1. Big, Ugly Bezel
   Have you seen the bezel on this thing?! It’s huge! I know you don’t want to accidentally input a command when your thumb is holding it, but come on.
   
2. No Multitasking
   This is a backbreaker. If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can’t listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can’t have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can’t have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product.
   
3. No Cameras
   No front facing camera is one thing. But no back facing camera either? Why the hell not? I can’t imagine what the downside was for including at least one camera. Could this thing not handle video iChat?
   
4. Touch Keyboard
   So much for Apple revolutionizing tablet inputs; this is the same big, ugly touchscreen keyboard we’ve seen on other tablets, and unless you’re lying on the couch with your knees propping it up, it’ll be awkward to use.
   
5. No HDMI/HD Video Out
   Want to watch those nice HD videos you downloaded from iTunes on your TV? Too damned bad! If you were truly loyal, you’d just buy an AppleTV already.
   
6. The Name iPad
   Get ready for Maxi pad jokes, and lots of ‘em!
   
7. No Flash
   No Flash is annoying but not a dealbreaker on the iPhone and iPod Touch. On something that’s supposed to be closer to a netbook or laptop? It will leave huge, gaping holes in websites. I hope you don’t care about streaming video! God knows not many casual internet users do. Oh wait, nevermind, they all do.
   
8. Adapters, Adapters, Adapters
   So much for those smooth lines. If you want to plug anything into this, such as a digital camera, you need all sorts of ugly adapters. You need an adapter for USB for god’s sake.

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What I like:
- UI is much better, OS seems fairly fast and responsive.
- Google Maps Navigation.
- Solid HTC hardware. About the size of an iPhone, feels good in the hand/pocket.
- The bundled apps are excellent with (obviously) deep Google integration.
- 5MP camera w/flash, options to set white balance, effects, location, and focus.

What I didn’t like:
- Some UI inconsistencies between Google apps.
- GPS sucks the battery down pretty fast.
- There are only a handful of good Android apps, most of them are written by Google.

Final thoughts:
Android based phones have always seemed ..how to put this.. Linux-like. That is, solid and utilitarian but lacking the eye candy and attention to detail. This phone/OS release closes the gap on the iPhone, but doesn’t overtake it. That said, if my favorite iPhone apps make the jump to android I’d seriously consider making this my full-time phone when the Verizon model is released. Nice job Google, you’ve come a long way in a short amount of time.

-Source

So with that, I want to know what phone is your baby?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

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This is actually old news, but I only just stumbled across it a couple of days ago. You see, news of Adobe’s next Creative Suite is so hard to come by that this is still the latest Photoshop development! In fact, since October, the only news they’ve released was to announce the cancellation of their Flash CS5 public beta. But can I say, having just watched the the ’sneak peek’, I am now very, very excited about the possible applications for Adobe’s CS5. Give us more news, Adobe!

Do you see the 3D elements that have been thrown in? The wire frame, the joints (the kinematics!), the simulation of a paint brush’s tip… it’s really quite crazy. I know Adobe gets a lot of flak for the continuous milking of their cash cow, but after that video I could almost forgive them.

With no news since October, and their usual 18- to 24-month development cycle, we might actually see Photoshop CS5 and Flash within a couple of months. I’m positively eager to review both of them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Being more of a software guy than a hardware geek myself, I was the only Lifehacker editor who had never built a PC from scratch. So when I needed a new PC late last year, I took the plunge and built my custom system. I’m so glad I didthe project turned out to be one of my proudest accomplishments of 2008. If you’ve cracked open your PC before to install a new hard drive or TV capture card, but you’ve never built a whole new system from the ground up, it’s not as difficult as you might think. Here are my notes for first-timers who want to build instead of buy their next computer.

Why Build Instead of Buy

“But computers are so cheap these days,” you say. “Why waste the time and energy building your own system when you can get a great machine fully assembled and shipped to your door?” That’s a great question. Building your own PC will not save you time. It might save you money, but that’s not even the best reason to do it. For me, it was a fantastic hands-on educational experience. It gives me a deep sense of satisfaction every single day when I press the power button on my tower, watch it light up, and know that I plugged in the wire that goes from that light to the motherboard. Building your PC takes the mystery out of what’s going on inside that black box you spend hours on per day.

There are other good reasons to build instead of buy, too. With your own build you can customize your system just how you like and make your perfect media center or gaming machine. You can save money if you already have some parts (though see my warnings on the dangers of a “Frankenbuild” below). Upgrading your PC in the future becomes easier and cheaper since your parts aren’t tied to a particular manufacturer. With a custom build you can do fun stuff like overclock your CPU and get more bang for your buck, or install OS Xwhere it was never intended to run.

In short, building your own PC makes you feel like a badass.

