From Gadgetwise - NYTimes
February 13, 2010
Is romance dead? If not, this should kill it.
Many people are likely to observe St. Valentine’s Day by downloading relationship-minded background check apps like “Stud or Dud,” “Are They Really Single,” both from the PeopleFinders Network, or “Date Check,” from Intelius.
These apps purport to dig up the dirt on potential Romeos (and, I suppose, Juliets), by checking publicaly available personal, legal and financial records.
Stud or Dud is the more complete of the PeopleFinders offerings, checking address history, real-estate ownership, business records, professional licenses, bankruptcies, criminal records, evictions and, of course, marital records.
While the app is free, the information it finds is not. Each category that returns data gets a check mark (green for good, red for iffy). To get the details, you have to pay $6 for each category. The detailed reports are not delivered to the app, you’ll have to get on the computer or switch to you browser to retrieve them.
Are They Really Single only checks relationship information, such as marriage and divorce records. The free version give you two searches at no charge; the 99-cent version allows unlimited searches.
Date Check, which encourages you to “lookup before you hookup,” says its “sleazedetector” will instantly check for criminal convictions and sex offenses, as well as returning a report on the subject’s living situation, interests (based on social professional networks), astrological compatibility and home-ownership status. It also charges extra for complete reports, ranging from $10 to $30. It is available for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
Caveat emptor: Some people who have tried these apps have called them inaccurate in iTunes store postings, so proceed with caution. You might not want to throw your drink on an alleged cheater solely on the basis of an app.
by ROY FURCHGOTT
view original post
February 13, 2010
Is romance dead? If not, this should kill it.
Many people are likely to observe St. Valentine’s Day by downloading relationship-minded background check apps like “Stud or Dud,” “Are They Really Single,” both from the PeopleFinders Network, or “Date Check,” from Intelius.
These apps purport to dig up the dirt on potential Romeos (and, I suppose, Juliets), by checking publicaly available personal, legal and financial records.
Stud or Dud is the more complete of the PeopleFinders offerings, checking address history, real-estate ownership, business records, professional licenses, bankruptcies, criminal records, evictions and, of course, marital records.
While the app is free, the information it finds is not. Each category that returns data gets a check mark (green for good, red for iffy). To get the details, you have to pay $6 for each category. The detailed reports are not delivered to the app, you’ll have to get on the computer or switch to you browser to retrieve them.
Are They Really Single only checks relationship information, such as marriage and divorce records. The free version give you two searches at no charge; the 99-cent version allows unlimited searches.
Date Check, which encourages you to “lookup before you hookup,” says its “sleazedetector” will instantly check for criminal convictions and sex offenses, as well as returning a report on the subject’s living situation, interests (based on social professional networks), astrological compatibility and home-ownership status. It also charges extra for complete reports, ranging from $10 to $30. It is available for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
Caveat emptor: Some people who have tried these apps have called them inaccurate in iTunes store postings, so proceed with caution. You might not want to throw your drink on an alleged cheater solely on the basis of an app.
by ROY FURCHGOTT
view original post
Ah, Bluetooth Special Interest Group, our second-favorite source for mobile leaks (next to the FCC, of course). Here’s two new entries care of Acer, both touchscreen devices with quadband GSM. The Android-powered E110 (pictured, right), however, also touts the AT&T-friendly 850 / 1900 frequencies and A-GPS. As for the P300, it’s got an unknown version of Windows Mobile, 802.11b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. That’s quite a bit of detail for two tiny entries — now let’s get Mobile World Congress started already, give Acer a nice platform to spill the beans.
The N900’s well on its way to developing a solid reputation as a hacker’s dream, but here’s the thing: hackers need a way to charge their device. Actually, we all do, which makes a trending problem with N900s in the field particularly worrisome. It seems that the micro-USB connector’s surface mount design is causing it to become misaligned or disconnected completely, and affected users seem to be having mixed results getting the issue covered under warranty. One of the symptoms of a misaligned connector is that it’s unusually snug or difficult to connect, and thinking back to our review unit, we did have some minor issues there but didn’t really think anything of it at the time. Anyone out there run into this nasty little issue?
