Best Cell Phone Plans: Which carrier is best?

With all the different phone carriers and plans out there, it's ridiculously hard to determine whether or not you're getting the best bang for your buck. There are hundreds of different factors, fees, and options that different phone carriers can throw at you. To be able to find a plan and a carrier that fits your needs while saving your cash is no small feat. Reading and comparing the fine print can be arduous and painstakingly time consuming. Lucky for you, I've gone ahead and done the research for you. Here are a couple tips and tricks when choosing a plan and a carrier.

I've compared AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. Before deciding on what plan to take on, it's very important that you first decide on how you plan to use your phone. How frequently will you be using the phone? Will you be roaming? Will you be calling people who are roaming domestically or internationally? Will you need text messaging? What time in the day do you expect to use the phone? Who will you be calling and what service do they have? Should you get a family plan? This website goes through all the questions you should ask yourself prior to picking out a plan.

What type of plan to choose?

Figuring out whether or not you should get an individual, prepaid plan, or family plans can be a doozy. An individual plan is simple enough--you pay one bill for your one phone on a monthly basis. You sign a phone contract for 1-2 years depending on the carrier and if you decide to leave the carrier, they typically charge you an early termination fee of $175 (AT&T, Verizon). Every plan with a contract has an early termination fee.

Prepaid plans are best for people who only use cell phones for emergencies (i.e. mom & dad). Some companies, like AT&T, offer 2 kinds of pre-paid plans: one, where you're only charged for the minutes you use and one where you buy a fixed amount of minutes per month (it's essentially a monthly contract as opposed to 2-year contracts). Prepaid plans are renewed whenever you want more minutes, and the best part of the deal is that you're not tied down by any contracts and you're never surprised by any surprise charges, hidden fees, or super huge phone bills. The downside is that you have to buy the cell phone full price, so typically people with prepaid plans have super cheap phones. But if you don't use it much anyway, it really doesn't matter. You'd also have to go through the trouble buying minutes every month.

Family plans are best for people who want to share minutes and have everything charged on one single bill. These also have 1-2 year contracts. The benefit in this is that you can have a fixed set of minutes to share between 2 phones which can save you money depending on your needs and how many minutes you use. Check this article out if you're interested in family plans. 2 people with 2 separate individual plans can typically get 450 minutes for $40/month each or $80 total. If they signed up for a family plan, they can get 550 minutes for $60. They'd be saving $20 and gaining 100 more minutes. The downside to a family plan is that everyone in the plan has to make sure not to go over their allocated minutes. If you have a chatterbox in your family, you'll find your bill doubling by the end of the month. Sprint & AT&T have the cheapest family plans.

Things to look for when choosing a carrier...

After you figure yourself out, you're set to choose your carrier. One of the most important things to check is coverage. Find out which carriers have great coverage in your area by visiting their site. Usually they offer up a map that displays how good their service is in their area. Or you can check out SignalMap.com. Verizon has the best overall coverage, but it's worth it to check how well all these carriers do in your area.

Roaming charges, activation charges, early termination fees, hidden fees and charges in general. Keep long distance and roaming charges in mind when choosing a plan and carrier. Lot's of carriers offer plans with no roaming fees and that's definitely something to make sure you have. Emergencies pop up and you may have to use the phone outside of your local area. Or you may have to call someone who is roaming. Either way, footing the bill once you've roamed is definitely not a pleasant ordeal. Of the three carriers I've compared, AT&T has the most expensive activation fee of $36 for individual plans. Sprint & Verizon charge $35 for activation. Hey, a dollar is a dollar. And in terms of early termination fees, both AT&T and Verizon charge $175. Sprint by far has the highest ETF of upwards of $200.

Unlimited Mobile to Mobile and unlimited nights & weekends. You always want these perks. Who do you talk to the most over the phone? Check what carrier they have. If you talk to the same person or persons on your cell phone, chances are the best thing to do is to switch to their carrier or vice versa. Having the same carrier lets you talk to those people for free, whenever you want. You can then choose the cheapest plan with the least amount of minutes and that can save you hundreds. Another thing to look for when choosing a carrier and plan is if they offer unlimited nights & weekends. Sprint offers the best unlimited nights & weekends plan because nights start at 7PM (with certain plans). Verizon and AT&T both have nights starting at 9pm. With Sprint you can chitter chatter for free much earlier than the other two.

Contract length. You don't want to be stuck in a rut for 2 years. Unfortunately, with any kind of phone plan (save prepaid phone plans), you'll be stuck with a contract of up to 1-2 years. You wanna hope for just a 1-year commitment if you can fudge it. Carriers can up charges while you're under a contract and you will have to pay. This elaborates on why you don't won't to be locked in for too long.

This article has a list of the biggest complaints people usually have. Don't end up like one of the people surveyed by checking the article out...

