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	<title>The Connected Circuit &#187; Hardware</title>
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		<title>HTC Hero coming exclusively to Sprint</title>
		<link>http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/09/04/htc-hero-coming-exclusively-to-sprint/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/09/04/htc-hero-coming-exclusively-to-sprint/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:18:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter To</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Android]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gadgets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hero]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[htc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[htc-hero]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Phones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sprint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/?p=458</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s official Sprint will be the exclusive US carrier for the hot device that is the HTC Hero. Featuring a new svelte chinless design and HTC&#8217;s in house built &#8220;Sense Experience&#8221; UI. This marks the first non-T-Mobile Android headset to reach this part of the shore. Sprint is sure hitting it out of the ballpark, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s official Sprint will be the exclusive US carrier for the hot device that is the <a href="http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/06/25/htc-hero-the-android-cometh/">HTC Hero</a>. Featuring a new svelte chinless design and HTC&#8217;s in house built &#8220;Sense Experience&#8221; UI. This marks the first non-T-Mobile Android headset to reach this part of the shore. Sprint is sure hitting it out of the ballpark, first the exclusive carrier to the <a href="http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/06/04/palm-pre-review-round-up/">Palm pre</a> and now they&#8217;ve got the hottest Android phone. Expect this to drop on October 11th at $179.99 with a 2 year contract. Presser is <a href="http://newsreleases.sprint.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=127149&amp;p=irol-newsArticle_newsroom&amp;ID=1327394">here</a>, Sprint sign up is <a href="http://delivery.sprint.com/m/p/nxt/hero/index.asp?id9=vanity:hero">here </a>and the specs (with pictures to the Jay Leno-chin version) is <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/product/hero/overview.html">here</a>.</p>
<p>In case you missed it, here is a drill down of what you can expect:</p>
<ul>
<li>Built in GPS with digital compass</li>
<li>Exchange Active sync support</li>
<li>3.2&#8243; 320 x 480 capacitive touchscreen</li>
<li>Android</li>
<li>ROM: 512 MB</li>
<li>RAM: 288 MB</li>
<li>Qualcomm MSM7200A, 528 MHz CPU</li>
</ul>
<p>Just also keep in mind, since HTC heavily modified this device, this won&#8217;t come stock with any of those Google Apps you&#8217;ll see in full Google Experience phones, such as the <a href="http://www.htc.com/us/product/g1/overview.html">G1</a> (<a href="http://www.htc.com/www/product/dream/overview.html">HTC Dream</a>) or the <a href="http://www.htc.com/us/product/Mytouch3G/overview.html">myTouch</a> (<a href="http://www.htc.com/www/product/magic/overview.html">HTC Magic</a>), but be sure that someone like <a href="http://twitter.com/cyanogen">Cyanogen</a> or someone from <a href="http://www.xda-developers.com/">XDA </a>will be able to hack it in there somehow.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/htc-sprint-hero-2009-09-03_06-49-46-rm-eng-1251986298.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-459" style="border: 0pt none;" title="htc-sprint-hero-2009-09-03_06-49-46-rm-eng-1251986298" src="http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/htc-sprint-hero-2009-09-03_06-49-46-rm-eng-1251986298.jpg" alt="htc-sprint-hero-2009-09-03_06-49-46-rm-eng-1251986298" width="533" height="800" /></a></p>
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		<title>Mediastreamers: Why they aren&#8217;t dead</title>
		<link>http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/06/04/mediastreamers-why-they-arent-dead/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/06/04/mediastreamers-why-they-arent-dead/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:00:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter To</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Apple]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[apple-tv]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boxee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mediastreamers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[multimedia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/?p=249</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last night one of my favorite hosts finally made his triumphant return on the silver screen, Conan O&#8217;Brien, on the newly revitalized Tonight Show, but unfortunately I missed it. I don&#8217;t have a TiVo and I didn&#8217;t want to wait hours to download Conan&#8217;s first episode, I just wanted to watch it. So I turned [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span>Last night one of my favorite hosts finally made his triumphant return on the silver screen, Conan O&#8217;Brien, on the newly revitalized Tonight Show, but unfortunately I missed it. I don&#8217;t have a TiVo and I didn&#8217;t want to wait hours to download Conan&#8217;s first episode, I just wanted to watch it. So I turned to the source that I knew would have it, <a href="http://www.hulu.com/" target="_blank">Hulu</a>. For those who don&#8217;t know Hulu is, it is a collaboration between all the big TV studios, Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS (it first started out with just Fox and NBC) offering the latest episodes, for free, on-demand viewing. The