The Flip Video Ultra is a great low-cost digital video camera capable of recording up to one hour of video in 640 X 480 format. The video comes out pretty clear, however it lacks the ability to focus the lens. That being said, for the regular Youtubber, this is a great solution.

Check out the video, and let me know what you think in the comments.

Apparently Brazilian lingerie maker, Lucia Lorio did when she created what raging feminists are calling a 21st century chastity belt.

gps lingerie

GPS Lingerie. Now I’ve heard everything.

Lorio’s lingerie consists of a lace bodice, bikini bottom with a faux pearl collar. The GPS system is is visibly tucked into the see through part of the bodice, next to the waist.

Lorio explains it as “a wink to women and a challenge to men because, even if she gives him the password to her GPS, she can always turn it off,”

But many women disgree with Lorio, saying this is just the tool, over protective parents, and jealous boyfriends/husbands can use to keep tabs on where their woman is at all times.

Lorio is unconcerned with the controversy, and even less concerned over the global financial crisis, which is making it difficult for consumers to spend frivioulsy on luxery items. Perhaps she should re-think that theory, since she’s selling them at $800 for the standard model and as much as $1100 for a more advanced model.

Lorio admits to selling few right now, but believes that many women will buy them for protection, expecially in her home country Brazil, that she says is widely known for it’s violence.

Hide and Seek anyone?

Later Bitches.

Where did it all go wrong?

This honestly scares me. CTV.ca covered a story stating that in the near future of 2050, we will be able to forget about the hardships and the trouble with finding a nice, honest, stable partner, and now will be able to find one just as easily in the next Sears catalogue.

You know society is doomed. Not only are we not investing the time, money and effort into producing a better society for all, but we’re literally playing God. We’re creating a cyborg that will please us in ways that we deeply want to be treating, and not only that, you can program the machine to be either naughty or nice! Now you can always have that slave girl with the childhood complex or have the Russian dominatrix by your side at all times… and best part of all, when you get tired of this one, you can trade it in for a new model!

I’m actually serious people! That’s what truly frightens me! We’re in a society now where tattoos, piercings, and child molesters are common place, so why not throw something else to keep it fresh right??

I’m still in shock and awe that researchers, scientists, machinists, engineers, and doctors have nothing else better to do then to make a over-priced sex toy, then doing something good for society like finding and making new cures for diseases, designing and building safer machines to work on, nor helping sick people. This article sure is definitely interesting, but seriously… What the hell??

All I have to say, is if the public demand skyrockets for these things (which it inevitably will), make sure you install the latest security patch or update, and don’t forget to provide regular maintenance on your new found glory. Remember that bodily fluid and electronics never mix, EVER. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to be with a guy like me (see picture –>), then a Roomba that will always vacuum for you on command, and be utterly loyal, faithful, and dependable??

…

Now that I think about it, I think I need to get myself a carpet cleaner. More to come later!

Full story at CTV.ca

Great.

Not only did my heart sink, but I knew the impending doom that’s about to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of the Iphone, and I know that it will “revolutionize” the cellular industry as we know it. It’s too bad the client base it’s aimed incorrectly.

I don’t like the Iphone for two reasons; A) It can’t do basic functions correctly (STILL no MMS, no Copy and Paste); B) Apple fanboys won’t shut the hell up about it.

When this blasphemous device came out in the states, the first things I heard were, “When’s the Iphone coming to Canada?”

That really destroyed the whole notion and the whole hype. I cannot stand how Apple fanboys will go to any lengths to prove that the Iphone is the be-all and end-all to all phones, but yet you still can’t send a picture to a friend of yours over the air without incurring redonkulous data charges.

Yes, the Iphone will make Rogers drop their data prices. Yes, Rogers is the first ones to carry it. Yes, we are getting the second generation Iphone. Yes, the phone consistently uses data. Yes, the Roger’s “Iphone Data Plan” will cost you an arm and a leg. Yes, replacing the screen on your Iphone will cost more then the phone itself. Yes, there are security issues with the device if you ever to plan on using this phone for business. Yes I’m about to blow my brains out.

