ForcaTech Blog

Repeat after me:  No unlimited data plan with Verizon is a good thing. This is what Verizon is going to be  trying to convince all of their mind controlled zombies customers come September 8th–maybe.

Verizon will have a new classification of phone beginning in a week as well–”Enhanced Multimedia Phones”. Those phones will be required to pay for either the $9.99 or $19.99 per month data plans–much like how the red giant requires Blackberry devices to have a data plan.

What constitutes a phone being described as an Enhanced Multimedia Phone you ask? It has to have an HTML Web browser, EV-DO Rev. A, a QWERTY keypad, and it must launch on or after September 8th. If it doesn’t meet ALL of those requirements then it doesn’t qualify and won’t have the data plan forced upon it.

While the Omnia 2 doesn’t classify as a EMP we probably still won’t be seeing it until after this data plan switch. And what about the unlimited data plans? Will they be available for other phones? We sure hope so but it sounds like it has been thrown out the window. This will be a good change for people who occasionally check their email or browse every now and then but for power users who are constantly on the internet or who tether their phone to their laptop for internet this could be really expensive if the unlimited plan is completely done away with. [BGR]

The Xbox 360 Elite has now taken the place of the 20GB Pro model and is officially $299. You can pick one up anywhere the console is sold. Now the price line up is:

$299 – Xbox 360 Elite 120 GB
$249 – Xbox 360 Pro 60 GB
$199 – Xbox 360 Arcade 256 MB

Also some big news–Amazon.de “accidentally” posted a 250GB–super?–elite Xbox 360 bundled with 2 wireless controllers and Forza Motorsport 3.

The 360 Super Elite was listed for 279,99 EUR–just under $400 USD. Amazon.de is the same place where the PS3 Slim was listed 20 days before the official release and they have been nice enough to help us out again. There is no official word on the release of this version of the Elite but Forza 3 is due out October 23rd so we have got  a month or two to wait I would guess. This is a good deal, since a week ago you would have paid $400 for 130GB less, 1 controller less and no new release game.

Alright, fine, “right around the corner” may have been a small exaggeration but there is no question about it, these concept designs from the Electrolux design lab 09 are pretty awesome. While none of these really seem possible or cost effective right now we could begin seeing them over the next 5-10 years.

Of course if the ‘Teleport Fridge’ technology existed we would never have need to leave the house–via car anyway.[EDL]

This lazy, terrible, creative father used his programing skills to create a program that would rock his child to sleep. Don’t know what to do with those old CD drives? Hook them up to your linux machine and get creative.

It’s not as if we haven’t seen a fake “leaked” photo before but this one looks a little more promising. If my original assumptions were correct that we would be getting the Omnia 2 around September then this would be head on. Once the VZ warehouse has the product in their database, complete with the manufacturer code it is not long before we get to go into the store and hold one in our hands.

The Omnia 2–now with manufacturer code SCHI920DAV–should swiftly be on its way to Verizon stores now. In the photo you will notice that the quantity available is zero, but also that it was last updated on August 27 around lunch time, so anything could have happened since then.

Check back soon for updates as well as reviews of the CDMA version. [PhoneArena]

[UPDATE]: I have been told by multiple sources that the “Quantity Available = 0″ doesn’t necessarily mean that the warehouse/vz stores don’t have the O2. It could be that the warehouse has already shipped the devices out to the retail stores, or it could be that VZ doesn’t want any reps to accidentally sell the Omnia 2 and so they have the quantity listed as 0. Thanks all.

Bluetooth headphones have never been big about looking cool. Not that we are ones to sacrifice cool technology for fashion, but some bluetooth headphones just are not wearable. The Jabra Halo headphone set has made a step in the right direction. These still aren’t going to be something I wear to the gym but they are slightly  ”cooler” than others we have seen.

Just how cool you ask?

You asked.

We have seen alot of pictures of the new 360 box that shows the middle brother of the 360s and we have heard the rumors that the Elite will soon be cheaper. Until now, however, those all seemed to simply be rumors. Today amazon listed the Xbox 360 Elite in a white box–much like those “leaked” images we saw.

This means two things, one we will probably be losing the middle of the road 360–maybe in preparation for a Natal bundled system– and two, we may see the $299 Xbox 360 Elite price drop rumor may come to fruition.

