If you’re quick about your business, through 6 AM September 9th (That’s NEXT Tuesday people!), you can get an Inspiron Mini 9 for only $99 if you buy a Dell XPS M1330, XPS M1530, or a Studio 15! This is a great deal, seeing as they were set to retail for $349 and $399 with Ubuntu and Windows XP Operating Systems respectively.

This machine is meant for true on-the-go users. It comes with a 1.6 Ghz processor, 512mb of RAM, a 8.9″ Glossy screen, 802.11g Wireless capability, 3 USB 2.0 ports and to top it off, a 8GB Solid State Hard drive. It is the perfect companion for anyone who travels a lot, a student for classes, or someone who spends a ton of times in meetings. For more information, hit the direct2dell blog post that first posted the great deal.

1. The EULA or the End User License Agreement (that you normally accept because you can’t sit there and read about 100 pages of legal jargon about what is and is not allowed) will be rewritten and will hopefully be fixed soon.
2. When will Chrome leave beta and become a full fledged browser? GMail has been out for how many years? And that too is still in beta… Anyways, there are still bugs and since it still is in “beta” it is allowed to have these bugs… although maybe not as big as this…

So until Google comes up with a new EULA, I’ll stick with FireFox and my add-ons which I love dearly!

Okay, so there’s a lot going on with Chrome, and they’re all covered in what has quickly become my favorite new medium for product descriptions - a comic book! So while you should absolutely read it, here’s a brief synopsis of the key features being touted:

Stability
The first neat thing about Chrome is that tabs take precedence. Rather than your browser being based on a window divided by tabs ala Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, Chrome switches it up and puts the tab at the top of the hill. This setup allows for more stability, as each site you’re visiting can be contained as its own process. This provides immediate awesomeness. Example: You’re browsing seven web sites, and one of them crashes on you. In most major browsers, this means your entire browser crashes and you lose ALL of your sites. But with Chrome, if a site hangs up on you, it won’t crash your other activities. This kind of system also equates to better performance, since each website is autonomous and has no bearing on the performance of the other sites you’re viewing. It also mean increased security, since your tabs are effectively sandboxed, keeping them self-contained. So even if there were malicious code running on a site you’re visiting, it won’t have access to your machine or to the other sites you’re viewing.

Speed
As it was just mentioned, the emphasis Chrome gives to tabs means better performance. But Google doesn’t stop there. They’ve had a new Javascript (JS) virtual machine developed for Chrome. It’s called V8, and it runs through JS up to 10 times faster than FireFox 3. This provides a huge boost in speed, as most online applications use a ton of Javascript (such as web-based mail).

Search and User Experience
So Chrome has this thing called an omnibox. It’s what you would recognize as an Address Bar - the line where you type in the address of the website you want to visit. But the omnibox has been beefed up a bit to provide automatic suggestions while you type in what you want to view. These suggestions are based not only on live searches, but also on your browsing history. On top of that, it’ll also keep track of what sites you tend to search the most frequently. So if you’re a nut for Amazon, you could go to the omnibox and begin to type “Amazon.” But rather than even finish typing it out, just hit the tab button. This cues the omnibox to pull up your most popular search engine that starts with the letters you typed. So type in “A”, hit tab, and you’re presented with the ability to search Amazon’s site right there in the omnibox. Pretty nifty stuff.

Security
Chrome’s security measures are so well articulated in their PR comic that I’d feel ashamed spending this time paraphrasing all of the great information it provides. Still, what’s important to know is that each site you visit is self-contained (or “sandboxed”), preventing it from communicating with other sites you’re browsing or from any other process running on your machine. Chrome also communicates with Google, where it pulls in a constantly updated list of scam sites, helping protect you from the latest threats.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. For more details about the RIDICULOUS amount of kickassery happening with Chrome, please enjoy the comic and educate yourself on why this is such a big deal. Then download it.

With technology at our fingertips (pun intended!), people have opted to text message people rather than talk on the phone, especially when you can get cancer from talking on your cell phone for too long… They even have competitions for the world’s fastest texter!

But its not just the health effects, texting has become so popular the SMS language associated with texting allows kids, teens, and young adults to relay their message faster than verbally speaking it! It also allows them to speak to each other during class or other situations in which you can’t talk on the phone but need to get your message out. Not that we are condoning texting during class or such situations, but it is a great way to get little snippets of info to your friends/family.

But back to AT&T, they have partnered up with Rock the Vote and created the RtV Mobile Election Vehicle. At an aim to get the younger generations to vote, the RtV Mobile Election Vehicle has some lucrative offers:

· A PSA Recording Booth where visitors record their very own PSA/Rock the Vote message to share with friends online or via video text messaging (MMS)
· Two Voter Registration Bays with computer stations where young people can register to vote
· A Mobile Music Bay where concert-goers can download RTV-related content to their mobile device and sign up for an AT&T RTV text message short-code, RTVOTE (788683), to automatically receive voter registration and Election Day reminders, polls, political quizzes, celebrity messages, and mobilization alerts
· A Framerz Bay where guests can use a tethered camera phone to take photos with an RTV celebrity, presidential candidate or political icon
· A Convention Karaoke contest where political pundits and politicians are paired with Rock stars to sing (potentially bad) karaoke to urge young people to get out and vote.

So get with the times, use text messaing (note standard rates may apply), and GO VOTE!

* Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
* Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
* Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)

Users who go over the 250GB/month quota get a “friendly” phone call to warn them. However, after the second overage, your service will be terminated and you are prohibited usage for an entire year!

Read more at c|net

AT&T’s International Plans Fact Sheet

There are also new rates for using your iPhone in other countries. There are flat rates for data usage in other countries which is again significantly cheaper than not having these additional plans. Click the link for the iPhone details.

