Bill Gates Rules --> 11 Rules Your Kids Did Not & Will not Learn In School

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

3D Home Cinema - PHILIPS 58" Platinum HDTV (in 21:9 Wide Screen)

It's kind of hard to outdo yourself with only two dimensions when they read 21 and 9, respectively, so Philips has decided to do the only thing left for a trendy display maker: go 3D. Though we saw (and loved) a 3D prototype of the 56-inch variant at last year's IFA, this new, 58-inch Cinema 21:9 Platinum HDTV looks set to bring the third dimension to actual retail. It's got the Ambilight wall illumination that some people will like, LED backlighting with local dimming that most should love, and a slimmer, brushed matte bezel that will be appreciated by all. The 400Hz panel is capable of pumping out Full HD 3D and is expected to cost around €4,000 ($5,112) in Europe or £3,500 in the UK with a launch set for later this month. And if you want one in the US, well... things aren't looking very Ambibright for you.

Why Buy Chairs? (When You Can Cut Holes In Your Floor)

Plain ol' chairs, couches, sofas, and similar furniture take up too much space and can be too costly, but you've gotta sit somewhere. The easy solution? Cut some holes in your floor and say that you've made an OOoo Chair.

The idea for the OOoo Chair comes from the folks at design firm Decker Yeadon. They thought that it's perfectly logical to expect people to stick their legs through holes in a floor in order to conserve space, money, and materials.

I just wonder how your downstairs neighbors would feel about such a "chair" design. Hahaha...

The All New Blackberry Torch

If you don't already own a BlackBerry, you will not want this phone. And if you do, you still might not want it, even if it may very well be the "best BlackBerry ever."

 

What is BlackBerry?

The most exceedingly common observation about the Torch is that it's very much still a BlackBerry. Despite the gloss-speckled new BlackBerry 6 software, despite the retro-quirky slider anatomy, it's a BlackBerry. Well, what is a BlackBerry?
BlackBerry, in the beginning, was a glorified two-way pager. It's slowly evolved from that decade-old core into what it is today. Like Microsoft Office, a lot of people might use it at home, but it's mostly designed for its corporate base. What BlackBerry tends to be good at, and what BlackBerry users love about them clearly exposes those corporate-tinged roots: well-designed hardware keyboards, push email (routed through RIM's servers), BlackBerry Messenger (a robust, addictive BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry instant messaging service), communications security and encryption (see: Obama, Saudi Arabia, UAE). What it's not been good at: basically everything else. I mean, if you want to highlight the philosophical difference between RIM and say, Apple, consider that RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis brags about how carriers love BlackBerrys because they conserve bandwidth, while Apple told AT&T to screw itself when the carrier suggested making the YouTube app less awesome for users by eating less data.
When you see that for the first time since 2007 BlackBerry is not the top-selling smartphone platform in the US, RIM's looming problem seems a lot loomier. The Torch and BlackBerry 6 are RIM's effort to avoid the same kind of fate Windows Mobile suffered by ignoring regular people and leaning too much on corporate IT departments to keep them in business, especially when Apple and Google are making inroads into the workplace.
That's a lot of context to swallow, but understanding the DNA and RIM's incipient existential angst is the only way to understand the Torch: It's like Two Face, but even less focused. Is BlackBerry 6 a touchscreen OS? A trackpad and keyboard OS? Mostly for business users? Regular people? It's not quite sure, and the results can be pretty messy. The psychological split is real, and its imprint dominates nearly every aspect of the phone. FWIW, I'm looking at the phone purely from the role of a consumer—if your boss or IT department is handing you the phone, it's not like you've got a choice anyway. Just thank them for giving you this one.

 

This is how you put together a phone

Not to rely too much on the trope that the Torch is "like a BlackBerry," but the overarching industrial design and build really is just like everything else RIM has produced over the last year, simply evolved into a chromier slider form factor. While it works, almost shockingly well, because so little else has changed there's a sense of the uncanny, a subtext of indecision surrounds the whole design.



The Torch is as well-built as you could realistically want a phone to feel. The sliding action is smooth, perfectly balanced in the amount of effort it requires to shoot the screen up over the keyboard. It takes a push, and then it zips along the track until it clacks, satisfyingly. And it feels like you can do it 10,000,000 times. The rippled back is the right amount of rubbery, not so much it makes you hands feel weird, but textured enough the phone will never slip from even gross, clammy hands. The only issue is that the lock button on the left corner of the phone is too easy to trigger, so I pulled the phone out of my jeans pocket, an email half-filled out with jibber jabber or random phone number partially dialed, more often than I would've liked to.



The keyboard, ripped from the Bold 9700 is stereotypically fantastic, clicky and ergonomic. It is still one of the best keyboards on any phone out there. The optical trackpad is a suitable trackball replacement, but most of the time, I simply wondered why it was there, since there's a much bigger surface to manipulate—the 3.2-inch screen—right above it.