AT&T vs. Verizon vs. Sprint

So I decided to check out what all 3 of these phone giants offered at the very basic level of individual plans. I chose these 3 because they have the biggest networks. T-Mobile comes close too, but unfortunately doesn't as good coverage as these 3. I heard they have awesome customer service though :). I compared their cheapest individual phone plans, the only criteria being that the plan had to include unlimited mobile to mobile minutes. They all offer free domestic long distance and have the same basic features and the same typical fees (early termination & activation fees). Here's how they stacked up.

AT&T: Nation 450 w/rollover minutes ($39.99/month, 45 cents for each additional minute)

PROS: Rollover minutes. You can rollover any unused minutes to next month. After 12 months though, all the minutes accrued will be wiped out.
CONS: Highest activation fee ($36. The others charge $35. Not too big a deal.) No unlimited nights & weekends. Huuuge con, because the other two offer unlimited nights & weekends. AT&T offers 5000 minutes for nights & weekends instead. Lame. Plus, nights start at 9:00pm for AT&T. No texts.

Verizon: Nationwide Basic 450 minutes ($39.99/month, 45 cents for each additional minute)

PROS: By far, the best coverage (at least where I live in San Jose, CA and most likely where you live too.) You can text but it costs you 20 cents to receive & send a text. Activation is $35. Unlimited nights & weekends.
CONS: Nights start at 9:01pm for Verizon.

Sprint: Basic Plan 200 minutes ($34.99/month, 45 cents for each additional minute)

PROS: Activation is $35. Unlimited nights & weekends. Cheapest.
CONS: Least amount of minutes. For 4 more dollars a month, you can get more than double the minutes. Nights start at 9:00. I couldn't explicitly find how much the early termination fee was on their website, other than a statement under their terms & conditions saying that it's $200 or more. If it is $200, it's well above AT&T and Verizons ETF of $175.

Before you choose a plan, VISIT THIS SITE: http://www.myrateplan.com/wireless_plans/
It let's you do a side by side comparison of all phone carriers and their plans. Extremely useful.

At any rate, I hope you find all this info helpful to you. A simple search will also yield plenty of results where people review the services they have. The bottom line, mist important thing is to pick a service that fits your needs. Write your needs out and determine what's best based on that criteria. The best tip I can give is to write out who you speak to the most and share the same carrier as that person. Unlimited mobile to mobile is one of the best perks a plan can offer.

Grand Theft Auto 4 Cheats

GTA4 is out and everyone wants to know how know: how can I spawn a jet pack and be invincible, effectively becoming like superman, except in place of x-ray vision, laser eye-sight, and speeding bullet speed, I'd have a baseball bat, Molotov cocktails, and an M-rating?

Well the answer is right here. Codes and cheats galore for everyone who wants to experience this game in its maximum glory. And the great thing about this site is that its not loaded with additional ads and pop ups that most cheat sites love to spam you with.

The Bourne Conspiracy

A new game based on the Bourne Trilogy movies is set to come out June 3rd on Playstation 3 and Xbox360. The Bourne Conspiracy is being developed by High Moon Studios, a branch of Sierra Entertainment, who is a subsidiary of Vivendi games.

Though there were rumors swirling around about the possibility of it being a multiplayer game, High Moon Studios has comfimed that it will only have a single player mode. Check the website, the in game previews look great. I personally love the Bourne movies and I'm super psyched to check this one out.

High Moon Studios boasts that there's a system that allows you to switch between hand to hand combat and guns instantly, something that's not all too impressive or unique. The best third-person espionage game ever is the Metal Gear series (Metal Gear Solid being my all time favorite third-person espionage game), hands down. I doubt this game will top that, but I'm definitely still going to give this one a try. If anything, at least I'll get to see pieces of the movie played out in a video game.

Keep your eyes open for the demo set to launch on May 5th on XBox live and the Playstation Network.

The World's First DDR3-1800 4GB Kit

Up until now, the biggest, baddest memory kit you could for a top end rig was 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory technology. Super Talent Technology has just launched a 4GB kit of DDR3-1800 technology last Wednesday and so far, it's been in extremely high demand. As the world's first and only memory kit of its kind, I'd bet on it.

Gamers should be thrilled to hear about this, except for the fact that you can only run this RAM on an equally high-end and compatible motherboard. Motherboards like that can run you up round $300, and the 4GB kit itself is just under $460. There is, however, a 2GB kit as well for under $260. Right now, the only place that sells this product is eWiz.com.

"Additional features include an extreme cooling system with 106% more aluminum mass than standard heat spreaders and double the surface area. The extreme cooling system also includes Super Talent’s thermal adhesive which provides superior heat dissipation for the memory device."

The kit is also backed by a lifetime warranty from Super Talent.

Demand has been so high for this product that it's currently sold out and expected to return on May 2nd. And that's enough time for you to earn another paycheck to blow.

