Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Verizon Wireless has suspended several employees it says accessed call records belonging to a now inactive phone owned by President-Elect Barack Obama.  The employees will not be paid during their suspension and are under investigation.

“We apologize to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day,“ according to a statement attributed to Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam. “Those who have accessed the account improperly and without legitimate business justification will face appropriate disciplinary action.“

Sources say the phone in question has been inactive for several months.  More after the break.

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Starbucks has just announced yet another option that will let you have two free hours of Wi-Fi each day.  So assuming that you love Starbucks and still have not come up with any other way to get them to give you free Wi-Fi, now you can sign up for their Starbucks Gold Card program.

The gold card, which will set you back just $25 per year will give you two hours of Wi-Fi every day.  Of course, aside from the wireless, the card does have some other coffee related benefits such as 10% off all purchases and a free drink on your birthday.  But knowing our readers it is safe to think that most will be happiest by the Wi-Fi.

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HTC, along with Russian carrier Scartel have just unveiled the world’s first integrated GSM/WiMAX handset—the HTC Max 4G.  The new handset has taken plenty of design cues from the HTC Touch HD and has a solid feature set.  To begin with, the Max 4G has built-in support for WiMax, and it takes advantage of that support.  When calls are made in-network, they are automatically switched over to the WiMax network and handled as a VoIP call.

Other features of the Max 4G include a 3.8-inch touchscreen display with an 800 x 480 resolution, GPS, WiFi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth, 8GB of built-in flash memory, an accelerometer, a 5-megapixel camera with a second VGA quality camera on the front, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an FM radio.  Additionally it will be running Windows Mobile 6.1 and powered by a 528 MHz Qualcomm ESM7206A processor.

As of now a release date has not been announced, of course, this one is not destined for the US market anytime soon, so no sense in holding your breath.

Keep reading to check out the full press release…

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Gadgetell Quick Review:

Amazon Kindle

What is it?

The Amazon Kindle is Amazon’s electronic reading device. It uses E Ink technology and is available for $359.

Pros:

Easy to use, lightweight, lots of storage and free wireless service.

Cons:

The included cover needs improvement.

Keep reading for an in-depth, hands-on review. 

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Today we’ve got a guest post by Scott McGrath.  Scott has worked in the IT industry as a consultant and Sysadmin for 12 years, and has enjoyed communications gadgets since he got his Fisher Price telephone at 2 years of age.  Like what he said?  Hate what he said?  Go over to Scott’s blog at http://www.scamwagon.com and let him know.

Believe it or not, I’m in the market for a cordless phone.  Before you laugh, there’s actually plenty of reasons I maintain a land line, not the least of which is the fact that I have poor cell coverage at my home, and not the most of which is the fact that cellular usually can not hold a candle to the real deal PSTN or good VoIP line, in terms of quality.  Cordless phones still have life since some can pair to your cell phone so you don’t have to rush to find that tiny handheld when it rings.  If you’re a Skype user, you can be untethered with some cordless phones.

Continued after the break.

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Android is taking the books and the teachers out of music lessons.  The newest way to learn music – via your cell phone (as long as you have Android).

Among the first of many Android applications is SplashPlay Mobile Music Maker, an instrument learning and music sharing tool.  Wherever your phone goes, SplashPlay goes with you to learn, listen or share music anywhere.  Right now, guitar is the only instrument compatible with the software.  Continued after the break.

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With the release of the iPhone 3G and the T-Mobile G1 this year, most “dumb” cell phones seem to have been lost in the crowd.  Especially those cell phones with tech that isn’t readily available to Americans.  Casio has just announced one of these cell phones.  The W63CA is part of the EXIFILM series, that’s right, a consumer grade digital camera line.

The reason for the phone being part of a camera line?  It has an 8.1 megapixel camera on board, with a 3.1” OLED screen.  Got that?  8.1 megapixels.  On a cell phone.  The main problem for us?  Its a Japanese phone.  Keep reading for more details.

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We’ve seen this as the end game for the telecoms for sometime: cell phones will stop being the main pipeline for cash.  Technologies like VOIP are changing the means by which we communicate and that could spell trouble for the likes of AT&T and Verizon.  So what is a heavily invested in infrastructure to do?  Answer: go after everything.

Find out what AT&T plans by hitting more below.

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If you pay attention to sports, then you probably know that the NLCS (National League Championship Series) is taking place right now between the Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers.  As you can imagine during many popular events such as sporting events, many use their cell phones an awful lot at the same time.  This can sometimes cause a cell phone traffic overload and prevent calls and texts from going through, which would definitely be annoying. 

In efforts to combat this, Verizon is introducing something near the stadium known as COLT (Cell on Light Truck).  This is a fully-functional mobile cell site that adds extra wireless capacity.  Such extra measures will prevent from any calls to be dropped, texts not going through, and making surfing the Internet as smooth as possible.  In addition, if you plan to use a laptop near the stadium, you will probably notice that you have access to better Broadband Internet. 

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Technology is usually not mentioned in the hot-button issues in US politics.  After foreign policy, the economy and personal jabs, there isn’t much time on camera to talk about what many of us care about most (or at least an awful lot).  So, I dug deep into both candidates issue positions and came up with some info you should know before going to the polls.

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