WSJ: T-Mobile wants to sell Huawei Ideos

WSJ: T-Mobile wants to sell Huawei Ideos

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that T-Mobile is “in talks to distribute Huawei Technologies Co.’s new Google-powered smartphone this holiday season.” The phone in question, dubbed the Ideos, was revealed yesterday in Berlin. The phone is an inexpensive, 2.8-inch touchscreen, Android 2.2 device that Huawei says will be a powerful and accessible Android handset. The WSJ quotes a person familiar with the matter and explains that “an agreement would give Huawei an opening into the U.S. market and T-Mobile a low-cost smartphone.” The suggested retail price for the Ideos is between $100 and $200 off-contract.

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Determine Restaurant Wait Times Before You Leave the House [APPS]

Determine Restaurant Wait Times Before You Leave the House [APPS]
If you’re anything like me (too impatient to boil water), you hate waiting to be seated at restaurants — those blinking, vibrating beeper things really are instruments of the devil, no? Well, The Onion’s A.V. Club has come up with a solution for you: a crowdsourced iPhone app that lets you know about wait times at local eateries.

According to The A.V. Club’s website, the idea was inspired by popular Chicago hot dog maker, Hot Doug. If you’ve ever been to Chi-Town, you’ve probably partaken in Hot Doug’s wondrous wares — dude even braved a fine for serving up foie gras hot dogs during the ban of that particular duck product in the Windy City. In short: He makes good hot dogs, and the line is often long to procure one.

First came a Twitter feed, designed to keep tabs on wait times, and then the Onion partnered with Invoke to develop WaitList, a free iPhone app for the hungry and the impatient. Basically, it’s like a super-specialized Foursquare. Simply send a tip with regard to your wait time the next time you’re stuck bar-side and other app users will benefit from your frustration. But, hey, if you pay it forward it will pay off for you eventually. Still, all users will have to be active on the app in order for it to really work.

This idea reminds us of Google’s Open Spot app, which crowd sources users to share news about open parking spots. Both require users to be active with checkins in order for the app to work best. (However, this particular app doesn’t encourage people to check in behind the wheel.)

Currently, the app is only available for the iPhone, which is a pain for all of us Android users out there. I hate waiting…

In the meantime, check out some screenshots below:

Image courtesy of Flickr, Geoff Peters 604

Angry Bird for Android

Angry Bird for Android: "

As of today, that-famous-iPhone-game is now also available on Android Market!!! If you haven’t play it before, you ought to try it. Its really addicting and useful to kill time whenever you’re bored. On the iPhone world itself, this game has been so phenomenal that it is sitting on the top spot of Apple App Store for a while.

Sadly, the game is only available to 2nd generation Android phone, so probably it wont be available for those who are still using Donut(1.6) and below.

The game is still in Beta, so please let us know what you think of the game. Is it going to rock the world just as its iPhone cousin does?

Source: Rovio

Sharp 3D Phone At IFA

Sharp 3D Phone At IFA: "

Sharp will be showcasing a new cellphone at the IFA that will feature a glasses-free 3D phone that sports a camera that is capable of shooting 3D images too. The 3D images are captured thanks to the inclusion of two lenses. The glasses-free experience is due to the use of a lenticular lens, similar to that Nintendo's 3DS uses. The phone is currently still a concept, but Sharp spokespeople claim that it could be out this year.

Latest Build of LauncherPro Plus Brings Twitter Widget and Bug Fixes

Latest Build of LauncherPro Plus Brings Twitter Widget and Bug Fixes: "

Federico Carnales, probably one of the hardest working Android coders right now, has just released a new version of his popular homescreen replacement LauncherPro. The update to v0.7.7.2 includes a number of tweaks and bug fixes, such as improvements to the 3D app drawer which earlier sometimes would trigger involuntary long-presses.

The biggest addition, however, is for Plus users only: a Twitter widget. One of the most requested LauncherPro features was support for the HTC widgets, but since they are stored within Sense and cannot be used elsewhere, Carnales decided to make his own versions of them. There were already five widgets in LP’s arsenal: People, Bookmarks, Calendar, Messaging, and now Twitter can be added to the list.

The developer had initially planned to just make a widget that combined Twitter and Facebook, but once he started coding he decided that it would be preferable with three widgets instead: one for Twitter, one for Facebook and one Twitter/Facebook combination (such as the HTC Friends widget).

The Twitter widget looks great, is easy to configure and naturally uses the correct form of authentication unlike some other Twitter apps. Since all LauncherPro widgets can be resized, the Twitter widget comes in one size only. There are three different views: Timeline, Mentions, and Direct Messages. There is also a Compose button, and when you tap on a tweet you can reply, retweet, or send a direct message to the user.

The new widget currently has one major downside, though: the update interval is 15 minutes and cannot be changed. Future updates will luckily support a custom refresh rate, but since it ought to be a very easy option to add compared to writing the actual Twitter widget, it’s weird that he didn’t include it from the start.

One final thought: LevelUp Studio had to change the design of some of its widget because they looked too much like HTC Sense – will Federico Carnales eventually have to do the same?

Via [LauncherPro.com]

Samsung Galaxy Tab Rooted Before Launch

Samsung Galaxy Tab Rooted Before Launch: "

As we previously mentioned, Samsung's Galaxy Tab is getting plenty of attention this week, and now perhaps the device has gotten a little too much attention for Samsung's liking. The tablet hasn't even been made available for mass consumption yet, and the folks over at Sera-Apps have already managed to root the Galaxy Tab before the device is launched, which will allow you to fiddle with the system as you see fit. That being said, it remains to be seen if Samsung will take this period of time before the release to patch up the vulnerability that allows the rooting to be performed.

Twitter for iPhone/iPad getting push notifications soon

Twitter for iPhone/iPad getting push notifications soon: "

It seems that when the Twitter for iPad app launched a few days ago, a few users were accidentally blessed with push notifications. Those privileges have since been revoked, but it seemed to confirm that the option would be coming soon.

Well, Twitter reached out to Mashable today to explain how it happened, as well as to confirm that push notifications are, indeed, coming to the iPhone/iPad soon, but it’s still being tested internally for the moment.

To quote the original article:

“When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users,” wrote a Twitter spokesperson. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app.”

“We’ve been testing push notifications internally,” the rep continued. “Push isn’t ready yet, but we look forward to rolling this out soon.”

This means that users of the app will soon get real-time notifications on certain types of messages — eg DMs or Mentions — making the app that much more useful as a communication tool.