Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

We are looking for a few new writers and figured that there may be no better place to look for gear-heads than on Gadgetell itself. With our recent rapid growth we are in need of additional writers to provide regular, high quality, content for the site. To make the cut you must:

• have a strong pulse on the consumer electronics/tech industry.
• possess unique/creative writing style.
• be a wizard in the English language (spelling, grammar, sentence structure).
• be able to contribute a minimum of 20 articles (200-400 words per article) per month.
• stay up to date on current news stories and have background knowledge on prior product launches.
• be willing to take an active role in the site including responding to comments and reacting to readers needs and hot topics.

Currently we are looking for writer to fill the following time slots (times in EST): weekends (top priority), weekdays 4am-12pm, and weekdays 12pm-8pm. We do not expect you to be on for the full shift, though you would be expect to submit 95% of your content during that time and that content should be timely.

To be considered contact us with “Gadgetell Blogger” in the subject at : please include 2-3 links to previous work (related to consumer electronics) as well as your resume – attachments will not be opened.

It was just a little over a month ago now that the Cuban Government decided to begin easing up on restrictions with electronics, namely computers, and as we have already seen Cuba citizens lining up for cell phones, the same is happening with computers.

Reports of “more than a dozen prospective buyers” began to line up when they first went on sale. While “just” a dozen people may not sound like a lot, you also must consider that these computers are not coming cheap. Havana’s Carlos III shopping center began to sell the Qtech PC along with a CRT monitor for $780. Sounds expensive enough already, but consider further that these PC’s are not exactly high powered either, they are featuring Intel Celeron processors with 80GB hard drives, 512MB of RAM and running Windows XP.

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The Internet access while tightly controlled does not seem to be stopping Cuban bloggers from telling their story. Computers have just recently became legal for Cuban citizens to own and even with the hard to come by Internet access many are turning towards the web to share their story.

Some of the blogs, have been going on for longer than the two-months that computers have been legal to access. A site we have mentioned before, “Generacion Y” which is written by Yoani Sanchez receives more than one-million hits a month. But for Sanchez and other Cuban bloggers, most of whom choose to do so anonymously getting their stories posted is not as simple as sitting in front of a computer and typing away.

For example Sanchez has to pretend to be a tourist in order to obtain her web access, which costs about $6 an hour from local Havana hotels. Others are willing to pay upwards of $40 a month to get black-market dial-up access. Regular or authorized service includes access to an island-wide network that allows for sending or receiving emails, this is available at youth clubs, post offices and a handful of cafes however the rest of the web is blocked.

While its still illegal and potentially dangerous for bloggers such as Sanchez to write as she does, especially under her real name, she is quick to note that “with each step we take in that direction, it’s harder for the government to push us back.” Hopefully, as we have seen the recent relaxing of what Cuban citizens can legally purchase electronics wise, we will soon see the same to happen with other services such as unfiltered or unblocked Internet access.

Read [USA Today]

Its always nice to see a happy outcome, a Cuban blogger, who recently had her own site blocked by the Cuban government has won an award for that very site. Yoani Sanchez who writes the Generacion Y blog as a journal of her daily life in Cuba was given the Ortega and Gasset prize for digital journalism. This prize comes as an annual event that is presented by the Spanish newspaper El Pais. According to the paper, Sanchez was awarded the prize for “shrewdness in overcoming hurdles to freedom of expression in Cuba, her vivacious style and her drive to join the global space of citizen journalism.”

According to reports she hosts her blog on servers in Germany and was able to attract 1.2 million hits this past February. But perhaps more important than the award, Sanchez who spoke with Reuters via telephone was quoted as saying that “this is great encouragement for Cuban bloggers who are still at an embryonic stage.”

Thankfully the Cuban government has been getting a little looser lately when it comes to ‘modern’ freedoms such as cell phones, computers, DVD players and toasters. Hopefully some of this new found ‘freedom’ will find its way to the Internet access, which is currently still controlled by the government and we can only hope that Yoani Sanchez does not receive any unwanted attention courtesy of her blog, award and new found attention.

Read [Reuters]

It was just a few short weeks ago that the good news came about how the Cuban government was beginning to ease up a little by allowing their people sales of computers and video players. While they may be allowed to purchase (assuming they can afford one) a computer, it may not be that perfect setup considering the Internet access will be limited and remain in control of the government. Recently a popular Cuban blogger’s website was blocked, just like YouTube was inaccessible for almost a week in China.

Yoani Sanchez, a 32 year old graduate of philology blogs for ”Generacion Y”, journaling her daily life in Cuba, as well as the political constraints and economic hardships in her country. In an interview with Reuters, Sanchez divulged that she could not access her website as of Monday. Last February, Sanchez’s blog received 1.2 million hits from all over the world and just this week, website has become inaccessible from her connection in Cuba. However, she found a way to access her blog via an indirect route, most likely an Internet proxy. 