What You’re Getting Into

Don’t get me wrong, though: building a PC (for the first time especially) takes research, time, gumption, patience, and a willingness to deal with several WTF moments. If you’ve never cracked a PC’s case and installed parts, like a new hard drive or a video card, start there first. If you’ve got that experience under your belt, you might think that building a new PC is just a matter of snapping together a few parts. It is, but building from the ground up takes much more than an hour or two. My build took two full days, one online order, one returned motherboard, two trips to Fry’s, one condescending sneer from a sales associate when I asked a newb question, and one trip to Radio Shack. If that sounds like a lot, well, it was, and there were moments in the process when I wished I’d just bought a Dell. But when it finally all came together, all the sweat makes the results even sweeter.

Where to Start: Researching and Buying Your Parts

You scared off yet? No? Good. Let’s get down to it. There are a gadzillion articles on the internet about building your own PC, but many are way out of date, or just don’t get specific about what exactly you should buy. When I had to start researching what parts to purchase, of course I turned to savvy Lifehacker readers to help me out. Several readers mentioned Ars Technica’s excellent system buyer’s guide, which breaks down exactly what parts you’d want for one of three levels of computer: a “budget box,” a “hot rod,” or a “God box.” The 2008 guide published last fall; make sure you use the most recent one when you start your research. I started by plugging parts from Ars’ “hot rod” system list into Newegg to get a sense of price and see if there were any deals, coupons or upgrades. In the end I didn’t use Ars’ exact recommendations, but it was an awesome, up-to-date, jumping-off point.

Your research into parts is the most important stage of the process. For first-timers it can be bewildering, and you will have questions. Just keep reading, take notes, consult with forums or sales associates, and remember that if you make the wrong purchase you can always return it for the right one. In the photo to the left you’ll see my build’s case, motherboard, power supply, CPU, and RAM. (I had a video card, DVD drive, and a hard drive from an old machine I planned to use in my new build.)

See this entire comment thread for more resources on deciding what parts to buy for your budget.

Get Down and Dirty

Once you’ve got your hot little hands on all the parts you need, the real fun begins. There are two stages to your build: the hardware stage, and the software stage. Adam’s already covered how to install each individual hardware component. Here’s the list:

• Install the motherboard and CPU
• Install your RAM
• Install the video card
• Install the hard drive and DVD drive

Once you’ve got everything plugged in and mounted inside your case, leave the case sides off and plug in your keyboard, mouse, monitor, and power, and press the On button. This is the moment of truth. The first time you see the lights come on and the system setup appear on-screen, you’ll feel like you’ve just arrived at the top of Mount Everest.

If the machine doesn’t power on, or there’s no video signal, or the keyboard doesn’t workjust unplug everything and check your connections. It took me a few hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing attempts to get my new build to boot properly. If it doesn’t work the first time, take a breath, unplug it all, and try again. Don’t cry; that won’t help.

Once you’re into the machine’s BIOS setup, key around and make sure the motherboard recognizes your DVD or CD drive and your hard drive. You’ll need those working in order to install your operating system. Everything there? Now set your boot sequence to check your optical drive first. Insert your operating system’s disc into your CD or DVD drive, and restart the machine. Now your operating system’s setup will launch on boot, and you can install away.

In the meantime, blast very loud rock music, strut about the vicinity, arms upraised, and revel in your greatness.

Mistakes I Made That You Can Avoid

When you build your first PC, keep a few things in mind I wished I’d realized before I started.

• Beware of the “Frankenbuild.” A great way to save money on your new PC is using parts that you’ve already got around. But I was overly optimistic about what items from my very old Dell tower would work in my new system. I assumed my hard drive would work (it did, but it was an IDE drive, which I wound up replacing with a faster SATA model), I hoped my video card would work (it didn’t), and I thought my DVD drive would work (it did). In the end I wound up buying parts I thought I’d be able to reuse, so my total price wasn’t as low as my initial estimate.
• Expect mishaps. I bought the wrong motherboard. Well, not the wrong one, but one that didn’t have a FireWire port, which I wanted. Well, I had a FireWire card, but it didn’t fit into the motherboard. Anyway, I figured all this out after I installed the CPU, which meant I had to remove it from the board, break the thermal compound seal, and ship the motherboard back. When I got the new motherboard and reinstalled the CPU, because the thermal compound left there didn’t work anymore, the machine would start and within 10 seconds overheat and shut itself off. Next thing you know I’m scraping hardened thermal compound off the CPU with Goof Off and a credit card, and reapplying fresh from a tube I had to pick up from Radio Shack. Lesson: there will be mishaps. Expect crap to go wrong. Be confident in your ability to fix it after you Google the solution to the problem hundreds of people have had before you did.
• Read the frakkin’ manual. With years of tinkering in my PC’s case under my belt, I went into my build eager to start working and only skimmed the user guides and online howto’s before I started. Don’t do that. Open and read the full-on manual that comes in the box with every single one of your parts. If you’re not sure about something said manual includes, do your research before you plug anything in.
• Buy locally if you can. My initial parts order was from Newegg, which was great price-wise, but really sucked when I had to return my motherboard, because I had to pay shipping fees and a restocking fee. With a Fry’s down the road, I regretted not just buying everything at the store itself from the get-go to to make returns easier.
• Give yourself lots of time. I wrongly assumed I’d be able to finish my build in a day, but it took two whole days and stressed me out because they were work days. Don’t build a new PC when you’re on deadline or otherwise pinched for time. Give yourself a whole weekend and a clean and spacious work area that you can leave filled with packing debris and electronic parts strewn about for a few days.