This wouldn’t be a bad idea for Microsoft with the release of the $299 PS3 Slim that has the same sized 120GB hard drive.

Yep, its here. But most users have said the reason they never went with the PS3 in the past is because of the cost. Will it being $100 less sway you away from your Netflix friendly Xbox 360?

The Blu-ray player alone is worth $100 to $200 so if you are in the market for one of those it may be worth the extra cash for the 120GB hard drive and PS3 games. On the negative side the Slim can’t play PS2 games which seems like a really poor decision by Sony.

Well the day after BGR claimed the Omnia 2 would be hitting Best Buy stores we are all once again greatly disappointed by a false rumor. After stopping by a Best Buy first thing this morning and having everything I ever wanted vanish my hopes and dreams crushed we do have some hope for Verizon customers on the horizon.

Granting that this time the BGR leaked info is legit Verizon will have a whole slew of phones hitting the market in Q4 of this year.

Here’s the list(phone – release – est cost):

• LG Chocolate Touch                    -    October    -                  $230
• Samsung Rogue                             –    August    -                    $370
• Blackberry Storm 2                     –    October    -                   $TBD
• Nokia Twist 7705                        -    Late September    -    $230
• Moto Sholes(Google Phone)    -    Late October    -         $TBD
• HTC Razzle/Blitz 2                       –    Late October    -         $TBD
• BlackBerry Curve 2                     –    Late November    -    $TBD
• Samsung Intensity                      -     September     –            $160

The much discussed Storm 2 jumps out at me first with an October release. There isn’t a price listed here for it but I would guess it we could see it for $199 if Verizon and BlackBerry was smart. With the results of their first horrible attempt it would be smart to price the phone competitively to coax those still bitter about their purchase of the first storm into giving them a second chance. As a spokesman from BlackBerry said the Storm was their first touchscreen attempt and it is “never perfect on the first try” however Apple never had a problem with their first touch screen.

The Motorola Sholes will be the first Android phone–”Google phone”–to be released on the Verizon network which we are excited to see. [BGR]

We have all been there. Your friends, co-workers and acquaintances find out that you know about computers and you instantly know everything about anything with a power cord. Not that most of us mind. Personally I enjoy helping over the phone when I can–even if that is only so that I can call in a favor later!

The guys over at xkcd hit the nail right on the head with this one. I was hesitant to post this image for job security purposes for every tech support agent out there but from my experience with professional tech support this chart probably won’t mean much to you anyways.

For the rest of you, never call me again–just kidding(but not really).

Have you ever sat and thought to yourself: “I wish there was a robot that could take control of my body and teach me to play the piano”? Yep, me neither, but one company has developed a device that will make this dream come true for some out there. Concert Hands is a robotic device that is attached to your piano or electric keyboard. There is a rod that goes the length of the piano that sits in between you and the keys. You sit down in front of the piano and the Concert Hands latch onto you like a leech you lock your wrists into the slides that move your hands to the spot on the piano where they need to be and then slide your fingers into the finger sleeves that make your fingers press the correct keys.

If you aren’t sold on this great idea press play on the video above and let the mind controlling hypnotist Concert Hands advertiser convince you. I–personally–am creeped out.

The idea is that repetition will force your body to memorize how to play a song–muscle memory–just like anything you have done so much that you can do it without looking, like changing chords on a guitar or typing on a keyboard.

I am not saying this won’t work; in theory it sounds like it very possibly could. All I want to know is who thought of this? And one way or another you aren’t really learning to play the piano. A robot is training another robot your brain to play one song at a time through grinding repetition.

For more information I would tell you to go visit the Concert Hands website but at the time of this post it is down due to them exceeding their monthly bandwidth limits…

So you have downloaded a legit RC of Windows 7 from Microsoft–sorry free release candidates went offline last night–or you have purchased your copy from Microsoft directly but don’t want to enter the activation key yet? You can easily extend your trial period by entering a single command into the command prompt.

Open up your command prompt and type in “slmgr -rearm”. This will extend your trial period to 30 days. As soon as those 30 days run up you can do it again.

Microsoft is allowing you to do this 3 times for a total of 120 days. The same trick worked in Vista and it looks like M$ has decided to leave it in Windows 7.

You are probably tired of hearing about the Omnia 2 considering all of these posts but here it goes.