Apple Enjoys 36% Increase in Profit

Good news for all you Apple shareholders: Apple has reported a 36% increase in Q2. That's more than a half a billion dollars. Apple shares are now $1.06 per share. Amazing numbers, given that practically everyone else, in almost any industry (except probably the oil industry) is experiencing slow downs because of rising oil prices.

Apple's amazing profits this quarter has been attributed to the Apple Mac. The all-in-one has been especially hot this quarter and is yet another reminder of growing demand for all-in-ones.

Earth Day Sale: Motherboards & Power Supplies

For all you rig builders out there, eWiz has launched an Earth Day sale on all our extremely popular, eco-friendly products. So today, make yourself and the earth happy with these special, one-day deals. It'll be up until 6:00 a.m. EST. Yeah, Earth Day may technically be over by then, but it's ok. I think the earth would appreciate it.

We're featuring motherboards from Asus and Gigabyte that feature energy saving technologies. Asus has an EPU that ensures up to 96% power efficiency and saves up to 80.23% CPU power. Likewise, Gigabyte also has DES (Dynamic Energy Saver) software installed into its motherboards promising up to 70% CPU power savings and an improvement of up to 20% in power efficiency. So we've got a couple skus with super low prices and I've linked them below for anyone who's interested.

Additionally, we're also dropping the price of earth friendly power supply units, namely Antec's EarthWatt's Series PSU's which are all 80 PLUS certified. And, lastly, in an effort to offer some variety, there's also an Antec case with special low pricing, the Antec Sonata III. It's a looker, and it's also nice to mother earth as it comes with an Antec EarthWatts 500Watt PSU. Take a look, show some friends, make the earth greener today.

Motherboards:
Asus P5K/EPU
Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6
Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R

Power Supplies:
Antec EarthWatts 380
Antec EarthWatts 430
Antec EarthWatts 500

Case:
Antec Sonata III

All-in-One PC's

So I walked into Best Buy this weekend and saw their Featured System - a fully integrated computer/monitor. The idea is like Apple's Mac in that the system is all in one. The monitor is the desktop. Looks amazing, and the graphics on the rig were absolutely amazing but it got me asking...is this the wave of the future?

In technology, it's all about rolling everything into one. The XBOX 360 is more than just a gaming console. It can also play HD DVDs. And the same goes for the Playstation 3 except with a Blu-Ray. GPS's also plays MP3's and MP3 players also plays video. The All-in-One concept is a popular one, and it may now be over taking the traditional concept of the Desktop PC.

They are space and energy saving. But then again, they aren't as portable as a notebook or as upgradeable as a desktop. Still, the All-in-One PC I saw at Best Buy was a stunner. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up a hit. The All-in-One's are perfect for people looking to save space. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a staple of the typical office workplace. But as of yet it's a very niche product. If pricing for these products becomes comparable to desktops using the same technology, we could be seeing a definite increase in profitability in this industry.

Net Neutrality: This Week's Hot Debate

Many companies, like Comcast, want to manage traffic into sites. Net Firms and Broadband companies like Comcast can control traffic into websites, so that they can allow high-speed access to some sites, while other sites would suffer slower access speed. Website owners would have to pay Comcast for faster speeds, while the rest of us would just have to suffer with slower speeds.

Net Neutrality, for all of you who don't already know, is the concept that all sites should be allowed to have high-speeds and that companies should not have the right to control that.

In the future, I think that this is going to be a huuuuge issue. The internet is popular for being a completely ungovernable media, with the exception of censorship (like in China, though there are way of getting around that). Now that companies and governments have the technology to monitor and manage internet traffic, the internet is entering a new era of laws and restrictions. And because the internet is global and laws are domestic, countries and the companies within them are going to have a very interesting future figuring out how to deal with all these internet issues.

The Federal Communications Committee held a meeting yesterday to discuss Net Neutrality and the fact that Comcast has "been exposed as managing traffic by stopping some of its 13m customers uploading files to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks."

A formal investigation is underway to decide whether or not Comcast should be punished for this. The debate is as to whether or not it's wrong. Some people think that allowing net firms to manage traffic is fine, but they must keep their customers fully informed about their practices. However this turns out, this debate sure is an interesting one and it definitely applies to you and me.

Scientist in Japan Creates the First Invisibility Cloak

A professor in Japan alleges that he has invented an "invisibility" cloak, with plans to develop "invisible walls" as well.

Susumu Tachi was in San Francisco earlier this month at an exhibition where he showed off his new invention. Supposedly, it's made up of thousands of tiny beads made of a new material called retro-reflectum.

Sounds like something out of Harry Potter, doesn't it? Ridiculous!

Retro-reflectum is a technology that basically allows the thousands of tiny beads to project an image onto itself. You can check all the details here. It projects the image of what is behind the person wearing the cloak. "This material allows you to see a three-dimensional image," said Prof. Tachi.

Review of Super Talent's PICO-C

Check it out, the World’s Smallest USB Drive. And yes, this really is 8GB of storage packed into a shiny little drive about the size of a quarter. I got the chance to play around with one of them, and this is what I found..

