NEW YORK: Criminals in the US are bragging about their murders, rapes and robberies on social networking websites, often with photos or video clips, which has made it easier for policemen to track them down. Facebook, MySpace,TwitterandYouTubehave become "everyday crime-fighting tools," theNew York Postquoted police as saying. ManhattanthiefJames Robertsgave policemen all they needed to bust him - bragging on hisMySpacepage a day after he mugged a man at a bus stop. Roberts, 27, sealed his fate with pictures of himself and his loot, which included an expensive watch and ring he swiped from the victim. "He's sitting on the couch, and then there's a close-up of his hand with the ring out," a police official said. Detectives showed the photo to the victim, who quickly identified the stolen ring. Roberts and his accomplice, Darryl Calier, were convicted of robbery, and are serving five years each. Prosecutors saidFacebookrevelations have been "instrumental" in busting up a ring of drug dealers who sold coke, ecstasy and designer dope at nightclubs. "It's almost become unfair," said an official. "Facebook and MySpace are killing these guys." The sites have been useful in breaking up gangs, solving sex assaults and tracking down stolen goods, police said. They also help find witnesses and missing people. A heroin dealer, Tyrell "Handsome Rell" Blue, put up on his MySpace page a photo of himself with a wad of cash and a claim that he earned $250,000 a year. That information was used against him when police charged him and five others with multiple counts of selling narcotics. Lt. Kevin O'Connor, of the Manhattan North Gang Intelligence unit, is regarded as a social-media expert who trolls Twitter for clues about suspects. "You can find a lot of gangs on MySpace. They actually have their own sites," said one investigator.
Apple has reloaded the iPod. The world's most watched gadget maker can now legitimately claim that the new version of the iPod touch is more than just an MP3 player. Most notably, the device now includes the "Face Time" video conferencing service, allowing users to telephone over the internet. The iPod touch, the flagship of Apple's MP3 player line, always looked similar to an iPhone. All that was missing was the cellular service component. The fourth generation of the music player, now hitting the market, remains something less than a full-featured smartphone, yet now it too can use the internet to make phone calls.
Often our perception of quality and value are colored by our experiences. Consider food, for example. If all you know is McDonalds and Dennys, Sizzler and Olive Garden are an amazing upgrade to gourmet food. But for devotees of Spagos and Per Se, their food would be barely passable.
It's the same for cell phones. Feature phone and Blackberry users, accustomed to the limitations of their platform will perceive a new device differently than devotees of the iPhone or the better Android devices.
I was reminded of this quirk of human nature while spending a week with RIM's latest Blackberry, the Torch/9800, Rim's new hybrid phone that combines an iPhone-style full-screen multi-touch device with the classic and much-loved (by execs and some few others) Blackberry keyboard.
And for some -- including myself -- who have been feasting on Blackberry's previous model, the 9700 Bold, it's quite the upgrade. The 9800 includes all the great features Blackberry fans have come to love, including great email, great phone features, and a great keyboard. It's also about the same size as the previous, non-sliding 9700 Bold, but with so much more functionality and capability.
As with most RIM devices, the best part about the 9800 is its ability to place and receive calls, and the great email inbox. Unfortunately RIM seems hellbent on having you merge all of your messages -- including twitter DMs, SMS, and mail from multiple mailboxes -- into one single interface. Sure that's nice for some, but I'd like the choice to put my work email into one inbox, and my personal email into another -- and adding in Twitter, SMS and even Facebook messages just makes it too cluttered.
And like other Blackberries, battery life was awesome. I've gotten incredibly frustrated over the last few years with supposedly "smart" phones that turn into paperweights after half a day of light texting, calling and surfing (I'm looking at you EVO, iPhone, G1). I easily stretched the Torch to two days without recharging, which is an amazing feat in a touch-based screen phone.
And Blackberry users will really go gaga over the new OS -- version 6, which will supposedly be making its way to older models over the next few months. The new OS is a welcome upgrade to the tired menu-based options of past versions, and icons and touch are pretty well integrated -- at least on the surface. Unfortunately once you get into some of the included apps you end up with the same old tired interface -- here's hoping RIM finishes the job to a modern graphical user interface with version 7. If all you know is past Blackberries, you'll find the new OS snazzy, modern and sexy. But for iPhone and Android users, it'll be a step back.
