this site was an experiment for me: is technology writing actually a goal of mine, will people read a site that is small and written by teens, can a name like blargKABOOM actually work, etc. so many questions, blargKABOOM brought answers.

when there was a solid writing standard of a lot of quality posts during a week (maybe 2 a day), bK was doing really well. we had a readership base, we had a writer, and we had technology. which was really nice.

overtime, however,  I noticed the real lack of need for this little site here. we have the Engadget’s and Gizmodo’s… why blargKABOOM. and when there really wasn’t a good enough answer for me, I decided I needed to do something else. to build a site that has a reason.

and so, I announced in January big news for the future of blargKABOOM. major updates for 2009. well, we’re half way through the year: where are the updates?

the updates aren’t coming folks; well, not to blargKABOOM at least. for months now I’ve been working on a new site, a better site, a site with a purpose. now, it’s not launch ready yet, nowhere near launch ready; but my goal is to have it up, at least a beta or alpha version, by the end of this year. more of a universal site, this new “news network” (as i call it) will not have a focus, but will provide coverage of everything, with multiple types of coverage (real-time, media, video, etc) aimed at the teen demographic. for more info on that, check out my site jonathanfriedman.com

i can’t really shut down blargKABOOM as it was incredible at it’s peak, and i have to thank the readers who read this site when it was respectable and my staff (especially Danny Ahdout, who can be credited with finding the first trace of search on the iPhone).

so here’s the deal: blargKABOOM is on hiatus… indefinitely. however my new site will have many similar features, yet, honestly, be 100x better than what we have here with blargKABOOM.

cheers everybody, and thanks for reading.

so first off, an apology is necessary to all of you. so we’re sorry for this lack of coverage, and hopefully you’ve been able to get your news fix from other sites (like engadget.com and gizmodo.com).

but really what I want to say is that blargKABOOM has a future, so please stay tuned to this site along with the blargKABOOM twitter account and my site and twitter. we’ve got something really big coming later this year, so prepare for that.

but if blargKABOOM still remains un-updated, don’t fret. we’re just frantically trying to get this new site finished. so thanks for understanding and stay tuned.

“Join us at an invitation-only event to learn about the new SDK and get a sneak peek at the iPhone OS 3.0 software. The event takes place at Apple, Building 4, Town Hall on March 17 at 10:00 a.m.”

Engadget, Gizmodo, and gdgt will be offering live coverage, so check those sites this Tuesday @ 10 am for the most up-to-date news.

Technology sites over the web have already started making wish lists of features they’d like to have, however certain sites are already hearing rumors of features to be included: MMS (multimedia text messaging) and internet tethering allowing you to share your phone’s network connection with computers are two key rumors, though the ever-awaited copy-and-paste is also on this rumored feature list.Personally, if Apple wants the iPhone to remain on top, its got to pull a rabbit out of its hat (which its done before) and show a completely new UI that allows for easy copy-and-paste, new gestures, better app sorting features, and unobtrusive non-interrupting notifications. Basically, Apple needs to look at the features people want and add them, or they will have a lot of iPhone users switching over to the newly announced Palm Pre which has nearly every feature we iPhone users desire.

Apple announced a new iPod shuffle today, retailing for $79 with 4GB of space. The new model is similar sized to a stick of gum and has no visible controls as the new included headset acts as the remote. As with the old shuffle, a clip is still on the back ready to grip onto anything; to spruce it up, Apple changed the clip to stainless steel. The new shuffle, available in black or silver, uses “VoiceOver” technology for the mp3 player to speak to you. A click and hold of the earbud button says the track name, while a long hold allows you to select different playlists. The VoiceOver feature works in almost every language, though the voice switches from the standard OS X Leopard voice, Alex, to a more robotic female voice when the iPod user syncs with a PC (so to get that smoother tone, you gotta go buy a Mac along with your new iPod shuffle – classy move Apple.) The old 1GB model is still available for $49. Debates over whether this switch to no buttons is good have already started, let us know what you think in the comments.

