It looks like Commodore, that’s right, of the iconic Commodore 64 computer system – one of the first PCs that people remember having in their homes – is back, and they’re bringing the Commodore 64 name with them. The company is planning a new line of Commodore 64 computers, along with a revival of the VIC line of systems, all built with some of the old school retro styling but with modern and up-to-date specs and components.

Here’s the scoop from PC Mag:

Although the Commodore 64 appears on the Commodore site in prototype form, the company said it has designed it to be a “modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible,” even with the original taupe brown/beige color.

Aside from the barebones model, the C64x, as the company calls it, includes a 1.8-GHz D525 CPU, Nvidia Ion2 graphics (with 512 Mbytes of graphics RAM), either 2 or 4 Gbytes of memory, with options for Wi-Fi, DVD, Blu-ray, and either a 160-, 250-, or 500-Gbyte hard drive.

The computer also features a Cherry-made “clicky” keyboard.

And what OS will it run? Not Windows, at least natively. “Units come with the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating system on disk ready to install,” Commodore said. “Commodore OS 1.0, along with emulation functionality and classic game package, will be mailed to purchasers when available.”

Oh snap, no Windows? Wow – I wonder what Commodore has up its sleeve. If you can install Windows on it, I think that’ll make a lot of people happy, but it’s clear that Commodore isn’t terribly interested (at least not with the C64) in the mainstream PC market: they’re interested in tweakers, hackers, and people who really want to get hands-on with their technology.

We’ll see how that plays out for them, but I’m impressed – and glad to see the return of an old name.

[ Commodore Announces New Commodore64, VIC Computers ]

I have to say, the concept of “+1″ is actually pretty geeky. Lots of people have pointed out how close to net-speak +1 really is, although Google has the right idea with it. Saying “+1″ is usually a way to affirm that you agree with what the person said (kind of like saying “signed,”) and support their sentiment. Google wants to take it to the next level by giving you a way to +1 search results, services, products, and good results from Google so they can improve their search results.

It’s not Google’s first attempt at leveraging user input to improve search results, but this one might catch on because it has a lot of things in common with Facebook’s beloved “Like” button. The end goal is that you can put a “+1″ button on your Web site to get a little more exposure, and to have people click to prove to Google that your site is a good one and full of good information.

The down-side though is that it’ll be difficult for Google to separate the wheat from the chaff on this one: a number of tech pundits I know have already pointed out that SEO specialists and marketers have found ways to exploit and leverage virtually all of Google’s social search tools and techniques up to this point: why would this one be any different?

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

Here’s Google’s video describing exactly what the +1 button is and how it’ll work:

[ +1's: The Right Recommendation Right When You Want Them -- In Your Search Results ]

So word is that the Nissan Leaf is about to hit the road – almost literally, as the all-electric vehicle had previously only been available in a few select markets, especially on the west coast. Soon, according to Nissan, the Leaf will be available anywhere in the country. Here’s the skinny from UberGizmo:

The 2011 LEAF from the Japanese car manufacturer is 100% powered by a lithium-ion battery. Seating up to 5 people, the new LEAF can go up to an impressive 100 miles without using a single drop of gasoline. With a highly efficient electricity-powered motor, the LEAF generates up to 107 horsepower and 207 ft-lb of torque, making the car completely green without sacrificing any performance. The car can be charged up to 80% in just 30 minutes with a quick charge port; however it will take up to 8 hours to completely charge when done from a regular 220V outlet from home. The 2011 Nissan LEAF is already available in certain states in the US, but it will be released nationwide in the coming months.

The Leaf is a pretty strong vehicle. It’s earned high praise, drives like a dream apparently, and all in all is an incredible low-emissions vehicle. I love it as a car: my problem with the Leaf’s rollout is less technical and more infrastructural: more and more electric vehicles are hitting the road without places to charge their batteries, no battery swapping stations (a really innovative idea that involves swapping batteries instead of recharging them – that way you’re at a swap station for a few minutes while your batteries are swapped out and then on your way without waiting hours for recharges – in exchange, the company that operates the swapping stations pay for your batteries by eating a sizable chunk of the purchase price of your vehicle,) and no infrastructure for people who live in cities, commute to offices, or don’t have a garage/own their own homes to use to charge their vehicles.