So it turns out LG really wasn’t messing around with the “Mini” name on its new GD880 full touchscreen set that’s likely due to break out at its MWC open house next week, because our dear colleagues at Engadget Spanish have scored a quick video of the thing — and goodness, it’s small. F480 owners and fans are probably going to feel right at home with this thing, a phone that LG claims is the world’s smallest with a 3.2-inch display. The phone’s hard angles and odd material transitions are probably going to be an acquired taste for some, but hey, just how badly do you want a record-holding device (no matter how trivial that record may be) in your pocket? 
Other than some fancy wallpaper that automatically changes based on the time of day or the music that you’re listening to, the UIs of modern smartphones are generally pretty static — what you see at 8AM is going to be the same thing you see at high noon or bedtime. Israeli firm Intuitive User Interfaces is looking to change all that with its new “one-touch” UI concept that uses situational cues — presumably time and place, primarily — to call up functions that you’re most likely to use in a 3D mishmash of icons. Apps like Locale have been toying with the concept of situation awareness for a while now and Toshiba is working on a similar concept for phones released in its Japanese domestic market, so it seems like this could be the next logical step — just in time to stop our poor, overworked thumbs from cramping up. The platform’s first coming to Android with versions for other operating systems already in the pipeline.
HELSINKI (AFP) – Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, said Monday a class action complaint alleging securities fraud was filed against it in New York on Friday.
HELSINKI (AFP) – Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, said Monday it would restructure operations at its plant in Salo, Finland, to focus production on smartphones and could cut up to 285 jobs as a result.
The BBC’s crack team at Click managed to out a juicy morsel from the boys and girls at Virgin: its mobile and landline divisions are about to get a whole lot more cozy. This doesn’t have any bearing outside the UK, unfortunately, but our British readers might be excited to hear that the company intends to make calls between its mobile handsets and its old-school granny phones devoid of per-minute charges beginning on April 1, as is evidenced by a series of tweets betwixt Click and a PR dude over at Virgin. Perhaps the thinking is that landlines are finally irrelevant enough to pull a move like this without costing the company an arm and a leg, but who knows — maybe this’ll jumpstart interest in landlines again?
The first installment of Google’s fancy Nexus One design series focused on the sound quality of the device, and on the overall design. Well, part two is here now, and this time, we get to watch while HTC project manager Tomasz Hasinki and Android software engineer Romain Guy give us the goods on the Nexus One’s OLED display and the interactive, 3D framework. We’re expecting a couple more videos in the series, so grab a very tiny bowl of popcorn (it’s pretty short) and check out the video, which is after the break. 
We’ve had a pretty clear indication that Microsoft would have plenty to say about Windows Mobile 7 at MWC this month, and it looks like we now have the first significant batch of rumored details ahead of the presumed launch. While nothing is close to being confirmed just yet, PPCGeeks has received what it describes as some “truly amazing information” about what’s now apparently known as Windows Phone 7, and it certainly paints an interesting picture. According to the site, Windows Phone 7 will sport an interface that’s “very similar” to the Zune HD, along with a complete revamp of the start screen, and a UI (codenamed METRO) that’s described as “very clean,” “soulful,” and “alive.” Perhaps just as notably, the OS supposedly won’t support multitasking, with applications instead simply pausing themselves when in the background (there will be support for push notifications, though). Also missing is Flash support (at least initially), as well as NETCF backwards compatibility for older applications, although there are apparently “high hopes” for porting NETCF to the new platform eventually.
Just when you thought the Corby’s title was secure, along comes Samsung’s archrival LG with the KM555e Clubby — a phone whose meaningless, perfectly trademarkable name knows no limits of awesomeness. Apart from built-in support for LG’s Music Club track download service, we’re not sure what makes this thing so “clubby” — it’s just a midrange full-touch dumbphone with a WQVGA display, 3 megapixel cam, and Dolby Mobile tech on board — but seriously, with a name like that, does it matter? We submit that it does not. If you happen to be in Russia, it’s available now for 9,990 rubles (about $329) in your choice of black, purple, or silver.