AT&T iPhone International Fact Sheet

If you have trouble opening the files, click here for Adobe Acrobat Reader

Microsoft is pleased to announce the launch of a new mouse tracking technology is revolutionary than optical that than lasers. Explorer Mini Mouse will change your way of managing the computer. Thanks to technology tracking Microsoft Bluetrack, offers excellent performance and accuracy on most surfaces (raw wood, granite and carpeting included) allowing you to control your computer from anywhere you want. This mouse is ideal for notebooks for its small size. Its elegant design, the blue luminescence and metal finishing side will give an exclusive style. Accurate and fast, is rechargeable through the appropriate base.
Features:
• Microsoft Bluetrack ™ Technology tracking revolutionary: Microsoft Bluetrack ™ : Microsoft BlueTrack ™ is a new technology for tracking revolutionary than optical and laser. The optical sensors Blue Specular, born from a combination of a Blue LED and lens with wide angle, join the power-haul optical precision laser than managing to make more precise and wide the image contrast of the surface. This allows the mouse with technology BlueTrack to function perfectly well on surfaces such as granite, wood raw and the carpet, on which neither mice nor optical lasers can work to the fullest. The radius of tracking mouse BlueTrack capture a larger section of the area being four times larger previous technologies. The mouse BlueTrack are ideal for those who usually gather to manage their PC in the most disparate of the house, train, airport or even on the street, often in places where the areas of support are p

While multiple surfaces and a blue glow are nice features, a multi-touch pad would have been better. Mice are so confined to the area near the computer and surfaces and I’m not sure if this is a step forward or a step horizontally. Either way, it isn’t innovative.

Thanks to Engadget for the story and links

• Kevin Rose rumors on new iPods, etc. from Apple - CrunchGear
• XBox360 will get motion controllers like the Wii? - Gizmodo
• Google and Verizon to partner for cell phone searching - Gizmodo
• Virgin Mobile to acquire Helio - Engadget
• Cyborgs by 2050? - Gizmodo
• And finally… Why this Gizmodo writer won’t be switching to Macs anytime soon

http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/connectech.jpg

Anyway, over the past ten days there has been a fairly fascinating debate about Intellectual Property Laws, Computer Fraud, and plain old bored college geniuses.  (Or is it Genii?  Genies?  Can they grant wishes?  I need to figure this out.)

Last week, a group of MIT students (a rare species known both for their ridiculous ability to calculate Pi to 37 digits in their head, and their ability to throw surprisingly good frat parties on Bay State Road in Boston) announced that they had successfully hacked the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority’s (MBTA’s) CharlieCard system, used for all public trains and busses in and around Boston. 

The MBTA, after hearing the students’ presentation, reacted rationally by filing a court injunction (PDF Format) to have the presentation gagged from all public dissemination.  Makes sense – not exactly good for business if everyone can ride for free.

This week, as the 10-day injunction was set to expire on Tuesday, a Boston Federal Judge threw out the lawsuit against the students, saying that they had not violated the Computer Fraud laws of the United States.  The judge declined to rule as to whether or not their “school project” (for which they got an “A”, by the way) of hacking the MBTA system constituted something protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, but that’s to be expected.  Wouldn’t want a Federal Judge to actually set precedent or anything.

The news is fairly monumental in the Tech World, opening the door to newer and better hacks of major corporations.  This is not to say that the deadbeats who spend all day trying to get your credit card information from TJMaxx’s database are going to go unpunished.  But it does mean that kids messing around and not actually causing any harm to a corporation (in this case, actually showing the corporation the flaws in their system before ever releasing the information to the public) will not be punished for their efforts.

Many major corporations have wised up and started employing hackers like these kids to help clean up computer security within their firms.  Rather than trusting the old guard to sit around all day and try to find security vulnerabilities, companies are starting to simply pay the people who find the loopholes first to come in and close off the access.

The MBTA has announced they will be cleaning up their security flaws within the next three months, so for those of us in the Boston area – better fill up that CharlieCard fast!

Last note – in what is either an ironic twist of fate, or just one really really stupid lawyer, it appears that the MBTA has inadvertently released exactly the information they went to court to have gagged.  Sometimes corporate incompetence is staggering.

(One more last note: I’ve found my answer.  I can’t believe there are 585,000 Google hits for this question, but I guess the answer lies out there somewhere.  We have too much time on our hands in this society…)

All told the ground-based service, named GoGo, will be offered on all 15 of their 757-200’s for a cost of $12.95 a flight. There are no plans to include any direct VIOP (Voice-over-IP) capabilities at this time, but it will allow you to do basically anything you normally do in a WiFi hotspot. More information can be found at the Source, Dallas Morning News.

What does this mean for you? Well for starters it means only the tech savvy users will be talking your ear off beside you, but what really scares me is their Firewall options… Will they be blocking non “public-friendly” sites? I’m all for free speech and the freedom of information on the Interwebs, but heck… I don’t want to be stuck in a middle seat between some guy watching hardcore rock videos and a girl streaming Hannah Montana concert footage. Do you?

Got ya, didn’t I.

But still, that would stink (at least the Hannah Montana-in-peripheral-view part.)

• First Android phone to be shipped in November… without Microsoft Exchange? - Engadget
• Intel to release 160GB solid state hard drives, faster, bigger and use less energy - Tom’s Hardware
• Dell’s Mini Inspiron laptop specifications have leaked out - Gizmodo
• Blizzard will release the opening cinematic movie for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King at Games Convention - Kotaku

OK, so that last story is mainly for us, but I leave you with this tid-bit that I came across today. For those who watch Family Guy, there is a character named Ollie Williams, a meterologist. He apparently has his own site here. Watch this Ollie Williams montauge to fully understand if you don’t already.