+Design & Build: This thing gives new meaning to the fifth pocket. It’s extremely tiny and portable, and could definitely fit in anything, even the useless fifth pocket. The drive doesn’t feel cheap either. It feels pretty sturdy. I wouldn’t be too worried if I accidentally dropped or sat on it which would all be likely because of its size. The drive is shock resistant and waterproof and I definitely put it to the test. Check out the video below. I dropped it in water several times, dried it off, and it worked perfectly. An added benefit is that the USB’s case is reflective, so it’s like having a tiny little mirror in your pocket. Overall, I’m highly impressed by the sturdiness of this super tiny drive.


+Price: It’s around $35. For an 8GB drive, that’s a pretty good deal considering that a cheap 1GB drive can cost about $8 online. It also comes in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB for $8.94, $12.47, and $17.52, respectively. Add in the fact that this is the smallest drive around, highly portable, shock resistant and waterproof, and you’ve got the deal of your life when it comes to USB drives.

+User-Friendliness: It basically works just like your typical USB drive—plug and play. Super fast when it comes to accessing and transferring files, but other than that, nothing too remarkable here. No hardware to install, no frills, no problems.

From top to bottom: Super Talent's PICO-A, PICO-B, and PICO-C

PROS: Pretty cheap for 8GB, super small, highly portable, shock resistant, waterproof, accesses/transfers files relatively quickly, feels sturdy, reflective surface looks nice. Not to mention, acts as a tiny mirror in your pocket.

CONS: The size is mentioned as a pro, but depending on who you are, it can also be a con. The small size makes it easy to lose this drive. Another pro that can also be a con is its reflective surface. It’s nice but it can also be dull. It really depends on your preference at this point. To be honest, the drive delivers in all the areas it claims. It you want the most GBs for your buck when it comes to USB drives, this is probably your best bet.

A typical sized USB vs. the PICO-C

Conclusion: For people who need a USB drive with a lot of storage space, this is a great solution. I have a 2GB USB and that pretty much takes care of my needs. But if you want the newest, coolest, smallest USB out there, the PICO-C is probably what you want. An added benefit is that this thing is not only extremely portable, but it’s also really durable so that, if you’re accident prone like I am, you don’t have to worry about accidentally leaving this in your pocket and throwing this into the washing machine.

Psystar Offers "OpenMac"

Psystar has reportedly cloned the Mac. Yup, they're offering customers an "OpenMac" for only $399, compared to Apple's iMac starting at $1199. The OpenMac is basically just a PC with "2.2GHz Core 2 Duo E4500, @GB of memory, integrated GMA 950 graphics, 250GB disk and 20x DVD burner. " With an additional $155, they'll install Leopard on it. You'd get the whole system, plus Leopard, for $554. You'd end up saving upwards of $600 going with the OpenMac.

The OpenMac apparently has an EFI V8 emulator--a bunch of mumbo meaning that you can install Apple programs, essentially having a Mac, without the Mac look and price. This thing will probably be discontinued in the blink of an eye, so if you're interested, don't procrastinate.

Steve Jobs is probably dropping bricks right now.

If I was into multimedia and stuff, I'd be all over this. Multimedia fanatics will probably be the first to jump on this thing because Apple offers unmatchable multimedia programs like Final Cut Studio and others, all staples in the media industry. It'll be cool to see how Apple reacts to all this.

Myspace TV Goes Global

Myspace is going to distribute its original internet content internationally in conjunction with ShineReveille. Apparently, it will be Myspace's way of testing out new content and then eventually, they're going to sell their entertainment.

It's going to be a way for the Internet giant to test out ideas and see if their content will sink or float. If you've seen their original content, like "Quarterlife," "Prom Queen," and "Roommates," you'll understand why I think this is the dumbest business idea I've heard in 2008...that I can remember.

Tom made one big mistake this time.

I gotta hand it to Myspace, they're still super huge, inspite of the fact that Facebook is slowly but surely gaining on them. If you have either a myspace or a facebook, you'll appreciate that myspace is definitely stealing a bunch of ideas from facebook. You can have your own status now, you can view the status of your friend's recently updated pages, you can see who's changed what on their pages--all ideas that Facebook had up first. But I digress...

I understand the idea behind shipping entertainment overseas to see whether it will sink or swim. The music industry has been doing that for decades -- they ship unsuccessful artists overseas, mainly Europe or Asia, gain exposure and experience and re-release them here in the States, often times with incredible success. So I'm guessing, that based on that idea, Myspace went for this low-cost way of testing their entertainment.

I'm no fan of the Myspace original series'. I watched half of one and felt like shooting myself. This may or may not work, and I'd say the scales are tipped more towards may not. It's worked with the music industry but music is much more universal. You don't need to understand the words to appreciate a song. Shipping movies internationally is also a bit different. To the best of my knowledge, the most successful movies shipped overseas are the big action flicks...again, not hard to understand. Things blow up. People get shot. Simple.