I’m not the only one that thinks this way: please, check out my friend Maddox in his posts here and here.

Why do you think the Iphone flopped in Europe? One letter and two numbers: N95. Europeans have had touch screens, 3G, wifi, all this crap for a long, long time, and honestly, this is old news.

Don’t mind me folks, maybe I’m just a bitter flunkie that thinks this is just hype… or maybe I’m just one of the few that thinks that everyone should shut the f**k up, enjoy the idea and move on with their lives.

The primary reason to buy the N95 8GB is, arguably, its media playback. Having 8GB of storage equates to nearly 2,000 songs and is a welcome relief compared to many phones, where having any kind of permanent storage is still considered a luxury. For the most part, the N95 lives up to claims made in this area.

Unfortunately the media player supplied by Rogers Wireless is poor compared to the Nokia’s built-in media player or Sony Ericsson’s Walkman application. It’s the same basic player as found on far simpler phones and is decidedly more limited than what Nokia itself offers. Worse still is that it is set as the default player for the music shortcuts on the device: there may well be users
who never see the more powerful player hiding just underneath. While it’s easy enough to get in the habit of manually launching the built-in software, it’s an unnecessary complication and seems designed to steer inexperienced users towards buying songs from Rogers’ own music store, surprise! Surprise!

Rogers does contribute positively to media features through its VISION service; the Canadian carrier’s N95 8GB is likely the only Nokia smartphone on the continent to officially support two-way video calling. This gives it a decided edge over simply buying an unlocked version for those who want the feature. A definite catch of the service is the vicious circle of support.

With relatively few phones supporting the feature on Rogers’ network, so far, most people aren’t likely to sign up for VISION and spur their friends on to buying a similar device; until a lot of phones are already on the network with video call support, the front-facing camera isn’t likely to get as much use.

The phone’s exterior boasts both a left and right speaker for stereo separation – and they’re powerful enough to fill a large room on full blast without distortion. The most exciting external feature had to be the 3.5mm output jack. This can accommodate normal audio player headphones (no more proprietary cellphone headphones – yeah!) but also RCA cables for watching any of the phone’s multimedia functions, whether it be photos, videos or streaming TV – on your home television set.

The phone’s design is almost 2 years old (ha! and that’s “super-new” for Canada’s cell phone market!), therefore it wasn’t designed with N-gage gaming in mind. The phone is only good for one-handed gaming. During this time I tried using it with FIFA 08, and although it has great graphics for a cell phone, it’s challenging using two hands to play the game. However using one hand, the learning curve is short and the controls are pretty straight forward. It’s just a pity that the N95 8GB can’t be used in landscape mode for practical gaming.

Between the Rogers Vision suite and Nokia’s own set of pre-loaded applications and widgets, the N95 manages to provide virtually every conceivable way of ingesting, transferring, recording or sending media. The sheer amount of media the N95 puts at the fingertips is impressive: GPS (which I reviewed yesterday), two-way video calling, a dynamic and fast-loading Web browser with WLAN support, streaming video, TV and radio, access to 1.8 million tracks from the Rogers Music Store, support for up to 10 e-mail accounts. It also includes various social networking outlets which are Facebook Mobile, MySpace Mobile, Windows Live Spaces, Flickr and the newest mobile fad: Lifeblogging, where you can upload images and text to a Typepad blog on the fly.

In conclusion, the downside is with applications, and it’s not necessarily the phone’s fault. Rogers’ MobiTV is still patchy and inconsistent. N-Gage games are still nowhere near the caliber of standalone portable gaming consoles like the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. There’s still the long-standing issue that to get all of these neat applications you’re going to have to pay monthly subscription fees – on top of the phone itself costing $399.99 with a three-year activation on the Rogers Vision Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan.

Addicts and fanboys rejoice! Blackberry technology is now available in the Iphone!