We’ve been pretty slow on keeping you all up-to-date recently, so a quick apology for that. There are some big things in the works for later on this year and I’m working hard to get these new features up-and-running. Now back to the news:

• Apple updated its desktop line today, bring hardware updates to the Mac mini (long overdue), iMac, and Mac Pro. Most of these updates deal with detailed specifications on hardware (processor, hard drive, graphics, etc), so check out Apple.com for all the details.
• Amazon launched the “Kindle for iPhone” application yesterday, bringing almost all the features of a $359 device for FREE. Users cannot purchase books directly from the app and subscriptions are not automatically updated, but users can get their full Kindle library on the device and purchase books via the Safari Mobile browser on the phone and get them directly on the device. Basically, users have a fully loaded Kindle (without subscriptions and the controversial text-to-speech features) on the iPhone, something almost everyone has been waiting for.

So that’s the news everybody. Again, apologies for being pretty slow recently, but we’re working on big things, so stay tuned.

The next generation iPhone will have a matte-black metal finish according to some recent leaked photos. Do we trust those recent leaked photos? Not really. Sure, we’re not gonna immediately deny these photos’ legitimacy, but a big signal that these are fake: the case uses metal. Why would we immediately say metal means its not real? Because metal is a complete failure when dealing with cell and WiFi signals, so that’s why we’re gonna give this rumor a big “iffy” stamp. MacRumors and iPodObserver both received the images earlier today, and iPodObserver did post the first pics of the iPhone 3G’s glossy back months before the release, but we’re still doubtful. Check out some more pictures at MacRumors.

Just as predicted, the kindle 2 (official name) will be available on February 24 for $359 and the leaked pictures were real. Some key specs of the new device: 25 percent thinner than the iPhone, 25 percent longer battery life than the original Kindle, 7 times more storage space, 20 percent faster page-turning, and most importantly: IT READS TO YOU. It’s got text-to-speech built-in for those of you to lazy to move your eyes. Oh, and another major design change, the next/previous page buttons are tiny and won’t accidentally be pushed, which was the worst feature of the original Kindle (the sides of the device were buttons). Will this new model sell out in one day just as the original did? Who knows, but the kindle 2 is pretty tempting.

via Gizmodo

Amazon will launch it’s new Kindle at 7:00 AM Pacific (10 EST) this morning during a press event. Pictures of the device leaked to the media this weekend, while BGR had pictures of the device months ago. According to sources, the device will cost $359 and be available on February 24. All will be known in just a few hours, when Jeff Bezos will undoubtedly make the announcement of the new device. Engadget and Gizmodo will both have live coverage from the event, so check both sites out for up-to-the-minute news.

Some specs of the phone:

• 3.5g Data Connectivity
• Quad-Band GSM
• Wifi b/g
• Bluetooth
• Camera
• and of course Navigation

There is set to be a Press Conferance at 11am EST today, here for details.

- written by Bailey Berro

NBC and Fox joined forces in 2007 to stream the respective networks’ content (and their affiliates’) over the web through Hulu. Originally intended as simply a TV streaming site, Movie content from studios like Universal, 20th Century Fox, MGM and Sony were added to the mix when Hulu launched out of private beta in early 2008. Since then, Hulu has grown as a phenomenon and has even replaced the real TV set for some. So enough with this jibber-jabbering on Hulu. As you most likely know, the Steelers were the victor in todays Super Bowl XLIII (43). However, as always, the Superbowl ads are the true stars of the day. Ads from Pepsi, Coke, and Budweiser graced the stage as always, however we got special treats in the form of 3D, yes that 3D, commercials and a special commercial for Hulu. Hulu’s minute spot featured Alec Baldwin and is quite funny, thus we’ve got it featured for you above. And lucky for Hulu, it (most likely) did not have to shell out loads of money ot pay for the spot considering it’s parent company NBC hosted the Super Bowl festivities. Hulu really is a great resource to catch up on television, considering some of the most popular shows on TV (Heroes, House, and 24) are all streamed on the site for free. And just incase you want to check out all the ads featured during the big game, Hulu’s posted them for viewing. (The revolving list below contains all of Hulu’s streaming Super Bowl ads.)

Released early this year at CES, the Palm Pre is set to revitalize Palm and finally give the iPhone a run for its money. treocentral’s got a great hands-on video (around 25 minutes long) of the Pre and it goes into pretty great detail. To watch the full video, just click read more or click the screenshot above.

(Thanks for the tip, Mark!)

