What’s the most common phrase heard around the Gadgetell newsroom? Is it “I love Apple?”, “that’s cool!” or “sweet!” ? Answer: none of them, it’s “they are on crack”. This week we take a look back at the things that made us chuckle in the tech world. Let’s get to the suspects:
- A Kindle for this, a Nook for that?
- Dell ups the ante in what they’ll pre-install
- Droid X gobbling up data like me eating turkey on Thanksgiving
- Don’t be now says Micorsof
t
Kindle gets an exclusive.
This isn’t good. Word is from Shaun Ingram, Amazon is fragmenting the market. Awesome. As Ingram explains, “Amazon has announced that is has a new deal with the literary agent Andrew Wylie. The deal would give Amazon an exclusive for e-books from all authors the agent represents. The full list is here, and includes notable names such as Al Gore and Phillip Roth, it also includes the estates of popular authors including John Updike, William Burroughs and Hunter Thompson. So, if in any time in the next two years you wish to purchase an ebook of classics such as “Naked Lunch” or “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” or current books like “An Inconvenient Truth” or Roth’s upcoming “Nemesis,” you need a Kindle or a device with Kindle software.”
Imagine if you wanted to listen to U2 (pretend with me on their later stuff) and Sony pulled an Amazon. -You’d have to get a Sony Walkman (cringe!). But if you wanted to play REM (again bear with me) your iPod would be just fine.
The whole idea is bad. Amazon is setting themselves up in a bidding war vs. other ebook reader makers to divvy up the authors. If all the ebooks I want are not available because of the brand I bought, I buy none. In the end, we all lose. Stupid books.
Virus inside – que Intel “ba bum pa da”
Saving all of us valuable time and effort, thoughtfull Dell has taken bold steps in what they are willing to pre-install on our machines. Our Sue Walsh explains, “a red faced Dell is apologizing to customers after admitting that some of their PowerEdge rack servers shipped with malware infected firmware.”
That’s right, forget being forced to hit up some porn sites to get a virus, Dell will do it for you. Sweet.
Even better, Sue finishes the post with, “the company has offered no explanation of how the malware got into the servers in the first place.” Magic perhaps? Ninjas? Hacker Big Foot? The world may never know.
Droid X users eating 5x more data
What the heck are you Droid X users on? 2x more, I can see. 3x more perhaps. But 5x? Is the thing doubling as an HDTV for you guys (and I assume gals)? Seriously, are you streaming movies while streaming music while running speed tests?
Our Natesh Sood gets all factual: “according to Jennifer Byrne, Verizon’s Business Development Executive Director, Motorola Droid X users are using a lot of data – 5x more than other Verizon smartphones.”
What’s worse is you guys are going to ruin it for the whole Verizon party. This conversation must have gone on at Verizon HQ:
“Chief, we’ve got a problem”
“Droid X users are consuming 5x more data then the rest of our flock” (they really do call them that at HQ)
“What? Fine, charge them 5x more!”
“Sir, we just said we wouldn’t do that.”
“Grrrr. Fine, we’ll do it next month.”
I’ll say what we are all thinking at this point, “stay away from the porn, Droid X users.”
Microsoft hates the present.
Probably conceived during the Vista years, Microsoft announced their new slogan, “Be what’s next”. Our Natesh Sood again brings us some insight, “Maybe Microsoft is looking to change things up and have a refreshed tagline for its impending Windows Phone 7 launch. It’s a unique and different tagline to say the least and saying it aloud sounds weird. ”
Yes, yes it does. So where did this come from? Our Crack team uncovered the tagline was developed to be a two-part phrase. Here were the contenders:
- Be what’s next, because today sucks.
- Be what’s next, because what now sucks.
At this point, the project was moved out of the Vista team and sent over to the Windows Mobile team:
- Be what’s next, because we gave this up to RIM, Apple and Google
- Be what’s next, actually, with our UI chops, maybe you’re safer being the “thing after that”
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At this point the project was kicked over to the Xbox team:
- Be what’s next, because we totally knocked off Wii
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Then Ballmer got a hold of it and said:
- You suck in the now. Be what’s next
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In most ways, the Nook, by Barnes & Noble, seems to top the charts amongst ebook readers. Their only weak links, currently, are that they do not offer the text to speech function like the Kindle 2, and they do not browse the web like the Kindle 2. This, like all technology, will change over time. The playing field will be levelled amongst the competitors. Whatever brand you choose to purchase; know that they will
always strive to better their products and earn your business.