Blackberry 9700 Onyx

As a big fan of RIM and an avid user of the BlackBerry Bold, I can truly say that I’m very exited about the upcoming model that faithfully follows in the previous model’s footsteps. The new Bold 9700 has been officially announced just recently, and features more or less minimal upgrades, but which can prove to be quite sensible. The design is more or less the same, except some extracted/added chrome line, an increase in screen resolution and a revamp of the back, where the leather covering was removed. The camera was moved up to 3.2 megapixels, giving the screen another 40 lines of vertical resolution (480 x 360, up from 480 x 320), and shipping with the brand new BlackBerry OS 5.0 out of the gate. Also notable is that the 9700 replaces the trackball with an optical trackpad –continuing a trend started by the Curve 8520 — and will ship in both 900 / 1700 / 2100 and 800 / 850 / 1900 / 2100MHz 3G varieties.

The exact date hasn’t been announced yet, but RIM stated that the model will begin worldwide shipping in November. T-Mobile just announced its flavor of the Bold 9700 for the US which it says will be the first BlackBerry that allows voice calling over WiFi and AT&T says the 9700 will be out in the “coming weeks” for $199 after $100 mail-in rebate. So there you have it, a new Bold, that most likely will join the new BB Storm, will grace the user base soon. JOY!

You’ve yet to impress your friends with your Apple swag, maybe a bit of styling to differentiate you from the other Apple users might do the trick. HunterGatherer’s InCase Products pride themselves in offering “a purposefully fake version of something natural,” according to designer Todd St. John. “I also enjoy seeing it as a wrapper for a concentrated brick of technology.” Deep. For the MacBook, the $60 sleeve is simply a clutch for safekeeping, while the iPhone’s $50 slider case is a new skin in its own right.

I don’t know about you guys, but being one of those geeky techy friend everybody has, I’ve always found myself short of USB ports to plug gadgets into. This little gadget, captioned above, offers the solution to that little pesky problem right here. Not only is it very versatile, but it’s damn right dirt cheap too. You just have to plug into one of your USBs and you get an extra 3. Fair trade, right? The rather short cable might prove to be a bit of an impediment, but not that big of biggie. You can purchase the Power Extension USB 4 Port Hub for $15 from USB Geek.

The new Xbox 360 live is God damn incredible! Beyond it’s obvious gaming capabilities, the new Xbox dashboard features some impressive new features, quite innovative I might add. To be more explicit, I’m talking about its new social networking and streaming capabilities. Now you can connect with your friends on facebook, twitter and last.fm right from the Xbox. What’s very cool is that you also have a feature that lets you know which of your facebook friends also use Xbox live for better multiplayer and networking capabilities. As a down side, it’s a bit of a pain that you can really do anything else while you stream music over last.fm. Other than that, though, the new Xbox looks incredible! Check out the presentation video bellow.

Pretty cool, huh? It comes with 1 GB storage at a 90$ price tag. Pretty stiff, but damn awesome! (buy at gift-library)

If your trying to think of any good reason to visit Paris, now’s your chance! It seems Microsoft will be opening a café of its own in the heart of Paris, which will be themed around the new Microsoft Windows 7. While sipping a refreshing coup of coffee, together with a crispy croissant, customers will be able to play around with X-Box consoles, along with other Microsoft products. You won’t be able to buy anything Microsoft related from there, though – it’s just a promotional gag, a buzz driving move. A temporary one, too, since the cafe will only remain open for a few short weeks from its October 22nd opening day. For those interested, it will be located on 47 Boulevard Sebastopol.

Well personally I never asked myself such a question, but the guys at Dark Roasted Blend did, and damn I’m happy they did – out of curiosity if nothing else. So as it turns out, that epic quest would require 45 million ink cartridges that would add up to about half a million liters of ink that would be sprayed over 700 square miles of paper, which would require about 40,000 trees to make. Yeah, all those add up to one thing: the internet.

Motorola will be the next big shot to announce their Android phones, as the company plans to unveil this further today, at an event in San Francisco (stay tuned for further updates from there). Thing is, let’s face it: mobile applications for smartphones are today’s hottest. Just think about the fact that Apple’s App Store has had more than 1 billion (!) downloads in just a year of activity and add those who have… one way or another managed to get apps without downloading. It’s obvious that the market is hungry, and as I already said, Google delivers.

“Developing for the iPhone is a no-brainer,” said Noam Bardin, CEO of a mobile app company called Waze, which has developed navigation applications for the iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile platforms. “You get more bang for each line of code you write for the iPhone. But then the question becomes, which platform do you develop for next?”

Right now, it seems they’ve just moved in for the Android.

“What’s happening is Android is the third platform for people to think about,” said Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, a free, visual voicemail service that is available for the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. “The way we have done it is as YouMail has gotten a larger and larger audience, we’ve started to see 4 percent or 5 percent of our audience on Android. And we’ve built an Android app to satisfy those folks since it’s relatively easy to do.”

This comes after just earlier this week, Yahoo announced some other applications (including ones for Flickr) being released for iPhones and a handful of Blackberrys.

“We will make these applications available on Android devices and the Palm Pre later,” Sandeep Gupta, senior director of mobile applications at Yahoo said. “We’re not waiting until these devices have critical mass, but we do have to prioritize. And that means developing apps for devices with the most interactive mobile users first.”

Androids didn’t experience an explosive growth or over night successes, but their growth is steady and firm. In many ways, it has the potential to be an even better platform for developers than iPhone, as many have already been impressed by their approach to the market. Not only did they make the source code free for developers but they can also post their apps directly on the Android market. This means developers get updates and new version of their apps instantly, instead of having to wait for approval, which is the case with Apple. This has often been a subject of topic, with many complaining that the process is long and sometimes applications are rejected without any reason being given.

“The biggest challenge for a developer when it comes to Apple is getting their application certified,” Bardin said. “The whole process is a black box. You don’t know how long it will take or if your application will be approved.”

So it remains to be seen how the Google platform will develop, but I’d definitely put my money on it.

The much awaited Rhapsody app has been long awaited, and the wait has not been in vain: it’s available. At least in the US. Well it can’t cache like Spotify, but for 15$ a month you can stream how much you want, over Wi-Fi, 3D and Edge. Another good thing is that it’s free for a week. According to them, they have over 8.000.000 songs, but perhaps the only bad thing is that they only stream 64 kbps quality.

So there’ll be no more of them shiny stickers we were used to (and which were kinda cool too) – get ready for the new Vision platform which will give you the details. Vision breaks it down to 3 things: Vision, Vision Premium and Vision Ultimate. Vision is just for simple tasks, Premium is the next step up, with Direct X 10.1, HD support and other features, while Ultimate, is as the name says, the ultimate; it can work with video encoding and direct HD editing.

The thing is this may actually complicate things even more, though it’s task is the exact opposite. What do you think, a happy or a sad wave to the AMD stickers?