Take a peek at the latest in a long line of demo movies for the Notion Ink Adam Android Honeycomb tablet: Panel System and Desktop. Discover why CES is important (and what it is if you don’t know by now) in the first SlashGear article by fabulous tech pro writer Tim Bajarin: The importance of CES and what to expect in 2011! Break into PS3 security, grab your very own Sharp Galapagos Android tablet, and stay clean of the new Geinimi Android virus! Finally, get completely excited and run around the room screaming and kicking because we’ve got a full guide and demo of the brand new leaked Android Honeycomb Music Player – everything you need to know to get it working for you! All this and MORE on The Daily Slash!
It’s a [FEATURED] fantasy today! We’ve got columns and special posts by the barrel-full, and you’re gonna love em! First thing in the morning we got a pre-noon delivery from the FedEx truck – what did the FedEx man bring for us to unbox and get our hands on? A NOOKcolor, fresh off the factory line! Then we write a couple of columns: one on the raging state of the Tablets market, and one on the current quick-paced state of political news. Then Josh Marinacci says webOS will be available soon for ALL Palm devices, there’s a White iPhone 4 sale in China, and the feature stream begins. Last night our man Vince was at PEPCOM and brought back video demos of Gorilla Glass, a three screen monitor from Samsung, and a NOOKcolor. Finally (there’s more?!) the last installment of Evan’s Week with the HTC HD7 is up – Xbox LIVE! All this and even MORE on The Daily Slash!
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Today’s item of interest in The Daily Slash is a quote from the Professor / Writer / Inventer of the Internet Tim Berners-Lee as he writes an article called “Long Live the Web” about defending the Internet against those who would limit it in a variety of ways. I suggest you read the entire thing because it’s a masterfully written statement and it concerns us all, all of us internetlings.
Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected.
KDDI launched a wave of new phones this morning, but this is the one we really want to hold — it’s called the X-RAY, and it’s one of two new products in the company’s iida designer brand. Crafted by Tokujin Yoshioka, it’s a high-end Japanese clamshell with a 1-Seg TV tuner, NFC payments, and an 8 megapixel camera — you know, the usual — but with a translucent case (also available in blue and black) that leaves nothing to the imagination. There’s a QSD8650 CDMA-ready Snapdragon in there, a GSM radio as well, a 7 x 102 pixel LED scrolling sub-display to display alerts and notifications, plus all the requisite chips and wires beautifully laid out. It’ll be on display in Harajuku this Tuesday, but there’s no word on availability or price quite yet. However, given that the prime accessory for the X-RAY is a solid crystal stand that makes the phone look like it’s floating on air, we probably don’t want to know. Video after the break.
Ah, so now we understand Verizon’s intentions to hastily roll out LTE service to NFL cities. The NFL, which has sided with Sprint over the years when it comes to cellular distribution of content, is apparently in even deeper talks with newfound partner Big Red in order to get its prized content into even more hands. As the idea of watching NFL games on-the-go because more and more sensible, the league is apparently mulling the decision to distribute games (and potentially more) on the next big thing. You know, tablets. Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s senior vice president of media strategy, recently said the following: “The NFL will be on a tablet. It’s a question of what shape or form. We are currently talking to Verizon about it.” VZW declined to comment on the rumblings, but it’s really not a shocker — the carrier’s doing everything it can to get a live LTE network here in the States, and inking a deal with America’s most popular sporting league would obviously bring in boatloads of revenue. The real question is this: what tablet is the NFL eying, and if it’s not the Samsung Galaxy Tab, what’s Verizon’s second tablet going to be? Inquiring minds would love to know.
We already knew Verizon was planning to hit one third of the country with LTE this year with plans to expand dramatically after that, but things are starting to come into sharper focus: the carrier today said that it’ll light up 30 “NFL cities” with 4G by the end of the year. Now, there’s only 32 teams, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where that’s going to be — and considering the plan is to hit “major metropolitan areas,” we’ll go ahead and guess Green Bay isn’t on the list, even though the Packers are by far the best team in the league. (Buffalo and Jacksonville also spring to mind — and let’s not forget that the NFL still isn’t in LA, despite Ari Gold’s best fictional efforts on Entourage.) The plan is to first upgrade each cell site’s backhaul connection to Gigabit Ethernet so they’ll have the necessary bandwidth to support the 5-12Mbps down and 2-5Mbps up speeds with 30-150ms latency promised for Big Red’s LTE network at launch. Ambitious, but hey — we’d love nothing more than to be streaming the Super Bowl over LTE when all’s said and done.
