I covered the news over at Gearlog yesterday, but I felt compelled to mention it here too – mostly because I’m a proud owner of a pair of Sennheiser PC 350s, and I adore them. I wouldn’t trade them for anything, and I’ve had the opportunity to review a number of gaming headsets that offer solid audio and voice quality in a comfortable package.

There are a number of new models in the lineup, but the most notable is the one above – the PC 360, which is an upgrade and successor to the PC 350 that I and so many other gamers know and love.

Head over to Gearlog to read the whole story:

[ Gearlog :: Sennheiser Unveils New PC Gaming Headsets ]

SlashGear has an excellent story today about the so-called “Apple bias” in the media, usually bolstered by the notion that Apple has such small market share but the tech media tend to report on their every move without fail. SlashGear’s Philip Berne literally decimates those agruments by pointing out that Apple is a company that’s just as innovative as Microsoft or any of its competition, and its culture and products are so well loved that to not report on something so newsworthy and something that people clamor to read would be a horrible idea.

He goes beyond the journalistic arguments here and targets the haters; the people who simply can’t stand to see any product they dislike in a positive light, and with a company as large but as small and secretive as Apple, there are just as many people on the side of the line that irrationally hate the company for no good reason at all (or worse, make up reasons that would be good if they were true) that not covering the company’s achievements and impact in the industry would be equivalent to caving to a vocal minority that can’t and shouldn’t direct the course of the news. This is akin to my own column a while back, What’s Wrong With Good Reviews?

Berne also points out that in some cases there is a tendency in the media to jump when Apple says anything, like when they say the white version of their phone will be delayed, or when they say that they’re planning a slightly more powerful version of a product already on the market, and he’s absolutely right – it shouldn’t be newsworthy that Apple’s delayed the mythical white iPhone again – it should be newsworthy that Apple promised it almost a year ago and still hasn’t delivered, and doesn’t plan to until very close to its normal iPhone refresh date.

The best part of the story is that Berne comes to the conclusion that there is indeed an Apple bias – but not in the way you might expect.

[ SlashGear :: The Myth of Apple Bias ]

Like Gears and Widgets?

No really, Like Gears and Widgets, please!

And thank you! Thanks to all of the fans who already like Gears and Widgets on Facebook, and if we can start to grow a community over there, we’ll do some interesting things there like gear giveaways and special Facebook-only discussions, maybe even some live-blogs!

(this brand new image for Spinning Gears columns is courtesy of Narilka, who graciously gave permission to use it!)

So Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event just concluded, and if you were a betting person and bet on some substantial new hardware today, you’d have lost some money. Don’t get me wrong, we got a brand new line of Mac netbooks in the form of the 13.3 and 11-inch MacBook Air, and we got some substantial improvements there that hopefully will make their way across the Mac lineup, but all in all the event was what most people predicted and the rumor mill expected: new Mac OS, new iLife, new MacBook Air.

Let’s hit the major points, shall we?

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Wrapping Up Apple’s “Back to the Mac” Event…

I already covered this over at Gearlog, but I simply couldn’t resist showing it off again, mostly because the swimsuits are definitely geeky, definitely sexy, and frankly, they’re too good to not show the world in as many places as I can. I’m seriously even considering highlighting them over at The Classy Geek.

Anyway, here we go:

Australian designer James Lillis has become something of a minor celebrity after word got out that he designed two one-piece women’s bathing suits sure to turn the heads of Star Wars fans the world over. The two swimsuits, one with Darth Vader’s head and a rainbow passing through it and appropriately named “Darkside,” and the other all-white with blue patterns on the front and back made to look like R2-D2 and called “Artoo,” are $85 US and available now.

Lillis told ninemsn that he’s been backlogged with the thousands of orders placed in the past few hours, but orders are still open. No word yet on whether or not George Lucas is taking a cut of those sales, or how long they’ll be available to order, but if they vanish all of a sudden there are plenty of other geeky clothes in Lillis’ collection, including a swimsuit with a galaxy painted across the front and back and a variety of Star Wars themed t-shirts in his RedBubble Store.

Seriously, even if these swimsuits aren’t for you, some of the designs in his RedBubble store are pretty amazing. I pointed out that there’s no word on whether Lucas is getting a cut of the sales, but considering how long he’s been around, I sincerely hope he is, otherwise Lucas will come down on the poor guy like a ton of bricks. I’d hate to see these – and that model – vanish from the Web because of something like licensing issues.

