Samsung’s Gargantuan Galaxy Note To Finally Arrive State-side Next Year

Kelly has admitted to me that he would love a phone with a large screen, which seems ironic considering he totes an iPhone 4. He handed me his phone after I’d gotten acquainted to the Galaxy Nexus‘ 4.65″ display and the iPhone looked like a glowing postage stamp. The massive Galaxy Note – which is still a phone mind you, not a tablet – I might have just the tool to reel him over The Dark Side. The biggest problem, however, is that American carriers are probably going to screw the whole thing up before it even arrives in stores. The beautiful super-AMOLED display on the Galaxy Note measures 5.3″ at a resolution of 1280×800. The biggest feature is actually an included stylus as the phone’s size actually allows for enough real estate to comfortably jot down notes and drawings. The TouchWiz additions also allow for some cool Courier-esque copy and paste action. Who knows, it might even get in a bite of some Ice Cream Sandwich considering its release timeframe, but they might screw that up, too. Still, even if the device’s dimensions don’t entice, I have no doubt it’ll be a cool playground for ROMers and mods alike.

So Samsung, whenever you’re ready, we’ll be more than happy to give the device a fair shake

Source: The Verge

Sprint Starts To Build Their LTE Network, But Is It Already Too Late To Compete?

Yes, that little yellow dot is Sprint’s current LTE coverage, perched over the small town of Kankakee, Illinois, a stone’s throw from Chicago. While the site exists for testing purposes for a network that won’t even start to roll out in earnest until next year, it’s a harrowing reminder that Sprint is way behind the competition in rolling out next-generation cellular tech, even if the other guys are fumbling a little.

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Now Bored To Death, Google+ Admins Now Censoring Mildly Offensive Images

The image above of formee full-time TechCrunch writer, and complete Apple fanboi, MG Siegler, was removed from Google’s services abruptly. As he writes on his blog, he’s not mad about the incident, but he is curious about Google’s opaque policies regarding photos that feature flipped birds. While all services have issues with policy in their youth, this strikes me as odd considering Google has had years to learn from Facebook regarding this stuff. That they failed to disclose this to MG is another issue entirely.

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Verizon To Charge For The Convenience Of Paying Your Bill [UPDATE: Verizon Decides Against It]

UPDATE: After making the announcement, both the entire population of the internet and the FCC – yes, the FCC – revolted against the increases. Verizon has now backed down from the charges.

So this is cool. Starting January 15th, Verizon customers are going to be charged an additional $2 every time they pay their bill through their automatic phone system or online through their web site. The only way to get around this? Set your account up for automatic withdrawal, which hardly seems like a convenience considering they’ll probably just ‘automatically withdraw’ an additional $2 per month that way, anyway. I can see the situation now…

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Will Americans Be Nicer To The PSVita Than Japan Was?

“But N, there’s a supply shortage in Japan following their successful launch!” So after two booming days for Sony’s next-generation handheld after its debut in Japan, the PlayStation Vita’s sales fell by 78% week-over-week to nearly last place, behind the 3DS and the original PSP. While a shortage is implied, bear in mind that the Japanese audience has also been traditionally wired for first day/first week releases, which is how it’s been able to set such amazing entertainment records in those categories. A front-loaded release isn’t really out of the ordinary. The problem is: does the Vita have legs?

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My Greatest Wish For 2012: The Kardashians Disappear

There’s an incredible irony here: by simply acknowledging that they exist, I’m perpetuating their existence. Just like The Game, once you realize it exists, you’ve lost. Still, I can’t help but make this my favorite wish of 2012: that their appeal and popularity will simply evaporate. While the modern example of the celebrity that exists because they’re a celebrity is decades old, think back to the Gabor sisters, it doesn’t necessitate their viability. The Kardashians, as Barbara Walters put it, have no actual talent. They don’t actually do anything. They simply exist. Perhaps if they were developing software, creating some kind of new art, or producing some other meaningful benefit to mankind, that’d be great, but as it stands, their lack of productivity means that it won’t be long until they’ve faded off the radar like Paris Hilton did several years ago. Unfortunately, the media enjoys giving them attention because the effect reciprocates: people watch (or read) about them and need an outlet by which to do so. Who knows how this chicken-and-egg story got started, but now that it’s in place, one will fail the other and they’ll fall into obscurity.

So, enjoy it while you can, Miss Kardashians. And Kris Humphries, let’s face it, you deserved everything that came with your botched marriage. What were you expecting, really?

Ron Paul For President, Because Why Not?

(DISCLAIMER: This is not an endorsement of Ron Paul for President by FleshEatingZipper.)

Next year we all roll into the voting booths to mark our ballots for the middle-of-the-road Presidential candidate that will hopefully fulfill the most of their promises, but in reality, will hopefully just disappoint us the least. As a conservative, Libertarian-leaning voter, there was no possible way I could’ve possibly won. And while the Obama hype machine won over hearts in minds in a relative landslide (two points in either direction of split-even is basically a political earthquake), he’s disappointed his own party by not fulfilling the obligations he was elected on (which is fine by me), making the hype machine that got him elected look more superficial than ever before. “Oh, it’s a difficult time,” my butt. W. Bush did a lot of crazy stuff in a post-9/11 world, but he was committed to action, however controversial. Obama is just sitting there moaning about GOP resistance when his party had been in charge of the White House and Congress and accomplished little anyway.

The only hope against the continuing mediocrity of Obama’s administration? The crazy Ron Paul, of course.

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‘Grand Theft Auto III’ for Android – Game Review

It doesn’t feel like it’s been just over a decade since Grand Theft Auto III landed on the PlayStation 2 and went on to be the watershed game for 3D sandbox titles, make Rockstar hundreds of millions of dollars, and blah blah blah. Now that they’ve added support for PowerVR-enabled phones, I’m now finally able to get my hands on this former juggernaut. Like literally, my thumbs are touching the game itself. So how does it fare in its transition to mobile? Read on…

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Verizon: Your Wireless Network Needs To Be Online In Order For Us To Use It

When lunch time came around, it was super thrilling to get to reel out my phone and catch up on e-mails, read my TweetDeck stream, check my Facebook notifications, etc. The problem is that my connection was so intermittent that I couldn’t accomplish hardly any of that. And it wasn’t just me, either, it was thousands of Verizon Wireless customers nationwide. Being a recent convert from Sprint for obvious reasons, I was already disappointed by the lowly 1.2Mbps average downloads I was getting in areas around town flush with LTE, but my signal shows single bar-to-double bar reception all the time, regularly flipping between 3G CDMA and 4G LTE modes. (In fact, attempting a SpeedTest right now resulted in such a downgrade in speeds.) Verizon is the nation’s largest carrier with the largest fourth-generation network, based on LTE, designed to give mobile users crazy speeds (apparently 10x my rates in urban areas) at the expense of some battery. Well, consider my battery safe because I’m not getting lightning bolts or conjured Viking gods out of my connection.

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The Photographer’s Best Accessory For 2012: A 1.8 Gigapixel Helicopter

Forget the storm of quadrocopters that’s brewing on the horizon, the United States Army is deploying three Boeing ARGUS helicopters that feature 1.8 Gigapixel (as in, 1,800,000,000 pixels per image) cameras. Yeah, sure, there are battlefield applications, like being able to keep track of over 60 targets at once, or take photos from over 20,000 feet, but let’s think about this a little bit: what would you do with a 1.8 Gigapixel camera on wings? Let’s count the ways:

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