With the–rumored–leaked release date of the August 23rd Omnia 2 release to Verizon just around the corner I decided to stop by a local Verizon retail store and sniff around.

Before walking in I really had my doubts considering we have heard nothing about the release of the device and Verizon is still keeping its mouth shut. As I walked up to the store I was almost positive that the Omnia 2 was not going to be here in the next few days.

I walked in and was immediately asked for my name and why I came in that day. I said my contract was about to run out and I was hoping to find something that would keep me from switching to the iPhone in the next month or two. The guy set the clipboard down and began to help me right away. He first walked up to the Storm and I shot him down. He hasn’t been reading my blog.

He walked me over to the first gen Omnia and the HTC Ozone and their other devices and I wasn’t impressed with any.

I asked him about the Omnia 2. I told him I had gotten to see some GSM versions of it and heard that Verizon would be getting one as well.

His words to me were, “Yes we are! I was very impressed with the phone myself but haven’t heard an official release date. However our biggest phone releases are in the 4th quarter so I would expect it this year.”

Booo! I was really hoping he would leak us some information that we weren’t already 90% sure of. Only a few more days to go and I doubt that we will be seeing the Omnia 2 any time in the next few weeks. Our only hope is that Verizon is trying to keep it a big secret to blast everyone into staying/switching to Verizon. I highly doubt this as it would have been smarter to advertise for it months ago when the Pre and iPhone 3GS were being released. I know of many who have left Verizon for the Pre as well as the 3GS.

That is probably what this fellow in The-Middle-Of-No-Where, Chad, Africa thought as he looked up to the sky just as the Google Satellites took a snap shot of him. And with good reason apparently. This is one of the areas of the world that allow you to super zoom in with Google Maps. To see this location for yourself visit Google Maps here.

Why this location is candidate for being super zoom-in-able I have no idea. Not very interesting if you ask me.

This reminds me of a video I saw of a picture taken by satellite. It started as a picture of the whole globe and slowly zoomed in to the US, then to a State, then to a City, then to a street, then to a bus and then into the bus so close that you could read the heading of the newspaper a man was reading.

Does anyone know where I can find this video? If I ever find it then it will be up here.

Those of you who are avid Pandora users have no doubt had all of your hopes and dreams crushed recently. Pandora is now forcing Pandora One down your throat heavily advertising for their paid subscription service Pandora One. While I agree it is a little more than annoying that we Pandora members, who have been listening to the site since it first started up, are now limited to 40 hours a month; however, I can understand that they have their own costs to cover.

In the past you were also able to just go to pandora and listen without an account. Now you have to register and login to listen to music so that they can track your every move limit everyone to 40 hours.

I thought I would beat the system and create another account when I initially ran out of my 40 hours, but no dice. Pandora not only limits your account but also limits each computer.

You will notice a new drop down when you first sign up for Pandora One. One of the cool features of upgrading is the slim “Pandora Mini”. Its basically just takes everything off the web page except for the center area where the music is.

As soon as you get to 30-35 hours you will begin to notice a bar at the top of the screen warning you that you are about to run out of sweet, free listening time. Once you hit 40 hours BOOM. You’re done.

If you want to continue listening you have to pay $0.99 for the next month or $36/year to upgrade to Pandora One.

With Pandora One you also get a slim yet spiffy Pandora desktop application that allows you to listen to Pandora without a need to use your browser at all. This, in and of itself, is really cool. If you have a firefox update, accidentally close your whole browser instead of that one tab or have no reason to have a browser window open you can still listen to your  music uninterrupted. Whenever the next song comes on there is a little overlay that pops up in the top right corner of your screen to let you see the Artist, Song, Album, and Album cover.

You also get high quality streaming audio. Instead of the 128Kbps default you have the option of listening to 192Kbps instead. We tested this feature out on some $10 cheap desktop speakers and also on a higher end setup and on both we could tell a quality difference when switching between the two. It obviously wasn’t as noticeable with the cheaper speakers so if you don’t have a nice audio set up this wouldn’t be a selling point for Pandora One.

When you upgrade you also have the option to apply custom skins to your in-browser Pandora. Which is cool, but again, not a selling point.

Some other perks that are worth the money–if you listen to 40hrs+ of Pandora each month–is that you have unlimited listening and no audio or visual ads. Your idle time out before it asks “are you still there?” is bumped up from 2 hours to 5 hours. As long as you skip a song, rate a song or click on anything else on the Pandora site you won’t timeout and will have uninterrupted music.