[ Gearlog :: Sexy Star Wars Themed Bathing Suits Bring Out Your Inner Geek at the Pool ]

HP surprised everyone this week and announced the Palm Pre 2, the first Palm handset after Palm was acquired by HP earlier this year. The Pre 2 comes with beefed up specs, including a faster processor and some other basic hardware bumps. From PC Mag:

The Pre 2 is a curiously low-key upgrade for a Palm line that needs to aggressively expand to stay in the game. It looks and works almost exactly like the existing Palm Pre, though it has amped-up specs: a 1-GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor, a 5-megapixel camera, 16GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, and a flat, glass 320-by-480 screen. The Pre 2 will come out “in the coming months” both on Verizon Wireless and in an unlocked, 3G GSM version that’s compatible with AT&T’s network.

The bigger news is the unveiling of WebOS 2.0, which its widely believed HP saw as the true value at Palm. WebOS 2.0 rolls in true multi-tasking and support for Adobe Flash. The new OS will also support apps like Skype, peripherals like Bluetooth keyboards, and more. The back-end of the new mobile OS has a number of open APIs that just might make it more attractive to developers than the previous WebOS version, which looked great but was largely criticized because of Palm’s slow pace in opening the OS up to developers – no apps, no customers, it seemed.

Still, the new Palm Pre 2 and WebOS 2.0 don’t have official launch dates just yet, but it’s natural HP and Palm will, as a newly combined company, try to push it through as quickly as possible, as long as they don’t get in their own way.

[ PC Mag :: HP Launches Palm Pre 2, WebOS 2.0 ]

This week saw the release of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, which they hope will remove the horrible taint of Windows Mobile from the collective conciousness and put Microsoft in a position where they can compete with the likes of Apple’s iOS and the iPhone and Google’s Android mobile OS and the plethora of devices it’s available on.

So far, early reviews from hands-on testing of the yet-to-be-released handsets (coming to AT&T and T-Mobile by the end of the year) are largely positive, praising Microsoft for a well polished mobile operating system that — while missing lots of critical features like multitasking and copy/paste — integrates lots of Microsoft services like XBox Live, Zune, and social services like Twitter and Facebook out of the box. The hardware platform Microsoft requires from device manufacturers is strong and on the high-end, and manufacturers like HTC and Samsung are heeding the call.

To that point, PC Mag has put together a handy little guide that wraps up everything you need to know about the new Windows Phone 7 devices announced this week, and to help you decide whether you should rush to pick one up when they’re available on your carrier. The general gist? There are some pretty crucial features that are missing at launch, but depending on how you use your smartphone, you may not miss them. There’s even a phone-by-phone breakdown of each device and first impressions.

[ PC Mag :: New Windows Phone 7 Phones: Everything You Need to Know ]

Did you know that Yoda’s original name was going to be “Buffy?” Or that Darth Vader originally had a castle? No kidding!

These and other some-amazing-others-horrifying tidbits were published in the new book, The Making Of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by J.W. Rinzler, which was just released this week. The book contains a number of interesting story tidbits that any Star Wars fan should know – the story actually changed in some pretty impressive directions away from its original state, and some things that we come to cherish now were much much different in the original story for the movie.

For example:

Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi Knight would have had a lot more bumps.

One idea that got tossed around a lot in the early stages of planning ESB was the notion that Luke’s light saber had a crystal hidden in the hilt, with secret encrypted information on it — including the coordinates of Minch Yoda’s planet. And Luke would have been “humiliated” when he couldn’t use the Force to stop an attack by a bunch of ice monsters on the rebel’s Hoth base. (With Han telling Luke, “You’re not a Jedi knight, and you never will be.”) Meanwhile, Darth Vader senses that Luke used the force to destroy the Death Star and there’s a new wannabe Jedi in town — so Vader uses telepathy to choke Luke in his spacecraft, nearly killing him — except that R2D2 jumps the ship into hyperspace and takes it to Yoda’s planet.

That’s just one. I don’t want to spoil much more without sending you over to io9 to read the article in its entirety, and to take a look at some of the concept art from the movie that’s up at the article as well. Seriously – check out what Chewbacca originally looked like. That’s just freaky.

[ io9 :: 10 Things You Didn't Know about The Empire Strikes Back ]

Oh Google, say it isn’t so! Google announced on their official blog that the they would be shutting down the 1-800-GOOG-411 service as of November 12, 2010. I know I’m not the only one who’s disappointed, but Google points out that the rise of smartphones has also been the rise of Google Voice Search (shown above on an iPhone – it’s built-in to Android) on mobile devices that don’t require you actually place a call to someone to get things like business listings or to be connected to a business whose name you know but number you don’t.

