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Latest Gear Live Videos
Apple set to bring iTunes to the cloud and offer wireless syncing
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Rumors, Wireless / WiFi,
Our pals over at BGR have got a scoop from a “reliable Apple source” that has told them that the company is preparing for a major shift in their iTunes strategy. Basically, Apple is readying an iTunes cloud service that would bring a few new capabilities to the service, and untether you from keeping and accessing your content strictly off of a local hard drive. Once live, you’d be able to stream your music and movies directly from Apple’s servers to your devices, no matter where you are. Further, you’d be able to steam music and movies from your home computers to your other computers and remote devices, kind of like an extension of Back to My Mac. Lastly, we should finally see wireless iTunes syncing come to devices like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
These changes would immediately negate pretty much all storage space woes with WiFi-capable Apple devices. A 16GB iPad could stream every movie you own rather than requiring the movie to be stores on the device itself, making internal storage much less of an issue. Apple typically has their iTunes and iPod event in September, and this year should be no different. If this is real, we’d expect it to be unveiled in just over two months.
Gallery: Apple set to bring iTunes to the cloud and offer wireless syncing
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Amazon Kindle DX: Now $379, 50% more contrast, new color
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Handhelds, Hot Deals,
Hot on the heels of the Amazon Kindle price drop, the company has just released a new and improved Kindle DX. The most obvious change is the new color, as the Kindle DX is now darker than its littler sibling, sporting a graphite hue. The display is greatly improved, with 50% better contrast, making everything nice and sharp. It still rocks free 3G wireless, allowing you to download books just about anywhere you are, and the display is still 9.7-inches in size, which is a ton of real estate.
Even better than all the new features, though, is the price. Amazon has slashed the price of the Kindle DX down to $379 from the previous $489 price point. That’s even cheaper than the original 6-inch Kindle when it first shipped, and the Kindle DX is a far superior product. You can pre-order the new Kindle DX now—it ships on July 7th.
Read More 
| Kindle DX
Gallery: Amazon Kindle DX: Now $379, 50% more contrast, new color
iPhone finally hitting Verizon in January 2011?
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Handhelds, Rumors,
According to Bloomberg, it seems that Verizon Wireless may finally start offering the iPhone to customers, starting in January 2011. Many have wondered when AT&T’s exclusive grip on the iPhone would be coming to an end, and “two people familiar with the plans” are pointing to January. As expected, Verizon and Apple spokespersons have declined to comment, but we wouldn’t be shocked if we saw the iPhone 4 drop on Verizon in the new year.
Read More | SFGate
Gallery: iPhone finally hitting Verizon in January 2011?
Hulu Plus: HD, $9.99 per month, full details
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Internet, Video Games,
Hulu has finally announced their Hulu Plus programming package, and we’ve got all the details here for you. First and foremost, a Hulu Plus subscription will run you $9.99 per month. For that price, you get expanded access and features to the Hulu service:
- Hulu Plus Season Ticket: Every episode of the full current season of a bunch of shows are available to you, whenever you want (rather than just the last few episodes)
- Watch past seasons of shows in their entirety
- Watch Hulu on your iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, or iPad
- Watch Hulu on television-connected devices. Launches on Samsung devices, but coming soon to Xbox 360, PS3, Sony devices TV and Blu-ray devices
- Hulu Plus gives you access to watch shows in 720p high definition
The Hulu Plus service will be publicly available next month, but they are accepting email addresses from people who’d like to be part of the Hulu Plus Preview, starting today. Get ready to ditch cable, y’all.
Read More | Hulu Plus
Gallery: Hulu Plus: HD, $9.99 per month, full details
Samsung Epic 4G announced for Sprint
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Handhelds, Wireless / WiFi,
Sprint just announced their newest Android smartphone, the Samsung Epic 4G. Formerly known as the Galaxy S Pro in the rumor mill, the Epic 4G will launch in “the coming months” and seems feature-packed. For starters, it’s got a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p video recording, front-facing VGA camera for video calls, accelerometer, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a landscape QWERTY slider keyboard. Naturally, the Epic 4G will be running Samsung’s customized version of Android 2.1.
Definitely nice to see more 4G smartphones launching on Sprint’s 4G network, giving the EVO 4G some company. We will have more on the Epic 4G as news comes out.
Read More | Sprint
Gallery: Samsung Epic 4G announced for Sprint
Amazon Kindle Editions with audio and video support comes to iPhone and iPad apps
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Software,
Amazon is continuing their Kindle strategy—that being focusing on Kindle content sales in addition to Kindle hardware—with an update to the Kindle iPad and iPhone apps. The update brings Kindle Editions support, which allows books to embed audio and video, playable from right in the app. The first books to incorporate Kindle Editions multimedia features include Rick Steves’ London and Rose’s Heavenly Cakes which is a cookbook that shows you how to…bake awesome cakes. As of this point, there are only a handful of books that Amazon is classifying as “Kindle Edition with Audio/Video” but we are sure that Amazon is looking to make this a differentiating feature, so we expect we will see much more of this in due time.
Read More | Kindle Editions
Gallery: Amazon Kindle Editions with audio and video support comes to iPhone and iPad apps
First HTC EVO 4G OTA software update being pushed to devices
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Handhelds, Software,
If you’ve got an HTC EVO 4G, you may wanna check for updates, as Sprint has started pushing out the first OTA (over the air) update to their 4G-enabled smartphone. System update 1.47.651.1 is 21.43MB in size, so we are guessing that it’s mostly meant to kill some bugs and optimize some things—but who knows, it may also unlock and enable the 802.11n antenna in the EVO 4G as well. If you get the upgrade, let us know what you find!
Gallery: First HTC EVO 4G OTA software update being pushed to devices
Apple sells over 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in 3 days
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Corporate News, Handhelds,
We knew that over 600,000 iPhone 4 pre-orders came through before the device even hit the streets, but with the epically massive lines seen during the iPhone 4 launch, we had to wonder if Apple had topped one million sold. Well, this morning we got news that Apple blew way past one million—the company sold over 1,700,000 iPhone 4s in just the first three days of availability.
“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”
The 1.7 million number is based on sales in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan. iPhone 4 will go on sale in 18 additional counties by the end of July.
Gallery: Apple sells over 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in 3 days
iPhone 4 has orientation issues, not that there’s anything wrong with that
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cameras, Smartphones, Handhelds,
Looks like we found another iPhone 4 oddity. It looks like taking and sharing pictures with the iPhone 4 may have a couple of bumps in the road. The iPhone 4 uses scantily-supported JPEG orientation flags for photos rather than actually rotating the pixel data, causing many online services (Dailybooth and Facebook included) to interpret portrait-oriented photos as landscape and then turning them on their side. As you can see above, I took a self-portrait and sent it in to Dailybooth, and it appeared as a landscape image.
Gallery: iPhone 4 has orientation issues, not that there’s anything wrong with that
Test out FaceTime with Apple support
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio / Video,
Using FaceTime for the first time is one thing that many new iPhone 4 users were excited about—but what if you don’t have any friends who also have an iPhone 4, currently the only FaceTime-compatible device on the market? Apple is here to help.
Apple support representative are standing by, ready to connect with you on a FaceTime call to give you a tutorial of all the features that FaceTime offers. All you need to do to start is dial 1-888-FACETIME from your iPhone 4 handset. From there, you will be asked a few questions to make sure you are ready to connect over FaceTime, and then you’ll be on a face-to-face call with Apple.
For what it’s worth, we think it’s pretty cool of Apple to offer this basic service. What better way to show the magic of FaceTime than to let the user experience it themselves, first hand, which is something that will never come across the same way in a video tutorial.