 

The screen is a dealbreaker

After nearly a year of staring at screens packed with pixel counts of at least 800x480, the Torch's low-res 480x360 display is a grisly sight. It's like going back to standard definition after a year of HD, and then having a wet fabric softener sheet shoved in between my eyeballs and the screen. Text looks ugly and jaggy compared to the Droid or iPhone. Websites are grosser. Pictures less detailed. It's almost a cruel joke AT&T's playing on RIM, knowing it'll be on pedestals mere feet away from the vastly better screens of the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Captivate. It's unbelievable that anybody's flagship phone in 2010 has a display this low rent. Even if you were absolutely determined to buy a new BlackBerry phone, you should wait for one with a better screen.

 

Needs more guts

Like the display, the Torch's brains are straight out of 2008. It quickly becomes apparent that the 624MHz processor is too slow. It often hangs and stutters moving from app to app—say from messages to Twitter to Facebook and back to the home screen—pinch-zooming in the browser, or sometimes even moving from app drawer to app drawer on the home screen (the latter less frequently, but it definitely happens). That's even with 512MB of RAM, the same amount as the iPhone 4, Nexus One and other modern phones. Even if you found the performance acceptable (which, if you've spent time with an iPhone 4 or Android 2.2 phone, you won't after about 10 minutes), it means that there's not a lot of headroom for more advanced capabilities down the road: The guts seem like they're being pushed to their max already.

 

Camera & Video

The five-megapixel camera is disappointing, to say the least, even if the software interface is mostly pleasant and mercifully simple, while offering a metric crapload of scenes like a real point-and-shoot, from portrait to party. The only real software drag is that there's no tap to focus, so the easiest way to get creative with depth-of-field or focus on something off center is to half-press the convenience to focus, then recompose the shot. It's the photos and video themselves that disappoint. While they don't lack for detail in daylight, photos do tend to be undersaturated, and at night, the low light performance is pretty lacking. Video, a mere 640x480, doesn't make up for the lower resolution with higher quality, as you can see.

 

Calling, Networking & Battery Life

The Torch's battery life is up to BlackBerry par, which is to say, thoroughly excellent. I'm talking a day and half of moderate usage, and a day of heavy plowing, without a recharge (granted, I didn't use GPS very often because I didn't like AT&T's map application). Calls are loud and clear, though I noticed a subtle, high-pitched reverb—not quite an echo—in the earpiece whenever I talked, on multiple phone calls. Reception wasn't noticeably bad, but coming out of the subway more than once it took a few minutes to switch from EDGE back to 3G, and people more invested in the signal bar display might be nervous that it's apparently quite sensitive—even as I'm typing, it's bouncing between 4 and 5 bars like an ADHD child who's just been handed a giant box of Nerds. But no serious complaints.

 

The software: It's schizotastic

If the Torch's dual nature hinted at BlackBerry's psychological discord, BlackBerry OS 6 crystalizes it in a melange of glossy plastic, blue gradients, smoky shading, dull grays and white screencapes. It's largely a mess.
Like Android, BlackBerry OS 6 will ostensibly support phones with and without touchscreens, which means that unlike iOS, Windows Phone 7 or webOS, it's doomed from the outset to a lack of clarity. RIM has more or less embraced that fact, so proliferation, a scattershot explosion of choices, seems to be the operating principle. Sure, there are a million ways to accomplish any one task, but it means there's no obvious right way to do it either. It's conceptually slippery.



Examples! The front end of the interface is glossy, stylized, and not un-pretty. Dive into an options menu and it's like being hurled back into Palm OS circa 2005. It's highly incongruous. Or, more fundamentally, the way BlackBerry OS 6 integrates social networking, as most modern phones are wont to do. As you might've seen, it does this in a couple of ways. There's a social feeds app that, as you might expect, pulls in feeds from Twitter, Facebook, BBM, RSS and more, creating a single stream, so you don't have to dive into individual apps. The official Twitter and Facebook apps are baked into the OS as well, and they plug into the central notifications system and universal inbox. So, when there are new items in your Twitter or Facebook stream, you'll get a message in the universal "messages" inbox (which collects emails, texts, etc.) that you have new feed items waiting; there's the social feeds app; and there's the individual apps for Facebook and Twitter. If you have actual Facebook or Twitter messages, like a DM, they'll show up in the universal inbox and in the main notifications display on top of the homescreen. The only way to clear the messages count is to dive into the actual apps and read them—the social feeds app won't work for this. Like I said, it's messy, and at least initially, confusing, even though the idea of a single stream or inbox sounds fantastic. It's the implementation that fails.