Have you built your own PC? Are you considering taking the leap? Let us know how it went or what you’re thinking in the comments.

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It has a few good features from MAC a few from PC and obviously Google’s spin on things with features like the notification panel and such. Check out Google’s first produced video telling you exactly why they made this thing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And Google’s staunch “no third party apps” stance means that no, you won’t be running Firefox on Chrome OS. Google doesn’t want other apps playing in their sandbox, it would seem.

Personally, it looks like I’ll enjoy playing with Chrome OS but I can’t see myself relying on it for day-to-day computing. I’d prefer to at least run a lightweight but fuller-featured linux distribution like xPudor Crunchbang where I have more flexibility.

I own a Dell Mini 9 and would like to see it running Google Chrome OS. But I will always need my Adobe & Digidesign products to run my business. So until it runs everything then its just a netbook OS to me. Lastly, enjoy their actual demo part of the day video where they boot this baby up supa fast! Oh yeah!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Though at the time of this post we only have iPhone wallpapers, I am working on adding wallpapers for any screen size and type, hence the name paper your screen! So please go check out the webpage and start rating and commenting the images in there so far. The design of the site will be changing alot so please come back if not to see the wonderfully designed new wallpapers from various artists but also for the new layout changes we will be adding as we go.

View site

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Since a long time ago making alot of calm sounding ringtones for people I decided I should just go ahead and give you guys my complete list of this months ringtone collection. People seem to like to come to the site for my ringtones so what the hell right? If you are interested in getting your own ringtones made even songs completely made like with your own saying being chanted or what not, do not be affraid to ask for something in the comments or however you guys want to contact me.

This is just a zip file that’s about 26 MB full of m4r files that you just place anywhere and drag into your iTunes and then drag or sync to your iPhone. Others that are smarter and need mp3’s for whatever phone, just open these files and convert to mp3 using your favorite audio editor tool like Audition or Sound Forge or maybe Audacity if that opens that format. Pretty simple right? Good!

Here is a quick list of just some of the songs you’ll get

• Kanye West – Heartbreak Collection
• 311 – Random
• Basket Case
• Beatles Songs
• Big Booty Hoes (Hump wit it!!!)
• Brad Sucks
• C’mon ride that Train!
• System of a Down – Chop Suet
• Do the Stinky Leg
• Eazy E
• Some Gangsta shit!
• House of Pain – Jump Around
• I CAN BREAK THESE CUFFS (anyone remember this?)
• Kris Kros – Jump
• Ice Ice Baby
• Mary Jane
• Me So Horny
• My Dick
• STP – Plush
• Flobots
• & MORE!!!

Got some surprise ones in there too, so if you appreciate this list, please digg it and rate it and comment on it. Let me know when you guys want more. Bringin it to ya!

Download Zip File

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Aviary is already well-established as an online image editing suite, but today the company is expanding its creative reach and bringing multi-track audio editing to the cloud.

The service, called Myna, is sort of like Garage Band in your web browser. You can import audio directly into it, record a track into the application, or use clips from one of Aviary’s provided clip libraries.

All audio effects are non-destructive and you can automate fades and pans, modify gain over time, loop, stretch and reverse audio clips and more. Once you’ve got your track just the way you want it, you can mixdown to your desktop or publish directly to your Aviary account.

The entire process takes place inside your web browser (Adobe Flash is required) and the interface is both robust and easy to use. Anyone familiar with multi-track audio apps will be familiar with Myna’s layout, and I was impressed with the speed of the app. You can playback clips before dragging them to the time line, which is really nice.

Check out this video demonstration:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How do you edit your audio? What do you think about using online editing tools?

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We knew you could make great music on the iPhone. With instrument apps such as Smule’s Ocarina and Leaf Trombone. Still, while they’re cool and surprisingly rich mobile instruments, they’re not all that practical for creating, sampling, and recording musical compositions on the fly.

