Rumors are circulating that Sony is planning to develop a combo gaming and cell phone device. Japanese Business daily Nikkei reported that Sony is putting together skunkworks team to develop this gadget that will marry the PlayStation Portable gaming consoles with the Sony-Ericsson mobile phone handsets.

O RLY? Can Sony take on the iPhone? Neither their Walkman or Sony Ericsson phones do that well at all in the US market. Personally, I’d like to see more Ericsson phones in the US market, I’ve had an Ericsson phone and I was really happy with it. But the general attitude towards Ericssons are “meh” at best. What could help this phone is if it gets the same all access to the PlayStation gaming network like their other handheld gaming systems. They also have to go up against the big wall of iTunes.

However, this isn’t the first time that Sony’s had designs on this kind of hybrid device. From Businessweek:

“Rumors that Sony was working on a PlayStation cell phone first cropped up two years ago when Sony’s engineers filed a patent describing such a gizmo. The Internet rumor mill went into overdrive again in April, after Kazuo Hirai, who had led Sony’s video game division, was named as the head of a broader portfolio of networked products and services. The PlayStation Network is Sony’s biggest success story in online services. Under Hirai, the PlayStation group has rolled out online downloads of music, movies, TV shows, games and created a content platform for developers to create applications and games, sell videos, and post trailers and sneak previews. It’s clearly the model that Sony wants other divisions to emulate.”

With some phones such as the LG Versa trying to capture the gamers with it’s gamepad module, we see that companies are hoping to catch gamers’ attention. We have yet to see if they will bite.

[via businessweek]

Popularity: 7% [?]

The name of the phone, myTouch, goes with the big ethos of this phone: Customizability. Users will be able to customize the menus, wallpapers, icon and a range of other things on the device with the use of themes and skins. The handset will come in 3 colors, black, white, and merlot, and there will also be options to customize the shell of the unit also.

The phone will also get to know you and your search habits over time, how very Google of them:

“The other key point T-Mobile is touting for the myTouch is something called Sherpa, which T-Mobile worked with startup Geodelic to create. Basically, Sherpa is an application that claims to learn from a user’s actions. So, for example, if you’re searching a lot of Thai food, Sherpa should recognize that as something that you like in the future. And it uses your location information to give you tailored results for what it believes you will want based on what you’re around.”

The Hardware

While the myTouch keeps it’s 528 MHz processor, it has doubled it’s internal memory to 512 MB which bumps up the loading of apps and also makes the apps run more smoothly than on the G1. The screen size and resolution is the same as the G1, and unfortunately, is still not multi-touch. The camera is 3.2 megapixel with autofocus, comes with a 4-GB microSD card.

The big difference is that they did away with the physical keyboard. It’s running the Cupcake OS build, and the myTouch will now have a virtual keyboard. This makes for a slimmer, sleeker, and lighter handset.

While these some of these specs are admittedly, slightly meh, there is one big improvement. They did improve the battery life, which was the biggest complaint that users had with the G1. According to TechCrunch, “Well just in everyday use with a couple applications running in the background, my G1 battery would be gone in a few hours. The myTouch battery easily lasts all day in the same environment.”

Existing T-Mobile customers can pre-order the myTouch starting July 8. The device will be $199 with a 2-year agreement, and availability is set for early August.

via TechCrunch

Popularity: 7% [?]

Not to be left out of the smartphone fleet week, T-Mobile releases the Dash 3G today. It’s a new version of their smartphone, the Dash. It’s similar to Sprint and Verizon’s HTC Snap and the first 3G phone to run the WinMo 6.1 platform. It has some marked design changes, mainly a trackball and more spaced out, round navigation keys instead of the cluster design. It still has the full QWERTY keyboard and it is has an overall sleeker shape.

No price point announced yet, but we do have some  deets: QVGA (320 by 240 pixel resolution) display, integrated GPS, Exchange server support, microSDHC card slot, Bluetooth 2.0, and a 2-megapixel camera. It’s aiight, not quite as hardcore as the front runners, but it seems like it is a solid phone for someone who wants a smartphone of average intelligence. Hopefully, the price point will be as reasonable. The handset wil hit sometime in July. If you are looking for an entry level or gateway smartphone, this would be a good start. Unless you get swayed by the launch of the second T-Mobile phone with Android. Which is slated to happen next week!

via-PC World

Popularity: 10% [?]

