by Darren Murph, posted Nov 8th 2008 at 5:31AM For those who stick to one coast or the other, you may have never even heard of Centennial Communications. Not to worry, though, as AT&T just made said company entirely more relevant. Shortly before heading out of the office on Friday, AT&T decided it fitting to acquire Centennial for a few bucks shy of a billion, or $944 million for those seeking precision. The transaction will beef up AT&T’s coverage for customers in rural areas of the Midwest and Southeast United States, not to mention in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. (Read the full post about ‘AT&T picks up Centennial Communications for $944 million’…)

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Everybody loves a challenge, but when it takes 10 minutes to work out the time you probably have the wrong watch.  However for the sake of geeky-ness and pure novelty value I will continue and introduce the “Fire,” the new watch from Tokyoflash. And flash it most definitely is.  It has a sleek, modern and almost minimalistic design, or at least it is until you press the buttons and the concealed red, blue and yellow LEDs spring to life.  This is where your problems begin as the lights arrange themselves in a way in which it is possible to tell the time, just not easy. Reminiscent of binary watches, each LED indicates a particular time, with yellow for hours, red for 10s of minutes and the green for singular minutes. (Read the full post about ‘When time telling becomes a challenge’…)

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So RIM said they couldn’t put together a blackberry Flip with a full QWERTY keyboard.  LG said, “We can.” Take a look at the LG Lotus that will be available on the Sprint network.  It’s a flip phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and an odd square form factor.  What else does it do outside of being a texting machine?  The Lotus comes with GPS navigation, music player (which works with the Sprint Music Store), Bluetooth, and a 2.0MP camera that also does video.  LG claims over 5 hours of talk time and the phone weighs in at 3.7 ounces. You can pick one up in black or purple at $149.99 if you grab it alongside a ball and chain two year contract.  Flashy product page: [LG Lotus] Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! (Read the full post about ‘LG Lotus: clamshell QWERTY phone anyone?’…)

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Gizmodo has Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer yelling “6.5!  6.5!.” We had Moto’s chief spill the beans not too long ago.  And here I am talking about it again.  What could a “point” upgrade be worth?  Certainly not all this, right? Well, my time with the Samsung Epix on AT&T service has gone pretty well and I’ve hopes 6.5 will bring WinMo out of the dark ages.  While the OS has nowhere near the spit shine Apple products do, tons more usability was baked into this release.  Things like threading text messages, one touch for speaker phone, using the touchscreen for simple things like unlocking the phone.  Now, I am not saying all these things are comperable to other phones, merely just it is possible.  All of it was extremely welcome on phones that us corporate drones must use. (Read the full post about ‘Like Bigfoot, Windows Mobile 6.5 exists.  Has same problems.’…)

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The Swann MovieStick is one of the smaller spy cameras around, as it measures slightly larger than a pack of chewing gum while tipping the scales at a mere 1 ounce. All recorded video is stored in an SD memory card (microSD would’ve been so much better). The internal lithium ion battery is able to record up to 2.5 hours of video, while the integrated USB port is used to transfer recordings to a computer in a flash. Would be interesting to see what kind of use the Swann MovieStick will see as it hits retail stores for $119.99 a pop. Tags: lcd, gear, cellphone, CD (Read the full post about ‘Swann MovieStick For Covert Operations’…)

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Not sure why they’re calling it a ‘widget’, but Sprint has this crazy dense web page that incorporates a ton of Flash, and is constantly polling other data sources on the Web to stay updated. Why you’re wondering? Just to show off how speedy their mobile broadband cards are. Here’s a screenshot. Make sure you’re plugged into a decent conn before you hit this link! Posted in Networking & Internet, Phones Tags: gprs, audio, hi fi, ipod (Read the full post about ‘Sprint’s NOW Widget’…)

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Our friends in Canada have received the Samsung Cleo - a square clamshell handset that aims to be a hit among fashionistas, although we think something that looks more like a make-up kit might not be too appealing. The specifications are nothing much to shout about, which is a letdown compared to its unique design that catches one’s attention. Some of the features found within include :-

• QWERTY keyboard
• Color LCD display
• 1.3 megapixel camera
• MP3 playback
• microSD memory card slot

There is no word no pricing, and neither do we know whether it will hit the US or not. Will you get one if it does? (Read the full post about ‘Samsung Cleo Hits The Great White North’…)

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There is a new sheriff in town and it’s name is iphone.  This year, according the JD Powers the top dog spot goes to Apple’s phone, leaving RIM to finish in the #2 spot.  As you can see from the above graph, Apple’s entry was not included in last year (the survey’s inaugural year).  The graph shows some interesting items. Looking at RIM, they stayed pretty flat, as did Samsung smartphone owners.  Not much news there, but look at Palm!  Whether it is just fashionable to rag on Palm or users have had enough, they took a hit.  The actual numbers are 698 to 644, a substantial slide over the past year. (Read the full post about ‘RIM ousted from #1 by smartphone owners’…)

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Next time your “friend” hands you a pack of gum, beware. It could be Swann’s MovieStick in disguise, recording your every move. Small enough to actually fit in a gum wrapper, this industrial espionage device (read: portable digicam) can store up to 2.5 hours of video on a 2GB MicroSD card (not included). You can recharge the battery with any USB connection and while there’s no news on availability the retail tag has been set at $120. Imagine how many packs of real gum you can buy with that money. (Read the full post about ‘Swann MovieStick Fits In A Gum Wrapper’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Nov 7th 2008 at 7:00PM While low-cost laptops are all the rage right now, there’s still a solid chunk of folks out there willing to pay a premium for potent ultraportables. The Voodoo Envy 133 is undeniably one of the sexier small machines we’ve seen of late, and the internals are rather impressive given the size of the enclosure. Still, this here rig costs a pretty penny, and we’ve all ideas those who splurged have a thing or two to say about it with nearly two months of usage under their belt. Has the Envy 133 lived up to your surely lofty expectations? Are there aspects there you wish were different? How could Voodoo go about tweaking things whenever it finally decides to actually launch another (Read the full post about ‘How would you change the Voodoo Envy 133?’…)

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