After cases and cases of American companies trying to get money from the 51st state, Research in Motion, affectionately know as RIM and “the Crackberry pusher”, finally put it’s foot down and now on the offensive end!

After a small scuffle over patent disputes in push email, Visto Corp has thrown it’s hands up and admit they are in the wrong, and they stole their idea from RIM. Visto Corp, in fact, makes the push email app for the Apple Iphone.

After settling the case, the lawyers from RIM are quoted in saying “There is no settlement…. they threw in the towel.”

It’s nice to see RIM actually win these cases, and personally, I think it’s absolutely hilarious that the Apple fanboys will always have this heel in their minds. The Iphone may be original, but honestly, this isn’t new technology.

Courtesy of CBC.ca

Yesterday I was doing my usual read through of the technology news over at CBC.ca checking out the Canadian tech news when I came accross this article.

Now I’m not one to judge big business, but when it puts 1,100 of the Canadian tech support agents out of a job, I feel I need to say something.

This is absolutely deplorable what Dell is doing to Canada. This country has been more than accomodating for Dell by offering tax breaks, and credits to lure jobs over to this side of the border. In Canada, we have some of the brightest technical minds in the world. We are also friendly, curteous, and professional here in the Canadian tech sector. Dell pulling all of these jobs out of Canada is not only hurting our people, but their very own customers.

Dell’s commercials talk about award winning support and customer service. How great do you think their service and support will be when all of their centers are moved to India? More than half their service and support is already outsourced to India, and the fact of the matter is if Dell could move all of their call centers to India without pissing off a bunch of Americans in Roundrock Texas, they would!

Big business doesn’t care about the people they employ, or the families that those employees have. Big business only cares about one thing; lining their pockets with that sweet sweet green paper. With the Canadian dollar on the rise, and minimum wage moving up and up, it made it much less feasible for Dell to keep their call centers here in Canada (where the award winning service is.)

I found this exerpt in a press release made by Dell back in 2006

Dell chose Ottawa for the customer contact center expansion because of the availability of skilled labor and proximity to institutions of higher education. Ottawa has a highly-educated population, with 45 percent of its workforce holding a university degree, college diploma or certificate. The strong commitment to business provided by city, provincial and federal governments also made Ottawa an attractive expansion location.

We have skilled labour, and both of our governments gave Dell a break. What did they do in return? Pulled all the jobs out two years later. I guess that’s what happens when you use tax breaks to lure in big business isn’t that right Mr. McGuinty?

Dell clearly doesn’t care weather or not their service and support team can speak English. Outsourcing to India is a growing trend in big business that needs to be stopped and outlawed. I remember working at Bell Sympatico’s billing office back in the day, and I can’t even begin to tell you how many calls I took in a day that asked me to be transfered to an ENGLISH speaking technical support representative. Unfortunately all of our tech support people were Indian. We had maybe three or four that spoke “decent” English.

This issue is not one of people being racist or people hating India for taking their jobs, no that’s not it at all. But tell me, have you ever tried to troubleshoot an Windows error that already makes no sense with someone who also makes no sense? Have you ever tried installing an application with a tech who can’t even pronounce the name of the application. mmmmmkkkayyyyfeeee antee viroooooooooooooos? This is just unacceptable, and I am ashamed to even say I own a Dell.

God knows when my laptop goes down the tubes, rest assured that I will not be buying a Dell ever again!

The only advice I can offer Michael Dell on how to cut costs, and make money is to ACTUALLY OFFER top notch customer service and support. Mr. Dell maybe your board of directors will get rid of you and but someone from India in your place? Any job can be outsourced. Why pay you a huge salary as CEO of Dell Computers, when they could appoint someone in India as CEO and pay them $5US an hour.

This is just stupidity Mr. Dell, and you’ll be sorry when you see what kind of impact outsourcing your centers will have on your business.

You’ve made a huge mistake, and now you’ll pay a huge price for that mistake.

