Tech Newz

Every weekend, we comb our memories and archives to compile 10 useful items addressing a specific topic you may have forgotten about, or just happen to be excellent. Here are the 20 list(icle) posts that proved the most popular in 2009.

The best boxing doesn’t always happen at the heavyweight level. Likewise, some of the best things you can load onto your Windows system are tiny little guys that just make day-to-day writing, working, ..read more

Filed under: TUAW Business

We had a delightful chat last week with our friend Dan de Grandpre from Dealnews as we dove into the early information from Black Friday and looked forward to Cyber Monday. Beth Gladstone from WalletPop wasn’t able to be with us, but she’s promised to come back another Sunday very soon. You can download the shows direct from Talkshoe or subscribe on iTunes.

Tonight, we’re back live at 10 pm ET with the usual gang of ruffians, plus ..read more

Cellular carriers claim that their contracts offset heavy subsidies on handsets. They claim they’d love to sell phones contract-free at retail–you’re just not interested. But there’s a problem with this story: these “full price” handsets are grossly overpriced, suggesting that they want consumers in the contract rat trap after all. As hard as it is to prove, discount handsets often reveal the absurdity of list pricing. For example, Motorola’s Renew, free with a 2-year agreement, is listed as $160 full-price ..read more

Saul Hansell suggests that hated U.S. cellular carrier practices such as text message markups and fee-packed contracts ultimately give American consumers what they really want: predictable bills.

In pursuit of this we learn of the psychological “nuances” of pricing and the “supersized logic” of using fat overage fees to upsell customers to expensive all-you-can-eat plans.

“This year,” he writes, “the deals are becoming even better.”

His piece even claims that the industry would love to give up the adhesive contracts, early termination ..read more

Sony Ericsson UK’s got a new pre-registration page for the Xperia X10, and along with it what appears to be a brand new, February 2010 expected launch. It’s hard to say for sure, but as far as we can tell this page is new, and last we heard the target window was a much broader “first half 2010.” Can’t say we’re anymore excited about this than before, but far be it for us to get in the way of a truly ..read more

Nissan’s Scratch Shield paint is currently being licensed to NTT DoCoMo as the latter wants to use the former’s technology in their cellphones. This self-healing paint supposedly self-heals fine scratches and can restore the vehicles’ paint surfaces overnight, while more severe cases might take up to a week or so. Apart from that, the Scratch Shield paint is also more scratch-resistant compared to conventional paint, resulting in a more durable and long-lasting paint coat. This would make us less careful ..read more

It’s here, folks. We’ll naturally have more impressions in the near future, but for now feast your eyes on the Samsung Moment and one of the least eventful unboxings of all time — Sprint sure isn’t packaging this like a premium handset, but at $179 we suppose it isn’t really pricing it like one either. The hardware itself might tell a different story, with a solid, hefty feel to it and great screen. So far our editors are divided on ..read more

Nokia’s 5230 isn’t apt to blow any minds with the likes of the HD2, Droid and XPERIA X3 on the horizon, but for those perfectly content with a touchscreen-based Symbian S60 5th Edition handset, this one sure looks purty. After dipping its toes in the FCC’s expansive database just last month, a crop of new in the wild shots have surfaced to show off its 3.2-inch display (640 x 360), 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR module and variety of colorful ..read more

Hey, what do you know, Acer just kicked out its first Android handset into the mystical kingdom of donuts and Snapdragons. Liquid, a rebranded (and slightly restyled) A1, brings a 800 x 480 WVGA capacitive touchscreen upon which you’ll watch Android 1.6 ride that peppy Snapdragon processor. It’s resumably tuned to 1GHz (or higher) and not 768MHz as listed on the eXpansys Germany spec-sheet — a trick that’ll make this the fastest Android handset on the planet. Of course, what ..read more

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, TUAW Business, Podcasts

Last week, Steve took over the hosting reins for a rollicking hour of talkcast fun. You can download the show, along with all past shows, from Talkshoe or subscribe in iTunes.

We’ll be back live tonight with our outlook for a desktop refresh on the iMac and Mac mini lines, the simmering issues with Guest accounts in Snow Leopard, and AT&T’s decision to open up cellular connectivity to VoIP apps. Most of all, ..read more