US TV shows have been enjoying a resurgence in Germany. Apparently, on one station, there's an all American TV night every Tuesday. But American TV shows in other places haven't been exceptionally popular since the 80's. And the shows that do get big across the pond are ones that are INSANELY popular here already, and again, they have a good amount of action and gore, like CSI, Lost, 24. Friends is the only comedy that I know of that's been popular abroad. In the end, the trend is that awesome TV shows here sometimes make it moderately big abroad. Also, buying rights to American shows is much cheaper than producing a show yourself abroad.

Still, this article says that American shows are having a resurgence abroad. True or not, the trend is that successful American shows come from the US and then go abroad. They haven't yet been made abroad, and then been launched at home. It sounds backwards to me. Plus, those Myspace shows are ABSOLUTE crap. I'm predicting this to be a huge flop on the part of myspace...

I'd be happily surprised if I'm proved wrong...

Remember Strongbad?

Telltale Games is set to come out with a video game based on Strongbad. The game, aptly named, "Strongbad's Cool Game for Attractive People," is set to come out in June on the Wii. I love Strongbad, but I'm not too sure how this game will do...I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, there are 3 trailers out for the game. Check them out.

Zoombak: GPS Trackers

Zoombak has released a new GPS tracking device so that we can always know where our cars, prized possessions, and pets are. The tracking devices are small, pretty much the size of a Zippo, and Zoombak is offering them in two packages--one for your car and one for pets. The only difference is that the Pet Package comes with a collar attachment.

This is pretty cool gadget. Car nabbing will be a little bit more trickier because the tracker is small enough hide practically anywhere. You use Zoombak's website to locate where the GPS tracking device is. All you stalkers must be drooling at this point. There is a hitch though.

Tracking people is a bit more difficult because the GPS receiver does not work well indoors. Apparently, they did a test and if you put the receiver in a pocket, it loses signal. That's pretty weak. I guess if you want to stalk a person, the best way is to stick with the cell phones with the GPS tracking feature. So you know where you at.

The car tracker is $249 and the animal tracker is $199.

The World's Smallest USB Drive: PICO-C

Super Talent just launched the PICO-C, the world's smallest USB Drive and my company, eWiz, is the only company in the world with the rights to sell them for now. I got to hold one a couple months ago and it is tiny.

You shouldn't be afraid of sitting on it and crushing it though--it's ultra durable and shock resistant. It uses chip-on-board (COP) technology which allows it to carry so much storage capacity on such a small amount of space. It measures in at 31.3mm x 12.4mm x 3.4mm and weighs less than a nickel. I'd get one myself but I don't have much use for a USB drive right now.

It's $36.99 with free shipping right now and it has a lifetime warranty. 8GB and it's pretty cool looking too. Probably the coolest USB around at the moment. You can check it out here. And it's an extremely hot product, in just 2 days we sold nearly 200 of these things.

Smartphones are the Wave of the Future

Nowadays, you need one device to call people, send messages, calculate things, listen to music, take down notes, take pictures and video, wake you up in the morning, read the news, and get directions.

Less than 10 years ago, to do all of those things, you needed a a phone, a computer, a calculator, a music player, a notebook, a camera, a video camera, an alarm clock, a newspaper, and someone who knows how to get places.

Today's 'all-in-one' trend is a fascinating one in that it will eventually signal the end of many industries and the beginning of new ones. What's equally amazing is the speed at which technology does away with entire work forces, industries, and older technologies (and by older, I mean a couple months older). It's just amazing.

The BBC News posted a story about "Why the World is in Your Hands," and is definitely worth a look. It talks about how smartphones are set to take over laptops in the next 12 to 18 months.

It's all about converging everything to the point where we'll have everything we need in our pockets. And there's nothing wrong with that.

German Robot Restaurant Replaces Waiters

A restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany has been the first to automate restaurant service. And by that, I mean that a customer orders from a touch screen TVs and their food is teleported to them via metal rails and tracks extending from the roof (where the kitchen is) to the customers table. Gravity provides the power.

The touch screen TVs can also be used to send texts and emails while you wait for your food. Apparently it's a real sight to see, because food whizzes down roller-coaster like rails all the way down to the customers down below. Apparently, the customers order a meal via touch screen TV's, the order gets sent to the cooks' monitors up on the top floor of the building, the cooks (which are human..no robot chefs just yet) cook up the meal, put it in a bucket, tag it with the customers respective table color, and send it down its respective chute. The food then goes flying down spirals and tubes to the customers table. People order bottles of wine, bratwurst, pancakes, you name it. Sounds pretty fun.

The place is called " 'S Baggers " and no, that's not a typo.