Update: As many of our beloved commenters have pointed out, there are technically only 30 NFL markets, as New York has the Giants and Jets and the Raiders and 49ers play across the bay from each other. LTE for everyone, then? We’ll have to wait and see — and we’ve got a feeling a few Oakland residents might take offense at being lumped in with their neighbors across the bridge.
The first Sunday of the regular NFL season is almost here and some DirecTV Sunday Ticket subscribers (plus a few without the DirecTV part) are getting an extra treat. If you’ve dropped the additional $50 or so for the NFL Sunday Ticket To Go service, feel free to take advantage of the mobile apps that have been issued for Android, Blackberry (you’ll want to uninstall the 2009 app first), Windows Mobile, webOS, iPhone and iPad platforms in the last day or so. Check the gallery for screens from the new iPad version plus the updated iPhone and Android apps — isn’t football season the best time of the year?
I think we can all learn a lesson from Bengals wide-receiver Chad Ochocinco and the appropriate time and place for using social media after his in-game Tweets during a recent NFL game cost him big time. Chad is a big Twitter user apparently and Tweets all the time.
He posted a couple Tweets during a recent game using Rock Software and the NFL hit him with a massive $25,000 fine. The NFL doesn’t play around; let that be a lesson to any other players with a social media fetish.
The fine was for violating the league rules that prohibit the posting of messages on social media websites during the 90 minutes before kickoff and until postgame media obligations are completed. Ochocinco Tweeted two times during the game once talking about catching a pass and later talking about getting nailed on a play. His apology was naturally done via Twitter to the league and he said the fine was two months of his Bugatti payments. Hope you have some savings Chad.
Over the summer, the big draw for 3D sports content on cable networks and online has been golf. The problem with that was that golf isn’t a sport that a lot of people are interested in. NFL football on the other hand is one of the most popular sports in the country.
Verizon has announced that it will air the first 3D NFL game via its FiOS TV service on September 2. The game will be the pre-season match between the Giants and the Patriots. Viewers in parts of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island will be able to view the 3D game.
Verizon says that the 3D broadcast is set to start at 7pm and not only will the game be in 3D, but the pre-game, half-time, and post-game shows will all be in 3D too. FiOS customers can tune to channel 834 to see the game and will need a 3D TV, 3D Glasses, and a HD set top box to watch the program in 3D.
We’d heard that the NFL would be bringing the RedZone channel to phones this season, and it looks like Verizon was the highest bidder: NFL Mobile will launch on Big Red next month with the draft, complete with live streaming video of the event, on-demand video analysis from NFL Network, a pick-by-pick draft tracker, and other content. Once the season starts, customers will get RedZone, live streams of Sunday night and Thursday night games, on-demand video highlights and analysis, live home and away radio broadcasts, fantasy info, and the usual nasty ringtones and graphics. That’s a ton of content, and it certainly makes Sprint’s NFL package seem a little light in comparison — we’ll have to see what pricing is like and what devices this’ll run on closer to launch, however. Bring on the draft!
Update: We just confirmed that NFL Mobile will be exclusive to Verizon for the next four years, which means Sprint customers are out of luck. Verizon paid a pretty penny for the rights: the Wall Street Journal values the deal at $720 million.
The NFL has announced that it’ll be bringing its all-action, all-the-time RedZone content to cellphones in time for next season, offering tons of game-day coverage on the go to anyone willing to pay the price. Thing is, said price hasn’t been announced — but if it’s reasonable, it could put a pretty big dent in the value of Sprint’s existing relationship with the NFL, which brings free live and archived content to subscribers of its Simply Everything plans. Also worried, of course, are the NFL’s traditional content distribution partners — the major networks like CBS and FOX — but realistically, we can’t see ourselves choosing to watch a whole game on a 3-inch display over a 50-inch in high def. With one hand holding the phone, how are we going to hang on to the beer and grub?