Unfortunately, and especially for iPhone and Android users, there are some major drawbacks. First, at just 480x360, the screen is a far cry from the crisp and clean 800x480 pixels found on the competition. It's an upgrade from tiny feature phone screens, certainly, but looks awful compared to the high-end competition.
The phone is also slow. The 624MHZ processor -- the same found in the 9700 -- stutters, stops and freezes regularly, making for a less than seamless experience. Again, if you're used to older phones, or any Blackberry, it's not going to be a problem. But for phone snobs, it's just not going to cut it.
But the worst part of the Torch, from my point of view, is that it is only on AT&T, and not T-Mobile. I'm not ready to ditch T-Mobile for the overcrowded AT&T network yet, and that makes the Torch out of touch for me.
Blackberry Bold Problems Arise: And it's too bad, because I'm starting to sour on the 9700. Initially I loved it, and certainly I've enjoyed using one over the past six months. But RIM's quality level and attention to detail on this model are sorely lacking. I'm on my third unit, and it's still not rock solid. The first one had its speaker go south after a few months, and the second lost its "Q" key from the keyboard inexplicably one day. The third unit is proving to be the worst of all, as the internal speaker has become almost painfully tinny, and there's a nasty software bug that causes the phone to lock -- and never unlock.
The whole handset lock situation with Blackberry is all messed up with the 9700 to begin with. Clearly RIM expects you to use their included holster, which locks and unlocks the phone using a small magnet. But I'm not ready to look *that* geeky, instead preferring to put the phone in my pocket. Which, alas, has led to a spate of pocket dialing (my apologies if I did it to you), and even one extended bout of pocket tweeting that caused my poor followers no end of confusion. And now the phone locks up and never comes out -- sometimes a physical reset works, other times I have had to resort to downgrading the OS. Quite by mistake, I noticed that inserting it in the holster will reset the lock logic -- but I'll be darned if I wear that thing around.
I'm not alone either. A quick search online shows that many other Blackberry users are plagued by the same lock, speaker and keyboard problems. Hopefully RIM is addressing those quality issues, and the Torch fixes the problems. For now, I have a phone that often will lock up, never to return no matter how many times I angrily stab the unlock key -- while on other occasions will start inexplicably dialing and tweeting to the world while nestled snug in my pocket.
Look, I'm no phone-foodie (phonie?), but I'm not fresh off the bus either. I love all the great phone features that RIM is so good at, including battery life and phone capabilities. But I'm concerned about quality overall at RIM, and unfortunately the Torch remains a generation behind the competition.
But the short of it is that if you're moving up from a Blackberry, this is an awesome choice -- because it combines the best of the Blackberry tradition with a multi-touch full screen environment. The new OS version is miles better than its predecessor. But it is absolutely part of the schizoid Blackberry experience -- to a local yokel, the Torch is a feast of tasty features. Those with a more sophisticated mobile palate, though, will find it flat.
Granted, calling the new babyMacBook Aira netbook is probably punishable by flogging atAppleInc's corporate HQ. Indeed, the entire category of netbooks -- shrunken laptops that usually weigh 2 to 3 pounds and lack such accoutrements as a DVD drive -- is under growing pressure from, among other things, the new wave of even lighter tablet computers spearheaded by Apple's own iPad. Still, by any recognizable definition, a netbook is exactly what the entry-level Air is. Except, of course, that those devices are cheap, often uncomfortably cramped and underpowered, with slow hard drives that take forever to boot and batteries that require a tradeoff between bulk and performance. The MacBook Air isn't any of those things. It is, unquestionably, the sexiest laptop going. The wedge- shaped case is machined aluminum; at its thinnest point, along the front edge where it opens, it's only 0.11 of an inch -- considerably thinner than an iPad. It comes in two sizes: the one I've mostly been using, which has an 11.6-inch screen and costs $999 with 64 gigabytes of storage or $1,199 with 128 GB; and a 13.3-inch model with a more powerful processor that sells for $1,299 with 128 GB, or $1,599 for 256 GB. Big Brother Both models come with two gigabytes of memory standard. The smaller one weighs in at 2.3 pounds (1 kilogram); Big Brother is 2.9 pounds. There's a spacious keyboard and generously sized trackpad that makes it easy to use even in tight spaces, such as on an airline tray table. The Air blurs the line between laptop and tablet computing: Some of its key features are borrowed directly from the iPad. Its secret sauce is the hard disk -- or rather, the lack of one. With the new models, Apple has eliminated mechanical