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Google has, after 3 years, dropped the term “Beta” from its Blogger service. Does anybody else besides me think that Google is misusing the term “Beta” in applications? A Beta should be software under development, undergoing public scrutiny to find bugs and things that would make it better. Everything Google launches these days seems to have a “Beta” tag on it, which annoys me sometimes.

Of course, Beta software can be in that stage for lengthy periods of times while continuous feedback is received from external sources, and by doing so the product continuously evolves and (hopefully) gets better.

But I don’t think that’s why Google is doing all these Beta application releases. In my opinion, they’re just releasing many of these Betas just so they can say they have such a product on the market. If they truly are using these to get public feedback and improve, some sort of focus would be the order of the day. By concentrating only on one or few items at a time, they’d probably get the final product released more quickly in most cases, unlike 3 years for Blogger, and who knows how many years for GMail and GTalk.

Most of these applications are working fine, and instead of just hanging onto the Beta classification, I think it would be better if Google just launched them after a short Beta period, and updated them later on with new versions. After all, that’s what will happen to the non-Beta’s anyway, so why not just do it sooner?

Blog [Blogger] Read [ArsTechnica]

Performancing, the popular blogger portal, is now offering an all new services to add to its existing line of services that include job board, blog posting add on for Firefox and a forum for people to discuss blogging at large. They are now set to offer advertising through their existing web site. They appear to be setup to compete directly with companies like AdBrite, which is currently a major player in that same role.

The only thing that seems to be a little different is their reward system, currently they are paying blogger 70% of the advertising revenue while keeping the rest for themselves. With Performancing’s loyal blogger base it looks like they could really come out well from the deal by some of the lower traffic web sites. I’m sure we will see some casinos try to buy out all of the lower traffic blogs to increase link backs.

It would be a quick and easy way to just make the search engines like your web site just a little better if not get a few clicks out of the advertisements alone. At any rate, the advertising market seems to be getting a little more saturated as more and more companies try themselves out in the market. Google AdSense led the way in the most recent surge and now AdBrite, BitVertiser, Performancing, FM Publishing, PayPerPost and others are trying to pave their own way to the bank in gold.

Today, Sony Ericsson is announcing the latest entertainment phone, the K618. The light, slim, 3G cellular phone will be released in select markets; and is said to be the perfect mix of business solutions, entertainment, and mobile communications. As light as any 2.5G phone, it’ll include high-speed streaming and downloading for music and video.  Internet will be available with the phone, allowing for web browsing and push e-mail, allowing people to keep up with their inbox without having to download from their computer.

The phone will also have photo capabilities as well. Its 2.0 megapixel camera will come equipped with 2.5x digital zoom, and will work with Mobile Blogger, an application allowing for avid camera users to upload their pictures directly to blogs. Also, the phone will be able to handle video calls, making use of a separate video telephony camera and the phone’s 3G technology. Bluetooth will also be available on the phone, allowing for digital sharing of video, music, and photos; as well as for listening to music and phone calls on a Bluetooth Headset.

While storage on the phone may be a shortcoming, the phone will have a built-in Memory Stick slot, allowing for up to 1GB of external memory. This will come in handy as the phone can support four types of audio files and two types of video files. As is, the phone already comes packed with Disc2Phone music ripping software, MusicDJ, VideoDJ, PhotoDJ, a full HTML browser with RSS, and more. Just remember, it will only be released in select markets, so you’ll have to hope that it releases in an area near you.

Read [Gizmodo]

While not all of you who read Gadgetell are bloggers like us many are, and we encourage the rest of you to try it out (feel free to apply to open positions by emailing us at contact at gadgetell dot com).

Zoomr is a new web photo site, like Flickr, that wants to be the choice for bloggers to host their images on. In addition to building killer blogger friendly features, they have invited all bloggers to join Zooomr and give them a free Zooomr Pro account.

Learn more about Zoomr and why they are hooking up bloggers.

So why would I want to use Zooomr to host my blog images instead of someplace else? Ok, so first off we make it super easy for you to blog your photos and for others to blog your photos. Each photo has a magnifying glass above it. Simply click on this and cut and paste the html code for the size that you’d like into your blog.

Ok, that’s cool, but what else? We’ve got trackbacks, yes we do! Yep, as far we know we are the only photo sharing site offering them right now. Here’s how they work. Anytime anyone else links to your photo we capture the anonymous referring url information and put the trackback under your photo. We think you want to know when others are blogging your photos and where they are showing up out there in the internetland. This will also better show you the number of impressions your photo is actually getting through RSS readers that might have subscribed to your photostream and the like.

What about licensing? This is up to you, all rights reserved, creative commons, whatever. It’s your image, you choose how you want it licensed.

Read [Zoomr]
Via [Thomas Hawk]

Here’s a question for you, what do you give a non-social tech nerd like me for their birthday? Answer, the very first Xbox 360 that talks back. You heard me, now not only will your son, daughter, and/or favorite blogger stay at home and play video games all day, but they can also engage in conversation with their console. Some genius has created a program that allows the Xbox to create its own blog by recording what 8 test users have been playing or, not playing. America, big brother has returned as an Xbox.

Read [Wired]