It cuts down on labor costs for the owner, and those savings translates into cut costs for the customer as well. What does this mean? Obviously, waiters aren't all going to be done away with which is the big story that the media (and I...I admit it) is pitching to get everyone's attention, though I'm sure we'll find a copycat restaurant soon in a city near you. Everything, sans the touch screen monitors, is powered by humans (the cooks) and gravity. So it's not as robotic as it sounds. What it does show us, however, is that anything that can be automated will, and as a result, there will be an increase in machines doing menial work and a decrease in humans doing menial work. I think that everything that makes us human- our ability to create, innovate, reflect- all those abilities will be the only things that robots won't be able to do for us. Artists, entrepreneurs, composers, even salesmen I think, jobs that require creativity on a daily basis will be the ones safe from our own self-inflicted techno takeover.

Another sad reality is that human interaction and technological progress have an inverse relationship. The more we progress technologically, the more we miss out on human interactions. And we can all wax philosophical about what that means.

And you can catch a video of this restaurant in action here.

The Grid: Will the Internet Soon Be Obsolete?

The Internet may soon be a thing of the past. The scientists who created the internet have now come up with something even better, called "The Grid." Apparently, it's 10,000 times faster than your typical internet broadband connection. As a result, you'd be able to download movies in seconds. And that's not all.

The Grid could also be used to "allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players...offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call." and transmit holographic images. Badass.

This summer, scientists are going to test it out. You can read all the geeky mumbo jumbo about how they'll do that here.

Unlike the internet which needs cables and routing equipment to operate, the Grid would use fibre optic cables and routing centers. There are 12 routing centres all over the world with 55,000 servers in total. It is estimated that the number of servers will increase to 200,000 servers in the next 2 years. The 12 routing centres are scattered throughout the world and are connected via fibre optic cables running from Cern (in Switzerland), to the US, Canada, Asia, and Europe.

The reason the Grid was created however, is not just so we can download whole seasons of our favorite TV show in seconds. The real goal that scientists had in mind when creating the Grid was to have it work with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a "new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe." yup..

Anyway, by working together, scientists are hoping to track down the Higgs boson--the particle that "is supposed to be what gives matter mass."

The Grid isn't going to be released to domestic users as of yet, but there are plenty of companies and telecom providers that are introducing technologies based on the Grid. The biggest technology to take from the Grid that everyday users will probably get their hands on soon is something called "dynamic switching" which allows internet users to switch into a dedicated "channel" that would allow then to download large files. So we'd be able to download a movie in about 5 seconds.

The only people who are allowed access to the Grid are scientists, researchers, and academia for now. But can you imagine sending and receiving holographic messages? Last Star Wars reference...I promise

Literature has tried to predict the future in books like 1984 and the Brave New World. I find it ironic that, instead, the future is starting to sound more and more like a sci-fi movie.

Product Review: Super Talent Vidego28 MP4 Player

I recently got my hands on the Vidego28—a 4GB touch screen MP4 player. It’s priced at just about $70, and 4GB at that price with touch screen technology makes this product practically fly off the shelves at eWiz. Demand for this thing has been so high in the past couple months and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So I snuck into inventory and pilfered one to review. Here’s what I found:

+Design & Build: It feels like a good strong product and it’s much smaller than I thought it would be. It’s about 3.5” tall, 2” wide, and about 0.5” thick. It’s a really good size actually, perfect for pockets and stuff and much smaller and more portable than the Apple Touch. The build is really sturdy—it feels like if I dropped it, it would be fine so that’s nice. There’s three dedicated buttons on the bottom, 2 to control volume, and one to go back to the Menu screen. The touch screen is a tiny bit less than 2.5” by 1.8”. And it’s pretty light. Not too light to the point where it feels cheap, but light enough not to weigh your pants down. I was really impressed with this build as it feels much more expensive than it really is.

-User-Friendliness: This thing is only slightly user friendly. It’s easy to start up, and the menu screen is easy enough to navigate through, but figuring out where to find your files, manage your files, and delete your files are all slightly difficult tasks to figure out. I read through the instruction manual, but it isn’t helpful at all, quite frankly. It takes time to figure out where the device is storing all your recordings—it takes time to understand the logic to this thing. When the menu first pops up, it looks extremely similar to the iPhone’s Menu screen. Apart from the menu screen, all other screens are incredibly poorly constructed and cheap looking. Deleting things took forever to figure out. When you figure out how to select an item to delete, a “Delete?” screen pops up, you have to touch the up and down arrows to highlight Yes or No, instead of just being able to touch Yes or No. And the instruction booklet does not tell you this, among other things. I made a bookmark in my e-book, and I never figured out how to delete it. So, this thing takes some getting used to. Definitely not as intuitive as I wanted it to be.

+Price: Slightly above $70. This has got the be the biggest plus about this device. Even if it didn’t have touch screen technology, a 4GB MP4 player, with music, video, radio, ebook, radio & voice recorder, can store photos, and has Tetris is an amazing deal. You’d be hard pressed to find a regular MP4 player, without those features and without touch screen technology for the same price.