Cellular carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all offer USB WWAN cards or Expresscards that are usually free with a 2 year contract (or around $250 otherwise). As well as plans which run for $60.00 a month at the cheapest.
Currently, AT&T’s HSDPA/HSUPA 3.75G service is the quickest, and is priced the same as Sprint and Verizon’s similar services; as well as Chrysler’s recently introduced their Autonet service. 
Autonet has recently been unveiled by Chrystler as a mobile car internet service.  It is a step in the right direction, but still hasn’t hit the sweet spot.  It is appealing to the consumer because of its low $30 monthly payment and carrier switching between Verizon, Sprint, and Alltell, but it also scares consumers away with its hefty $500.00 pricetag.  

Times have changed, and the percent of consumers who travel with laptops has largely increased, and netbooks have gotten cheaper and more widely known.  Most of the owners of these netbooks and laptops do not have internet following them, and are constantly searching for WiFi hotspots.

THE SOLUTION:
Someone [ehem, AT&T!] should consider these facts, and should release a much more reasonable service:

Low Monthly Rates: This is the most important factor to consider, not  many can afford to drop $60.00 a month, and something in the $20-$35 a month range would be perfect.

High Speeds: 3G is a must! HSDPA and HSUPA would be nice, and in fact, should most definately be included.

A Reasonable Download Cap: No current U.S. carrier at the moment would be powerful enough to support a whole slew of customers using this service without a download cap, but 5gb is high, and reasonable.

Cheap Hardware: There should be one year contracts with dongle prices of no more than $100 on contract.  These would be perfect at $0-$50, but we can’t ask for too much.

In conclusion, all of these factors have to be taken into consideration before such a service is launched; but in the end, if we are lucky enough to see this happen, businessmen, travelers, bloggers, and everyday average Joes will have a fairly cheap way to access fast internet while on the go.

Apple announced record sales figures for Mac and iPod for the first quarter of 2009 in today’s conference call. However, iPhone sales were down over 2 million from last quarter, yet the drop was expected. Other notes of interest for the quarter include making over $10 billion in revenue for the first time ever and Tim Cook’s attack-dog attitude toward iPhone copy-cats and similar products. Cook basically said that if someone is stealing Apple’s ideas, they’re gonna get hell for it. Apple’s stock is up nearly 7 percent in after-hour trading, so the earnings were pretty successful. Oh, and just an added piece of information: Apple’s got $28 billion in the bank with no debt, don’t you just wish you were in that position.

A very reliable source has let me know that the Palm Pre is formally going to be known as the Palm 100 once it is out.

IGN reports that the Nintendo DSi will greet US shores (officially) in early April, April 4th specifically. Reportedly bearing a $179.99 pricetag, the DSi has already been imported and, consequently, hacked like crazy, so the device shouldn’t be that new to people. As you may know, the DSi is the next generation DS, featuring a thinner form-factor, dual-cameras, and larger screens. Check back for more on this story, but an April launch would be great considering previous speculation thought a late 2009 launch would occur. We’ve got a DSi overview video on Youtube, and you can check it out below.Click here to view the embedded video.

Team, 

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Palm needed something amazing during its CES keynote today. Basically, today was Palm’s last chance to live. Guess what? Palm is going to live, and they are going to live well. The Palm pre not only is a great looking device, it has a touchscreen worthy of competing with the iPhone and it has a slide-down keyboard for great texting as well as navigation. But that’s just the hardware, the interface on this device is fantastic. With similar MultiTouch gestures as the iPhone–flicking, zooming, etc–the pre’s interface organizes all of your web information together without creating duplicate information. The pre also has Microsoft Exchange support for the corporate types. Getting into the device’s core applications, the Calendar and Contact applications are pretty slick. The Calendar literally crunches free time when displaying the day’s events so the actual events are displayed. The Contact application can gather information from all of your information sites on the web and organize them together. The Mail application is relatively normal, but the Messaging application is pretty great. One messaging application for all your instant messaging services as well as text messaging, so less applications to clutter your device. Another cool feature of the phone: along the bottom of the display, the operating system leaves room for notifications from any of your applications. So if you get a message or got an email, it’ll pop up on the bottom. Dealing with price and release date: both are unknown; however, we do have the first half of 2009 as a launch period and Sprint is the exclusive carrier (a downer if you were hoping to use the device unlocked on a GSM carrier), hopefully we’ll see a GSM version down the line. Overall, the pre is a pretty sweet looking device. Coming from the standpoint of an Apple fanboy and an iPhone user, this device is tempting. And if it’s tempting for the Apple fanboys around the world, then it will definitely sell a good amount of phones. Hopefully the device’s Sprint exclusivity won’t kill it though, because Sprint is definitely not the most popular carrier out there. So good job Palm, you’ve finally done something right (and well).

