Scratch that…WinPhone users get the coolest device of them all…Google’s Android OS makes a good showing though…

Flash (superthin Android bar phone, 3.5″ screen)
Smoke (Pixi-like Android bar phone, 2.8″ screen)
Thunder (Android bar phone, 4.1″ screen)
Lightning (Windows Phone 7 vertical slider, 4.1″ screen)

The Lightning and Smoke are unique form-factor-wise for phones of their caliber…definitely not enough to get me to change carriers from my beloved Sprint but if the Lightning showed up with WiMAX and Android it would be a very serious contender to the HTC Evo 4G, set to launch this summer.

The McCain Campaign has been bitten by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Several of their YouTube videos, including political advertisements, were taken down upon DMCA complaints from who-knows-where, possibly the studios whose shows can be seen, albeit briefly, in the ads. McCain’s legal counsel has asked YouTube to exercise discretion about the takedown notices, ignoring them if “fair use” applies,, however the DMCA makes no provision for such a thing and for YouTube to make such arbitration would lead it down a slippery slope out of safe haror provisions, thus making it a much, much more restrictive environment for posting videos. All of this is rather ironic, but very much needed; McCain supported the DMCA’s legislation a few years back.

Speaking of YouTube, it is now the second-largest search engine on the web. Google is number one, Yahoo ranks third. If you count Google and YouTube as a single entity, there’s no chance of catching up unless aliens suddenly abduct the colorful company.

Sandisk’s SlotMusic initiative is now in full force, though the idea is downright dumb. Basically you’re lookig at a casette-player model (no track information one album per piece of media) except instead of casettes you’ve got tiny MicroSD cards. It’s a nice way to sell flash memory for Sandisk, and at least SlotMusic cards don’t have to be rewound after playing, but if you have a midrange cell phone (or, for that matter, one of several of Sandisk’s MicroSD-slot-equipped Sansa players), there’s absolutely no point in getting the $20 SlotMusic player. Nor, in my opinion, any reason for not just downloading your music from Amazon’s MP3 store to a regular MP3 player or a regular McroSD card, which can be found for around $5 per gigabyte nowadays.

Don’t want the temptation of a ringing phone while driving? By working with cell carriers, Aegis Mobility wants to help, forwarding calls to voicemail and pausing text message reception if you’re traveling at a high rate of speed, presumably down the freeway. Problem: you could be in a bus, or in the passenger seat. Interesting, though…what do you think?

Google’s Android phone operating system apparently has a “kill switch” in it, so Google can turn off malicious applications that might make their way onto the phone. Apple has been found to have such a procedure as well, however it seems people find Google’s option more admissable, since Google told everyone about the switch, the software is open-source so the switch can be disabled, and Google has no control over applications’ entrance into the market. As opposed to Apple, who in all honesty sould be able to shut off such applications before they get through te rather fickle iTunes App Store submission process.

Want a cheap laptop? How about a really cheap netbook? Best Buy is selling the Asus Eee PC 900A for $300. Granted, there’s no optical drive, the processor is on the slow side (Intel’s Atom chip) and you’re not going to store much on the unit’s built-in 4GB flash-based hard disk alternative. But, if you can handle the tiny keyboard, mini-sized screen and Linux operating system, you’ve got yourself one tiny laptop at an amazingly low price.

Want something slightly more substantial? Though the Lenovo IdeaPad Y430 that I looked at last week has gone up a whopping $150 in price (hey, it was a good deal!) Buy.com has a promotion on the last-gen IdeaPad Y510. This solid machine’s price? A cool $500, shipped.

A final DMCA debacle: Quote Unquote Records had their site taken down for posting copyrighted music…their own copyrighted music! What’s more, the music, offered for free, wasn’t coyrighted in the regular sense, but licensed under the more liberal Creative Commons system (which I use on my non-Oredigger blogs). Copyright paranoia at work? Absolutely.

Antec is getting into the Halloween spirit with their “Skeleton” case. The rather audacious substitute for your average computer component cavern has a practical use as well, beyond the flashing lights and the gargantuan 250mm fan up top: components are dead-easy to swap out. So whether you like to tinker or troubleshoot, the Skeleton case may be worth a look, even past October 31st.