Well this is good news. Amongst all the rumors swirling around the Palm Pre, it’s predicted shortages, it being dissed even before it comes out, Reuters reports that it was announced today that Verizon will be carrying the Palm Pre in about six months. Great news, because this phone is touted to be Palm’s saving grace and deserves to be on a better carrier than Sprint.
Also in the works is a new version of the Blackberry Storm. Perhaps a head-to-head release? Oooh Fight!

via Reuters

Popularity: 7% [?]

Well, you don’t really lose. You just have to wait a couple more weeks before you can get your new iPhone 3GS. If you put in your order now,  your new baby will be delivered to you and you won’t have to go to the Apple Store to pick it up.

If you have put in your pre-order order, you are ate least guaranteed a slot at the Apple Store in the 7am power hour to get your new baby. The rest of the masses will have to gear up and be ready to throw down to fight for the remaining stock when the Apple Store opens at 8am or go to your local ATT store.

So, gear up. Either for your camp out at the Apple Store, or for your battle to get your hands on the remaining stock. Good Luck all!

[from Endgadget]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Welcome to the Twitter Client UFC Octagon!
TweetDeck and Seesmic go head to head with huge updates to their desktop clients… and TweetDeck has a pretty sweet finishing move.
Earlier today, I got an email from Seesmic announcing their upgrade. The Deets from the email,  .:commentary:. by LizMoney:

Multi-Account Posting with Smart Account Enabling:
We’ve upgraded the user interface to select which accounts to send posts to, saving you the time and effort it takes to post to each account separately. We’ve also added an option for Smart Account Enabling. With this feature turned on, this will allow Seesmic Desktop to change accounts when messaging your friends based on whom you are replying or direct messaging to. Seesmic will not change the accounts if you do not enable Smart Account.
.:Ooh I like the Smart Account feature. If you are managing other people’s tweets, there’s no danger of mis-tweeting:.

Authenticated bit. ly Integration:
You can now use your own bit. ly account when using bit. ly as a shortener for Seesmic Desktop. By simply entering your bit. ly API key, you can now keep track of your URL clicks when sharing your links with your friends and followers.
.:Nice. This way, you can track your link stats and see how much your bit.ly link is clicked:.

New Services Panel:
Along with bit. ly, we have set a foundation for managing your accounts for sending images, and be able to set them in our new Services Panel. The Additional Integrated Account Services panel currently includes image services such as Pikchur (where you can set your own account), Posterous, TwitPic, Twitgoo & yfrog (which is currently using your twitter account).
.:Integration. Put your Tweet out on blast on other services right from inside Seesmic:.

You can also watch a demo video here

TweetDeck, the defending champion in Twitter clients comes back with a Super Combo. It’s not just upgrading, but it’s ReLaunching it’s desktop application and has the finishing move – TweetDeck for the iPhone. Available Today at 9pm PT. This is awesome…because, after using Tweetdeck, whenever I’m on mobile, I miss my groups and columns.
Here’s the deets for the iPhone App, from Mashable:

- Column based friend groups (like TweetDeck desktop)
- TweetDeck desktop syncing (make a change on the iphone and it’s reflected back on the PC)
- Facebook toolbar like status updates
- Multiple account support
- Flicking to move between columns
- Shake to refresh

**Ha-Du-Ken** That’s awesome.
ooh Tweetie, better watch your back. TweetDeck for the iPhone just challenged Tweetie to a streetfight.

So the Deets on the TweetDeck updates ReLaunch via Mashable, .:commentary:. by LizMoney:

TweetDeck will support mobile-to-desktop sync. This means whenever you make a change on TweetDeck (i.e. change friend groups or columns), it will automatically update on your iPhone and vice-versa, multiple accounts and unlimited columns.
**Shori-yuken!**

“Block and Report Spam” button: Clicking on this button will not only delete the spam message, but it will block that specific user and report them to Twitter. Simply brilliant.
.:Word! All those Britney sucking on various things accounts? Gone and reported!:.

“Reply All” feature: You can now tweet to everyone who is mentioned in a specific tweet.
.:Yes! I’ve been dying for this. Often there are more than just one person involved in a conversation that I want to reply all to:.

“TweetDeck Recommends” column: Just as it sounds, it’s a column with a list of recommended people to follow.
.:As Borat would say: Verrry nice. A great way to get genuine follwers and add value to your tweetstream :.

