U.S. Marines Corps Immediately All Ban Social Network Sites = Fail!

August 4, 2009 by 2 Comments

Marines Corp Seal Plaque 1broken-hearticon_facebook

The United States Marine Corps has decided to immediately and unilaterally ban all social networking sites from its network. This is a  first move in a complete reassessment of the way the Pentagon and troops are engaging with an increasingly open web.

This ban will commence immediatly and goes after Facebook and Twitter and will last for a minimum one year. “These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high-risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” the Marine Corps said in a statement.

Andy Sernovitz, the chief executive of the Blog Council, has said “the ban on social media was a bad idea, and bound to fail. You’ve got 5,000 people on an aircraft carrier, mostly 20-year-olds, who are stuck at sea for five months with no contact with friends or family,” Sernovitz said. “Getting an occasional e-mail is not enough when the baby pictures are on Facebook. This is like telling the troops in 1942 there would be no more letters from home,” Sernovitz said. “If you ban social media, you guarantee it goes underground and you increase the security risk.”

Good job USMC and Pentegon. Instead of figuring out way for the soldiers fighting in your wars to communicate with their family more effectively, you idiots decide to completely cut them off from everything that matters, family. What a morale booster! FAIL!

[via Businesweek]

Filed under Apple, AT&T, Blackberry, FCC, Garmin-Asus, HTC, iPhone, Palm, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, Touch Diamond, Uncategorized, Verizon, Windows Mobile, WinMo 6.5 Tagged with , , , ,

Apple Tries To Silence British Girl With ‘Exploding iPod’

August 4, 2009 by 2 Comments

Ellie Stanborough, 11, holds an exploded iPod

Ellie Stanborough, 11, holds her exploded iPod

Apple tried to silence a daughter and her father with a gag order after the her iPod music player had exploded. This happened after the two tried to get a refund from Apple.

According to Britain’s The Times which reported yesterday, they found out that Apple was going to offer the daughter and her father a full refund only if they were willing to sign a non-disclosure/settlement form. The proposed settlement would have left the family open to any legal action if they ever violated the terms of the proposed agreement.

The father had contacted Apple and the store where they purchase the device. The two were passed around to various departments when they tried to get into contact with someone. The father then got a hold of an Apple executive via the telephone. The result of the communication? Apple forward a letter to the family denying any liability whatsoever but offered them refund.

No proof has been establish of simply dropping any iPod Touch which would result in a exploding fireball kind of reaction.

[via The Times - UK]

Filed under Apple, AT&T

Apple, RIM, Samsung Chips Targeted Violating Patents In Trade Case?

August 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment

3giphone_1rim-blackberrysamsung_b7320_omniapro

Oops! Apple Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. and six other companies that use Samsung Electronics Co. memory chips were specified in a U.S. trade complaint which seeks to block imports of all products containing the iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm. It appears that a little known company by the name of  BTG International Inc. of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, alleges that Samsung’s nand flash memory chips, which are used to cache songs and photos on portable electronics devices are infringing five BTG patents. Yikes! BTG actually doesn’t make the products but instead licenses it’s patents to other companies.

The patents pertain to the certain way of programming and the ability to  read these  flash memory cells which store more than a one bit of data per cell. It’s  called “multi-level cell,” according to the alleged suit. This process effectively reduces the cost of each flash memory chip and allows users to store more data and information.

In addition, several other companies were targeted  are computers by Asustek Computer Inc., Dell Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. and memory cards by Transcend Information Inc. and PNY Technologies Inc.

Well, it seems that the six companies involved may have to pony up some serious scratch in order to payoff settle the complaint filed in federal court in Marshall, Texas. Either that or they need to stop importing iPhones, Blackberry Storms and a slue of other products sold to American consumers.

Filed under Apple, AT&T, Blackberry, iPhone, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Tagged with , , , , , ,

BlackBerry Desktop Manager Now On Apple’s Mac

August 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment

BB-MacMany of you Mac aficionados have waited so long to see the marriage of you beloved Blackberry and your Mac, well you wait is almost over. Today, one of the Crackberry faithful decided to head over to a T-Mobile to take a gander at the new curve Curve 8520, he ended up running into an early ‘build’ of Blackberry’s Mac desktop manager. Why has it taken so long for RIM do this, we just can’t tell you.

Some of the features are:

  • Integrated Media Sync for iTunes
  • Backup and Restore
  • Install/Remove 3rd party applications
  • Ability to automatically sync multiple iCal calendars
  • Ability to sync with Entourage
  • Ability to sync multiple devices on multiple Macs
  • Event settings for syncing (which device calendar to sync with, merge etc.)
  • Automatically detects new carrier released OS upgrades for devices
  • Ability to rename a device and view available free device memory

So if are interested in reading more, head over the Crackberry for the full review.

[via Crackberry]

Filed under Apple, AT&T, Blackberry, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Tagged with , ,

CONFIRMED: Sprint To Get HTC HERO!

August 4, 2009 by 1 Comment

htc-hero-sprint-support-page

The days of Sprint customers waiting a year for the crappy hand-me-down phones which were already well popularized on other carriers are officially over. Sprint and HTC have once again come out with a new release; the HTC Hero. Having already played with the Magic, I welcome test driving the HTC Hero on Sprint’s network. So now that the Hero has been confirmed, are you going to buy one or are you going to wait for the HTC Touch Pro 2?

[via Engadget]

Filed under HTC, Sprint

BlackBerry 9990 Photo (New Device) Surfaces. Is it the Storm2 or Magnum?

August 4, 2009 by 2 Comments

blackberry9990sm

Apparently, the guys over at Crackberry have received a photo of a device they believe to be the 9900 Storm 2. They’ve stated that it may be an internal (to RIM)  model number “9990″ and that it actually exists. But Crackberry reports that doesn’t seem to point to a new device at all. They believe that it is classified as Storm 2 hardware. We think that this may be the model number for the “Hybrid” Blackberry Magnum.

In another post by Crackberry last year, they stated: “A little more info for you – we’re now hearing it will be called the BlackBerry 9900 and it’s currently codenamed Pluto.” Also, BoyGenius had this photo not much later. I think we are going to see the “Hybrid” touchscreen with full qwerty keyboard running the latest (hopefully revamped) OS Blackberry Magnum. And I would probably breakdown and buy one if it was half decent because I love the Bold’s keyboard. Just make sure RIM uses a trackpad and not trackball, OK? Your thoughts?


Filed under AT&T, Blackberry, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Tagged with , , , , , ,

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