Sadly, with the majority of the world’s population now in cities, it’ll be a while before electric cars see serious adoption unless they can be plugged in virtually anywhere – including outside of an apartment building, or in any parking garage, not just at someone’s house plugged into a custom power outlet the owner’s had installed.

Even so, I’m glad to see the Nissan Leaf taking off, and I’m happy to see that the people who can get the infrastructure willing to invest in it. For people who rent or prefer to live the city life like me, we’ll have to wait until the infrastructure supports electric vehicles more robustly before we can dive in.

[ 2011 Nissan Leaf Arriving in the Rest of America ]

I’ve reviewed a bunch of mobile apps that promise to help you text while walking or in motion without forcing you to not pay attention to where you’re going, but this is the first time I’ve seen an app that actually proactively takes action against its owner if the owner has pirated the app.

The rogue Android App, Walk and Text, is not an official version of the app from the developers, and it’s listed as a version number that doesn’t exist (1.3.7.) Essentially, the only way to get it is to get a pirated copy of the app – one that includes the trojan that’s lying in wait under the surface for you to install and try to run it.

Once the app is installed, it’ll display a screen to you that makes it look like the app is cracking or installing itself, or setting itself up in some other capacity. What it’s really doing behind the scenes is taking your name, your phone number, your phone’s ID information (your International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMEI number,) and anything else it can get to an external server.

Then, and perhaps this is the clincher if the previous weren’t bad enough, the app sends an SMS to everyone in your contacts list that tells everyone that you pirated an app and how cheap you are. The SMS looks like this:

Yowch. That’s pretty harsh.

While I have no love for piracy, I think this one might go a little too far. Maybe if it sent a message to your own e-mail address or something, or did something clever that stayed between you, the app, and the people who knew you pirated it, I wouldn’t think too much of it. Then it’d be harmless.

This, on the other hand, is anything but harmless, and the folks collecting that data are slowly building a repository of data about mobile devices and their owners that they could do just about anything they want with, including sell it to the highest bidder. The SMS to all of your contacts too is pretty underhanded, I don’t think anyone would want their family, friends, or worse employers to get a text message like that.

Admittedly, the folks behind it would say “well then, don’t pirate apps,” which I think is a good moral of the story now that we’ve all heard it. It won’t stop me from feeling a little sympathetic to the people who get busted by it, though.

[ Android Threat Tackles Piracy Using Austere Justice Measures ]

Over at PC Mag, some big questions that have been on everyone’s mind since AT&T announced last Sunday that they were buying T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom for something on the order of $39 billion get answered by the one and only Lance Ulanoff. Among them, topics like whether or not your T-Mobile phone will suddenly be an AT&T phone, or whether T-Mobile will survive at all are all on the table.

After all, it’s important to note that the implications for the merger have a little less to do with users (as T-Mobile was the smallest of the big four wireless carriers) as it does with the industry: AT&T doesn’t want T-Mobile’s customers, it really wants T-Mobile’s network. See this question:

3) Why Didn’t AT&T Buy Sprint?

I’d say it’s the network. Sprint is a CDMA carrier, which makes it more like Verizon. AT&T uses the GSM network, the same as T-Mobile. That said, network platforms are changing fast. T-Mobile has its 4G-like HSPA+ and AT&T is working, slowly, on its 4G LTE build-out.

That’s the clincher. AT&T is willing to absorb T-Mobile in order to get its spectrum and its network and infrastructure. Don’t get me wrong, AT&T whines a lot about spectrum but they’re not hurting as much as they allow themselves to hurt by not beefing up their own infrastructure with decent investment in it, but this is one way for them to get a little more saturation.

Which raises this question:

5) Why didn’t AT&T Use that $39 Billion to Build Out its 3G Network?

