It’s no back to school roadmap because, hey, you’re already there. Still, this leaked sales sheet from TmoNews shows Magenta stacking its shelves for an abundant fall mobile harvest. So, let’s dive right in as there’s a lot of two-year contracted bounty to cover. Starting things off on October 19th are a trio of high-end, 42Mbps-capable 4G handsets: the HTC “Ruby” or Amaze 4G at 9, Samsung Hercules (that would be this) at 9 and the Huawei Wayne at (which comes pre-loaded with Spaghetti Westerns, we presume). Following just a week later, is Samsung’s Arnold tablet — a.k.a the Galaxy Tab 10.1 — which’ll run along the carrier’s faux-G and retail for 9. But the real wireless bonanza takes place on the 2nd of November, when six new phones will bow. LG’s Maxx QWERTY and Maxx Touch at 9 apiece are the sole 3G-only units in the bunch, leaving the HTC Omega (better known as the Sensation XE overseas) at 9, LG Flip II at 9, Huawei Tallsome slate at 9 and the low-end Samsung “Ancora” to surf along at 4G speeds. Making a late appearance to this Autumn party are the last two of the bunch: Samsung’s Robin (which looks to be the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus) at 9 and RIM’s Dumoine QWERTY slider. That enough options for you? We thought so.

T-Mobile’s fall roadmap leaks, cornucopia of mobile goods on the horizon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon is seriously diversifying its portfolio today with the official in-store launch of four new smartphones. Three of them roll up in Android gear, though they all have major selling points beyond Google’s software. LG’s Revolution is the sole LTE-capable handset of the bunch, bringing with it a 4.3-inch screen and pre-installed Netflix for 0. The Droid X2 undercuts it on price, at 0, but doubles the core count with its Tegra 2 processor and ramps up resolution to qHD (960 x 540). Gaming aficionados can spend the same amount on the Xperia Play from Sony Ericsson, which offers a slideout gamepad and unique PlayStation Certified status. Bringing up the rear is HTC’s well-traveled Trophy, a 3.8-inch Windows Phone that accepts it’s a little late to the party and therefore slices off its asking price, with a 0 levy before the obligatory two-year contract. What say you — buy, try, or keep waiting?

Verizon bonanza: Droid X2, Revolution, Trophy, and Xperia Play hit Big Red today originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 May 2011 02:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why Iron Man 2 ignores Hollywood 3D mania
Summer movie-going begins at midnight with “Iron Man 2,” the Marvel sequel projected to threaten the first-weekend box-office performance of the current record-holder, 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” But remarkably, in the new Hollywood 3D bonanza led by the best-selling movie of all time, “Avatar,” the Iron Man 2 is coming to theaters in good, old-fashioned 2D, no 3D version in sight.

Read more on The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News

Whether you’re excited about the iPad or not, you really have to admit that it’s a beautiful piece of hardware. What people disagree about is whether it’s worth having around, what with Apple’s chokehold on content and the limited inputs. Hell yeah, it is! But for flicking my way through word documents, watching scaled-down HD content in mono, and designing presentations? Nah.

It’s not until one of the thousands of hackers out there, with teeth sharpened on jailbroken iPhone apps, gets their iPad and cracks the mother wide open, that we’re going to have the real fun. And I have reason to believe that’s going to happen mighty fast.

Why do you think Apple neglected to include USB slots and an SD card slot? Because obviously they want you to buy the pre-approved games and apps from the App Store. Sure, those will be nice. Tower defense games are going to be fun as hell, and I’m looking forward to the big Diablo-esque dungeon crawler that’s surely in development. But brother, I want to play me some arcade games! I want a custom file browser, and support for obscure video formats! I want unfettered access to the device I just paid $500 for!

The single input is the big issue, but the dock is essentially a USB-to-iPad cable. Sync everything over that, even — dare I dream — driver support for multiple wireless controllers? I’m thinking how perfect this thing is for couch or travel gaming — but I’ll be damned if I’m going to limit myself to the App Store. Bring on the DOS emulators. Bring on dual-boot with Chrome OS.

The limitations are very few. With the iPhone, it still had to function as an iPhone — adding forbidden functionality on top of that was difficult and broke often. But the iPad is far less tethered to its OS, and I get the feeling that’s going to result in a bonanza for people willing to hack it.

See, here’s the thing. It’s not just that the iPad is a great device. You may or may not think it is; personally, I think it’s incomplete and compromised by Apple’s control fetish. If I pay $500 for this thing, I’m not buying an Apple product, I’m buying a beautiful touchscreen device that has hackers and developers the world over drooling over the possibilities. You may dislike that it’s the Applest Apple product ever to come out, but you can’t argue with the numbers being sold and the hardware itself. Decent CPU, discrete GPU, responsive touchscreen, familiar resolution — it’s a tablet computer, whether Apple wants to let you use it as one or not. I don’t know about you guys, but in my world, the consumer decides what the device is for, and the iPad is a great place to prove it.

I think we all knew it was coming. After all, the new interface, while aesthetically similar to the old Zune UI, is totally incompatible with the old hardware. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, unfortunately — though I would add, that doesn’t mean you have to throw away the dog.

Unfortunately, that’s what Microsoft has to do in order to run with Apple and Samsung and the rest; slick little touchscreen players are the future, and as we’ve seen, you can make the screen bigger (or the whole device smaller, as with the Zune HD) if you remove those bulky controls.

So, farewell, pal Zune. We’ll post a proper retrospective at a later time. Anyway, I’ll continue to use you because you’re good and I don’t want to buy anything from Apple.

On the plus side, this means there will be some crazy prices on Zunes within a few weeks. For those of you out there like me who buy their tech one generation behind (lovin’ my PS2), it’ll be a bonanza.

[via Zune Spring and Engadget]

Leisure Suit Larry was one of those game franchises I always saw on the shelf at the local computer games store but never bought. I picked up the box and oggled at the titilating pictures on the back, but I never traded my hard-earned cash for the soft-core bonanza that the games offered. I like to think I’m a better man, as a result. Lots of people must’ve bought the game, though, because they released something like eleventy billion different installments. That’s a lot of 16-color skin to admire.

Now, thanks to the wonders of The Internet, you can admire all that skin without ever having to play the games! The Women of Leisure Suit Larry collects some of the better gems from this franchise for your enjoyment.

And as Mr. Harvey James says:

There is a seriously ugly and amazing coffee table art book dying to be made out of this.

I couldn’t possibly fail to agree less.

My goodness, all these low-resolution women remind me of some of the great ANSI art I used to see back when I used BBSes. You know, those things we used before the Internet to get all our porn!