UPDATE – Palm has confirmed to Engadget that a GSM version of the phone is still in the works.

Check out Engadget’s live coverage of the Palm keynote at CES. This event is rumored to make Palm an actually ‘good ‘ company again.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the Windows 7 beta will be available for download starting this Friday (January 9), for everyone. Ballmer delivered the opening CES keynote; Bill Gates has delivered the keynote for practically the past 15 years and last year was his last keynote. So the first announcement Ballmer made of his keynote was this Windows 7 beta availability. Windows 7 has been pictured and seen a lot over the past couple of months and this announcement was already expected (along with almost all the “announcements” from today’s keynote). Download the beta and learn more at the Windows 7 site.

Sling Media announced that they will submit an iPhone version of the popular SlingPlayer application  to Apple for certification sometime this quarter. The application will have the same features known to the SlingPlayer application. Incase you are unaware, Sling Media has products that allow users to stream content from their TV (along with a DVR like TiVo) over the internet to any computer worldwide. Sling Media has added a dedicated iPhone page to its website, featuring an overview video explaining the software.

• iLife ‘09: iPhoto adds Faces and Places, along with connections to Facebook and Flickr. Faces is a new way of organizing pictures by the people in them. You tag people in photos by faces, and iPhoto will automatically find other pictures of someone you’ve already tagged via face recognition and group them together. This is very similar to Facebook’s tagging service. Speaking of Facebook, you can now click the Facebook button in iPhoto and upload your photos direct to Facebook with tags (and if someone tags it on Facebook, you’re computer will download the tag). Places organizes photos by location via geo-tagging, camera’s with GPS do this and you can add the detail yourself. All of your pictures, along with the geo-tag, can now be uploaded to Flickr via one click. iMovie adds much more advanced video editing and gains back the abilities lost when iMovie was redesigned in the last version. Precision editing along with new themes and maps are included in the new version. Garageband now includes Learn to Play, offering users the ability to learn how to play the guitar or piano. Along with free basic lessons included, users can download celebrity lessons that teach you how to play real songs. Both iWeb and iDVD were updated in this ‘09 edition, yet Schiller did not go over specific details. All information about iLife ‘09 can be found at Apple.com/iLife.
• iWork ‘09: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote all received updates dealing with themes, layouts, transitions, and other basic features. The big news, however, is iWork.com. Apple launched iWork.com in beta today, and what the service does is allow iWork users to upload their documents to the web and share them with others to review them. iWork.com automatically has all different file types in which the user can give reviewers the opportunity to download the file in any format.
• MacBook Pro 17″: Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro were updated back in October, but the 17″ model was left out. Today, the 17″ model was upgraded. Including the same unibody design as the MacBook and MacBook Pro, the 17″ adds a matte display option (for $50 more) which removes the glass and adds a metal bezel to the screen. The big new feature for the 17″ is the inclusion of an incredibly long lasting non-removable battery. The batter lasts up to 8 hours, much longer than any previous battery, and can charge up to 1000 times (3 times the average battery’s capacity). The 17″ is available in only one model retailing at $2799.
• iTunes: 1) iTunes is ditching its 99-cent-a-song policy and adding a three tier pricing strategy. Music labels will be able to choose between $.69, $.99, and $1.29. According to Apple, there will be more $.69 songs then the rest, but all new music will undoubtedly be priced at $1.29 so they can rake in the dough on the new music train. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, who knows? I have a feeling this is gonna be a negative, just because new music buyers will most likely have to pay the price (increase). 2) iTunes is going completely DRM-free by the end of the quarter, and as of today 8 million of the over 10 million songs on iTunes are DRM-free. This means there’s no copy-protection, so you can do whatever you want with the songs. 3) You can now purchase music from your iPhone anywhere. Joining Wi-Fi, you can now download music from the iTunes Music Store over cellular networks. All the same songs, same quality.