The homescreen feels conceptually muddled too. Rather than going for a full desktop with definable shortcuts and widgets all over the screen, like Android, it blends a drawer system with a half-desktop metaphor in a way that's less than natural. A handful of icons are visible, which can be dragged up, like a drawer opening skyward, to reveal more icons—apps or now, contacts—hidden below. When the drawer isn't "open," most of the screen is wasted space, just an expanse of wallpaper between the four visible icons and the status bar above. Flicking left or right takes you to a different "drawer" (or "panel," in Android parlance). Each one is a section, like frequent apps, media apps, or downloaded apps. Oh, one interesting point is the pause RIM has inserted into sliding between drawers. It registers your flick, takes a second, and then moves to the next drawer. It's an odd behavior, but so consistent it has to be deliberate. At the top is one of the more useful aspects of the homescreen, a notifications window like Android's—touching it drops down a list of messages and events from email or Twitter or whatever.



Universal search is awesome, and very much what it should be. If there's one thing done truly well, interface-wise it's universal search. Start typing for a contact, an app, a song, an email, whatever—it'll pull it up, or offer to search the web, YouTube, App World and others. You can basically bypass the rest of the interface for getting to something, at least a good portion of the time.

The touch keyboard is passable, but I don't think you'll ever use it over the real one. Otherwise, why did you buy this thing?



The BlackBerry 6 browser, now running on WebKit, is mostly on par with what other phones are offering—since they're using WebKit too—but not exceptional. The interface is cleaned up, and better, with a combined search/address bar. It rendered most pages the way it should (albeit still with no Flash), though in real world testing over Wi-Fi, it never beat an iPhone 4 on the handful of pages I tried, like Giz. Pinch to zoom can be laggy, particularly if a page is still loading. It is predictable and can be fairly smooth, once everything's loaded. (Oddly, the whizzy effects to twirl between tabs never stuttered.)



Email also uses WebKit for HTML rendering now, and while the perks of BlackBerry are still there—hello, push Gmail—there are subtle annoyances, particularly when it comes to Gmail. For instance, a threaded conversation doesn't show the sender of the email, simply the number of items and the subject. Moreover, for most people, the split between the phone's inbox and the server's—which doesn't exist with standard IMAP implementations, or a Gmail app—feels awkward. The app itself is conservative, aesthetically. There's a way to make email beautiful and functional; Windows Phone 7's proven it. The allure of BBM as the be-all, end-all of mobile instant messaging is slightly diminished as well, given that Google Talk for Android accomplishes most of what I'd want it to do, and crosses the boundaries between phone and desktop.



The music and video apps are indeed nicer, even if RIM's implementation of perma-Cover Flow is gratuitous. Say you have an album queued up—above the player interface is a carousel of album art, repeated 10 times, or however many songs are on the album. You can flick through to jump to whichever track you want, but seeing the art repeated over and over is just odd. (I didn't get to test wireless desktop syncing, the feature I was most exciting about, unfortunately.)

It's strange that RIM sacrifices its own software at the whim of a carrier deal. BlackBerry Maps has been refreshed and made better, but you can't actually use it. You're stuck with AT&T Maps, which is slow and made me yearn for Google or Bing Maps. (You can sneak a peek at BlackBerry Maps if you try to preview your location inside of BlackBerry Messenger after sharing it. I wish I could've actually used it.) There's even a separate AT&T AppCenter, which wasn't quite working when I tried to access. Are people supposed to use the newly better BlackBerry App World (with carrier billing), or AT&T's

AppCenter? Other crapware includes AT&T Navigator, AT&T YellowPages, to start. It's kind of an odd message to developers, whom RIM needs, in a way. BlackBerry's become a distant priority behind iOS and Android for many, and a lot of the apps that are cross-platform are grossly inferior or straight up ugly on BlackBerry. (I'm thinking of Facebook and Foursquare, in particular.)

 

What it all means

The distillation of this grand mishmash of observations and scenarios is this: BlackBerry isn't good enough anymore if you're comparing it to other smartphones. What does it do better than the rest? That's the fundamental question. And the answer is that for most people, in most situations, compared to Android and iPhone, not a whole lot.



People who love BlackBerry exactly the way it is will like the Torch and BlackBerry 6, because it's pretty much the same. It offers a lot of marginal improvements in a lot of places—like the browser—even if it makes a mess of some things. That said, in a few months, they might like it a lot less. Nielsen numbers show that half of BlackBerry users are thinking about switching. This won't change their mind. And even with all of those corporate accounts locked down tight, it's hard to say that's not a problem.

Maybe RIM's too big, too entrenched to build the kind of phone that'll make people want a BlackBerry again. But they could've at least given the damn thing a better screen.