only requirements is that you have a <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/" target="_blank">capable </a><a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html?from=getfirefox" target="_blank">browser</a>, <a href="http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/" target="_blank">Adobe flash player</a> installed, and a fast enough connection to stream the sub-SD/ED quality video. But I had a dilemma, instead of watching it on 24&#8243; LCD monitor, I wanted to watch it on my 42&#8243; Panasonic plasma HDTV that was situated right in my living room. I had a few options, either I bring out all the </span><span>necessary </span><span>cables and wires  to hook up my computer to my TV and disabling the use of my computer for the ~45 minutes or I could use something <a href="http://boxee.tv/" target="_blank">boxee</a> that I installed on my <a href="http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/apple_tv?mco=MTE4MTU" target="_blank">Apple TV</a>, which was already hooked up to my TV, to stream the content direct from Hulu itself. The choice was obvious, I fired up my Apple TV, navigated to the Hulu feeds application in boxee and I was ready to watch the plethora of video made available through Hulu. I was ready to watch Conan completely disconnected from my computer. There are plenty of other uses for my Apple TV with boxee. I can seamlessly stream media within my personal network, connect to <a href="http://last.fm/" target="_blank">Last.FM</a>, <a href="http://www.pandora.com/" target="_blank">pandora</a>, watch or listen </span><span><a href="http://www.geekbrief.tv/" target="_blank">my</a></span><span> <a href="http://www.tekzilla.com/" target="_blank">favorite</a>podcasts or any number of add-on applications that others had created to watch content from <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/" target="_blank">Discovery</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/" target="_blank">Youtube</a>, <a href="http://www.joost.com/" target="_blank">Joost</a>, <a href="http://vimeo.com/" target="_blank">Vimeo</a>, or <a href="http://www.theonion.com/" target="_blank">the Onion</a>&#8230; the list goes on and on.</span></p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 504px"><a href="http://lifehacker.com/5138423/cut-the-cable-for-good-with-boxee-and-apple-tv"><img title="Apple TV" src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/01/appletv_boxee.jpg" alt="Apple TV" width="494" height="250" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">*Image cred to Lifehacker</p></div>
<p><span>If there&#8217;s so much free content, why aren&#8217;t more people using boxee? Well, a few reasons, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5138423/cut-the-cable-for-good-with-boxee-and-apple-tv" target="_blank">installing</a> <a href="http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/10/06/how-to-video-boxee-on-apple-tv/" target="_blank">boxee</a> <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5082130/how-to-max-out-apple-tvs-potential-with-boxee" target="_blank">on the</a> Apple TV isn&#8217;t the most seamless and easiest thing to do and if you&#8217;re expecting to get HD content streamed to your <a href="http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/apple_tv?mco=MTE4MTU" target="_blank">Apple TV</a>, don&#8217;t be. The Apple TV is simply not powerful enough, it can barely handle 480p streams (video can be choppy at times), but that&#8217;s a limitation on how Adobe Flash works.<br />
</span></p>
<p><span>The Apple TV never makes use of the GPU because of its proprietary nature, reverse engineering the thing would be one heck of a trial. However, that&#8217;s all going to change with the recent <a href="http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200906/060209AdobeandNvidia.html" target="_blank">announcement </a>that Adobe is working hard with other companies, such as <a href="http://www.nvidia.com/page/home.html" target="_blank">Nvidia </a>and <a href="http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&amp;STORY=/www/story/06-02-2009/0005036356&amp;EDATE=" target="_blank">Broadcom</a>, to develop a way for it to offload some of the video decoding to the GPU, resulting in a less choppy, HD video playback.<br />
</span></p>
<p><span>Another thing holding boxee back is that fact that the bandwidth speeds in the US required for these streams is simply not there, you can blame that on those<a href="http://consumerist.com/5207002/time-warner-cable-caps-metered-broadband-overage-fees-at-75" target="_blank"> ISPs</a> implementing speed caps and metering. Video steams would be hit with much buffering to the point where it would keep you waiting for minutes at a time, which is not very seamless.<br />
</span></p>
<p><span>Let&#8217;s, also, not forget that Microsoft&#8217;s Xbox 360 and Sony&#8217;s PlayStation 3 has media streaming/extending capabilities as well. Those two devices double as gaming consoles and media devices and features are constantly getting added. Just this Monday, Microsoft <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/01/xbox-live-gets-live-tv-streaming-netflix-browsing/" target="_blank">announced </a>that the Xbox 360 is to have advanced <a href="http://www.netflix.com/">Netflix</a> queue integration, taking the computer part out of the equation and letting you browse Netflix&#8217;s watch instantly movie catalog, as well as, <a href="http://last.fm/" target="_blank">last.fm</a> integration. It&#8217;s a pretty big deal, where in the past, you&#8217;d have to go to a computer, log into your Netflix account, find stuff you want to watch and then add it to your queue. This cuts having a computer out, giving you access to browse straight from the 360.<br />
</span></p>
