy Genius has just come upon a blurry photo and spec list for this new smartphone, which is believed to be heading to AT&T. That hasn't been confirmed yet, but the phone most definitely exists.

It comes with support for GSM/GPRS and EDGE, tri-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA, and a 5 MP camera with an LED flash. The Motus packs a healthy 256 MB of RAM, aGPS, WiFi, and sports a 3.1" capacitive touchscreen. It has Bluetooth 2.0, a microSD slot, and a Qualcomm MSM 7201A processor. The UI will, of course, be Motoblur.

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:35:31 CST | by Robert Evans

Sony To Launch iTunes Competitor

Topic: Technology News

Sony confirmed yesterday that they plan to launch an online media store (BusinessWeek) in order to sell music, movies, and books for use on a variety of products. This new store will be called Sony Online Service, and it will be launched as part of Sony's push to reverse their recent losses with an increase in software content.

This new online store will be a direct competitor to iTunes. Anyone who sells media over the Internet is a competitor to iTunes. The question on everyone's mind is; what will Sony do to differentiate their Online Store from all of the others? How will they compete with iTunes?

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:22:20 CST | by Robert Evans

New Black Friday iPhone App Is A Must Have

Topic: Black Friday 2009

The number of advertised deals on Black Friday is overwhelming. There is no easy way to compare deals for a specific product across stores. The Black Friday Sites do a good job of categorizing and analyzing the Black Friday circulars. One of these sites called TGI Black Friday has now gone a step further and released a surprisingly useful Black Friday App for the iPhone.
For instance if you want to find out which Wii Bundles will be offered on Black Friday. You just search for "Wii Bundle" on this iPhone App and you see at a glance all Wii Bundle offers with prices available in the different stores.
When you search for iPod touch you can easily see that Walmart has the best deal with $195 and a free $50 iTunes card.

TGI Black Friday announced the free Black Friday iPhone app today and I just downloaded it from iTunes.
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Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:18:22 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Samsung's Diva Phones Are Really, Really Girly

Topic: Mobile Phones

Two new Samsung phones have just been snapped by Samsung Hub. The first mobile is the S5150 Olivia, and the second is the S7070 smartphone. Both of these new devices are seriously girly. I can't tell if this is brilliant or foolish marketing.

The Olivia is a clamshell feature phone with a silver body that looks almost rhine-stoned. It has a 2.2" QVGA display, a 3 MP camera, and appears to be composed of about 60% estrogen. The S7070 is a standard touchscreen smartphone with a 5 MP camera, 3" WQVGA resistive touchscreen, Bluetooth, microSD slot, and FM radio. It's got a checkered, pearl-colored back and what looks like a gemstone for a 'home' key.

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:58:37 CST | by Robert Evans

Best Early Black Friday Deals Available Today

Topic: Black Friday 2009

Black Friday 2009 is exactly one week away, but as you know hot sales are being offered the whole month. Today several hot early Black Friday deals are available. Tomorrow the next round of Walmart Black Friday Deals will be available.
But let's focus on today. Best Buy is still offering an HDTV sale with Black Friday prices, but has now added an Insignia 50-inch Plasma to the available Dynex TVs.
Amazon offers a Sony PS3 Bundle as an Amazon Black Friday Countdown deal. Amazon is also still offering the hot Wii and Wii Fit Gift Card bundle. Amazon also has a great deal on the Canon VIXIA H200 HD Camcorder.
Find the list of today's deals below.
Read more

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:52:53 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

New Multi-touch Gateway One ZX Coming

Topic: Notebooks and PCs

Multi-touch all-in-one PCs are one of the hottest gadget types in the world right now. The best thing about Windows 7 is that it sports multi-touch functionality, which makes a whole bunch of different UIs possible. According to Akihabara news, Acer Japan has just released a new, multitouch member of the Gateway ZX series. This 20" all-in-one packs a lot of power, despite its slim frame.

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:38:15 CST | by Robert Evans

Chrome OS Smartbooks Coming 2H2010

Topic: Notebooks and PCs

After yesterday's developer chat it's hard not to be excited about Chrome OS. During the talk, it was mentioned several times that Chrome was intended to be used in products like netbooks and not larger laptops and desktops. While smartbooks weren't specifically mentioned as supported or not, it seems likely that they will be. Especially in light of this news from Digitimes.

They're reporting that Pegatron Technology has received a "large volume" of smartbook orders from several different clients. It's believed these smartbooks will launch in Q1 2010 on several different carriers. These first smartbooks are expected to cost around $200 USD. Most of them will sport a Linux OS, due primarily to their tiny display size. Now, here's where things get interesting;

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:27:19 CST | by Robert Evans

Cloud Engines Unveils Second Generation Pogoplug

Topic: Hardware & Peripherals

Pogoplug is a multimedia sharing device designed to allow users to sync up information from multiple computers and automatically share it across the Internet. This allows small businesses and extremely mobile individuals to have access to documents, music, and media files wherever they go. Today, Cloud Engines sent out a press release announcing the release of the Pogoplug 2.

This device sports 4 USB ports in order to let it connect to up to four drives. It also has a bunch of new features, and an improved drag-and-drop interface. The Pogoplug 2 can now be set to automatically synchronize with a PC or Mac and import specific types of content off of them. This way you can continue to add content to your computer(s) without needing to worry about putting it on your Pogoplug. The device does that automatically, which ensures your content is always available online.

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:09:53 CST | by Robert Evans

Panasonic DMP-B15 Portable Blu-Ray Wins CES 2010 Award

Topic: CES 2010 News

Today Panasonic won a CES 2010 Innovations award for their DMP-B15, the world's first portable Blu-ray player. The B15 will be shown off at CES 2010 along with all of the other award honorees. It's not hard to see why the B15 won this year. There are no other portable Blu-ray players on the market. If you want to watch your Blu-ray disks while on the go, your options are either the B15, or a really expensive laptop.

The B15 displays its videos on an 8.9" WSVGA LCD screen. It has an Ethernet connection which gives it access to Viera Cast, a Panasonic service through which users can access Amazon Video-on-Demand and YouTube. There's also an SD reader, for the folks who want to transfer their Blu-ray collection to a more portable form. In addition, the B15 has an HDMI input, which allows it to also serve as a standalone Blu-ray player.

Posted on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:44:50 CST | by Robert Evans