Android Power User Guides

From its auspicious start as the brainchild of Internet giant Google, Android has matured into a well-rounded, extremely capable smartphone operating system. Here's everything you need to know to master Google's smartphone OS.
Advocating open source, Google released Android to the masses, opening the doors to application developers. There were a few growing pains, of course, such as weak Bluetooth support and a lack of multitouch support, but today Android is knocking on the door of the iPhone mansion, and it's knocking hard.
Android hardware offers some of the most powerful smartphones we've ever seen. The Android Market app store is growing strong, and the Android user base is growing just as fast. Android phones are flying off the shelves faster than they can be created, so we think it's about time we put together a guide for the Android power user. On the following pages, we'll walk you through what you need to know about Google's mobile OS and how to make the most out of it.

General Usage Guide

Using Android's basic touch-screen interface is relatively straightforward. You'll find that many applications and functions utilize the "long press," where you hold your finger to the screen rather than just tap it. Think of a long press as a right-click on a mouse; it will bring up additional functionality for the object you press. All of this will be familiar to anyone coming from any other touch-enabled smartphone.

When coming from an iPhone, though, the transition can be somewhat awkward because the Android platform brings several additional buttons over the iPhone's single button interface. Get comfortable with Android's Menu button, as it's essential. You'll find that many settings, functions, and options can only be accessed via the Menu button. Holding the various hard keys can also bring up additional functions; for instance, holding the Home button will open a list of recently used apps.
For the Android devices with a hardware keyboard, you also have the option of using keyboard shortcuts, which are done through combinations of keys. You can also create custom shortcuts under the Quick Launch option in the Applications section of your phone's settings.

Default Keyboard Shortcuts

Quick Launch

Search + B = Browser
Search + C = Contacts
Serach + E (or) G = Email (or) Gmail
Search + M = Maps
Search + S = Messaging

Inside the Browser

Menu + B = Bookmarks
Menu + W = New Window
Menu + R = Refresh or Stop page load
Menu + F = Find on Page
Menu + J (or) K = Navigate Backword (or) Forward

Inside Maps

Menu + D = Directions
Menu + M + Change Map Mode
Menu + O = My Location

Optimize Your Android Experience

One of the key features Android offers is the ability to customize nearly every aspect of your device. You can download widgets to keep information available right on your home screen, install custom skins and keyboards, and create notifications and ringtones.

Stay Up to Date Using Widgets

With Android, you can have several home screens, each with its own unique collection of widgets.
Widgets are like small applications that run on your home screen and keep information right at your fingertips. A simple long press on an empty space on your home screen will bring up the option to add widgets. Because many apps in the Android Market have widgets, there are widgets for just about everything including texting, Twitter, and email; weather, stocks, and news information; and music controls. Because Android lets you configure several home screens, you can group messaging widgets on one screen, news and weather on another, your music library and Pandora on the next, and so on, keeping all of your important information just a finger swipe away. Widgets on your home screen are kept active and update regularly, so you have to be careful not to add too many, especially on older and lower-end devices. If swiping between home screens begins to appear sluggish, you may want to consider removing a few widgets.

Stay Organized with Shortcuts

Just as with widgets, Android lets you add shortcuts directly to your home screen. Adding a shortcut is done the exact same way as adding a widget; just long press on an empty space and you'll see the option to create a shortcut. If there's anything you find yourself doing often with your phone, creating a shortcut can make it even easier. Shortcuts can be created for launching a bookmarked website, calling a specific contact, accessing settings, playing a music playlist, opening a specific inbox, and, of course, applications. If you find your home screen becoming cluttered with shortcuts, you can create home screen folders that let you group similar shortcuts together. For instance, you can put all of your email inboxes into one folder, your work contacts into another, and your personal contacts into yet another. One common practice is to create application shortcuts on your main home screen for your top four to eight apps, generally messaging, email, browser, and maps. Then, one screen over, put the runners up, like the Market, contacts, calculator, etc. It doesn't particularly matter where you put your shortcuts or how you group them as long as it's intuitive to you, and you can find them quickly.

Find Your Perfect Software Keyboard

One of Android's most criticized features is its default software keyboard, but thanks to Android's unrestrictive nature, there are several great alternatives available both on and off the Android Market. We recommend Better Keyboard (available on the Android Market for $2.99), the HTC IME modified keyboard, and Swype.

The HTC IME modified keyboard is superior to Android's default keyboard.
All of these keyboards offer significant improvements over the stock Android keyboard. Better Keyboard has a multitude of skins as well as many customizable settings. HTC IME modified keyboard is a well-made imitation of the keyboard found in HTC's popular SenseUI custom Android skin. Swype offers a unique and original text input interface that greatly improves texting speed. Installing a custom keyboard is not entirely straightforward, though. You will need to both enable the keyboard in the Keyboard and Language section of your phone's settings, as well as long press on a text box and select the new input method.

