Google Maps with My Location

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Google released version 2 of the Google Maps for BlackBerry. The main new functionality in this version is that you can zoom in the map to your current location even if you don't have a GPS enabled BlackBerry or if your GPS isn't currently working. In this case it would get your estimated current location according to the cellular tower you are connected to.

To download Google Maps v2.0, point your BlackBerry browser to: http://www.google.com/gmm/

To see how the new feature works, you watch this movie:

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iDo

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The amount of accessories created for iPods is incredible almost as the amount of licensing fees Apple collects for each of these. Every iPod accessory has an "i" at the beginning of the name to fit with Apple's "coolness". I thought I've seen all, until I came across the iRing. This is a stylish ring that controls, via Bluetooth, the playback and volume your iPod and iPhone. It has a bright OLED status display with touch-sensitive function strip and a rechargeable battery that lasts for 2 days. It comes with a charging cradle and you can get your iRing in white or black.

The iRing is designed by Victor Soto.

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MapQuest Navigator 5.0

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MapQuest updated its Navigator application to version 5.0 and decided to penetrate the market that is mostly taken by TeleNav and offer half price subscription until the end of December - $4.99 a month.

Besides the regular features such as:

  • Voice guided turn-by-turn directions
  • recalculation of a route if you missed a turn
  • real time traffic
  • Gas prices and locations
  • 16 million POI

MapQuest Navigator offers the following special features that are not available on TeleNav:

  • Integration with AOL CityGuide to show restaurant and venue ratings
  • Pedestrian navigation option
  • Send to friend - Send a location from a map (or your current location) to a friend so they can navigate to this location (if they have MapQuest Navigator installed or if they don't it will open the location in a browser in the mobile version of MapQuest.

To enjoy the offer go to: https://mapquestdtc.telmap.com/

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Travelocity Mobile

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image Travelocity launched a new mobile service that allows travelers access their itineraries and other great travel information from a mobile web device.

Simply point your BlackBerry to http://mobile.travelocity.com

The Better Z...

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I love my Nissan 350Z. It's a great powerful car that is fun to drive (as long as you have your Valentine One on of course...). Nissan revealed the specifications for the 2009 GT-R at the LA Auto Show. This AWD features a twin turbo 3,8L V6 engine that produces 480 HP (This is almost 200 HP more than the 350Z which produces "only" 287  HP). Price is expected to start at $69,850 when it is released, which means that it's more than double the price than the average 350Z, so it probably won't be in the top of list when I trade-in my Z...

Ho well, at least we can enjoy the video:

Hello, I'm a Mac

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Although I'm a happy Vista user (yes there are happy ones..), I love the Apple commercials that show the differences between a Mac and a PC with the "cool" guy and the nerd that is supposed to look like Bill Gates. Apple just released 3 new ads to present their new OS Leopard vs. Vista. Enjoy the clips:

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Google Android UI Demo

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After all the gPhone hype Google revealed to the world that there is no gPhone but an open platform to create mobile applications that will interact with each other. On this video, Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz show the user interface of Android, how applications interact with each other and the powerful graphical engine the platform has:

Start writing your applications, there's cash prizes!

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Black Friday 2007

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Black Friday 2007 is upon us! Black Friday is the day after thanksgiving and is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. On November 23-24 (Fri-Sat) all the stores in USA will have crazy sales and even crazier consumers standing in lines early in the cold morning to try and get the best deals. The most important thing is to be prepared and know where to go since you probably won't be able to get everything you want, so to better prepare there are different web sites that already have scans of the ads of different retailers and what they will be offering:

God bless commercialism! Praying

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The Best Flying Experience?

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imageSingapore Airlines won in 2007 the World's Best Business Class Award. I never had the chance to fly with them yet, but I've heard a lot of good things about the service in this company. In October 25th 2007, Singapore Airlines also made history being the first airline to operate the enormous Airbus 380. A typical Airbus configuration is set to 555 passengers, but the Singapore Airlines configuration is set for less than 480 passengers.

