The Consumer Tech Blog

Blackberry Storm 2

tmlevine9 — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:05:25 +0000

The Blackberry Storm 2 was released 5 days ago and brought with it some changes. Are there enough changes to make a signifigant of Storm 1 owners upgrade?

Storm 2 new improvements:
A new sure press touchscreen with four receptors, letting you type a letter and press down on the next one before your first finger has completely left the screen, enabling for faster typing.

New buttons on the front. The call, menu, last and power buttons are part of the screen, which gets rid of the significant gap between the screen and the buttons on the original storm.

Wi-Fi is now featured on the new Blackberry Storm, although many issues have been reported.

The Storm 2 brings with it a decent amount of improvements, but nothing major. When i compared the two devices, I found the clicking of the first Storm to be more desirable, but could still type slightly faster on the Storm2. While the buttons now being part of the screen removes the gap on the front of the phone, it doesn’t provide any added functionality; it just looks different. While Wi-Fi is a nice addition, I find the Verizon Network has enough coverage and speed to be sufficient and I almost always use my phone on the move.

OS: Both phones were running OS 5.0.328. They ran at the same speeds and had all the same features. One difference I found was in the camera speeds. I put them side by side and hit the focus button. When they were in focus, I took the picture. The Storm 2 was slightly faster. When I hit the button to take the picture before they could focus, The Storm 1 focused and took the picture almost a full second faster.

Final Decision: The Storm 2 Improves on many aspects of the original Storm, but isn’t all that different. Both phones are identical when it comes to operating systems but the Storm 2 has a slight advantage on hardware with the new touch screen and Wi-Fi. While I am not going to go out and purchase the new Storm, if you are someone that has a Storm 1 and finds Wi-Fi an absolute essential, go for it.

Blackberry Storm Review

tmlevine9 — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:48:51 +0000

This is a review I made a while ago when I first purchased my Blackberry Storm.
OS 5.0.328 has come out since then and brought with it many improvements that aren’t mentioned in the video
Some of them include:
Flick Scrolling
Full Portrait Keyboard
Faster Camera
Faster Accelerometer Response
More Iphone-Like message system (Including emoticons )
WAY less lag

Here’s the link:

Happy April Fools!!!

tjlee1220 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:12:52 +0000

Happy Wednesday and happy April Fools Day! As tradition holds Google came out with their annual April Fools joke today. It is called CADIE and has many other features as well. One feature is GMail autopilot. It says that instead of having to go through the hard work of reading and replying to every email you can let Google do it for you! The new Autopilot will scan your email and send the perfect reply. Another feature (which might actually work) is Google Chrome in 3D. when you download the add-on you get a 3D button on you Chrome toolbar that shifts the colors and position of everything in your browser. Get some 3D glasses and figure out if its real!

Recommendation and some new info

tjlee1220 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:01:29 +0000

I was just taking a break from brushing up on some javascript and I turned on the TV. The first show to come on was Mad Money with Jim Cramer. I have heard of the show before but had never really been around to watch the show. I started watching and all i can say is “wow”. This show is great, what you might see as boring (Which most shows make the stock market) becomes and exciting and informative hour of television. I suggest you check it out whoever you may be. It is on CNBC at six & eleven pm. on weekdays. Now for something completely different (yes, it was a reference to Monty Python). I have started another project with some friends. The basic idea of it is to provide multiple services such as video, articles, tutorials, photos, etc. Please stay tuned for further updates.

AIM appealing to techies? and other cool stuff

tjlee1220 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:59:17 +0000

Just an interesting thing i noticed while browsing the interwebs today. I recently set up a PC desktop computer in my room and I wanted to the get the AIM application for Windows XP. When I went to the website to download AIM I noticed that they had AIM for linux! I have no idea how long how that has been up there but it really surprised me. Linux is the bomb and it’s great that it is getting some more mainstream “advertising” if you want to call it that. Another interesting experience I had today was trying to explain what Linux was to my family. They weren’t exactly interested and probably wished they didn’t ask. I lost them around Linus Torvalds. This just added to my list of unsuccessful attempts at explaining Linux to someone who’s never heard of it before.