Use Identifiable Ringtones and Notifications

In four simple steps, you can set up a different custom alarm to wake you on each day.
Like all modern mobile phones, the Android platform lets you select and create your own ringtones. Creating ringtones and notifications can be done manually or with the help of an app from the Android Market. Manually adding a ringtone to your phone involves creating several specific directories on your SD card, based on the type of ringtone you'd like to add. The other method is far easier. Simply download the Ringdroid app free from the Android Market and use it to edit and trim your audio files before saving them as a ringtone, notification, or alarm. You can customize notifications and ringtones on a per contact basis by opening the desired contact's information and selecting Set Ringtone. You can change email notifications within the Gmail app (though you might want to select Silent if you receive a lot of emails).You can also set a different song to wake you for each day of the week by creating an alarm ringtone of your favorite songs, and creating an alarm for each day of the week, then selecting the desired song.

Create a Unique Look

With the aHome app, you can apply themes that even make your Android phone look like OSX.
The keyboard and ringtones aren't the only things Android lets you customize. You can also select your own background wallpaper, which for many Android 2.1 devices, includes Live Wallpapers that actually move and react to your interactions. Wallpapers are just the tip of the iceberg, though. Apps like aHome, found on the Android Market for $4.99, let you apply skins to just about every aspect of your interface. With aHome, you can download skins, themes, fonts, and widgets to make your Android phone look as unique as possible. Some themes not only change colors and add flare, but also make significant changes to the interface itself, allowing you to customize the way you interact with your phone to exactly how you want it.

Under the Hood: Tweak Your Settings

With GPS, Bluetooth, 3G (even 4G), and astounding processor speeds, smartphones are smarter than ever. All of this extra intelligence means that the apps can be more complex, information can come faster, and battery management is far more critical. It's important that you configure your settings properly to get the most out of your phone.

Sync More with Integrated Accounts

Add Accounts screen for syncing additional social networks with your phone.
When first setting up your Android phone, you have the option to add several different types of accounts, including Facebook, Flickr, Microsoft Exchange, and of course Google. You can always add more accounts after setting up your phone by going into Accounts & Sync under your phone's settings, although only Android version 2.0 and later allows for multiple Google accounts. Here, you'll be able to add additional Google accounts for syncing calendars and email, Facebook accounts, which can sync your contacts (including contact photographs and phone numbers), Exchange accounts for syncing with Microsoft Exchange servers, and Flickr accounts for sharing photos.

Network Speed vs. Battery Life

Having 3G connectivity is extremely convenient, especially when accessing large amounts of Internet data, like when streaming music or videos, but there are still some areas where 3G just isn't available yet. When you live in an area where a 3G signal is poor or nonexistent, it can have adverse effects on your phone's battery life. When a 3G phone is on a 2G network, it significantly boosts its transmitting power in hopes of finding that faster 3G tower, which drains your battery even faster. Fortunately, Android lets you disable your 3G antenna if you are on the edge or outside of a 3G coverage area. You can do this by going into your phone's settings under Mobile Networks in the Wireless & Networks category. You will see an option called Network Mode or Use Only 2G Networks, depending on your device. You will want to select the GSM Only option or check the box for 2G Networks. This same concept can also be applied to 4G phones like the EVO 4G.

Configure Your Search Settings

Searchable Items category under Search in the main Settings menu.
Being a creation of Google, it's not surprising that Android offers a plethora of search functionality. If you're constantly using your phone to search the web, you've probably found the Android Search widget and have it smack in the middle of your home screen, but there's more to that little search bar than meets the eye. Hidden under the Search category in your Android phone's settings are some very useful tools. Under the Google Search Settings, there is a check box that enables web suggestions. When you're typing with your thumbs, this is extremely useful, as it lets you type the first couple letters of your query and returns a list of probable entries. You'll also want to look into the Searchable Items option where you'll be able to configure exactly where that Search widget looks. You can set it to search the Internet, your contacts, your music, your mail, even your text messages.

Location, Location, Location

Mobile phones have had Assisted GPS for quite some time now, but it wasn't until somewhat recently that true turn-by-turn directions and other location-based services came to the mobile phone platform. That being said, you'll notice a couple options under the Location settings of your Android phone. The first, Use Wireless Networks, is a course-positioning system, which triangulates your approximate position based on tower signal strength. It's accurate to about 1.5 miles, which makes it useful for most any location service that goes by zip codes. The other, Use GPS Satellites, is the true AGPS setting, which can be accurate up to three meters. This must be enabled for features like turn-by-turn direction and track recording. While using network location only will save some battery power, Android is actually very adept at managing the GPS receiver to the point that you will not see much of a difference in battery life with both settings enabled at all times.

Get More out of Maps with Google Labs

Google Labs is accessible in the Maps app via Menu > More > Labs.
Google Maps is by far one of the most used apps on the Android platform. You can use it to search for nearby businesses, complete with addresses and contact information. It can also give you directions, and for the devices with Android version 2.0 and later, live turn-by-turn instructions. While all of these features are great, there are actually more, somewhat hidden features, available through Google Labs. To access these features, hit the Menu button while in the Maps app and select More. You'll see the Labs option, inside of which is a list of independently created and unreleased features, such as a scale bar, a point-to-point measuring function, and additional shortcut buttons.