Realistically, most Americans won’t have a chance to enjoy the full spoils of T-Mobile’s shiny new 21Mbps HSPA+ network any time soon, but hey, at least they appear to be making solid progress. In a recent chat with GigaOM, T-Mobile’s VP of engineering Dave Mayo has said that the requisite software for HSPA+ service is already rolled out to cell sites along the California coast and in major cities between Washington, DC and Boston, but like AT&T, it’s not the software that’s the concern — it’s the width of the backhaul pipe. The company says that it’s got 20Mbps fiber connections to just 7 percent of its cells presently but plans to rapidly expand that to around 25 percent “within the next few weeks.” Ultimately, that’s going to be the key for every carrier around the world that’s deploying 3.75 to 4G networks — the cells themselves might be easy, but getting enough data piped to them is another story altogether.
This might be the best entry yet in Google’s Nexus One video series. Today’s double feature is marked by the testing and manufacturing of the device, and while the all-white facilities and assembly lines can be interesting in their own right, we love nothing more than seeing just how Google and HTC stress test its labor of love. Watch it dropped, slammed, bent, poked, and detonated — okay, maybe not detonated, and we unfortunately don’t get to see any phones crack, but it’s still good fun. The big game’s not on yet, so give yourself a few minutes and hit up the two short videos after the break.
Bell and Telus’ massive, sudden addition of nationwide HSPA networks to succeed their legacy CDMA towers was an experiment unlike anything the wireless world had ever seen; at no other time had carriers that large jumped from one 3G technology to another, and it was anyone’s guess how well it’d go and what effect it’d have on their bottom line — clean-slate network build-outs aren’t cheap, after all. We’ve got part of that answer now that Bell has reported fourth quarter earnings, and in a nutshell, it seems like this may have a huge gamble that paid off. The company’s wireless unit saw a 2 percent decrease against the previous in EBIDTA — and ARPU fell by CAD $1.48 to CAD $51.08 — but here’s where the bubbly gets broken out: it saw a 39.3 percent increase in gross activations to 523,000, up 11.3 percent year-over-year. That works out to 163,000 net adds, almost certainly attributable to the launch of HSPA service and a variety of hot new handsets (and some older ones — the iPhone 3GS, for instance) that gave some disgruntled Rogers customer the ammo they needed to bolt. It’ll likely be a good long while before Bell actually goes net positive on its massive network investment, but early signs certainly suggest that it was the right move to make.
There’d been some drama not long ago on news that Vodafone was scrubbing its exclusive launch of Sony Ericsson’s troubled Xperia X2, but it turns out they still wanted a crack at the thing after all — just not in the UK, apparently, where it had originally been listed as “coming soon.” Instead, it’… 
We can’t say we were overwhelmed by the first leaked photos of what we’ve come to know as the Nokia Mystic, but there’s something about this QWERTY candybar form factor that Nokia just does so well that we have to hang onto the benefit of the doubt. The latest news on this front is that the handset … 
Motorola’s official spec sheet for the Devour reveals that there’ll be a Flash Lite runtime on board — presumably version 3.1, which offers support for a variety of video codecs and Flash 9 content — and more importantly, it’ll work in the browser. That’s pretty cool — it gives the Devour one sma… 
As we’d figured out last night, Symbian’s big reveal for today was the completion of its move to a fully open, royalty-free platform — meaning you no longer need to be a paid-in-full member of the Foundation to see all the code — and they’re ready to talk about it and spread the word far and wide…. 
If you’re Clearwire or Sprint right now, the last thing you want to hear is one of the world’s major suppliers of wireless infrastructure badmouthing the very technology that underpins your next-gen network — so we imagine there’s some groaning in the hallways and boardrooms of the world’s WiMAX ca… 
