If you thought you had it good because your plan to buy a text messaging-oriented feature phone from AT&T (NYSE: T) didn’t include a mandatory data or text plan, you might want to rethink your options. Newly minted rumors indicate that AT&T will require some feature phones in its stable to sign up with requisite data and messaging plans. If that feature phone you’ve had your eye on is considered by AT&T to be a “Quick Messaging” phone, AT&T will slap an additional $20 onto your voice plan. The additional cost will give you unlimited data and 200 text or picture messages.

AT&T says that devices like its Pantech Reveal, Pantech Impact, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Karma, Samsung Flight, Samsung Impression, Samsung Magnet, Samsung Solstice, Samsung Mythic, Samsung Propel, LG Xenon, LG Neon, and LG Vu, will require an additional $15/month unlimited data plan and a $5 messaging bundle. If you already have one of those phones, worry not, you’re in the clear. If you’re picking up a new phone or plan to upgrade to a “quick messaging” phone, just know that your monthly bill will be $20 higher from now on.

[Via: Gizmodo]

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In case you haven’t noticed, the Apple iPad runs a version of iPhone OS that is conspicuously missing support for Adobe Flash media. Despite being billed as the web-surfing tablet to rule them all, the iPad won’t be playing nice with any embedded Flash content. Adobe doesn’t like that. They don’t like that so much, in fact, that Adobe’s Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow has posted a graphic to TheFlashBlog.com that shows the iPad’s limitations in visual form. One of Brimelow’s examples of the iPad’s Flash-shortcomings included a mockup of the iPad viewing porn site Bang Bros, filled with little blue legos that indicate failure to load Flash content. Yup, Adobe is using porn to smear the iPad. Nice.

The smutty image has since been removed from TheFlashBlog, but Wired was quick enough to snap a screenshot of the original content. Adobe apparently isn’t taking Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s exclusion of Flash from the iPad too lightly, but we have to wonder how the “porn argument” fits into the equation. Could you imagine using the iPad to “watch” porn? Imagine the awkward positioning, the smudged screen, the… we’ll stop now. Suffice it to say, porn on the iPad would totally redefine what it means to do some “one-handed typing.”

[TheFlashBlog via Wired]

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Incoming search terms for the article:

• www moje porn

The Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Nexus One is already available on T-Mobile USA and will soon hit Verizon (NYSE: VZ)’s network as the gotta-have Android phone of the year, but AT&T (NYSE: T) has been conspicuously missing. That is, until today – an AT&T 3G-compatible version of the Nexus One has just popped up on the FCC’s website, hinting at the possibility that Google will soon release a new Nexus One variant capable of pulling down 3G data on AT&T’s wireless network. If true, the Nexus One will be available on three out of the four top US wireless carriers – Sprint (NYSE: S), it seems, is being left out of the party for now.

Engadget is reporting today that the FCC has unveiled a new identification label for an as-yet-unannounced Nexus One variant. The label you see on the right (above graphic) lists an ID number that corresponds to the current T-Mob-ified Nexus One. The label on the left sports an ID number that differs by a single digit, indicating that it’s a variant of the original. FCC doc also confirm that the new variant supports 3G on WCDMA Bands I, II, and V, making it compatible with 3G bands used by AT&T in the US. From the looks of it, the Nexus One is headed to AT&T!

Although Google has previously neglected to mention AT&T as a partner for their Nexus One, it makes sense to open up Google’s first own-branded Android phone to a wider market. Unless, that is, we’re looking at a label for the “Moogle” phone (Nexus Two).

[Engadget via: PhoneDog]

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I, and everyone around my age who loves to dress casually, has and wears hooded sweatshirts, commonly refereed to as hoodies, on a fairly regular basis. The UK media portrays people who wear such garments as young vagabonds, hoodlums who are going to destroy decent society, but look at the video below and tell me what you see. It’s Steve Jobs, and he sure as hell isn’t wearing a black turtle neck, it’s a hoodie.

For all the shit people give me, and the youth, about how informal and how vulgar such a simple garment is, I think this is a testament to the fact that there is nothing wrong with our “style”, that perceptions have changed, and it is not us who have to adapt, but you.

So wear your hoodie with pride, because if the CEO of a 50 billion dollar a year company can wear one and feel no shame, then you should too.

[Via: Valleywag]

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By Dusan Belic on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 1:02 AM PST In Apple, Devices, Videos

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The UMTS Forum announced that subscriptions to 3G/UMTS networks have reached 500 million! The milestone comes after about eight years after the world’s first commercial 3G/WCDMA network was launched by Japanese NTT DOCOMO (NYSE: DCM).

Here are some other interesting figures from the press release:

• According to Wireless Intelligence, there are now over 300 UMTS family networks worldwide.
• Almost 40% of 3G/UMTS subscribers are connecting via HSPA networks.
• Over 35 HSPA+ networks are now commercialized, boosting theoretical peak data rates as high as 28 Mb/sec.
• Over 40 operators have already confirmed their plans to roll out LTE networks during 2010-2012.

Commenting on the milestone reached, UMTS Forum Chairman Jean-Pierre Bienaimé said: “While it took fixed telephone networks over a century to reach their first half billion customers, GSM achieved the same milestone in only a decade.”

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After the BlackBerry version, Handmark has launched TweetCaster for the Android platform. The popular Twitter client exists in two versions: regular which “costs” a tweet, and the Pro which sells for $4.99.

Feature wise, TweetCaster supports multiple Twitter accounts, retweets, Twitter lists, push notifications, URL shortening with previews, photo attachments, threaded direct messaging, font and theme customization.

As expected, latest Android smartphones equipped with WVGA screens such as the MOTO DROID and Nexus One perfectly sing along the app!

If you’re interested, hop over to this page and follow the instructions provided (you’ll need to tweet to grab the free version).

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After releasing the Symbian version last year, ABBYY is bringing its Business Card Reader app to the users of the iPhone 3GS. Like other such apps, the ABBYY Business Card Reader transfers contact data such as names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and other key information from business cards directly to the iPhone address book. ABBYY is using its own OCR (optical character recognition) technology which they say has “won worldwide acclaim for its supreme accuracy.” 16 languages are supported — including English, German, French, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Indonesian, Norwegian (both Bokmal and Nynorsk), Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

As for the pricing, you can grab the app for $9.99 from here. (iTunes)

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