Besides the Coach and Business classes, Singapore Airlines offers a "Suite Class" on the A380 instead of the traditional First class.. This is a spacious private cabin where you can have either a comfortable armchair that turns into a flat bad or a cabin with a comfortable full-size bed. Each cabin has a 23" wide screen LCD.

You can see the different classes in this video:

More Live Search

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Microsoft Live Search for your mobile device. One of the cool features of Live Search, was demonstrated at the CTIA conference last month. This is reviewed in the following CNET video:


Look Ma, No Wires!

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We live in a wireless world. Most of the peripherals nowadays communicate over some type of wireless protocol whether it is Bluetooth, radio signals or Wi-Fi to access the Internet. The only thing that you still must have and holds your laptop is the cable to charge electricity. For a long time I've been saying (mainly as a joke) that we should invent wireless electricity, but I guess a team of six physics from MIT didn't think it is so funny and are actually working on it! This team have created WiTricity (which stands for wireless electricity).

This technology is based on strong coupling between electromagnetic resonant object to transfer energy between them wirelessly. There is a transmitter and receivers that listen to the same frequency and need to be not more than a few meters away.

The main problems that the group is still dealing with are:

  • Efficiency - Make sure that not too much energy is wasted in the transmission.
  • Size - Miniaturize the setup enough for commercial use - for example, to be able to fit a receiver in a laptop, cellular phone etc.
  • Transmission strength - Make sue that a transmitter can power devices inside a room.
  • And last but most important: Safety - The researches claim that the magnetic field is safe and are below the threshold that the FCC safety regulations require.

Solid State Drives

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The hard-drive is the only mechanical part left in today's laptops and therefor the component that is most likely to breakdown (I should know since I "killed" 2-3 hard drives in the last couple of years on my laptop). Flash memory makers hope to retire the platter based hard drive with the flash chips that power the new solid state drives (SSDs). The new drives are thin, and include near-instantaneous seek times (the throughput rates are really limited by the bus instead of the mechanics of the drive). The consume less power, generate less hear and are silent which makes them great for laptops. Notebook makers start now to offer some of their laptops with these drives for better reliability and mobility (for example: Dell ATG, Samsung Q1 Ultra and Sony TZ Series).

How faster are these drives? A normal hard drive at a speed of 5,400 rpm has an average access time of 17 milliseconds. SSD has an average seek time of 0.11 milliseconds! What does it mean? If you have such drive as your main laptop drive, you'll see the machine boot the BIOS and operating system more quickly and of course open applications much faster.

The main problem today (like with any new technology) is capacity and prices. Right now, the typical SSD is either 32GB or 64GB, whereas most laptops today come with at least 100GB hard drive. For the privilege of a third capacity of the SSD drive you will pay an extra $350, but prices are expected to drop in the near future.

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Leaving Sao Paulo

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I wrote a few days ago about the "great" order in Brazil, but nothing prepared me to the the experience of going through immigrations on my way out of Sao Paulo last night. It took me 90 minutes to go through immigration Surprise and I can say that I'm one of the "lucky" ones that was able to get in line quickly.

So why does this happen?

  1. All the international flights leave pretty much at the same time (about 5 minutes apart from each other).
  2. All the international carriers open their check-in area 3 hours before their flight(s).
  3. With more than 10 flights to USA and UK leaving at about the same time, you have about 2,500 passengers that check-in together and then stand in the same line for immigration.

I was 5th in line for check-in (I've been standing there 40 minutes before they opened the Continental check-in counters), so that is why I was one of the people that was able to get in line to immigration early. If it took me 90 minutes I wonder how much it took for the people at the end of the line to check-in.

Between the time you spend in the check-in line and the time spent in the immigration line, how do the Brazilians expect that you will have enough time to buy a bottle of Cachaça in the duty free to take back home? The lesson learned from this experience is that you should have your last Caipirinha before starting the check-in process. There's a couple of bars in the check-in area so have a drink there because you won't have time before the flight Martini Glass

São Paulo skyline

Free Titanium Theme

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Here is a clean and nice free theme for your BlackBerry:

To get it, from your BlackBerry browser:

Download OTA (OS 4.2.2): http://www.jasoncalhoun.com/blackberry/Titanium/Titanium.jad
Download OTA (OS 4.2.1): http://www.jasoncalhoun.com/blackberry/Titanium/421/Titanium.jad

This is created by Jason Calhoun and you can get more free themes on his site.