Deeper video playback support: Qik, 12seconds, and other video clips are fully supported in TweetDeck.
.:Just in time for that iPhone 3G S video capability:.

Auto-suggest filter: When you start typing someone’s username, it will find the person and allow you to add them to a group quickly.
.:Sweet. Group your peeps on the fly:.

Integration with YFrog for photo sharing.

RE (In reference to): A new menu feature that allows you to reference a specific user or a tweet in your own message.
.:I like this. Because you might miss an @ to you, or want to reply to someone’s tweet who is scrolling fast. It facilitates connections and conversations:.

Are you ready to rumble?! Both applications are busting out with great improvements and upgrades, not to mention throwing down on the iPhone front.
But they are not alone. PeopleBrowsr is a social media addict’s dream. Imagine TweetDeck on steroids. With ADHD. It multitasks with almost every single Social Media site out there and you can customize it like woah. It’s so feature rich, I have been using it for a few weeks and still haven’t gotten to everything that it can do.

Also,  I’m pushing beta on Mixero, which is on the other end of PeopleBrowsr, as it’s motto is “Reduce the Noise” it’s clean, great for only picking out what you want to see, when you want to see it. It will slim down your twitterstream to just what you want to see. It’s awesome for when you want to track a certain trend (I used it for tracking #E3 and #WWDC streams), or just certain groups, and it’s minimize-to-avatars when it’s not in focus is my favorite feature. Mixero’s got an iPhone app in the works too. It’s definitely one to watch. You can follow @Mixero and @Peoplebrowsr for latest news and updates on these apps. They’ll answer any of your questions too, they are super responsive.

So who will win the Twitter client Kumite? What is your favorite Twitter Client? Let me know! @LizMoney on Twitter, leave a comment, I want to hear from you!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Ok, so I’m all over the internets. I am a News hound, Blog follower, Shopaholic, Social Media Junkie, and I often have a billion (ok, 10 ) tabs open in my browser at any one time. I wished, “If there was only one place I could have all my favorite internet hot spots all in one place….” And of course, there is such a wonderful place. It’s called Netvibes.com.

I completely dig this site because not only does it come with a staggering array of modules to choose from to customize your personal page, but you can add just about any content or RSS feed that you want to also. It’s so super easy.

And just last week, Netvibes rolled out some major changes. Now you can have Multiple Personalized Pages. This lets users better organize their collected widgets and also give more control over accounts and decide what gets posted publicly. You can also have mulitple accounts and personalize everything.

Here’s the Deets about the features:

Multiple Personalized Pages (MPP) introduce new page publishing and management tools, leveraging Netvibes startpage technology into a rapid publishing platform for users, marketers and enterprises. MPP can be used to create infinite:
- Business Dashboards: Monitor industry, client and competitor news, alongside calendars, CRM and workplace tools.
- Topic Pages: Track favorite hobbies, sports teams, entertainment news, etc.
- People Pages: Follow friends, family and social activity feeds.
- Public Pages: Publish a small business website, online portfolio, aggregated social profile dashboards, etc. Like iWeb, but better, easier.
- Branded Microsites (for marketers): Rapidly publish user-personalizable brand, product and media portals with Netvibes Premium Universe.
- Enterprise Portals (for large companies): Deploy employee dashboards, intranets and user-personalizable websites on a global scale with Netvibes Enterprise
- Startpages: Oh yeah, you can still make startpages, too, but the point is that MPP let’s you do way more.

So what does this all mean? Lots!
With Multiple Personalized Pages, users have unlimited room to make as many personalized pages as they like, it’s way super fast to remix and add all your widget content, it’s really easy to manage multiple accounts from one dashboard, and you can organize each page as you wish. All your different interests will have it’s own home in netvibes. You can also publish as many separate pages as you want, and you can personalize everything just to your tastes: no ads, logos, forced search bars, etc. There is no limit to what you can do and present on Netvibes. From personal hobbies to enterprise solutions, Netvibes will let you aggreate all your favorite sites and you have the power to customize everything just how you like it. Give it a spin, and there’s lots more screenshots after the jump. Sign up, get your page started at www.netvibes.com, you can find my public page here: target="_blank">http://www.netvibes.com/lizmoney

Popularity: 3% [?]

