It wouldn’t be a BlackBerry press event without something totally unexpected and semi-weird thrown in the mix. Today, at BlackBerry’s media conference revealing BlackBerry 10, the company appointed Alicia Keys as the new Global Creative Director.

Her first act as GCD was to talk about how much she loves BlackBerry 10 at today’s media conference. Her other responsibilities are somewhat unclear — just like will.i.am’s role at Intel.

According to Keys, she’ll be working with app creators, designers, carriers, and more to make sure BlackBerry is the most efficient, cool and simple platform to be on. She proved just how “BlackBerry” she can be by wearing a tuxedo-type outfit, complete with black pants, black jacket, and white button down.

Keys was a long time BlackBerry user in the past, but jumped ship for “something sexier.” The way she explains it, she was carrying two phones for a while, “playing the field,” but now she’s exclusive in her relationship with BlackBerry.

If so, that exclusivity began today, as she was Instagramming photos from either an Android device or iPhone just yesterday. And she has been tweeting from Twitter for iPhone in the past week as well.

TechCrunch asked Alicia Keys directly which phone she used during her rough patch with BlackBerry and she declined to answer. “I don’t think it’s necessary to disclose which phone I used,” she said. “It was another phone.” It was clearly an iPhone.

For now, she seems pretty focused on combining your work phone with your play phone, which is something BB10 does very well. However, it’s unclear just how much Keys will bring to the company other than celeb status.

Hopefully, she’ll be able to refrain from Instagramming until the Facebook-owned app makes its way to BlackBerry. We’ll be keeping an eye on it in case she falters.

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Music video by Fiona Apple performing Fast As You Can. (C) 1999 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
Video Rating: 4 / 5

There are whole host of new smartphones waiting for their time to shine at Mobile World Congress (not to mention an event or two before the big show), but you’re in luck if you’re a domestic Android fan smitten with LG and Google’s Nexus 4. The hard-to-obtain handset first reappeared in the German Google Play Store earlier today, and now those of you in the U.S. can finally purchase one again too.

Google caught some flack when the Nexus 4 first launched because of the tumultuous process of actually ordering one, not to mention subsequent issues with stock. It eventually got to the point where Google and LG representatives started playing the blame game, insinuating (and sometimes proclaiming) that the fault lay with the other party. In the end though, LG remains committed to cranking out Nexus 4s and it just may be that the Nexus drought is over for good. That is of course, until the oft-rumored Nexus 5 (also supposedly crafted by LG) makes its official appearance — murmurs from the rumor mill point to a possible introduction at Google’s next I/O conference in May.

On the off-chance that you’ve read this far and still haven’t clicked over to the Google Play Store to place an order, here are direct links for the 8GB and 16GB models so have at it! At this point, Google claims that units will start shipping within the next two weeks, but The Verge claims that shipments will hit doorsteps even sooner than that. Is Google under-promising and planning to over-deliver? Let’s hope so — those first few hours of Nexus availability definitely left a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

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After months of stoking anticipation and dealing with criticism, RIM will finally reveal BlackBerry 10 to the world on Wednesday. It’s got to be a heady moment for everyone involved — this is the company’s big shot at redemption and relevance — but until then the rest of us will just have to make do with another batch of leaked BB10 hardware photos.

The subject this time around though is the white Z10, an oft-rumored version of the device that’s popped up in rumor posts and renders (including one that appeared as part of a leaked Verizon Wireless promo page) but generally not out in the wild. Longtime readers may know that I’m a bit of a sucker for a white phone, but the black bezel that runs around the white Z10′s 4.2-inch display is a neat little touch that makes the thing look visually distinct — certainly not a bad thing now that RIM preparing to wade once again into the middle of a heated smartphone conflict.

Naturally, the rest of the technical particulars are still under lock and key right now, but that hasn’t stopped leakers and rumormongers from disseminating a tentative spec sheet in recent days. Should it hold true, the Z10 will include 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and 1800 mAh battery, and an 8-megapixel rear camera. BGR reports that the Z10 will make its retail debut with a sub-$ 199 price tag as well, with editor Jonathan Geller pointing to a $ 150 price point as a distinct possibility.

Wednesday’s event will be the first time that the world at large can get better acquainted with BlackBerry 10 and the hardware that runs it, but it certainly won’t be the last. RIM has sunk an undisclosed amount of money into a 30-second spot due to run during the Super Bowl this Sunday, so it’s clear that RIM is gunning to make a real splash in the market over the weeks and months to come.

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The Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet has been anything but shy, leaking all over the place and posing for a few hands-on pics.

But today’s scoop from French blog Frandroid marks the first time we get a real idea of its size, as the latest leaked photos show the Galaxy Note 8.0 next to the Galaxy Note 2.

Context is a beautiful thing.

