What it is, however, is a plastic hamburger. Why the sudden proliferation of cheap hamburgerphones? A movie, of course.

Source: Film Junk

Macworld Keynote facts:

• Number of new hardware products announced: Two. The Time Capsule network backup device and the ultra-thin MacBook Air.
• Number of product upgrades announced: Four. Apple TV, iPod Touch, iPhone, iTunes.
• Number of failed product demos: One. Apple TV couldn’t load photos from Flickr’s servers.
• Number of price drops: One. The AppleTV dropped from $300 to $230.

MacBook Air Notebook:

• Weight of the MacBook Air, in pounds: Three
• Size of the MacBook Air’s screen, in inches: 13.3
• Thickest measurement of the MacBook Air’s slim case, in inches: 0.76
• Number of inches thinner than the thinnest measurement of Sony’s TZ ultra-portable: 0.04
• Base cost with 80GB hard drive and 1.6GHz processor: $1800
• Cost with a 64GB SSD hard drive and a 1.8GHz processor: $3100
• Hours of battery life Apple says the MacBook Air gets per charge: Five
• Number of optical drives in the new notebook: Zero. Instead, MacBook Air users will “borrow” the optical drives of other computers on their wireless network using an application called Remote Disc.
• Cost of an optional external DVD drive: $100

iPhone/iPod Touch:

• Number of iPhones sold since the device became available in June, 2007: 4 million
• Average number of iPhones sold per day: 20,000
• Percentage of the U.S. smartphone market captured by Apple during Q3 2007, its first full quarter shipping the iPhone: 20%
• Number of custom iPhone home screens users can now create, save and switch between: Nine
• New applications added to the iPod Touch: Five — Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes and Weather.
• How much iPod Touch users will have to pay for the latest enhancements: $20
• How much iPhone users will have to pay for the same enhancements: $0

iTunes:

• Number of songs sold in the iTunes Store to date: 4 billion
• Number of songs sold on Christmas Day 2007: 20 million, a one-day record for Apple
• Number of TV shows sold through the iTunes Store: 125 million
• Number of movies sold: 7 million, a disappointment according to Jobs.
• Number of major Hollywood studios participating in Apple’s new iTunes movie rental program: 11 — Touchstone Pictures, Miramax, MGM, Lions Gate Films, New Line Cinema, 20th Centeruy Fox, Warner Bros., Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony Pictures
• Cost of iTunes rentals: $4 each for new releases, $3 for older titles
• Cost of iTunes rentals for Hi-Def movies: One dollar more — $5 each for new releases, $4 for older titles
• How long you’ll have to wait after a movie is released on DVD before being able to rent it at iTunes: 30 days
• How long a user with a broadband connection will have to wait before beginning to watch a rented movie, on average: 30 seconds
• How long you can wait before starting to watch a movie rental: 30 days
• How long you have to finish watching a rented movie after you start it: 24 hours
• Number of movies available for rental on iTunes by the end of February 2008: 1,000

AppleTV:

• Number of YouTube videos AppleTV users can watch on their televisions: over 50 million
• New price for the upgraded Apple TV: $230
• Amount of the price drop: $70

Leopard:

• Copies of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 sold since its debut in October, 2007: 5 million
• Percentage of Mac users who have upgraded to Leopard so far: 20%

So there you go, the quick and dirty, way to sum up Macworld. Thanks for stopping by, please drive through…

Doug Rodriquez was able to do so merely by setting up a custom ringtone using a well-documented iTunes workaround.

Rodriquez started getting SIM card error messages sometime thereafter and went looking for some customer support.

Apple basically told him to piss up a rope because they had “determined that (the iPhone) has been subjected to accidental damage or misuse, which is not covered by the warranty or an Apple service contract.”

According to Doug Rodriguez:

I’ve never dropped my iPhone, I’ve never exposed it to water. I’ve never put third-party apps on it or hacked it. It just stopped working and Apple apparently does not believe me…The only thing I’ve ever done is back in September putting one custom ringtone on my iPhone via the “manual transfer” method. Nothing Else.

No word yet on what kind of warranty love using the Apple-sanctioned GarageBand method for installing custom ringtones will get you.

Look for Barracuda to expand its line further in 2008 and push deeper into international markets.

Barracuda has already transitioned from being a one-trick, spam-blocking pony to selling a variety of security appliances.

The next step, says president and CEO Dean Drako, is to offer an even wider range of appliances, including those support IT tasks beyond security.

Some possible examples:

• Internet access
• Bandwidth optimization
• Fax archiving
• Disk storage
• Backup
• Device monitoring
• Anti-spyware
• Packet filtering

Its flagship products are its spam firewall and Web filter. Barracuda also sells an IM firewall, load balancer, message archiver, Web application firewall, and application gateway.

While Barracuda’s products ship as appliances, Drako says Barracuda could almost be described as a software-as-a-services company, given the frequent updates that are pushed out to its hardware.

Last September, Barracuda acquired NetContinuum, a provider of application delivery controllers, which combine Web app security and traffic management.

Barracuda plans to push NetContinuum’s products down and out–to small and mid-size businesses and into overseas markets.

More acquisitions are likely. Drako won’t say whether Barracuda, a private company, plans to go public this year, but he acknowledges that capital fuels growth and an IPO is an obvious way to raise money.