YouTube is now serving up TV shows on their site, starting with Star Trek, Beverly Hills 90210 and MacGyver. The interface seems reminiscent of Hulu’s, with a big focus on the viewing area, plus some ads interspersed in with the content. Fine with me…I’d rather watch an ad or two on a cool TV show than have YouTube keep on not making any money…

Texting while driving has now been proven to be more dangeous than driving while drunk. Just don’t do it. Also, if you don’t have a number on voice dial, think twice before trying to hammer it own while speeding down the freeway. Have an iPhone? You’re screwed; stop if you want to do anything with your shiny new toy, or have someone who isn’t behind the wheel do it for you.

Know about the Roku “Netflix Box”? Pretty soon it’ll be able to stream from a variety of sources. A very good deal when you’re talking about a device that costs just under $100.

Between this article and the last one of its kind, MySpace Music was announced…and streamed over one billion songs! It helps that “the usual suspects” are on board in terms of recording labels. It’s also an advantage when your service is probably already the largest aggregator of indie bands on the web at the moment.

Aside from being delayed…or maybe coming soon…depending on who you ask, Windows 7 (which, by the way, will actually be called Windows 7 upon release) will not ship with photo, video or e-mail editing applications on board. This time around, they’ll be downloadable from Windows Live, something Microsoft is already doing as an option with everything mentioned but a video editor. The idea is to get both applicatioons and Windows itself to the market quicker, with the side benefit of less litigation from the suit-happy EU. In “same difference” news, Microsoft is now touting “Windows Cloud“, some bit of vaporware that exemplifies Microsoft’s new focus on web-based services. Misplaced focus? You decide.

eBay is nixing check and money order payment options for small-ticket items, trying to keep buyer satisfaction up. They also laid off 1,000 workers recently. Coincidence? Mostly, but eBay hasn’t been doing so well lately, with their modified policies on both ends of the transaction and the site’s unfortunate abundance of cheap accessories for whatever item you’re really trying to buy.

Verizon Wireless now has the option to buy a phone and plan without a contract, though you’ll pay as much as three hundred more dollars for your phone for this privilege. Or you can activate your own Verizon-capable phone. In other news, they’ve announced that the BlackBerry Storm 9500, a touch-screen, multi-network Swiss army knife of a phone, will be out “in time for the holidays” “priced competitively”. Whatever that means, the phone itself looks awesome. Not so awesome: charging content providers three cents per text message sent to a Verizon subscriber, in addition to what that subscriber already pays to receive the message. Look for mobile services like Google SMS to start offering their wares everywhere except Verizon sometime soon.

The Large Hadron Collider is shut down until early spring. Even the paranoid are safe…for now…

TiVo is now available for your computer. TiVo lovers rejoice…and say “Finally” under their breaths.

Pandora will survive for just a little longer. The internet radio service is a direct beneficiary from a Senate bill that passed recently, allowing internet broadcasters more time in negotiating with the big names in terrestrial radio, who would absolutely love to sock it to internet venues with high per-play royalties, thus putting the poor guys out of business.

RealDVD has been halted from sale by entertainment industry litigation, after Real, the software’s producer, sued to establish legitimacy of its product. In the mean time, Google is your friend; there are plenty of free DVD rippers out there.

iTunes threatened to shut its music section down in light of Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) rate hikes. The CRB blinked, so Amazon’s MP3 store is still playing second fiddle to the Apple music behemoth.

Adobe Flash is being developed for the iPhone. The problem is that Apple decides what goes onto the iPhone, and such platforms as Flash just aren’t on that list. A few other notable apps, such as a podcast catcher and a special GMail reader, have also been rejected. Look for them on an Android phone near you soon.

Android phones seem to be qite the hot item these days. T-Mobile is having trouble keeping up with preorders for their device, the HTC-built G1. Over 1.5 million have been sold, and it isn’t even the first day!