I saw this question on Twitter and had to laugh. AT&T was, prior to Verizon LTE, the fastest mobile network around, but it was also the most inconsistent. I carry a BlackBerry Torch 9800 and the Swiss cheese 3G coverage drives me to distraction. AT&T has pretty much acknowledged the issues with its 3G network, but has also touted all the work it’s done in the last two years (like using more spectrum) to build up its 3G coverage. None of it seems to have helped much, though. Obviously, it takes time, effort, and money to build out a better network. I bet that even a portion of that $39 billion could have made a huge difference in AT&T’s 3G coverage.

You know, I thought this too as soon as I saw the news, and while Lance takes a more measured approach to answering it, I’m a little more livid at the notion that AT&T managed to get $39 billion – mostly in cash – to close the deal for T-Mobile, but could have wiped them off the map with market forces if they were willing to invest in their future and in their network.

Instead, they’re taking a more tactical, market driven approach that makes their balance sheets look better in the short-to-mid term by adding more assets, adding more revenue, and shrinking both companies to try to do more with less (in the name of streamlining due to the merger, of course) as opposed to actually improving their service offerings. Still, that’s been the AT&T way, ever since it bought Cingular: buy the good things and then drag them down with you.

Still, some people are optimistic that the FCC will block the move, or at least create enough friction that the deal falls through. I’m with Lance here: I think the deal is inevitable, partially because the US Government does not and never has understood the complexities of technology enough to know that this is probably a bad idea for customers.

It’s not just wireless phones that this applies to: the FCC allowing Comcast to buy NBC Universal is another example, and the FCC allowing XM and Sirius to merge is another example of how easily officials can be fooled by lobbyists who can smooth over the anticompetitive mergers by pointing out competition in radically different markets (for XM/Sirius, they said “but there’s still traditional terrestrial radio to compete with us,” conveniently avoiding the fact that if you wanted satellite radio or had no terrestrial radio in your area, there would be no other option than their newly formed company.)

So to that end, we’re looking at a wireless marketplace that will eventually be two major carriers and a few bit players: Verizon and AT&T far and away the major competitors, and then a smaller batch of companies in the way of Sprint, MetroPCS, Cricket, and other startups that essentially leverage spectrum and infrastructure already used and partially owned by the big two. Who wins here? Shareholders of the big players, that’s for sure, but the consumer? Likely not.

[ PC Mag :: AT&T Buys T-Mobile: 10 Big Questions ]

If you haven’t already heard the news, Firefox 4 is out and ready for download!

I’m still by far a Firefox loyalist; I use Google Chrome at the office on an underpowered, employer-owned PC where Chrome – which is admittedly leaner but unfortunately more feature-starved – runs a little better. On all of my other systems, especially my personal ones, I have Chrome installed, but Firefox and all of its glorious extensions are my true loves.

So while I’ve been hanging out and running the Firefox 4 betas, some of you may not have and have preferred to run the most recent stable versions – which means you’re missing out on great features like Firefox Sync, the new JavaScript rendering engine and HTML5 support, restart-less extension installs, and more. It’s also worth mentioning that Firefox 4 is fast. Really fast. Like “compete with Chrome” fast.

If you’re still a Firefox user, or you left Firefox because Chrome was faster, it’s time to go back and take another look to see if Firefox is back in the top spot, or at least meets your needs. It looks like the mantra of the Mozilla Foundation these days is that they’ll keep the browser fast, try to address user’s concerns about memory, but ultimately compete on features, not on lean-ness.

So, go grab a copy and give it a spin. You won’t be alone, you can see all of the people who have been downloading Firefox 4 here. Then when you have it installed, drop by and let me know what you think!

[ Get Firefox! ]

Well, the social has officially ended. Microsoft has tipped to Bloomberg that the Zune line of hardware products is all but finished, but the name, the media player, and the software line will live on. I reported on this here at Gears and Widgets a while ago when word started to leak out that the death of the Zune may be coming. Now, it seems, it’s finally here:

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft will continue to put its Zune features into Windows Phone 7 and in the Zune desktop software for Windows. Microsoft’s Zune Pass remains an economical way to stream and have access to a large array of music, but the fact that it only runs on Windows devices ruins its potential as a true iTunes competitor.