-Touch Screen: Not as cool as you were expecting. It’s semi-responsive, meaning it felt me about 80% of the time. I found myself poking at it over and over, however, because loading time on this player is incredibly slow sometimes. It takes up to a good 2 seconds AFTER touching the screen before the player responds. When deleting items, it can take up to 5-7 seconds to actually get this thing to delete a file. And 4 seconds to load a photo. I must admit, I found myself incredibly frustrated after playing with this thing for awhile because sometimes the touch screen wouldn’t feel me, or it would take a long time to respond, or both. It is a touch screen and they do equip you with a Stylus, but it doesn’t help much. It’s responsive to your finger just as much as the Stylus. The slow response and the fact that it tends to lock up when you delete things kinda got on my nerves though. Once you get the hang of it, however, the player becomes a lot more fun. It just takes awhile to adjust to the time it takes to process your commands.

+Speakers: The speakers on this thing are actually quite good. You have the option of using earphones, included with the player, or playing music out loud with the built in speakers. I really liked this part about the MP4 player, because it’s a portable player that can play music pretty loudly. The speakers sounded really great, I give this thing 5 stars in terms of sound quality. The only downside I see in terms of sound quality and speaker quality is that it has FM/AM radio on it, but you can’t get very good reception on it unless you have the earphones in. Then reception is acceptable. So don’t expect to be able to play the radio loud and clear on this thing. It plays MP3’s exceptionally though.

+Video: The screen has 320x240 pixels. In my opinion, the screen quality is great for the price. It runs videos smoothly. The only con is that the sample video already on the player is not synced with the music it plays. The sample video on the player is a Jessica Simpson/Nick Lachey music video, and the music slightly lags behind the video. That’s just the sample video though. The frame rates are good and the video is clear.

-Performance & Operating System: When you maneuver your way through the system, you become starkly aware that this thing is made in China. First of all, the default radio settings are in China, the welcome and goodbye screen feel pretty…uncool, there are grammer/spelling errors here and there, the sample songs and videos are all from the 70s, 80s, and 90s (nothing before 1998, LoL). Many things endemic of a bad localization program. It’ll tell you that it’s, “Deleteing” your file, when you want to trash something. What is super cool about it is that it comes with 2 songs already on the player, “Yesterday Once More” by Joni Mitchell and “Hotel California” by the Eagles. Jams, to be sure, albeit extremely dated jams. My parents would love this thing. Anyway, when you play those two songs, the song lyrics pop up, as the song plays. It’s like a mini-kareoke machine. The lyrics have also been pre-loaded onto the player, in the e-book section where you can upload text. The lyrics run along with the song, but apparently they didn’t put any breaks in the line of text, so when the lyrics are too long and it breaks into 2 lines, the letters just completely drop to the 2^nd line. For example:

You also can't skip around in a song. You can only skip the entire song, or replay the entire song. All in all, the operating system shows some pretty FOB signs, but it works. Another thing is that when you play any media, music or video, you press the Pause button. And then the media starts to play, the Pause button becomes the Play button, so if you want to pause the media, you have to press Play. Confused? I was too. Basically, they just got the buttons backwards, normally, you’d press the play button and while the media plays, the play button becomes a pause button. Again, all endemic of some pretty bad localization skills on the part of Super Talent.

+Features: Music, video, displays photos, fm/am radio, built-in speakers, e-book (basically you can upload txt files onto the player as well), Tetris, voice recording & radio recording. The radio recoding is pretty interesting. Reminds me of my middle school days when I used to record music off the radio. All what you pretty much expect.

+Battery Life: Battery life actually pretty good. I played with it for a total of 4 hours and only half of the battery was gone. A+ in terms of battery life

+Input/Output Ports: It’s got an input port for headphones, a slot for a mini SD card, which isn’t included (you can put a max of 4GB on this thing), and a USB slot. It connects to your computer via USB.

-Accessories: The box comes with a charger, USB cable, earphones, stylus, cleathing cloth, a velvet pouch that looks like it should belong to a fairy or wizard, installation CD, and a user manual, which you might as well throw away. A big con is that there isn’t anywhere to put your stylus. Unless of course you carry this thing around in your fairy velvet pouch. Seriously. It doesn’t attach to the player at all. You’d just have to carry it around separately.

PROS: The Price. A little over $70 for a 4GB media player. The build. It looks cool, it’s sturdy, the design looks like a dumbed-down version of the Apple touch. It’s highly portable because of that. Menu screen also looks awesome. I love the speakers and the fact that it can play music pretty loud without the earphones. The video quality was also pretty good, relative to the price, battery life was outstanding, and it comes with plenty of features.

CONS: All the things that make this feel really cheap: Bad localization (grammer issues, typos). I’m a stickler for those kind of things. The touch screen is not too responsive. It has a pretty slow response time, and sometimes it doesn’t feel me. I felt super frustrated a couple of times. Another con is the fact that it’s only kind of user-friendly. You can get around, but figuring out how to manage your files is a pain, and the user manual is not helpful at all. Lastly, it sucks that I can’t put the stylus anywhere except my velvet wizard pouch.

