Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Where did this past month go?  It started off far-too-fast with CES then into the daze that follows.  My attention is now attuned to what is going to come out of Barcelona’s phone festival next month.  But, since that is weeks away still, let’s look at the stuff that drove me nuts this past week.  More bad economic news can only mean more desperation.

On tap this week:

• Circuit City’s realizes their errors
• Suck on this, Cox
• Psst: Google, you’re a web company
• Apple’s got a new iPhone-Holy Duh?
• Hooked on your carrier’s crack?

Circuit City: We should have gone out of business years ago.

Selling electronic gear isn’t always easy.  But one way to do it is to get the word out that it is liquidation time. According to our Heather Wood, the retail giant managed to move $450 million worth of gear in just two weeks.  Recession Susmeshion.  From Heather’s post:

They expect that the liquidation sales will end sooner than expected due to the astounding number of shoppers that have turned up to snatch up their discounted electronics.

This reminds me of those Railroad Salvage stores back in the 80s.  These guys would sell what fell off railroads and from railroad crashes I guess at remarkably low prices.  Will we see a return of these kind of store vs. Wal-Marts of the world?

Here comes bandwidth discrimination from Cox

Here at Gadgetell, we don’t stand for any kind of discrimination, so when Sue Walsh posted about Cox’s plan to discriminate based on what you happen to be doing online, I went into fits.  Cox is unilaterally setting priorities to your online activities.  Peer to peer?  Low.  Software update?  Low (OMG Windows Updates are going to be slower?).  FTP uploads?  Low.  Says you.

This is far too authoritarianism-istic, even for Cox.  I stopped supporting “isms” back in the 80s.  Cox cannot decide to limit our activities speeds just because their line can’t handle our flow.

Google sends your e-mail offline.  Wait, what?  They meant to?

Applause broke out in the Gadgetell newsroom when Google announced their much beloved Gmail now offers offline capabilities.  Not me though.  These guys are nuts.  Offline?  Who the heck is offline these days?  I’ve got e-mail following me on my desktop, smartphone, iPod, heck my new fridge might have it to (only halfway through the owners manual).

Like ants scurrying around, we want more places we can work on our glorious e-mails?  E-mail is great but offlline time is for sleeping folks, not wishing you were online and drafting e-mails.  Good God man, take a break, grab a nap-ski and at least enjoy aviation-al progress.  It is a glorious thing, crackheads.

Proof Apple is working on a new iPhone: Apple is still in business.

Read that section heading again.  No need to peer through code.  No need to wet yourself over mention of iPhone 2.1.  Come on guys, lets look a little bit further through the forest, huh?

Don’t worry, crack 2.0 will be just as tasty and satisfying as crack 1.0.  Promise.

I can’t believe we have to buy Femtocells.  Seriously.

How dumb are we?  So hooked on the rock that to make up for our cell phone carriers coverage shortcomings, we are willing to plunk down $50-$200???  Not only that, when we use this gadget we bought to cover up the crappy service, the carrier saves money?

Yes, that is the deal behind the femtocells that Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T will be pushing in the coming months.  These devices hook up to your broadband connection and route your calls over the net, like VOIP.  They save traffic on their networks and you get a a couple of bars around your house.  Fair deal?

No freaking way.  Not only should these boxes be free, but so should any call we place routed this way.  It is time we stopped drinking the teleco’s Kool-Aid and started standing up to the man.  If you don’t stand up to your dealer now and then, he’ll just keep selling to you.  Face it.