Proof that the iPhone 4 and Galaxy Tab have had sex

I just got a very random, no-bullshit pitch from Marvel Digital (some Hong Kong company I’ve never heard of) for their TBT-10C 7″ Mercury Pad. If the iPhone 4 and 7″ Samsung Galaxy Tab had a random encounter at the Christmas party and this would be the unwanted bastard child.

The email just said the name of the product, listed its specs, listed the price, linked to the video I’ve embedded below, and said nothing else. It was actually kind of cool that there was no pitch. If that’s not exactly what most Internet geeks are looking for, I don’t know what is.

So here are the specs…

CPU : 1GHz Samsung S5PV210, ARM Cortex-A8 processor
Memory : DDR2 512MB
Storage : 4GB/8GB/16GB
OS: Android 2.3
LCD : 7″TFT, 16:9, 800 x 480
Touch Screen : Capacitive Multitouch
Camera : 0.3M forward facing 2 megapixel regular
SD Card : MicroSD up to 32GB
HDMI : 1080P HD Video Output
USB : USB Host 2.0, USB Device 2.0
Audio : Built-in Stereo Speaker, 3.5mm Stereo Headphone, Built-in Microphone
WIFI : 802.11 b/g
3G : External USB 3G Modules only (HUAWEI:E220, E1750, E156G, ZTE:MF637U)
G-Sensor : 360 Degree G-Sensor
Battery : 2250 mAH
Power : 9V/2A power adapter (100 – 240v input)
Power jack : 9V/2A power adapter (100 – 242v input)
Weight : 510 g

Here’s the price…
$259

and here’s ten minutes before this baby was conceived…

Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” … How awesome is this?

logo doodlings

well, I accidentally rotated my logo doodles.  c’est la vie.

A quick tribute to my dad, original Hax0r.

There was a period of time from Thanksgiving to Christmas when I wasn’t contributing the same amount of literary/journalistic content that I usually do, and it wasn’t because of the holidays or anything. It was because my dad passed away.

My mom died when I was only seven, and my dad and I never had the best relationship, partially due to the fact that our communication skills are shit, partially due to the fact that he was doing clandestine government work throughout the cold war and was sort of limited in what he could even talk to me about.

I never knew much about my dad because he had top secret clearance and couldn’t tell us much about his day-to-day work in the bunkers of Aberdeen Proving Ground or his four-day stints at the Pentagon once a month. One time when I was a kid, I asked him what his job was like, and he said, “You know everything you read in science fiction stories? It’s all real, and that’s what I do.”

I believe my next question was something to the order of, “You work on jetpacks!?”

I had never even seen the above picture of him until yesterday, and it made me wish we could have made it to the level where we could speak to one another as gearheads, because this is goddamn cool. I’m dating the picture around ’76 by my dad’s appearance and by our family’s location at the time.

He was totally going for the “Meathead” look.

Rob Reiner...Not my father.

I believe machine in the picture above is a Commodore because I zoomed in on the placard on the left, and it looks like it says “CBM Termicare.” I’ll continue looking that one up.

But the real sci-fi shit my dad was working on was ARPANET. Long before the term “Internet” even existed, that was a major part of his job…check this out:

This article is from 1980…so this is in the period of time when it was still ARPANET, before it got turned into MILNET, when the packet-switched network was still a new concept, and there were only 100 something nodes in the entire Internet.

What he was researching is anybody’s guess, though. The only thing I know about this is that he once gave us a full-sized injection molded replica of an AK-47, and two smaller calibre replica handguns from his lab. Once he came back from one of his weekends at the Pentagon with a gasoline-soaked russian tank driver’s helmet. My stepmom says those monthly trips actually took him places like Cuba and Russia during the Cold War, and I know he went to Panama and Germany in the 80′s. I may never know exactly who he was watching.

He was a spy, after all…and an Internet espionage pioneer. Pretty cool. I just wish we could have talked more about his work when I had the chance.

Nexus One, CES, and what I’m up to

To be totally honest, I’m not all that thrilled about the Nexus One.  Yes, it’s powerful and sleek, but like I said on Betanews today, it’s not about the device…the big deal is that it’s available across multiple carriers and directly from Google.

So yeah, that’s something, but I have CES to think about.

I’m heading over to CES Unveiled or Unleashed or Unchained or whatever the fuck it’s called, where there are going to be a number of Android devices, including the Sygus V1*  and perhaps the Android Tablet.

I’ll update later.

*Android device names +1 are starting to really rub me the wrong way.  G1, A1, Nexus One, V1… I mean, it’s like car names.  If I tell you I’ve got a Pinto, you have a clear picture what i’m talking about…but if I say ZX20, or TR-7, or I30, or whatever, you may know what I’m talking about, but the name lacks a hell of a lot of punch.  It’s like naming your child “Blitzwing Traurig Smith” versus naming him “John Smith VII.”   One’s just much more evocative.

Be Right Back!

Hey everybody. No updates for nearly 2 weeks! It’s hard to write to pay your bills and then do 20 other writing projects on the side, but I’m trying! Plus, a bunch of great new video games have come out and my G1 has been extremely underperforming….so you know, motivation.