It’s the World Wide Developer’s Conference! What What! And everyone is waiting for that one piece of magical news….new iPhones? Short answer yes. But there was other stuff too. Here’s what I gathered when I was watching Ryan Block and Peter Rojas of gdgt.com’s live blogging from the event:

New Macbook Pros are shipping. Unibody design with built in battery.

New batteries have over 1k recharge cycles, and the batteries should last five years.

How’s the Speed?

It’s the fastest notebook we’ve ever made, up to 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo – up to 8GB of memory.”

Starts at $1699 – Woah, crazy fast AND more affordable? Word!

And.. there’s more:

the 13-inch now has SD, FW800, and “it deserves the name: MacBook Pro. And it starts at just $1199.”

MacBook Air gets an upgrade too – now it’s got a 1.8GHz for $1499 – $300 less than before. 128GB model for $1800… that’s $700 less than before.”

Then there is the specs as to how “green” it is.

Then there is the Operating System Talk:

OS Leopard update is 90% backend tweaks for Speed. Speed. Speed.

Not just speed but it’s more compact too: upon install, you recover over 6GB of disk space – over half the footprint of the existing OS.

- is this a move towards netbooks OS status? hmmm. Liz Likes.

Safari talk:

This is interesting, they’ve done some kind of magic where if the plugin crashes, it does not crash the whole browser. Excellent. Does that mean there will be more extensions and add-ons for Safari? I like what I hear.

More Speed talk:

Even more JS speed in Safari: 50% faster in 64-bit.

Also: Full history search in Safari; Cover Flow view of the browsing history, and Quicktime is faster, and has color correct, and new streaming technology.

Super Techy Deets:

“Lots of enhancements, but there’s also powerful new technologies.” Talking about the modern Mac: “You have gigabytes of RAM, a few years ago it was expressed in megabytes! It’s GHz – used to be expressed in MHz. And a GPU with enormous raw processing power. But to take advantage of all this, you need to write software. We have a number of technologies, but I want to mention three.”

“First: 64-bit. If your app runs in 32-bit mode, it has a 4GB memory limit. In 64-bit you have 16 billion gigabytes. Unlimited. Things run up to 2x faster: for those reasons, we’ve been on a trajectory for 64-bit. SL is the final stage, all major system apps run in 64-bit mode.”

“We want to use this power for all kinds of things. So we developed OpenCL – the C stands for computing.” Hardware abstraction, auto optimization, numerical accuracy.

Exchange: “We’ve decided build Exchange into the main three communication apps: Mail, iCal, and Address Book.” Demo time again! Mail now auto-discovers corp mail servers.

More MS Digs: Bertrand: “It’s so ironic that we have Exchange support for no extra charge, while Windows PCs have it as an extra product.” Ha.

Pricing: 29$. Srsly? Srlsly. And the family pack is $49. Pricing like Woah. Available in September.

Ok, here’s the iPhone talk. They started off with the 3.0 OS update

Scott Forstall makes the presentation:

MMS, CutnPaste, Text message search, and Spotlight.

ok Spotlight is dope. Oo000oo Tethering over Bluetooth! That makes me excitey.

Safari on iphone:

Streaming live audio and video. SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark. More talk of speed speed speed.

js runs 3x faster. Auto-fill. HTM5 support (with offline db support) and audio/video tags.

Then there is lots of app talk:

Airstrip technologies is bringing patient monitoring software to the iPhone. I remember the partnership with Johnson & Johnson developing a blood glucose monitor at the prior OS 3.0 announcement in March. I figured this was a big step, of making the iPhone a legitimate medical device. I seem to be correct: Airstrip Critical Care supports virtual vitals and patient monitoring. Doctors can look at real time patient data on the iPhone even if they are away from the bedside.

I feel that this is a good step for the iPhone. However, I wonder about security of the connections. Medical records are no joke.

ScrollMotion is introduced. Their online bookstore. Books, newspapers, journals, even textbooks. Eyestrain abounds.

GPS:

TomTom. Get turn by turn directions and there is also a dope accessory kit.

TomTom car-kit accessory: windshield mount (in portrait or laptop), dock + power, louspeaker, GPS enhancer, handsfree calling, and audio output.