It’s not a phone, but the Nintendo DSi, coming soon to Japan and likely later here, looks to be a solid answer to Apple’s iPhone\iPod Touch challenge to the mobile gaming throne. The DSi has an internal camera, a 3.2 megapixel external camera, larger screens and an application store. It’s also even thinner than the last iteration of Nintendo’s handheld series, making it enough of an upgrade to get people thinking about the platform again. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether DS or DS Lite owners will upgrade…the price of $190 probably doesn’t justify the number of features added to the unit.

Heard of the Slingbox? Its makers will soon be pulling together content from major studios, your computer and even the Slingbox itself at Sling.com, though not all of these features will e available at launch. Still, very, very nice.

It’s a TV, it’s a camera, it’s a game console, it’s an MP3 player…it’s the Sega Vision! No kidding…they’re getting back into the hardware market next year, though who knows how successful this handheld PSP competitor will fare.

Want more battery life? Then don’t boot into Windows and use a cell phone processor to do all your work. That’s the premise behind the Dell Latitude ON feature. Naturally, when you’re in this flash-based, email-checking mode you’re running Linux and not Windows Vista.

Heard of the Sony eReader? No? What if Sony gave it a touch screen, spiffed up the design and added a few features both on the dive and its associated online store, then raised the price by $100? Ah well, that’s what those folks did…

Is drunk e-mailing a problem for you? How about drunk basic math? If you answered yes to the last two questions, Google’s Mail Goggles may be the answer to your first problem, by taking advantage of the second.

AMD is splitting into two companies, one for design and the other for actual chip-building. The idea is to have the design half focus on…well…competing with Intel on the CPU front and Intel\nVidia in the GPU sector, leaving the expensive process of building factories and other such physical burdens to another entity.

What happens when you cross light with WiFi? A research project, of course. The idea is to allow for scrue short-range communication in lieu of WiFi by way of LED-based light fixtures. Sorry guys, but the very thought gives me subliminal messages that a headache is imminent.

Google Chrome (yes, the browser) seems to have had a dose of meteoric success; its market share is dropping faster than the Dow in an economic crisis (close to home but an appropriate sense of scale). It probably doesn’t help that the browser is no longer being promoted on Google’s front page, but it’ll probably go back there once a new version (or a Mac version, or both) becomes available.

Paranoids, now is your time. The Google-exclusive GeoEye-1 mapping satellite has beamed its first high-resolution images down to earth, and while they aren’t military-grade (each pixel covers 50cm of territory) they are creepily detailed, especially if you don’t trust what used to be simply the world’s best search engine, or something like that.

That’s it for now. More news bits coming soon!

Also, I forgot to mention a few things about the G1. First off, it has copy and paste unlike, ahem, the iPhone. Second, it uses MicroSD cards for memory expansion (they’re available in 8GB capacity now, 32GB later), and the G1 comes with a 1GB card to start you off. Third, the charging port on the phone is the same as the headphone jack (I have an HTC phone so am familiar with this situation), so you’ll need an adapter (likely included) to use regular headphones. Then again, HTC may just include a wired headset (they did with my phone), which you can use until Stereo Bluetooth support gets rolled out on the Android.

Featuring tight integration with Google service to the point that the phone syncs only with Google’s calendar and contacts applications (no Outlook sync, but a GMail account is required), the HTC G1, and its Android operating system, is whatever you make it. Like the iPhone, the G1 has a built-in application store. Unlike the iPhone, “Android Market” is completely open; developers are free to publish whatever software they want to the system.

The phone itself is a relatively high-end model, though most of its features are mirrored in other phones of the same price. It has a relatively large (but not iPhone large) touch screen, a Blackberry-like scroll ball for navigation and a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard that looks comfortable enough to type on, if it weren’t for the way the phone is designed: at the bottom (or on the right when the keyboard is open) there’s a bulge that doesn’t move with the screen.

The G1 also sports a 3.2 megapixel camera (that, like the iPhone, can’t do video) and 3G data capability on T-Mobile’s US network. You can also take the phone internationally, and 3G will work there. There is a 1GB limit on data transfer per month, however, and T-Mobile won’t sell you the phone unless you’re in or near their 3G coverage area (we aren’t…yet). The phone also has WiFi built in.