<p><span>However, with the popularity and interest of all the individuals in the development of boxee, which can be installed on just about any platform (right now you can get it for the Apple TV, Mac OS X, and Linux and a Windows build is coming as early as the end of June). With the recent release of a <a href="http://developer.boxee.tv/" target="_blank">developer API</a>, it has limitless potential. If you have the know how and the drive to build an application, the tools are these for you to use to build your own application, kudos to the openness that is boxee. What&#8217;s most exciting is the operating system-agnostic behavior of boxee, it doesn&#8217;t have to be confined to a particular set of hardware, since it was originally a fork of the the very popular <a href="http://xbmc.org/" target="_blank">XMBC</a>, which gave whomever had an original Xbox the ability to turn it into a multimedia powerhouse. Boxee is making the experience of watching on-demand content as easy as turning on your TV. For <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5259977/so-long-stupid-media-streaming-boxes-you-sucked" target="_blank">those</a> <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10244006-1.html?tag=TOCmoreStories.0" target="_blank">proclaiming </a>the death of mediastreamers, you couldn&#8217;t be more wrong, they aren&#8217;t dead but just taking a different form. I did eventually end up watching Conan using boxee and it was almost as seamless as watching it on TV.</span></p>
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		<title>Palm Pre Review Round Up</title>
		<link>http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/06/04/palm-pre-review-round-up/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/2009/06/04/palm-pre-review-round-up/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:00:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter To</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Gadgets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review Roundups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mobile-phones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palm-pre]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Phones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pre]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[webOS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theconnectedcircuit.com/blog/?p=261</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The launch of the Palm Pre is just around the corner, but reviews were out in full force tonight. Before you dish out that cash, be sure to check out all the reviews for the Palm Pre to get the real low-down on whether or not it lives up to all the hype (from all [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter" title="Gizmodo Palm Pre Pic" src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/06/prereview.jpg" alt="Palm Pre" width="482" height="322" /></p>
<p>The launch of the Palm Pre is just around the corner, but reviews were out in full force tonight. Before you dish out that cash, be sure to check out all the reviews for the Palm Pre to get the real low-down on whether or not it lives up to all the hype (from all indications it does). Here are the reviews, in no particular order. I will add more reviews as I see them, but so far the reviews have been glowingly positive. Some caveats of the Pre are the software is extremely nice and fluid, contacts management is an all or nothing affair, the device feels like a toy at times, and the keyboard is so-so. However, for a first generation device, it performs surprisingly well. Reviewers have also noted that it being on Sprint&#8217;s network could hold this device back from selling even more and the device doesn&#8217;t seem as sturdy as it could be. Looks like I may switch to Sprint after all.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/palm-pre-review/">Engadget</a></p>
<p><a href="http://gizmodo.com/5277499/palm-pre-review">Gizmodo</a></p>
<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124407239691783093.html#mod=article-outset-box">WSJ</a>/<a href="http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090603/palms-new-pre-takes-on-iphone/">All Things Digital</a> &#8211; Walt Mossberg</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/technology/personaltech/04pogue.html?8dpc=&amp;_r=2&amp;pagewanted=all">NYTimes &#8211; Dave Pogue</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/06/palm-pre-the-wired-review-by-steven-levy/">Wired&#8217;s Gadget Lab</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.slashgear.com/palm-pre-review-0345853/">SlashGear</a></p>
<p><a href="http://mypre.com/palm-pre-review-2-2009031789/">MyPre</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/05/29/palm-pre-review/">Boy Genius Report</a> (Only Part 1)</p>
<p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/05/31/countdown-to-palm-pre-my-super-quick-hands-on-review/">GigaOM</a> (Quick Review)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/61683/review/pre.html">PCWorld</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338899,00.asp">PCMag</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.laptopmag.com/review/cell-phones/palm-pre-sprint.aspx">Laptop Mag</a></p>
<p><a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/palm-pre/4505-6452_7-33490473.html?&amp;subj=re&amp;tag=smallCarouselArea.0">CNET</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=274">Phonescoop</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/01/palm_pre_mini_review.html">UberGizmo (mini-)review</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE5530EO20090604">Reuters</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ihYLyeD2564pg-DqjcewukkE7K4gD98JHPI80">AP</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_24/b4135000732267.htm">BusinessWeek</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2009-06-03-palm-pre-review_N.htm">USA Today</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.precentral.net/palm-pre-review">PreCenral </a>- Epic Review</p>
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