Root Your Phone for Extra Functionality

Although Android is an open platform, cellular carriers still like to put certain restrictions on their devices. Wireless tethering is a prime example. The Android platform is more than capable of wireless tethering, but without root access to the system, it's impossible. Up until the release of Android version 2.2 Froyo, you had to "root," or hack, your Android phone to get wireless tethering (with a few exceptions). Prior to Froyo, running applications from the SD card was also not possible without hacking root privileges. Rooting also allows for various other functions that apps on the Android Market provide, such as overclocking and taking screenshots.
Rooting has another great advantage, as well. It allows you to install custom ROMs. While Froyo is bringing a lot of root-only functionality to official Android releases, it's hardly available on a single model. By way of a custom ROM, Froyo can be ported to devices that do not yet have Froyo or may never get it. The same has already taken place for 2.1 Éclair, bringing it to devices months before the manufacturers released an official update.

Staples in the Android Arsenal

Just like the iPhone, Android is nothing without apps. We consider to the following applications to be essential for getting the most out of your Android phone.

Astro File Manager

Astro file manager displays the contents of your SD card.
Today's smartphones are quickly approaching the capabilities of modern computers. They can already browse the web, play music and video, take photos, and edit documents, all while streaming it up and down the internet. Managing all of this data would be impossible without the help of a file manager. Astro File Manager, available on the Android Market, is currently the pinnacle of Android file managers, and, at least for now, is completely free. Astro doesn't just let you look at a file tree of your SD card; it gives you a full-featured toolset for managing your files. With Astro, cut, copy, paste, and delete as well as zip and unzip files, install apps, view photos and documents, play videos, and search and transfer files.

Add a Task Manager

Android is touted as the king of multitasking, and it certainly does that very well. Unfortunately, this puts a lot of faith in the developers, trusting that they will manage their resource consumption fairly and diligently, but this isn't always the case. There are always a few apps that will run unnecessarily in the background, slowing down your phone and eating up your battery. A task manager allows you to close the background processes you don't need, freeing memory and saving battery life. There are several great task managers that can be found in both free and paid versions in the Android Market, the most popular of which are Advanced Task Manager and TasKiller, which both allow for configurable automated task killing. Both are available in free "Lite" or add-supported versions, but the full versions are less than $1.

Upgrade Your Messaging App

Chomp SMS provides a clean interface and handy home screen widget.
Apart from the standard keyboard, Android's stock messaging app, while perfectly functional, is another weak link in the platform. It's biggest downfall being a bland interface and barren feature list. Fortunately, all of this can be remedied with a quick trip to the Android Market where you can find Handcent SMS and Chomp SMS, both free, feature-packed messaging apps. Each offers a similar feature list, capable of sending and receiving MMS messages, saving attached files to the SD card, and customizing conversation threads. Which to choose is primarily a personal preference. The most significant difference is that Chomp SMS has a powerful widget while Handcent SMS instead has a sophisticated popup notification box. Both offer a great alternative to the standard messaging app.

Locale

Available on the Android Market for $9.99, Locale is relatively expensive, but it's one of the best apps on the Android platform. With Locale, you can program your phone to be aware of its location at all times, and adjust its settings accordingly. For instance, when you get home or arrive at work, Locale can automatically enable Wi-Fi and turn it off again when you leave. It can put your phone on vibrate when you walk into the conference room at work or into your favorite movie theatre. It can block calls from specific people based on your location or the time of day. There are also plugins available that allow other applications to launch or perform specific actions with location or time cues from Locale. With the proper setup, you may never have to manually change your settings again.

WaveSecure Mobile Security

The WaveScreen app helps you find your phone when it's lost and protect your data when it's stolen.
Losing your cell phone can be a nightmare. Smartphones are expensive to replace, and then there's always the fear that should someone find it, they can potentially wreak havoc with the information that might be on it, usernames, passwords, phone numbers, maybe even credit card numbers. WaveSecure, a free app from the Android Market, gives you several lines of defense. If you've only misplaced your phone, WaveSecure can enable your phone's GPS and relay its exact location to you. If it turns out that your phone has been stolen, WaveSecure can lock it remotely, back up your data, and even wipe your data clean, ensuring that the thief can't do anything like steal your identity or rack up a huge phone bill.

If Android's So Great, Is There Any Need for Chrome?