Pinger Phone review

tjlee1220 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:56:25 +0000

The Pinger Phone application is an app for the iPhone that was recently released at the Macworld Conference & Expo. It is a free application that is up on the App Store and available for download. When you open Pinger Phone for the first time a screen will come up asking you the enter in your mobile phone number and it will have you create a password which is called a PIN (personal identification number). Then woosh! your Pinger account is created. All of your iPhone contacts are automatically imported into the contacts list. You can link all of your social networks like facebook and myspace to Pinger so you can receive all of your friends status updates. Pinger also has a built-in IM client that links to your AIM, Yahoo, Google, or whatever you use. Thankfully the creators of Pinger have put in a horizontal keyboard for typing delight! Another feature is contact linking; you can link your phone contacts to email addresses and IM screen names to chat with them or send them a message with the click of a single button (actually it’s more like two buttons but whose counting). All in all the Pinger application is an extremely useful app with a very easy to use interface. This app is free in the App Store so go download it. I give Pinger phone a 9/10

Jailbreak your iPhone with one click!!!

tjlee1220 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:52:06 +0000

Yes its possible.

All you need to do is access the Safari internet browser on your iPhone and visit the website Jailbreakme.com. Scroll to bottom of the website and click the button that says AppSnapp. It should then cause your iPhone to restart and it will install all the software needed for jailbreaking an Apple iPhone. The problem with this “one-click jailbreak” a lot of things can go wrong. If were you I would just download a software and do the jailbreaking process manually. But if you are the kind of person who is lazy enough to take uneccesary risks then this is the perfect solution for you!!!

Tech Social-Our social networking site

tjlee1220 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:10:40 +0000

From the people who brought you Consumer Tech and another guy have come together to create a new project. We have made Tech Social- A social networking site for people interested in technology. Check out the site at Techsocial.ning.com

Best Installer/Cydia applications for iPhone

tjlee1220 — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:02:31 +0000

These are the the top ten applications from installer and cydia. The only way to get these applications is to Jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch. To jailbreak your iPhone visit www.quickpwn.com.

10. Snapture

- Snapture is like getting a whole new camera for your iPhone. Snapture allows the user to give sights to the camera or add in effects. There is also a timer feature built in for steadying the shot. Although you have to pay for the premium version the basic version is free

9. Dock Pref.

- Dock Preferences gives your iPhone or iPod Touch a dock just like the dock for the Mac. While you are in any application just slide your finger from the bottom up and a dock appears with all of your applications neatly ordered for easy switching.

8. Air Horn

- The point of the app is pretty obvious, but all it does is annoy the heck out of anyone within range by making a loud noise reminiscent of an air horn.

7. Hood

- Hood is somewhat like the Dock but it is more of a Heads-Up-Display instead of a Dock.

6. Festival-Lite

- This light version of Festival is an embedded text to speech library. Sort of like MacSpeak but for the iPhone

5. MobileCast

- MobileCast allows you to download your favorite podcasts over the air instead of through your computer.

4. Doom

- Yes. The original Doom game is finally on the iPhone, aren’t you so relieved that the wait is over!!!

3. Cycorder

- Cycorder turns the camera on your iPhone into a fully functional and good looking video camera. The quality is great and the videos are easy to access and find once filmed.

2. SpoofApp

- SpoofApp is like the SpoofCard that was available for phones that don’t have the handy dandy App Store. SpoofApp allows you to make a call and switch your caller ID and change your voice to become higher or lower. It also gives you the option to record the call. You do have to pay for minutes but its usually worth it. But you do receive free minutes occasionally.

1. Winterboard

- Winterboard allows you to change any aspect of your iPhone from the Battery to the App icons. Sometimes there are even full themes such as the Vista theme or Ubuntu theme.

Command Prompt Instant Messenger

tjlee1220 — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 02:33:19 +0000

Command prompt is an amazing application that can do so many different and interesting things. One of things that I can show you is how to make a instant messenger within command prompt. First open up command prompt by going to the Start menu and clicking on Run. Enter cmd into the Run and command prompt will open up, it should look something like this.

Now that you have command prompt open you will need to minimize and open up a text editor (notepad, text edit etc.). IMPORTANT do not use any word processors such as Word or Pages. Once you have your text editor open write down

@echo off

Cls

echo MESSENGER

set /p n=User:

set /p m=Message:

net send %n% %m%

Pause

Goto A

Save this document as a .bat file (an example would be file.bat). Then open up the file and presto! you have a messenger. It should say Messenger at the top and below it should say User:. Enter the IP addresss of the person you want to message next to User: and then type away.