drives from the Air line in favor of the same sort of flash-memory chips it uses in the iPad, and the benefits ripple throughout the experience of using the machine. For one thing, the solid-state memory responds so quickly that it makes the MacBook Air feel faster and more powerful than it really is. Both Airs are powered by Intel Corp.'s Core 2 Duo microprocessors, which -- while more potent than the Intel Atom chips found in many Microsoft Windows-based netbooks -- are still previous-generation technology. Instant On In addition, the flash memory speeds boot-up time: A cold start takes less than 15 seconds -- about as close to instant-on performance as we're likely to see in anything this side of an Amazon Kindle. (My Windows 7-poweredToshibaNB 305 netbook takes two minutes, give or take.) Moreover, the combination of solid-state memory and the Mac's power-management features means you aren't as likely to turn it off in the first place, making the experience of using it that much more iPad-like -- just lift the lid and you're ready to go. Using the computer for basic tasks, including word processing and surfing the Web over a Wi-Fi connection, I was able to easily exceed Apple's claims of five-hour battery life for the smaller Air; the 13.3-inch model, which has a beefier battery, promises seven hours of operation. Apple claims up to 30 days of standby time for both models, and while I haven't had the Air long enough to test that statement, my experience with the device so far leads me to believe it. Main Drawbacks The principal compromises imposed by the Air are storage and the inconvenience of adding software or watching a movie. While flash-memory chips have come down in price, spending four figures on a computer that doesn't store much more than a typical smartphone may rub you the wrong way. The other drawback -- the absence of a DVD slot -- isn't as big a hindrance as you might think, and is growing less so by the day. The MacBook Air's emergency recovery disk, for instance, isn't a disk at all -- it's a USB thumb drive. (The Air now has two USB ports, one more than the previous model, though not the new, high-speed 3.0 version.) More and more video content is arriving online, via streaming services like Netflix and Apple's own iTunes Store. Also, Apple is promising to bring the iPhone's App Store concept to the Mac within the next three months, which will make it easier to download software directly onto the Air. In the meantime, if you want to install, say, Microsoft Corp.'s new Office 2011 for Mac from a disk, you'll either have to bear the hassle of configuring an optical drive on some other nearby computer to allow the Air to borrow it, or pay $79 for Apple's external read-write DVD drive. Two years ago, Apple's Jobs dismissed the idea of making an ultra-small Mac because "we don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk." With its sleek looks, swift performance, Nvidia Corp. graphics processor and other premium features, the MacBook Air is most certainly not a piece of junk. Then again, it doesn't cost $500 either. Just don't let Apple catch you calling it a netbook.
Apple Inc may introduce a thinner iPad in the first half of next year with features such as a camera for video-calling and chips made byQualcommInc. that let it work on global wireless networks, analysts say. Production may start as early as January, with an introduction to the public by February or March, said Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets inToronto. The device will feature Qualcomm chips that allow a Web connection on both GSM and CDMA networks, the dominant radio standards used in mobile phones, said Brian Blair of Wedge Partners, who said he expects an April debut. "They can sell it around the globe without having to worry if it works with one carrier's network or another carrier's network," said Blair, who is based inNew York. Infineon Technologies AG, whose wireless business is being acquired by Intel Corp., now makes those radio chips for the iPad. The announcement's timing would put the iPad on an annual cycle of introductions similar to those of iPhones and iPods. Paul Jacobs, chief executive officer of San Diego-based Qualcomm, declined to comment when asked in a Nov. 16 interview if his company's chips will be part of new products by Apple. Apple declined to comment, said Natalie Harrison, a spokeswoman. Suppliers of parts to the iPad have had fourth-quarter orders cut by about 10 percent, said Patrick Wang an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities in New York. The most likely explanation is that Apple wants to draw down inventory ahead of the new model's launch in the first quarter of 2011, he said. Bigger than iPod The iPad, which went on sale in April, accounted for about 13.7 percent of Apple's revenue last quarter, more than the nine-year-old old iPod media player. The device helped establish a market for tablet computers that blend the capabilities of a smartphone and notebook computer, leading rivals such Samsung Electronics Co and Research In Motion Ltd to introduce their own models. Apple may sell 48 million iPads next year, said Blair.