Conclusion: If you want a cheap 4GB MP4 player, this is it. It’s definitely no iTouch, though it does have a pretty good build and the menu screen looks like something from Apple. I wouldn’t get this thing if you’re thinking you’re going to get an awesomely responsive touch screen, because it’s not. Still, for the price, this is a pretty good deal. It would make an amazing present for someone looking for an MP4 player. It feels like a child’s version of the Apple Touch, actually. For me, personally, I think I’d stick with a 4GB MP4 player that isn’t touch screen, if I can find one, just because I’m too impatient and the response time on this would make me lose it. But if you want an entry level mp4 with touch screen capabilities, I don’t think there’s another one out there like this with a price as low as this one’s.

Call of Duty 4 Map Pack

I don't know about you, but I'm unhealthily excited about the new Call of Duty 4 map pack expected to be released this week. The release was supposedly postponed to April 10th, but Infinity Ward just contradicted that claim and promised to have it released April 3rd or 4th. Here's to hoping it really does come out today or tomorrow.

It's about time...I'm pretty much bored with all the other maps.

Some people hate the fact that game developers release updates or upgrades to their games because it's a way to keep making money off of one game. I guess I see their point, but when a game is as good as this, I'm happy to pay for upgrades, rather than get bored with the game itself and opt to buy another one that could potentially be a complete waste of cash. New maps, like new song additions to Guitar Hero or Rock Band, is a welcome reason for me to drop more dough.

There's going to be 4 new maps: Creek, Chinatown, Broadcast, and Killhouse. That's right. Killhouse.

Price? $10.

See you there.

Samsung Instinct: Sprinting Ahead of the iPhone?

Last Tuesday, Sprint announced the release of their version of the iPhone: the Samsung Instinct.
Which is better?

The Instinct brings a couple things to the table that the iPhone doesn’t. It features a 3.1” touch screen and has 3 buttons on the bottom—phone, back, and home. It is reported to be faster and also have more preloaded content than the iPhone. Let’s look at how it does in comparison to the iPhone.

Price: the Instinct is likely to be priced at around $200-$250 with a 2-year Sprint contract. You can bump up the storage to a maximum of 8 GB. The iPhone is still uncomfortably priced at $399 for the 8GB model.

Phone Service: the iPhone runs on an older, slower AT&T network. Fortunately, a faster iPhone is in the works, one that supports AT&T’s fastest data network. The Instinct uses Sprint’s fastest network and provides “faster online access than the iPhone.” Sprint has also reportedly been trying to persuade cable companies to deploy Sprint’s WiMax network which would offer faster wireless speeds than its competitors for a long period of time with a greater range than Wi-Fi.

Touch-Screen Technology: If you’ve ever tried the iPhone, you know its touch-screen technology is amazingly responsive. The iPhone allows for multi-touch abilities, where you can use multiple fingers to zoom in and out of things. The Instinct does not offer the same advantage, however the Instinct also offers a new touch-screen technology that the iPhone doesn’t: it uses “tactile feedback.” For instance, if you’re dialing a number or typing using the touch screen, the screen will vibrate in the areas where you press, making it feel as though you’re actually pressing a button. This is a pretty cool innovation—one which addresses many people’s complaints about touch-screen technology. The complaint against the resistive touch screen, however, is that it lacks the iPhone’s smooth response. It’s all up to preference, but to that good chunk of people who abhor touch technology because of its lack of feedback, the Instinct offers a solution.

GPS: The Instinct offers true GPS technology on it. The iPhone has a similar thing—you can use Google maps to get where you need to go but it doesn’t offer a real GPS.

Customizability: The Instinct is super customizable. You can create a list of favorites for your start-up screen and you can customize the main screen by swapping out icons. Third-part apps are also supported by the phone, so all BREW/Java apps for other phones should be easily ported onto the Instinct.

So back to my original question, which is better? I’d have to go out and play with a Samsung Instinct before I make a final decision, but based on the cold hard features, the Instinct seems to be a better choice in terms of value for the price. Of course, if you’re a huge iPhone fan, the Instinct will look like nothing more than a knock-off. And I think I prefer the iPhone’s looks over the Instincts’. But the Instinct is cheaper, has a better network, and offers a wide range of features and content like the GPS and 3rd party apps that the iPhone does not. And I want to play around with the new tactile feedback the touch screen offers. Whether or not the Instinct is a hit, it is, to date, the closest thing to the iPhone that anyone has to offer.

Best April Fool's Pranks for Nerds

In honor of April Fool's Day, I've once again lifted an article from Wired.com. It's pretty awesome, I'm not gonna lie.

Here are the top April Fool's pranks that'll really put the nerd in your life on edge. Enjoy!!