Android's adoption rate has been growing steadily, and so has the Android platform, from its humble beginnings on a single device as Android 1.0, to its numerous hardware and software upgrades in its current form as Android 2.2. Of course the updates will keep coming, introducing new features and utilizing new technologies. Just recently, rumors of Android 3.0 surfaced, suggesting that Android was branching out from the mobile phone market. Google was quick to denounce these rumors, of course, as Android is and always will be a mobile phone OS, but that hasn't stopped the OS from spreading its wings.
Android's open nature has allowed manufacturers to experiment with the OS on other platforms, including tablets and netbooks. Even Google's newly announced Google TV is created for Android, giving way to Android-powered HDTV's like Sony's Dragonpoint. It's possible that Android's success has exceeded Google's original intentions and has become a potential threat to the company's upcoming Chrome OS, an operating system designed to be as lightweight as possible, ideal for tablets and netbooks.
Android and Chrome OS have some similarities. Both are designed to have a small operating footprint, are ideal for ultra portable devices, and utilize an app-driven interface. The similarities end there, though. Chrome OS puts an entirely different spin on the operating system. Instead of providing you an interface with your hardware, Chrome OS is simply an interface with the Internet, basically a web browser with a few system management features. The goal behind Chrome OS is to alleviate the need for local storage; everything is stored on the cloud. Its applications are almost all web-driven, capable of being run in a standard web browser. As Google has stated, "Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web."
Android, while capable of always being connected to the Internet, is designed as much more than just a web browser, and if Android were created to work in the same sense as Chrome OS, every Android user would have his or her data plan revoked due to exorbitant data use. While the two operating systems overlap, Chrome OS has a much more specific target than Android, and the two should be able to survive together without much issue.

Fun with Helmet

Helmets are safe, not fun. These helmets are safe and fun. Channel your love for bald heads, brains, watermelons, bowling balls, butts, breasts, and more with these ridiculously designed helmets. Can you imagine seeing one of these on the road?

Libretto® W100 — Dual screens UMPC, the Next Perspective in Toshiba Way

When two screens are simply not enough, now there’s the libretto® W100. This special-edition ultra-mobile companion goes beyond slates and tablets to deliver something more—a full Windows® 7 experience. Small but multi-talented, it puts 360 degrees of freedom right in the palm of your hands.

some models include:

Dual-Screen Versatility

The new libretto® W100 ultra mobile PC multiplies your possibilities by offering dual 7” diagonal multi-touch screens that work horizontally or vertically—perfect for ebooks or enjoying movies, music and photos. It also offers easy navigation, along with different virtual keyboards plus a “soft” track pad that let you type, click and browse the way you want.

Breakthrough Portability

Weighing in at under two pounds, the durable clamshell design of the libretto® PC makes even the lightest laptops seem heavy. Engineered for the ultimate in carrying comfort and handheld performance, it’s equipped with a spacious solid state drive for storing and sharing your files, along with music, photos and clips. And it’s encased in a black metallic finish.

Wireless Freedom

Carry the libretto® W100 PC and you’re done with wires. Wireless-N puts you in touch from any hotspot. A built-in webcam empowers you to chat face-to-face all over the place. And integrated Bluetooth® v2.1 lets you lose the cords when using headphones, speakers or a mouse.

Seamless Synchronization

This PC definitely plays well with others. Driven by Windows® 7, it lets you easily share, stream and synchronize your files and multimedia through your home network or cloud. It also comes with a USB port and built-in memory reader so you can transfer stuff to and from external hard drives and other popular gear.

Go-Anywhere Windows® 7 Performance

This ultra mobile PC is small, but never shrinks from the task at hand. Powered by Windows® 7 Home Premium, it offers familiar navigation and full multimedia capabilities. So now you can enjoy many different things—games, ebooks, movies, music and TV—from a single device. Perfect for multi-tasking, it also comes with an energy-efficient Intel® Pentium™ processor that lets you keep on doing and enjoying, wherever you’re going.

 

  The Libretto has the specs of a halfway decent ultraportable: a 1.2 GHz Pentium U5400 processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 62GB SSD, a USB port and a microSD slot. But that body isn't really like anything else, unfolding to reveal two 7-inch multitouch displays. The screens can either be used together or independently meaning one web page can span the whole device, or be sequestered on top while the bottom is filled with email, documents, or an on-screen keyboard.
Speaking of which: the Libretto has fully six different keyboard options to choose from, including a split solution that looks far more comfortable to use than what's we've seen so far in tablets.

So, it's neat! But what is it actually for? My first impression of the W100 is that it feels more like a proof of concept than an actual product, and the fact that it's only going to be released in "limited number" indicates that Toshiba might feel the same way. But even if it's just a curiosity, it's an admirable one. And one that might just hint at the future of mobile computing more than you'd expect.
Update: Pricing has been set at $1,100, which seems a little steep. That's probably more a function of the limited release than anything; if Toshiba ever ramps up production in a serious way, I'd be surprised if there weren't a significant price drop.