A few nice Google-focused developments on the phone include built-in GMail support with push capability (then again you can do this with any other smartphone via a few ways that I’ll discuss in a lter article) and a version of Google Maps that not only has Street View but actually ill reorient the street view depending on where you’re pointing the phone.

The phone will go on sale October 22nd in areas that have T-Mobile’s 3G network available for $179 with a two-year contract (by the way, Verizon will now let you get their service contarct-free if you pay full price for your phone, but that’s another story). Data plans are either $25 for “unlimited” (1GB then painfully slow thereafter) plus 400 messages (text or multimedia) or $35 for both data and unlimited messaging. These costs are in addition to that of a voice plan, which on T-Mobile can be had for as little as $30 per month.

I’m looking forward to eventually seeing this phone in person…it seems to be missing some features (stereo Bluetooth, also not found on the iPhone…is still in the works) and T-Mobile’s 3G coverage is still extremely limited, but the Android OS holds promise (you can actually buy music from Amazon MP3 right on the phone) and, like Google’s recently released Chrome browser, is open for tinkering for all. As opposed to that crazy amazing slab of plastic, glass and metal that they sell for $200-$300 over on AT&T…

You can find more information on the phone at this site.

1. Best Buy has bought Napster for $121 million. Why, we’re not sure…maybe because they want to increase their position in the music selling market…they sell CDs and had a relationship with Real for Rhapsody. Now they have their own subscription service, which of course still won’t break the iTunes mega-market share situation.
2. The Large Hadron Collider was infiltrated by hackers earlier this week, to the point that a computer one level away from the actual control inferfaces was compromised. Also, they’ve shut the collider down to fix some cooling system problems. Scary, much?
3. Google has been working on a new place to put their data centers: on the ocean. THe big advantages: power from the waves, cooling from the water and the lack of land to tax. Sounds like a plan…let’s just hope there aren’t any scurvy data pirates around, ready to take all that personally identifyiable information wieth them on a raid in the high seas.
4. Heard of the Google Android phone? How about the HTC Dream? Well, T-Mobile will be introducing the latter, with the former operating system on it, Tuesda. The phone won’t be available until October, but this is finally the end of the vaporware that has been Google’s mobile phone operating system for some time now. The Dream will retail for $199 with a two-year contract, on par with the iPhone 3G lower-end model.
5. Have a Zune? Microsoft has made a deal with Wayport, a WiFi hotspot provider, to give Zune customers free WiFi at McDonalds outlets, for downloading music. In contrast, Apple has had a deal with Starbucks ever since their iPod Touch came out. Interesting dichotomy though.
6. In other Microsoft news, they’ve launched “I’m a PC” ads to counteract Apple’s ongoing PC-bashing ad blitz. Whereas Apple touts what Macs have that PCs don’t have, or are uncomfortable with Macs having, the “I’m a PC” ads focus on the wide ariety of people who use PCs. Sure, Apple might connotate Macs with being cool, but with a PC you can be cool, smart, rebellious or…um…a suba diver. That works. Microsoft has also passed a milestone build of Windows 7, meaning that a full-blown beta release may land as early as this year.
7. Yahoo is trying out a new home page layout. They’re also where Sarah Palin had an e-mail address, which was social-engineered by some hackers. Moral of the story: check the “Forgot your password?” option on your e-mail provider; it may well be the weakest link security-wise for getting into your e-mail. It was for Sarah.
8. In other political news, researchers have designed a program that figures out how much political spin is placed on a speech based on word usage. The verdict: Clinton is average, McCain pretty much doesn’t spin things, and Obama is an absolute spin doctor. Also, there seem to be problems with voting machines in several swing states, which includes here in Colorado. No is a good time to volunteer to help in whatever way you can to solve these problems. Tech heads are patriotic like that, right?
9. In the ongoing Spore saga, Electronic Arts has decided to relax some of the onerous copy protection restrictions imposed on the game. Now you can install it on up to five computers (up from three) and there’s an automated mechanism for deauthorizing machines if, say, you trade an old computer for a new one.

That’s it for now! If you have any comments or questions, look below…a comment box awaits your command!