DopplerPad [iTunes Link] is a turntable-like instrument iPhone app built by one of the two creators of FourTrack [iTunes Link]. Unlike some other apps, this one doesn’t feature just one instrument – it has 37. It doesn’t just play notes; it lets you sample them, no matter where you are. And most of all, you can record and combine the beats to create your own electronic remix.

Want to make a techno beat?

Click here to view the embedded video.

DopplerPad takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of its interface, there’s actually a lot you can do. It uses touch-based responses in order to create an instrumental piece. The 37 instruments we mentioned earlier are almost all techno or electronic-based beats: FM Bass, Cymbals, and even “Space Oddity” are available. You can fine tune the tone of the instruments as well.

Once you’re ready, the key to it is picking a beat count, a tempo, and recording your music. You’re only allowed up to 16 beats, which is a little disappointing but more than enough to get the job done (and considering you can record more pieces, you can just combine them all later).

Each time you touch the screen while recording, DopplerPad remembers it and plays it back the next time around. This allows you to add instrument after instrument. The DopplarPad video above gives you a good idea, although we want to note that it will take a lot of work before you can make music like they do on the video.

At $9.99 though, this app may be a bit too expensive for most people’s tastes. And because it focuses specifically on electronica beats, the music it can create may not be for everyone. If you’re just a guy who likes to make funky sounds, DopplerPad works, but you really get the full benefit if you use it to create actual music and remixes. The app is strong enough to make a good dance club beat, but it’ll take a bit of practice before you knock the socks of your friends at your next party.

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Less than two months ago, Google dropped a spectacular surprise upon the world: Google Wave. The communication tool aspires to redefine not only email, but the entire web. And from our very first test of Google Wave to our complete Google Wave Guide, we have to say that it’s a game changer.

Well, in the last two months, Google and third-party developers have been hard at work testing out the system, fixing the kinks, and building some amazing extensions (which we discussed in-depth previously). Still, only a handful of people, almost all developers, have access. That’s about to change soon though: on September 30th, Google will start sending out about 100,000 invites for the next version of Google Wave.

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Google Wave’s Rollout

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Google made the big revelation in a blog post on the Google Wave developer’s blog. The post is part of an update on the Google Wave Hackathon, which allows developers to come to the Googleplex and work with the Google Wave API to build extensions such as Wave in Wordpress, a bot that allows you to easily place Waves in WordPress posts.

It looks as if the testing in the Google Wave sandbox is going well though – it opened up the sandbox to 6,000 new developers and up to 20,000 more will get access before the end of August. But this pales in comparison to the 100,000 users that will get access on starting September 30th.

According to Google, at that point Google Wave will appear on Wave.Google.com, instead of the Wave Sandbox. They will help further test for bugs, provide feedback, and play with apps. Google intends to invite groups of users, so the invites may not come out all at once.

If you want to be part of the next wave of testing (haha, get it?!), you can sign up for updates here. Until the invites go out though, you’re going to have to get your Google Wave fix from our extensive Wave

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Skype 2.8 Gold, the final version of Skype 2.8, is now available for Mac users to download. The list of impressive new features for the popular phone app includes screen sharing, improved audio and video quality, and Skype Access, which is a way to pay for wifi hotspot access with your Skype credit. There are a few cosmetic changes to the UI as well, which

Screen sharing has been in Skype Beta for a while, and it works pretty well. The ability to share just part of your screen is a nice touch, and could especially come in handy for presentations. Skype Access – which is currently only available for Mac users – gets you past the annoying signup process for many paid wifi hotspots. Instead of entering your information and your credit card number, you can just pay with your previously purchased Skype credit. Even better, you only pay for what you use, which means an end to paying for a full hour when you only need a 20-minute session.

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It’s been quite a while since the crew at Avast released a major version, so this news should be very welcome to its 80 million + users. Version 5 is slated for release this October, and beta testing will begin in just a couple weeks.

What’s new? For starters, the interface has received some obvious TLC – gone is the option of switching between the simple and enhanced UIs. Under the hood, Avast 5 now supports heuristics and will feature an improved and optimized detection engine. From the official blog post, “It may sound like a cliché, but it’s a fact: the new engine can detect more viruses, while actually consuming less resources.”

Version 5 also boasts detection of PUPs (potentially unwanted programs) and a new code emulator that is better able to detect unknown malware packers. Avast has also tuned the program to minimize impact on startup and shutdown times.

Paid versions include a virtualization component as well, likely similar to the one used by Sunbelt in Vipre. As you can see in the screenshot, the new version of the Internet Security suite will also include a firewall and anti-spam module.

Here’s some great news for current Avast users: the upgrade to version 5 will be free to anyone with a valid license. When was the last time you saw the big guys (Norton, McAfee) offering that?

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