If and when the company’s strategy calls for that kind of cash infusion, he says, “We will consider very strongly the public markets.” Sequoia Capital is an investor in Barracuda.

Make no mistake, Barracuda’s still got plenty of spam fighting to do.

According to the company’s end-of-year spam report, spam accounted for 90% to 95% of all e-mail in 2007, an increase from the 85% to 90% range in 2006.

Michael Nathanson of Bernstein Research notes that sales of regular DVDs were down more than 4 percent in 2007, and he attributes the decline to competition from HD DVD and Blu-ray. Upshot is that retail shelf space devoted to regular DVDs will shrink to make room for next-gen discs.

But there’s less upside for participants than previous format changes, Nathanson says.

Unlike going from videotape to disc or vinyl to CD, the DVD to hi-def migration isn’t compelling enough to get consumers to re-buy movies they already own.

Source: Tech Trader Daily – CDs Are Dying. Are DVDs Next?

Instead of relying on pansy radiation, the Turbo Toaster uses a fan to take the heat right to the toast, blasting air across a heating element.

Fittingly, given the popularity of Beans on Toast with the British student, Newberry designed the Turbo Toaster to deal with the problem of the beans going cold while the toast was cooking.

While I might suggest it would be simpler to just start the toaster earlier, I admire anyone who solves a problem in such an over the top manner.

Amazingly, this might actually see production next year.

Source: Daily Mail

Last month BGR leaked details about the 9000-series, but now it seems they’ve got more solid information:

The BlackBerry 9000 device (not series) has been confirmed with screen size of 480 x 320, although the physical dimensions are unknown at this time. Think of this device as the elder sibling to the BlackBerry 8320. Like it’s small screen counterpart, it will operate with a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE radio (850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 1900MHz) and will feature 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi capabilities. This will be a full QWERTY device, as well.

The BlackBerry 9000 will feature the same general OS platform, although it will launch with version 4.3.2. Coincidentally, OS 4.3.2 will potentially be in the future roadmaps for all 8000 series devices, sans the 8700 family (although that may change).

It looks like the 9000 will, however, feature a QWERTY keyboard, even though it will also be touch-screen device. Unfortunately, the 9000 will not include HSDPA, which is a big disappointment:

To recap, Research In Motion will soon launch the BlackBerry 9000 handheld, which will feature a larger screen, a new OS update, most likely a new full QWERTY keyboard layout (which may or may not be a touch screen keyboard), but without HSDPA or UMTS capabilities.

The BlackBerry 9000 doesn’t look as impressive now as it did a few weeks ago, but this looks like a more realistic device.

I have to ask, just how revolutionary will this phone be without HSDPA? How long must we wait for a truly revolutionary touch-screen 3G smartphone? What do you think?

Input is via a standard 3.5mm jack, and the set comes bundled with a USB charger and AC adapter: fully charged you’ll get up to eight hours listening time.

I have a hard time believing this kind of sound delivery will give anything like the fidelity of normal headphones, but it won’t batter your eardrums quite so much.

Apparently when Popular Mechanics tested the kit, the reviewer noted that the bass feel is much more speaker-like: “both intense and felt through your entire body”.

Now if you want to really rattle your bones, turn your volume up to 11 (insert Spinal Tap reference) and Cum On Feel The Noize:

Don’t you just love the smell of metal in the morning? \m/

The speakers are six and a half feet tall.

The pair weighs in at $19,000 USD, and each cabinet has 12 subwoofers at the back and a combination of eight mid range and seven tweeters at the front.

I almost fell asleep reading the specifications.

Like all high end audio gadgets, there is plenty of nonsense to get any audiophile excited: “spherical enclosure technology”,”carbon fiber” and my personal favorite: “rear-firing 4 inch drivers”.

I almost want to try these out, if only for the perverse pleasure of hooking such monsters up to a tiny Apple iPod Shuffle.

Watch for each of them to be a force for change in their own corner of the tech world.

Meet 8 people who will help shape the business technology world in the coming year:

Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt
With very different approaches, this duo’s dragging the stagnant phone business into the Internet age. Jobs’ Apple iPhone embraces a closed network, and Schmidt’s Google Android platform envisions a wide-open one. Both are forcing change for the better.

Mark Zuckerberg
It’s not Facebook that matters, it’s Facebook thinking. IT will feel growing pressure to provide social networking functions–to customers, along the supply chain, and inside their workplaces.

Mark Hurd
He’s got Hewlett-Packard back atop the PC market. How big a splash can he make in business software? The year ahead will tell.

Ray Ozzie
For a Microsoft exec, Ozzie sure is quiet. That’s fine, but it’s time for his vision of software-plus-services to make some noise. That means delivering some surprising products businesses can put to use.

Sam Palmisano
IBM can’t afford to stand pat in software. After making the company’s biggest acquisition ever this year, count on IBM’s CEO to keep dealing in 2008.

Diane Greene
Microsoft storms the virtualization market next year, along with a growing horde of Xen-based rivals like Sun and Oracle. The VMware CEO is a leader, and this is her toughest test yet.

Charles Phillips
2008 needs to be about new products, as Oracle promises to deliver the first of its Fusion applications, which draw together software from past acquisitions. But don’t expect Oracle’s president, a former Wall Street analyst, to lay off the deal-making.