Here’s a Few Articles Discussing Your Amazing Customer Support:

http://www.ihatedell.net/forum/phpBB2/why-do-customers-hate-dell-f32.html

http://www.ihatedell.net/forum/phpBB2/the-good-bad-and-the-ugly-f3.html

http://www.ihatedell.net/forum/phpBB2/my-shits-busted-and-i-need-help-fixing-it-f8.html

http://www.ihatedell.net/forum/phpBB2/why-do-employees-hate-dell-f33.html

http://www.oag.state.ny.us/dell_comp/dell_lawsuit.html

Cheers Dell Computers…. Cheers.

Toshiba will completely be rid of HD DVD by March 2008 though one interesting caveat was that they will “continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives.” Why stick with HD DVD in notebooks? Well, they just recently started putting their HD DVD drives into notebooks so I am guessing they want to suck out as much money as they can before HD DVD goes completely the way of beta max.

What does this mean for Sony, Blu-Ray, and us customers? Find out my thoughts after the jump.

What does this mean for Sony and Blu-Ray in general? Now that Blu-Ray has won the format war, I see Sony making a lot more money. They (Sony) have invested a lot of their money into making Blu-Ray the winner and now with that actually happening, Sony is going to laugh their way to the bank. Also, now that customers feel secure with buying Blu-Ray, a lot of people are going to choose to buy a PS3 which would give them not only a great Blu-Ray player but a high-end gaming machine as well. Not only is this great for Sony but it’s great for the customer as well. Now manufacturers of players can focus on Blu-Ray which leads to more competition which also leads to lower prices. Blu-Ray players have just recently hit the 100-200 dollar price point. This means that as the competition heats up between manufacturers, we should start seeing sub $100 players hitting the market and phasing out standard definition DVD players.

So yes, now you can buy your Blu-Ray players and your Blu-Ray Discs without worry. Well at least until digital distribution takes over in a few years, but that’s a whole different story all together.

Extra stuff:
How many HD DVD players and recorders, exactly, did Toshiba sell?
600,000 players in the US — 300,000 of which were Xbox 360 HD DVD drives.
100,000 units were sold in Europe.
10,000 players and 20,000 recorders in Japan.
In total, about 730,000 units worldwide.

Credit to Engadget for their amazing up to date coverage of the format war.

Visit Nokia’s N810 Product Page

The technical stuff after the jump.

The Technical Stuff:

• High-resolution 4.13” WVGA display (800 x 480 pixels) with up to 65,000 colours
• TI OMAP 2420, 400Mhz
• DDR RAM 128MB, Flash 256MB
• Up to 2GB internal memory
• Support for compatible miniSD and microSD memory cards up to 8GB.
• Supported audio formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, RA (RealAudio), WAV
• Supported video formats: 3GP, AVI, WMV, MP4, H263, H.264, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, RV (RealVideo)
• Supported Image formats: BMP, GIF, ICI, JPE, JPEG, PNG, TIF/TIFF, SVG, Tiny, WBMP
• Map application with pre-loaded maps including points of interest
• Built-in keyboard, full screen finger keyboard and on-screen keyboard

Visit Nokia’s N810 Product Page

Bloomberg.com is under the impression that Apple may announce an iPhone in Canada. Members of HowardForums.com (a well known cellular community.) have their doubts.

Member AM Radio says

“sorta OT.did anyone read further into the business news today? Apple is in big-time, heavy, sweaty, contentious negotiations with CHINA MOBILE over the iPhone. the Canadian market, compared to the Chinese, is a drop in the bucket, and a teeeny drop at that.

Jobs might bat an eye if the iPhone got to Canada, but he’d pollute his britches with pleasure knowing he just got into China (where the war with Nokia would really start to get interesting …). if there’s any announcement that would shake up the tech sector a bit, it would be the solidification of the Apple/China Mobile agreement.

my 2c.”

What do we think here at NerdyBlog.com…? We think it is a possibility, and we will be watching the blogosphere like rabid dogs waiting for this scrap to hit the floor.

Stay Tuned!

NO CANADIAN iPHONE ANNOUNCEMENT! Just some new features for existing Apple Products.