The service will still operate their SMS service, which you can text by sending a query to 466453 (“GOOGLE”) and they’ll respond with the same information, but those of us with smartphones – according to Google – should be using their Google Mobile apps, which offer way more features without forcing you to use voice minutes. I have to agree with that part, but it’s still a shame to see the service going by the wayside.

Granted, if you really liked being able to call someone and give it your location and what you’re looking for, Microsoft hasn’t announced plans to close BING-411 just yet, but its time may be coming as well.

[ The Official Google Blog :: Goodbye to an Old Friend: 1-800-GOOG-411 ]

(this brand new image for Spinning Gears columns is courtesy of Narilka, who graciously gave permission to use it!)

I covered this story over at AppScout today, but I think not only does it bear repeating, but it just sparks some interesting thinking about the way the Web works and who’s really a customer of whom on the Web these days. It’s surprising how many common URL suffixes are actually owned by foreign powers who may or may not have their customer’s best interests at heart – and certainly may not have the same passion for free and open speech on the Internet as those companies – especially if they’re American or European – may have.

Here’s a lift from my story, for those folks who don’t want to click the link:

For example, co-founders of the vb.ly URL shortening service Ben Metcalfe and Violet Blue both posted warnings today that the vb.ly domain had been seized by the Libyan government for first being in violation of their terms of service agreement, but was later clarified to mean that the content of the vb.ly site, which featured Violet Blue herself holding a green glass bottle while wearing a sleeveless blouse, violated Libyan Sharia law.

Additionally, the Libyan officials that Metcalfe and Blue contacted about the issue responded that .ly domains shorter than four characters were now to be reserved for use by Libyan businesses and organizations.

Worth referencing, as I did in the story, is Brian Metcalfe’s post at his blog and Violet Blue’s post at TechYum about the incident, complete with records and exchanges from Libyan officials about the matter.

The critical thing to note here is that Libya is the owner of every domain that ends in “.ly,” and when you register and purchase a .ly domain you’re not so much getting ownership as you are signing an agreement to use the domain with the cooperation of the Libyan government, and their domain registration authority, NIC.ly. So that means services that are commonly used by lots of people (myself included) like the bit.ly URL shortener, the ow.ly URL shortener, and the ad.ly advertising URL shortener, are all subject to the whims of the Libyan government for their terms of service agreements.

Now, not to paint the Libyans in too bad a light here: the country is a Muslim country and they’re guided by Islamic/Sharia Law – meaning that a free and open internet for all subject matter isn’t exactly one of their core principles, and is pornography and adult content is expressly forbidden by their morality code. When they learned who Violet Blue – co-founder of the vb.ly URL shortener – was and likely did a little research, they jumped to shut the shortener down, regardless of the fact that the vb.ly page is anything but unsafe-for-work (shown above before it came down) and the content of the URLs shortened by the service were likely in part adult material but certainly weren’t exclusively adult material – no more so than ow.ly or bit.ly, I’m sure.

It’s not the adherence to Sharia Law that bothers me here, it’s the fact that the Libyan government has stated that they want all sub-four character .ly domains to be reserved for use by Libyan businesses and local organizations. That in itself doesn’t bother me, but it’s the application of both of these rules that’s the irritant, and that has such huge consequences for the rest of the Web – Libya’s information officials are essentially using Sharia Law as a scapegoat and a convenient excuse to shut down vb.ly, and are immediately reclaiming it in line with this new “locals only” policy. Essentially, two very weak excuses for action that’s far more aggressive than is warranted.

If Libya wants to reserve URLs for internal use, that’s their business – they own the .ly suffix. If they want content that passes through .ly suffixed domains to be compliant with Sharia Law, that’s also their business. The problem is when they strong-arm their want into a battle over values, freedoms, and speech on the Internet by bullying businesses and other parties instead of simply making their case and asking for a change.

If Libya had said they weren’t going to renew the registration to Ben Metcalfe and Violet Blue when it came up because of these two policies and rules, I doubt there would have ever been this controversy. As it stands however, it means that every company that deals with a foriegn power for its domain suffix – especially those using .ly – stand at risk to be shut down immediately and without notice should they enter the crosshairs of that nation’s government officials.