Macgasm

If at first you don’t succeed… add an ‘m’ to the name of your product, capitalize a word, and cut the price. At least that’s what Microsoft is doing with its newly and cleverly renamed Kin ONEm and Kin TWOm phones. You know Microsoft, TWOm kinda sounds like ‘tomb’… but I digress. Oh sure, they might sound like the old Kin One and Kin Two, but they’re different now. They have a different name! And they cost less! So they must be good.

Part of the difficulty Microsoft had in the initial release of the phones was that they were classified as smartphones, and thus were placed in a higher price category for data plans. In that space, the Kin fared poorly when compared against the iPhone and Android handsets, and sales were abysmal. The phone was pulled after just six weeks on the market.

Verizon has these (new!) phones priced at $20 for the Kin ONEm on a two-year plan, and $50 for the Kin TWOm plus a second phone in a buy one get one free deal. Voice plans now start at $40 plus $10 for data, which is substantially lower than the $70 and up data plans for smartphones. Hopefully the lower price point and more affordable voice and data plans will allow Microsoft to sell more than 8,810 units this time.

Article Via Electronista

Capcom Mobile‘s recently introduced Smurfs’ Village game has been swiftly climbing the charts in the App Store, at one point reaching the top spot in highest grossing games, surpassing even Angry Birds. At the time of this writing, it has currently fallen to the number 3 spot*, behind Angry Birds, which is behind the freshly released RAGE HD.

Surprised? After all, Smurf’s Village is a free game, and the only revenue comes from in-app purchases of Smurfberries, which enable you to speed up the construction of village buildings and purchase exclusive structures. You can play the game without paying anything, but be prepared to wait a while for your village to take shape.

It seems that many people are not willing to wait, because Capcom is making quite a bit of real money selling virtual Smurfberries. Other popular games using a similar ‘freemium’ model include We Rule and We City by ngmoco, and the granddaddy of these kinds of games, Farmville by zynga. I for one refuse to pay for virtual currency with these types of games, so I guess I’ll be waiting for my village to build. I must say though, it’s good to see those little blue guys again.

Smurfs’ Village is available on the iTunes App Store for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

* in the US App Store. In Canada it still sits at number 2 above Angry Birds. The App Store does not show worldwide sales charts, which would be interesting to see how it is trending globally. In the Smurfs’ home country of Belgium, Smurfs’ Village isn’t even in the top ten grossing apps. Huh.

Articla Via TUAW

If you find yourself needing some reassurance about what side of the fence Apple’s interests fall on—customer or carrier—the embeddable SIM might provide some answers.

Back in early October, patents and rumors started popping up, suggesting that Apple was working on an embeddable SIM system that would work with multiple carriers. It wasn’t really talked about at the time, but it’s become pretty obvious that an embeddable SIM card with multiple carrier support would be a huge advantage for consumers. Consumers would regain their purchasing power, and carriers would be forced to focus on providing the best experience for their users, instead of trying to figure out a way to trap them in the telco ecosystem.

The new SIM would be “embedded in a chip that has an upgradeable flash component and a ROM area. The ROM area contains data provided by Gemalto with everything related to IT and network security, except for the carrier-related information. The flash component will receive the carrier related data via a local connection which could be the PC or a dedicated device, so it can be activated on the network. Gemalto will provide the back-end infrastructure that allows service and number provisioning on the carrier network.”

So, now carriers are starting to realize how easy it will be for their customers to switch to another carrier should they be unhappy with the service provider they’re working with, and they don’t like it one bit.

Think about that for a minute. The carriers are worried that if they aren’t providing you with adequate service, it’ll be easier for you to leave. They’re now privately threatening Apple with unsubsidized phone sales should Apple implement the embeddable SIM.

This is the reason I’m buying my iPhones unlocked moving forward. I may not be buying a new phone every time one’s released due to the increased cost, but I’d rather pay a little bit more for my phone than be treated like a captive by the carriers.

The embeddable SIM would be a big step in breaking telecom control over customers, and I’m pretty happy that Apple’s doing all they can to make sure it happens.  So the next time you read about Apple’s draconian ways, stop and ask yourself just who they’re trying to help. Sometimes consumers are on the raw end of the deal, but in this case, as well as some others, Apple’s looking out for consumer interests.

It’s hard not to support that.

Article Via AppleInsider

Today, we discuss USB 3.0 with Peter Cohen of The Loop.

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Y’all can quit whining now. BoxWave is now offering a QWERTY iPhone 4 keyboard attachment, aptly named the Keyboard Buddy.

Take a gander at the attachment in its full glory:

And here it is from the side:

It’ll set you back $70 US, about the cost of a Mophie Juice Pack. The design looks  functional without adding too much bulk to your device. But seriously, is using the touchscreen that hard?

Anyways, you’re welcome. You can get rid of your Droid now.

Article Via Gizmodo

Photo Credit: BoxWave

When it comes to Steve Wozniak news we tend to err on the side of caution when our RSS readers start to fill up with questionable quotes. It’s not that we couldn’t see Woz predicting that Android might take over, it’s that he’s been used in Anti-Apple rhetoric before, but it usually ends up being a giant pile of misquote.

Turns out the news from De Telegraaf suggesting that Woz thought that Android was going to overtake the iPhone was another case in point.

Go Media!

Thank goodness Engadget managed to get to the bottom of it with the Woz. The Woz admits to “prognosticating” about how Android may become more popular “based on what [he has] read,” but at no point did he give his own opinion to De Telegraaf on the matter.

Yay Media!

If you want to hear Wozniak explain his quotes to Engadget they recorded their conversation with the Apple co-founder.

Article Via Engadget

Apple snuck a Safari update out today through Software update. You’re going to want to run your updates from the Apple menu.

This update contains improvements to usability, compatibility, stability, accessibility and security, including the following:

• More accurate Top Hit results in the Address Field
• More accurate results in Top Sites
• Fixes an issue that could cause content delivered with the Flash 10.1 plug-in to overlap webpage content
• More reliable pop-up blocking
• Improved stability when typing into search and text input fields on www.netflix.com and www.facebook.com
• Improved stability when using JavaScript-intensive extensions
• Improved stability when using VoiceOver with Safari
• For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

Expect an OS X restart once your update is done. Save your files, close your applications, and then do the Safari installation. There’s nothing worse than having the OS yell at you to close your programs.

TUAW is reporting that the update fixes a nasty address field bug. The bug would give priority to headlines in the URL bar over  actual URLs.  It’s been driving me crazy for the last couple of weeks.

It’s often hard to explain some of the thing that we see come through our inbox.  This is one of those cases. So bear with me as I try to explain the videos below, and this kick ass project.

iProject25, created by Taq (who’s also pretty renowned in the video game world for his work on Komani’s BeatMania) is a giant interactive iPad wall.  But it’s not any ordinary iPad wall.  This wall is an interactive installation that lets the audience interact with the audio and visuals to create  unique experiences.

It’s pretty clear that Taq took inspiration from the DJing world while he was working on the project. The iProject25 installation lets users speed up and slow down the video feeds on each individual iPad, giving the users the ability to sync up video between each individual iPad. But it doesn’t end there, the “audience” also has the ability to change the speed of the sound, adjust the screen brightness, and change the melody being played by each individual iPad, creating a sum greater than its parts.

It’s really hard to explain the project without seeing the video, so here’s two YouTube videos showing off the project.

It’s almost like a giant modern turntable.

Video Explaining the iProject25

Video Showing the giant iPad wall in action

Thanks to Dayne Barton for the tip.