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Opera Mini 4 Released

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Home screen

Just a few days ago I reported about the 3rd beta of Opera Mini, and after a very short beta cycle it is officially released!

You can find here the full feature list.

To download the release version, point your BlackBerry browser here: http://mini.opera.com/

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Knee Defenders

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The legroom space in airplanes get smaller and smaller every year. For those that need to squeeze to a coach seat and still try to work with their laptop this is almost an impossible mission as the passenger in front of you is determined to recline his seat until it bumps to your knees.

GadgetDuck offers an interesting product for the road warriors called Knee Defender. It helps you stop reclining seats and defend that little space you need to be able to open your laptop without worrying that it will be squeezed by the guy in front of you.

I have not tried this yet but interested in your feedback in case you did!

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Ordem e Progresso

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image"Ordem e Progresso" is the motto that is inscribed in capital letters on the Brazilian flag. It means "Order and Progress". This motto is inspired by Auguste Comte's motto of positivism: L’amour pour principe et l’ordre pour base; le progrès pour but ("Love as a principle and order as the basis; progress as the goal"). It was inserted due to the fact that several of the people involved in the military coup d'état that deposed the monarchy and proclaimed Brazil a republic were followers of the ideas of Comte's thought.

I'm in Sao Paulo this week and I can say that after 118 years (this flag was adopted in November 19 1889), order is the last thing you will find in Brazil. The traffic here is as crazy as in India and you should be very careful walking or crossing the street (I wouldn't even try to drive here). From a progress prospective the situation isn't much better. I visited here last time in 1994 and not much has changed since then.

On a positive side, I can say that Brazil had an amazing progress on their fuel program and is actually a world leader in the amount of cars running on ethanol fuel. The western world can learn a lot from their accomplishments in this field. The Brazilian government, after the 1973 oil crisis, decided that it cannot depend any longer on imported fossil fuels (such as gasoline) and initiated a nation-wide program to phase out the automobiles that consume such fuels in favor of ethanol. The ethanol fuel used in Brazil is based on sugar cane and provides a cheap alternative (production cost of 22 cents per liter) and basically an unlimited renewal energy source since they can keep on growing it again and again in their climate. Today more than 84% of the cars sold in Brazil can run on ethanol or "flex-fuel" (both ethanol and gasoline).

Why does it work there and not in the rest of the world? The answer is simple: Unlike in other countries, this program was financed and pushed by the government which made all gas stations to have ethanol pumps to provide the demand for consumers. The car manufactures in Brazil are the same as in the rest of the world so there is no reason why we can't buy the same cars in USA, we just need the government to make the gas stations (or gas companies) put ethanol pumps and the consumer will start switching to ethanol (or flex fuel) cars, especially with the constant increasing gas prices. General Motors is actually selling most of their vehicles already with this option in the USA. More data: http://www.gm.com/explore/livegreengoyellow/

The CES Badge Is Here!

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imageAfter missing the last 4 Consumer Electronic Shows (CES) I decided that this time I'm going no matter what! This week I finally got my badge for CES 2008. This is the first year that CES attendees will be tracked using opt-in RFID tags, embedded in their lanyard cards. According to CES, the tags contain no personal info, only a number that can be associated with personal info in a their backend servers. CES decided to implement this to see which booths you visit, sessions you go to and to whom you talk and promise to use this data only internally without selling it to a 3rd party.

The RFID is embedded in one of the papers that come with the badge and you need to look real close to actually see it:

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3D Local Search

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EveryScape launched a three-dimensional search web site that allows people "drive" through the streets and even "walk" into buildings. This web site is kind of "Google Street View" meets "Google Maps" meets "Citysearch".The purpose of the web site is to give you a good experience of what some place looks like before you visit. It currently supports only 4 USA cities: New York, Boston, Miami and Aspen but it will probably grow quickly.