First thing to note: Microsoft officially refused to comment on the rumor, and claimed that they’re committed to supporting their devices, but they also didn’t do anything to diffuse worry, and didn’t even approach a statement claiming that they would continue to work on the Zune. (Full disclosure: this makes me really sad, because I met an engineer from Microsoft at CES 2010 who worked on the electrical systems that make the OLED display in the Zune so gorgeous. I hope she’s still got a job.)

While a lot of blogs are writing pretty nasty epitaphs for the Zune player, I think that it was a great device in the end that had a lot of unrealized potential. The Zune desktop software and Zune Marketplace for music were both great, the Zune hardware was sleek and attractive – especially as the Zune HD came out, and while I think the Zune started as something of a bad idea and a copycat product to the iPod, it eventually came into its own and was a strong, affordable, and great-sounding music player that any music lover would have been happy to own.

Lance Ulanoff of PC Mag, however, thinks this is emblematic of bigger problems at Microsoft regarding brand control and their desire to let unfavorable products simply die on the vine (a la the Microsoft Kin.) He says:

Dear Microsoft: Manage your message or someone will do it for you. Case in point: the recent, none-too-surprising news that the lovely Zune HD will meet a timely death. Within minutes of the news breaking, stories and tweets flooded the Internet declaring, “The Zune is Dead.” This was followed by people asking if everything “Zune” was gone or just the hardware. I assured people that the obvious answer was the hardware only, but is it that obvious? And why wasn’t Microsoft out in front of this information?

…

Sadly, Microsoft could also use some of that positive buzz for Windows Phone, too, right now. The nascent mobile platform has, just like the Zune before it, gotten off to a slow start. Yes, I heard that there are now 10,000 apps in the Windows Phone marketplace, but I hesitate to call that momentum. I’m still not seeing enough Windows phones in the wild—more than I ever saw Zunes and Zune HD’s mind you, but not enough to create the kind of excitement you see around every Apple iPhone release, rumor, upgrade or random notion.

The company did not do a great job during the recent Windows Phone update fiasco (it’s ready, it’s not the one we talked about, it’s not ready, we don’t know, here it comes). That kind of nonsense just makes it seem like Microsoft cannot get its act together.

He has an excellent point, and if Microsoft is going to treat Windows Phone 7 the way it’s been treating the Zune and the Kin, they’re in trouble, and we’re in trouble because we’ll lose some decent products in-market and solid competition for other products that are already market leaders.

The Zune was great competition to the iPod, and in some ways the driving force behind larger storage and lower prices that we saw in the iPod, and eventually the abandonment of physical drives in music players entirely: it brought great video to the screen of a simple music player and forced Apple to do the same.

The Zune HD’s only real weakness was a lack of apps and software support by developers to make it a solid competitor to the iPod Touch.

Still, do I own a Zune? Not at all – although I know a few people who do and love them. Most people I know with Zunes loved them when they got them, the problem was getting the Zune into the hands of people to try and enjoy. It was definitely the kind of product that you had to use to love, and once you used it, you loved it. I’m sad to see it go – partially because it’s a great product, but partially because it was the iPod’s only real, solid competition.

At the same time, many people would make the argument that the stand-alone digital media player market is dead or dying anyway: more people want to take their music with them on their phones, and phone storage is getting to be as large as some of these large-screened DAPs with NAND flash storage anyway. If I have a 32GB iPhone, what do I need a 32GB iPod Touch or Zune for?

So here’s to you, Zune – I’ll pour one out for you. Or maybe pick one up on sale, now that I’m betting I can get a good deal on a Zune HD.

[ Mashable :: RIP Zune Player: 2006 - 2011 ]
[ PC Mag :: Zune Hardware's Dead: That's the Least of Microsoft's Problems ]

Reports are that the Motorola Xoom – the iPad’s first real competitor, and the first Android tablet to run Android 3.0 “Honeycomb,” isn’t selling quite as well as people had hoped. Admittedly, there are likely a number of reasons for why this is, but ultimately the success of the Xoom is key to the success of the tablet market in general: if the iPad has a strong competitor, Apple will feel the need to push forward when it comes to improving and innovating in the marketplace. If they feel they can completely define the market direction and the technology consumers buy, they’ll make more modest steps.