The Galaxy Note 8.0 is Samsung’s next big tablet venture, according to recent rumors, presumably meant to take on the iPad mini. As you can see in the images, the Galaxy Note 8.0 has very similar design language to the latest Galaxy Note, and even the Galaxy S III to an extent. Perhaps most notable, however, is Samsung’s seeming insistence to keep this tablet in portrait mode, as noted by the home and navigation buttons on the bottom.

In terms of the competition, the GalNote 8.0 bears a striking resemblance to the new Nook HD 7-inch tablets, with curved edges and a relatively thicker bezel.

Today’s leak marks the first time we’ve gotten a glimpse of the 8-incher with its S-Pen, Samsung’s version of a high-quality pressure-sensitive stylus. To me it looks a tad thicker than that of the Galaxy Note, but that’s potentially because it’s pictured next to the much-smaller Galaxy Note II smartphone.

The Galaxy Note 8.0 is rumored to have a 1280×800 resolution display, Android Jelly Bean, a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM along with a 5-megapixel rear camera and a front-facing camera for video chat. We expect to see this bad boy at MWC in February, and by then we’ll be able to confirm all these specs for you fine readers.

Until then, these pics will have to do.

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On today’s Brief we congratulate Felix Baumgartner and the Red Bull Stratos team, get giddy over Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Golden Globes gig & price out the Microsoft Surface tablets. First up, we were just as awestruck as the rest of you guys when Felix Baumgartner broke the highest freefall record this weekend. For those of you living under a rock or in some kind of sensory deprivation chamber, Baumgartner and his Red Bull Stratos engineering team took a balloon 24 miles straight up to the edge of space in order to smash a record held for over 50 years. The Austrian daredevil took a huge leap of faith, falling back to Earth so fast that he became the first person to break the sound barrier during a freefall. Baumgartner hit speeds of up to 833.9 miles per hour! That’s Superman-faster-than-a-speeding-bullet type stuff! So congratulations to Felix Baumgartner and the Red Bull Stratos team for feeding our love of batshit crazy stunts! www.bbc.co.uk Next up, we’re already looking forward to seeing if Seth MacFarlane can inject some life – or at least some humor – into this year’s Oscars, and now we’ve got two good reasons to watch the Golden Globes this year. And those reasons are co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. The former SNL castmates will take over hosting duties from Ricky Gervais who enjoyed a three year stint as the Golden Globes master of ceremonies. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler both continue to have successful TV careers and getting the two of them to co-host this …

If you only watch one video today, it should be this one. You will discover that it is footage of a DIY LEGO pancake maker which is, in my expert opinion, the best thing to come out of Norway since the fjords. Created by Miguel Valenzuela, an American maker abroad, the project has been around for a few years but this video shows us how the project works in detail, further proving that the nascent robotic-pancake-making scene is a cultural juggernaut waiting to explode.

The project uses LEGO and a ketchup bottle to squirt and cook pancake batter on a built-in griddle. While it is not able to feed us directly using a robotic arm, I definitely see a future for this sort of device in the homes of the catastrophically DIY-oriented, because I’d personally be afraid to trust LEGO to cook my pancakes for me.

If you want to make your own pancake bot, simply head over here and see Miguel’s step-by-step instructions or view this video again and again, marveling at how amazing those pancakes must taste on a hungover Sunday morning.

They’re looking to go to Maker Faire in San Francisco this year and they’re looking for donations so please be generous.

via Make

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It’s been a weird decade for Cisco. After being a dot-com darling in the late 90s (everyone wanted a few Cisco routers for their door-to-door pet food delivery services), the company tried its hand at consumer products with the Flip video camera series and, a little while later, Linksys routers. It seems, then, that Cisco’s grand consumer experiment is over.

The terms of the sale are undisclosed but it should close in March of this year. Belkin has been taking a harder look at networking hardware for the past few years while still maintaining their ties to the computer accessory market that defined the company for years. Their current crop of routers are aimed at home users so Linksys could give Belkin a bit of an edge in the home/small office market.

What’s more interesting, however, is where Cisco hopes to go now that the company has divested itself of all consumer products. Consumer electronics are a horrible business. The margins are low and demand fluctuates depending on what comes out of Cupertino or Redmond. In short, there’s very little incentive to sell hardware to consumers when they’re fickle, hungry for Zappos-esque “You screwed up so give me free stuff” support, and rarely, if ever, upgrade their PCs and peripherals. What electronics manufacturer wants to waste his time with consumers when IT clients sign a nice contract and pay on time?

But the consumer market is leading the IT market. The story in CE these days is BYOD – I get emails about it nearly every day – and IT managers used to dropping a few thousand on fleet laptops now have to contend with people bringing in iPads, Surfaces, MacBooks, and their own mini-routers. It’s a maddening situation, to be sure.

Big iron isn’t the watchword anymore. Buying a Cisco router for a small home office barely makes sense and, increasingly, it makes even less sense for a bigger office. That is not to say that IT infrastructure isn’t lucrative – it’s just not as lucrative.

Belkin should be able to do good things with Linksys. Cisco clearly couldn’t.

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