Toshiba Unveils New libretto Concept PC with Dual-Touch Screen Design. Revealed as Part of Toshiba's 25th Anniversary of Laptop Innovation Milestone, libretto W100 Demonstrates Next-Gen Ultra-Mobile PC Design With Full Windows 7 Functionality.

IRVINE, Calif. – June 21, 2010 – Embodying a quarter-century of innovation, Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the libretto® W100, a next-gen ultra-mobile concept PC. This limited-edition 25th Anniversary device goes beyond slates, netbooks and smartphones to deliver something more: a full Windows® 7 experience that can be enjoyed across two multi-touch touch screens.
"The libretto W100 continues the libretto brand's heritage of defying convention by packaging a full Windows computing experience into highly compact ultra-mobile form factor," said Carl Pinto, vice president of product development, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "This concept PC sets the pace for Toshiba's continued commitment to innovation, demonstrating what's possible in the next generation of ultra-mobile PCs. "We will issue a limited run of the libretto W100," continued Pinto. "We design our products around the way people actually want to use them, so getting this concept PC out into the hands of early technology adopters will allow us to gather invaluable feedback that we can filter into future product developments."Optimized for Versatility, Performance and Convenience.
The libretto W100 is powered by Windows 7 Home Premium and comes equipped with an Intel® Pentium® processor, 2GB of fast DDR3 memory and a 62GB solid state drive - plenty of horsepower for enjoying rich Internet and multimedia content. With the libretto W100, users can take advantage of all the Windows applications they commonly use, including productivity apps like Microsoft Office and video chat like Skype™. Built-in connectivity features, including 802.11b/g/n4 and Bluetooth®5 give users the flexibility to connect from any hotspot or pair the device with their favorite wireless accessories, such as a mouse, headphones and more.
Innovative Design for Multi-tasking on the Go With an ultra-portable weight of just 1.8 pounds, the libretto W100 is designed to deliver a rich Internet experience, multimedia playback and the freedom to multi-task - just like a standard laptop - but with the advantage of two seven-inch diagonal touch screens to work, watch and play on. The multi-touch screens can work independently or together, giving users the flexibility to decide how they want to use them. Surf the Web on one screen while checking e-mail on the other, view two documents simultaneously or view a webpage across both screens. A built-in 3D accelerometer allows the libretto W100 to rotate into portrait or landscape modes, making the device look and feel more like a book, newspaper or magazine.
Designed for portability, the libretto W100 features a compact and durable clamshell designwith a brushed metallic finish. The traditional clamshell design allows the device to fold up for easier portability, while protecting the screens from breaks and scratches. Measuring a mere 4.84 inches by 7.95 inches when closed, the device fits easily into almost any bag or jacket pocket.
"Since producing the first Intel 286-based clamshell laptop 25 years ago, Toshiba has continued to take a leadership role in bringing new mobile computing technologies to market," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies. "This new libretto is yet another showcase of the company's technological laptop prowess – they have their minds on the future and a unique, creative view on delivering innovations and form factors that provide a full computing experience in very small packages."

Simplified Navigation with Premium Toshiba Apps
The libretto W100 features six virtual keyboard modes plus a virtual touchpad. The keyboards feature haptic technology, providing sensory feedback when the keys are selected, making typing fast, accurate and easy. Keyboard modes include simple, full, numeric 10-key and split thumb mode keyboard styles, providing users with options to fit their own personal style or To make navigation as easy as possible, the libretto W100 includes several premium Toshiba apps that enhance the computing experience.
Toshiba Bulletin Board gives users greater personalization of their desktops with fast access to daily activities, tasks and projects, plus the ability to drag and drop photos, videos, links, documents and application shortcuts into one place. Toshiba ReelTime™ helps users easily find files based on when they were opened with a simple visual history. With the flick of a finger, quickly scroll through automatically generated previews of documents, photos, videos and more, filter by file type or use the calendar to go back weeks or months.
File Browser makes it easier to access file folders and applications.
Quick access to the apps and keyboards are easily accessible via on-screen icons.

Features available on the Toshiba libretto W100 include:

• Dual 7.0-inch diagonal multi-touch displays7 (1024 x 600)
• 6-mode virtual keyboard with haptic response
• Windows® 7 Home Premium operating system
• Intel® Pentium® U5400 processor1 (1.2GHz)
• 2GB DDR3 memory2
• 62GB Solid State Drive3
• 1.0 megapixel HD Webcam with Toshiba Face Recognition
• 802.11 b/g/n wireless4
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR5
• MicroSD card slot
• One USB 2.0 port
• TOSHIBA Bulletin Board, ReelTime™ and PC Health Monitor software
• 8-cell battery
• 7.95" (W) x 4.84"(D) x 1.2"(H)
• 1.8 lbs.6

Availability
A limited number of the libretto W100 concept PC will be available for purchase later this summer from select retailers and direct from Toshiba at toshibadirect.com.