Analyst Peter Misek told ZDNet:

Xoom sales have been underwhelming. While marketing has just started we believe MMI will likely have to cut production if it already has not done so. We believe the device has been a bit buggy and did not meet the magic price point of $500. We believe management knows this and is hurrying development and production of lower cost tablets. Importantly we believe management will likely have to make the painful decision to accept little to no margin initially in order to match iPad 2’s wholesale pricing.

Yowch. He even tosses in a ding at the Motorola Atrix later in the report, claiming that the Blackberry Torch – a phone that got a largely tepid response from the tech community and BlackBerry enthusiasts – is selling better than the Motorola Atrix, the highly lauded Android phone that made waves at CES back in January.

So what’s the deal? Well, the Atrix got dinged on confusing pricing and – the real draw, supposedly the laptop dock that Motorola wanted everyone to pick up – being about as expensive as the phone. Add that to the fact that the Atrix is an AT&T exclusive, and you have a great phone that’s essentially DOA.

As for the Motorola Xoom, some people are complaining that the Xoom is buggy, Honeycomb isn’t ready for prime time, and of course, the fact that there’s a ridiculous lack of Honeycomb apps available, so you’re stuck using apps for Froyo if you can get them to work properly.

To me, there have been three nails in the coffin of the Xoom right now – the lack of tablet-based apps, the confusing pricing structure, and the delay of a WiFi only model. The delay of a WiFi only model all but positions the Xoom as something that people would have to go to a wireless carrier to get, and not everyone who may be interested in a tablet want to get into an added contract with their wireless carrier to enjoy. The lack of tablet-based apps has been talked to death. The pricing structure has been its own problem: there are three prices for the WiFi model, three prices for the 3G model, a cost to upgrade to 4G, an activation fee, a fee to pay Verizon Wireless to get a WiFi only model, and so on. Ultimately, when you buy a Xoom, or think about buying a Xoom, you have absolutely no idea what your out of pocket expenses will be.

Still, all of those woes aside, I really like the Xoom – or rather, the idea of the Xoom – since competition is good and the iPad needs some. After all, I’m still convinced that Apple got away with a fairly lackluster update to the original iPad largely to fanfare because there still aren’t solid competitors in the market yet that can stand toe-to-toe with Apple on the software front.

What do you think? Are you pondering a Motorola Xoom, or are you waiting for additional Honeycomb tablets to hit the market? Maybe you’re looking instead for more Honeycomb apps to appear? Let me know in the comments.

[ Motorola Xoom Sales Tepid; Production Cuts Next? ]

(image via CrunchGear)

Microsoft should be proud of this one, it’s a huge accomplishment! The Kinect peripheral for XBox 360 has claimed the title of fastest selling consumer electronics device of all time, snatching it from the jaws of the original Apple iPad. That’s right – more Kinects were sold faster than the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Nintendo Wii, PS3, and pretty much everything else in recent memory you can recall people lining up for outside of stores before they opened.

For those who follow my writing, yes I already mentioned this at Gearlog, but I thought the news was pretty important and worth sharing again.

Now whether or not the iPad 2 will claim the title back from the Kinect remains to be seen. We’ll see how it goes starting tomorrow, but I doubt it – it’s not usual that a sequel device outsells the original. But still – all this and I still don’t have a Kinect? I’m really behind the curve here.

[ Kinect Confirmed As Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device ]

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

So the blogs have been buzzing recently thanks to a report that for SpaceTime Studios, the developers of the popular mobile MMO Pocket Legends, has found that its Android version is simply more profitable than the iOS version of the same game.

SpaceTime runs Pocket Legends for both platforms, and since the game is an MMO, anyone on any platform can play with each other. But SpaceTime noted that they’re seeing more sales from its Android customers than from its iOS customers. Does this mean – as many tech news sites have jumped to the conclusion – that Android owners are somehow more willing to shell out for apps than iOS users? Does it mean that developers should all switch to building games for Android now?

Well, what exactly does it mean? I know – partially because unlike a number of people who have covered the story in a couple of places, I’ve actually played Pocket Legends (on my Android phone, no less,) understand SpaceTime’s business model, and get what they’re really trying to say here. Let’s dive in after the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Is Android More Profitable than iOS for Developers?…