Honestly, there aren’t a ton of features available for Pandora One but if you are someone who listens to Pandora often then I say it is worth it. The desktop application is pretty slim but allows you to add new stations, select the one you want to listen to, rate, skip and adjust volume. The real selling point with Pandora One is if you run our of your 40 free hours. All of the other features are nice, but just perks to having the unlimited music and no ads.

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[UPDATE]: Users have been reporting that when using any build of Windows Mobile 6.5 they experience a time out after a few songs. No word as to what exactly is causing this–and we don’t have any other details and haven’t verified–but we have contacted Pandora support to see if they are aware and have started doing any kind of troubleshooting. This is definitely something wrong with WinMo 6.5 specifically since users who experience this problem can move back to 6.1 and the issue is resolved. It would be a smart move by Pandora to look into this and set a goal to get a work around  for their App finished around or before the unknown 6.5 release date. We will update you with any additional info.

Redbox is now renting video games for $2 per night in the Reno area. To view all of the participating locations click here. Right now the selection is pretty slim pickins but you can view what they have available here.

Here is what we know right now. Renting the games will cost $2/night. There currently is no way to reserve a game online like you can with a movie and the only available game systems right now are the Nintendo DS, PS2, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360.

Redbox has been incredibly successful with their $1 movie rentals. Honestly when you rent a movie at a store and get 1 week how often do you actually watch the movie more than once? Surely not enough to justify spending $4-$7 as opposed to $1-$2. But how is this going to work for video games? Generally you spend more than a few days on a video game. If you keep it for a week that is $14 you have spent for one video game. You can pay less than that(around $9/month) from an online subscription service like GameFly(the netflix of video games) and keep the game as long as you want and never even have to leave the house.

TomTom software for the iPhone 3G and 3GS is now available in the App store. The down side to this is you will be spending $100USD for the US and Canada version which is just about $20 less than what you can find a dedicated GPS unit for.

It will make it convenient. You almost always have your phone with you so you won’t have to worry about forgetting the GPS or about it getting stolen out of your car.

The iPhone is even able to receive calls while being a GPS and simply cuts out your GPS audio while you are on the phone.

The downside of course is that if for any reason you need to use your iPhone you will lose your navigation momentarily, it will suck your battery and you are going to have to spend more money to get the windshield mount and other accessories that you may want which will put the cost of using your iPhone as a GPS solution at around $200.

I think I would wait for some more usage reviews before dropping the money personally but here is one review to get you started.

This DIY Xbox case mod puts the Nintendo Wii to shame. A member of the forums over at Xbox-Scene has taken his original Xbox, modded it with an operating system called XBMC–Xbox Media Center, and created a super thin case mod for it.

Here is a picture of the original case versus the modded case. One thing you will notice is the lack of a DVD drive and controller ports. The controller ports of the original xbox were simply custom USB ports and you can get adapters to make your controllers USB.

With XBMC you can install a larger hard drive–this modder used a 320GB) and copy your games to the hard drive via the DVD drive or over the network from your PC.

From my experience with XBMC you lose none of the capabilities of the original Xbox but gain the ability to play your games from the hard drive, stream media over your network to your TV and install emulators to play old NES, SEGA and n64 games.

Like technology from an outdated sci-fi movie the color picker concept pen designed by Jinsu Park can scan the color of an object in the real world and reproduce it using a mixture of Red, Green and Blue.

Why they thought to go with RGB instead of CMYK is beyond me. It could be that Jinsu is more used to digital design where RGB is better suited instead of printed design where CMYK is better. One way or another it is still impressive that the technology is there that can scan an object and automatically mix together the correct levels of ink in order to produce a match. All it needs now is a USB connector so you can scan the color of something and use it on your computer or push a color from your computer to the pen.

In the past, any time a book needed to be scanned it had to be done assembly line style–page by page. Researchers in the Ishikawa Komuro Lab at Tokyo University have developed a prototype scanner that may potentially change that. Their prototype can scan the pages of a book as you flip the pages.

The camera is able to adjust for light and movement distortion using a laser grid to assess the current page geometry and is able to create copies that are true to the original. Right now it is just a concept but with some funding this could be a huge time saver for large corporations, schools and print shops. [PlasticPals]