Music apps:

Line-6 and Planet Waves. Control sounds for your amp and guitar through the iPhone. Pretty impressive, 80 amp models included. Tuning feature, change your guitar sound on the fly. Super cool for the recording studio, however, this may be unwieldy for onstage performance. I’ll have to get my musician friends to try this out and get their feedback.

They also announced an app that is integrated with the Mobile Me service that will locate your iPhone if you leave it somewhere. And if you have lost it, it will remotely wipe all your data. If you find it again, just sync it and it’s all restored. Ploy to get Mobile Me subscriptions, perhaps? This could probably be it’s own standalone app.

When is the download date for this upgrade? Free for iPhone users, $9.99 for iPod Touchers.

June 17th.

NEW iPhone 3GS announced.

S for Super fast Speedy performance. Good thing because they’ve upped their camera to 3mp autofocus cam, and the big news – Video, with edit features, and upload to youtube, and .mac.

Voice Command over all apps, and…

Compass (what? Random. But it may be a nod to compete with Google Android’s Compass feature)

Nike+ integration for you worky outtie runny types

AND they are keeping the regular 3Gs on the market for $99 (new contract, etc etc). Well that’s pretty cool.

When can you get one? Preorder now and pick it up on June 19th. Rumor has it that you will be able to come into the store an hour early V.I.P style and pick up your new baby.

Downsides – ATT will not be supporting MMS and they are not sure about the tethering. It was definitely disclaimed at the keynote that “SOME CARRIERS” will support these features. Hmph.

But go get you some Safari 4 now, it’s available for download, and peep the Apple site for the new iPhone 3GS

Popularity: 4% [?]

Apple’s new baby is the iPhone 3GS.
S is for Speed. It’s processor is super fast so you can do everything fasterrrrr.

The new hardware:
fasst
3mp autofocus camera
Video. 30fps and VGA. You can also do some slight editing on the iPhone 3GS.
Voice command
Compass
Nike+ integration
And of course, the 3.0 OS upgrade.
Also, keeping existing iPhone 3G on the market for $99.
The 16 and 32 both come in black and white. How much?
16GB- from $199
32GB- from $299
Comin atcha June 19.

You can pre-order it now, of course:
iPhone 3GS at the Apple store

I will have a full post on the WWDC soon enough, but I know this is what you guys really wanted to hear.

Big Props to Ryan Block and Peter Rojas of gdgt.com for doing awesome job live blogging!

Popularity: 5% [?]

So it’s Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference this week, and everyone is awaiting what the biiiig announcement will be, namely, new iPhones?
With the big 3.0 OS release being so comprehensive, it’s only natural that there are new iPhone models in the works. And the Palm Pre’s release date suspiciously moved to the weekend right before Apples WWDC? Come on. SOMETHING is up, right?

Well, here’s a roundup of what we would like and hope to hear at the conference concerning new iPhones and new iPhone models:

Most likely new iPhone features:
Faster processor.
More storage capacity.
Faster Internet speeds.
Video recording.
Better camera.
Digital compass.
More iPhone 3.0 software features, such as video editing, voice controls, laptop tethering, and potentially a new home screen that’s better designed for organizing and launching dozens of apps.

The phone will likely look very much like the current iPhone 3G. Some reports suggest a matte, rubbery back. But many “leaked” photos are fake. Then there’s a slew of other potential features, some of which Apple could unveil Monday, too, such as a front-facing camera for video chat, background app processing, or multi-colored iPhones. But those are relatively unlikely.

Just as important: What Apple announces regarding AT&T’s iPhone service plans. Specifically, if AT&T will offer some sort of entry-level iPhone plan that is less than $70/month, or if it will at least make its plans a better deal by including unlimited text messaging. (Sprint is doing this for the Palm Pre.) The iPhone itself is still too expensive for many buyers. And the service plan is, too.

And about pricing: It makes sense that Apple would keep its new, premium iPhones at the $199/$299 price levels. But it seems that a cheaper iPhone, perhaps will less storage or a few missing components, could show up for $99 or $149.

And other rumors swirling around the tubes include Video editing on the iPhone, a family of models so that you can find just the right size for you, FM transmittals so that you can transmit to other audio devices, Siruis, will ATT introduce tiered pricing?

And Steve Jobs is back on the scene. There must be good things to come, right?
Stay tuned, L$ will be peepin in on all the live blogging and will report back. fo’ sho’

from Businessinsider

Popularity: 2% [?]