Look at Mr. Excuses up here!

I will post a nice long update this week and you’ll be like “oh…that’s where he’s been!”

Check your feeds for it!

Thanks

Tim

Android 2.0 features unveiled!

Today, Android SDK Tech lead Xavier Ducrohet announced Android 2.0 support in the SDK, which unveils some of the big capabilities in the latest version of Android, expected to hit the market soon on at least one of Verizon’s upcoming “Droid” devices. In the developer video posted today, for instance, all the new features were shown off on a device connected to the Verizon network, and the release notes say it will be deployable in November.

The keyword with Eclair is interoperability.

Motorola recently launched its custom Android build with a UI called MotoBLUR, the central function of which is the ability to integrate with a user’s many social web services from a single interface. The new APIs included in Eclair give this communicative function to all developers. So with the new Account Manager API, developers can centrally store account credentials on the device, the Contacts application can now sync and aggregate contact data from multiple accounts, and the Sync Adaptors API provides full two-way contact sync with ANY backend.

To provide a single, unified face for this data, the Quick Contact function has been added. By clicking on a contact’s picture, a user can pull up a menu of all the different ways to reach that contact…Gmail, Email, IM, Phone, and the various Social networks. It’s like the existent “live folder” concept for contacts, but brought together under the standard contact list, or in any app the developer chooses.

Android 2.0 also updates the Bluetooth API so apps can now access Bluetooth controls to discover, connect and share information with nearby devices, which unlocks the ability to make peer-to-peer and proximity-based applications.

The built-in Android browser has been updated with a refreshed UI with an actionable address bar, bookmarks sorted by thumbnail, double-tap zoom command, and HTML5 support, which opens up Application cache, client-side SQL databases, geolocation API support, and fullscreen video tag support.

The camera app has again been tweaked, but this time it includes digital zoom (with macro mode), built-in color effects (posterize, solarize, etc) and built-in flash support.

It even adds Exchange Support and includes Multi-touch support for the soft keyboard.

Throw this out there with the upcoming availability of Verizon Droids, the Sony Racheal, and whatever else is coming out, and we’ve got a really huge quarter for Android. I’m gonna start doing video blogs soon, it just takes a bit longer to write and record them.

Android’s first real e-reader was born today

Never mind that bullshit about the Spring Design “Alex” yesterday. Total patent troll “prior art” move. The Barnes and Noble Nook is real and it’s making me drool.

I’m a Kindle 2 owner and fan. I love how easy it is to read, I love how thin and light it is, I love the free connection to Sprint’s “Now Network” (I wish you could add more quotes around a phrase to increase the sarcasm/attitude/cynicism) . Obviously, I’m also extremely focused on the Android operating system, ecosystem, and lifestyle. So nook really excites me.

I was tempted to rush out my first Android Bakery video podcast to talk about the nook. But I held off.

nook eReader - Android power

There’s no shortage of news about nook right now. I wrote about it on Betanews earlier today, saying that it somehow managed to combine the spirit of two most “walled garden” tech devices (iphone and kindle) to make a new, uber desirable device.

But the thing is, we don’t know where it fits in the Android family. I contacted B&N this afternoon to see if they could get me in touch with a developer who could explain, just how much of an Android device the nook really is, but I haven’t heard back from them yet. That’s how excited I am. I’m posting a story before I even have any useful info. Just check back, I’ll have something good.

Android Knockoffs welcome

Behold. The Android knockoff party is well under way.

With China’s biggest mobile carrier supporting Android under its OMS platform, China Mobile is inviting a grey market Android takeover. Since it’s an open source OS, though, this sort of thing can really only contribute to Android’s impending world domination.

I, for one, welcome our cheaply-made robot overlords. (WARNING, reflexive link which also serves as a segue)

Now, because I’m a logophile for fun and a linguist by trade, I adore Engrish. I simply adore it. On the surface, it’s bloody hilarious, but when you peel back the layer of humor, underneath you see the extremely interesting nature of grammar, syntax, and the consistent fallibility of translation. So frequently, I cruise knockoff sites to laugh, enjoy life, and find weird technology.

A little more than a week ago, a press release for the new “SciPhone” N19 came out, these devices have names that belong in the Nokia N-series, and look to be straight rips of other designs. The N19 promises to be the “World’s Cheapest Google Android Smart Phone, SciPhone N19 support WiFi,Bluetooth 2.0, 2.8 inch LCD with touch screen, 2.0 MP Digital Camera, Android Operating System v1.5.”

Look at that, a BlackBerry Stormdroid.

As you can see, it looks like a Blackberry Storm…and it’ll run you $195.

And here’s another Android SciPhone, the N21, looking to have drawn some cues from the HTC Touch Diamond.

jiao 5 megapixel SciPhone, ni ne?

And let’s not forget the N12 with “Real Google Android TV GPS.”

aww..it's got an antenna.

I just thought I’d include these here to coincide with my “140 characters about every Android Phone” post, to show what I’m intentionally skipping. I very nearly didn’t include the rumored ZTE and INQ handsets because they’re not far off from this crap.

But just for fun, I’ll keep track of noteworthy deviants and include them in aiding the growth of Android.