The site lets you browse popular places and categories or type an address of a business and either use the "Auto Drive" option to look-around or "You Drive" option to check everything on your own. It's really nice to look for restaurants this way, besides getting the address on a Google Map and review, you can walk inside the restaurants and get a tour around to see what it looks like before you decide to visit there.

The main difference between EveryScape and Google Street View or Microsoft Street Side is the business model. EveryScape makes deals with the businesses to create the tours inside the building (attractions, hotels, restaurants etc.) instead of just showing their ad on a map.

You can watch here a demo of EveryScape:

Video On The Go

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TVHarmony is a free software that automatically pulls shows of your Tivo, converts them to AVI (MPEG4) format and sets them nicely in a folder that you can drag to your BlackBerry. This little application will also allow you to get to your BlackBerry videos from site like YouTube.

Microsoft vs. RIM

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Microsoft announced at CTIA that it will release Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager in the second quarter of 2008. This will provide IT organizations control over Windows mobile devices and enforce over-the-air policies in a similar way that the RIM BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) currently does for BlackBerries.

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Opera Mini 4 Beta 3

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Opera released a new beta version for their mobile web browser. If you have not used Opera's browser yet, this is the closest you can get to a true web experience on your mobile device (unless you have an iPhone). This mobile browser will allow you to view real web pages and not just a WAP / Text minimized version and easily focus on different sections on the page and zoom in and out.

The new version allows you to synchronize your desktop version of the browser with the mobile and transfer your bookmarks, searches and recently visited web sites. The mini version also includes an RSS/Atom feeds reader .

Mozilla recently announced that they will develop a mobile version of Firefox, but until they do, Opera is the best mobile browser available for your cell and BlackBerry.

You can download Opera Mini by pointing your BlackBerry browser to http://mini.opera.com/beta

Free Pac-Man For BlackBerry

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This Pac-Man game was especially written for the BlackBerries that have a trackball and best of all it's free!

Install using Desktop Manager

Bandai's Mugen Puti Puti

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Popping bubble wrap is one of the worse addictions. I'm sure you've experienced it in the past: You see a sheet of used bubble wrap and you can't help but to start popping the bubbles to hear that sweet noise.

The Japanese toy maker Bandai (the company that created the Tamagotchi) decided to create this little toy for all the addicted people out there so they can have an unlimited relief of that popping sound. The toy is called Mugen Puti Puti and translates roughly to "Pop Forever" or "Infinite Pop Pop". When you press the little buttons, it emits that satisfying sound of squeezing bubble wrap from a recording in the device.

This little toy is sold so far in Japan only and has been a great success there, selling over 300,000 units in the first 9 days. It is not planned (yet) to bring this to USA but you can get it on eBay.

The only thing to learn from this is that the best ideas are the most stupid ones... Silly

TeleNav 5.1.0.54 for BlackBerry 8800

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TeleNav released an update for BlackBerry 8800 that can be downloaded from their web site. Changes from previous version (5.1.0.29):

  • Version 5.1.0.29 automatically synchronized your Recent Stops list every time you started the application. Version 5.1.0.54 returns to the previous behavior of having manual updating. To synchronize your Recent Stops list on your Blackberry with the one on TeleNav web site, you will find an option within your Recent Stops List to refresh.
  • Resolved an issue that caused the phone to not save external GPS Receiver service strings on some phones.
  • Blackberry 8800 devices now have the option to use an external receiver for better GPS reception.
  • Minor improvements to audio processing

To download, from your BlackBerry browser go to: http://ota.telenav.com/att/tnn/

Sub $100 HD DVD!

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Not to long ago HD DVD player would cost $999. In the race to reduce the prices and increase the market share, Walmart won the battle again. After Circuit City introduced the sub $200 HD DVD, Walmart strikes back and brings just in time for the holidays the Toshiba HD-A2s for $98.87!!

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It's not the most advanced HD DVD player, but sure is a great entry player for people looking to switch their DVD player and start watching high definition DVD movies.

To find it in a store near you visit the still hidden Walmart page