My biggest heat is that the entire world acknowledges that Apple is ‘God’ at the moment and therefore allows Apple to get just a itsy-bitsy big headed, but hey who wouldn’t be? We all strive for greatness, but some of us just get there first and casts a nice shadow over the people under you. This isn’t to say that they won’t strive, they just have to work a little harder to get a bit of light shined on. As absurd as this may sound, Samsung is a underdog in the mobile market. They make great home appliances, but something about their cellphone’s aren’t on par with all the other products. Many have complained that their phones are built with cheap quality and lack manufacturer support, and many have graced their devices as being some of the best phones on the market. In all honesty, it’s a love-hate thing with the user, but it’s certain that they don’t get as much love and support from their users in comparison to HTC.

Truth be told, when Apple released the iPad, we all knew what was going to happen. That billion dollar Apple logo was going to shoot it so far into the sky, I’m surprised it came back down and was actually sold. But, it wasn’t the fact that it was a tablet, many tablets have been released before, albeit perhaps not with the same specs, snappy OS, nor online store ecosystem but still plenty tablets, so what made this one so special? Well, Apple of course.

And like any other product, here comes the competition, suddenly churning out tablets left and right, with different concepts, some with stylus, others with add-on keyboards, and well yeah we all saw CES so why go there. It was crazy, but of all the non-Apple tablets, the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 stole the show.  Thinner than the iPad, better display, it was just sexier in every way, but in the back of my head I still told myself. “This is a tablet, competing with the iPad, it’s going to do good, but it’s sadly never going to win.” My thoughts were washed away when I found out Apple began to sue Samsung for quite some patents and product design. Now here’s my biggest thing, if Apple has the right to sue Samsung for stealing it’s “product” design, why doesn’t it sue ALL Android tablets that have the same slab shaped form? It didn’t just stop there, they attacked the Galaxy S lineup as well, saying it was copied to the detail, including the OS, when the OS’ look nothing alike.

At the moment, Apple and Samsung are still at war in court, and the Samsung Tab 10.1 is currently only banned in Germany, while still pending actions in plenty other areas. (We’ll keep you posted with that) The relieving thing is this: Apple is scared of Samsung, but I don’t know why. Samsung has never done anything to Apple, heck if anything Apple NEEDS Samsung if they ever want to get into the SAMOLED+ displays, cause I must admit, that Samsung 7.7 is one sexy device. Apple needs to learn to play nice with their competitors. The worst thing you could do is put up walls and close yourself off, take that into consideration Mr. Cook

Hold yourself to your chairs you are about to be exposed to some of the most revolutionary, new, technology. A touch based mouse. Oh, wait, it has already been done by Apple. Now with the sarcasm left aside today Microsoft announced the Explorer Touch Mouse. This announcement came with a promise of a September release date and several photos of the to be product. Obviously, this product is meant to, for lack of a nice way to say this, photocopy the Magic Mouse into the Windows PC sector.

When I saw this product, which Redmond has been hinting at and showing prototypes of it for a while, I began to think why Apple created the Magic Mouse in the first place. Mac OS X has built in touch based gestures to launch certain set-aside features of the operating system and overlaying applications. Microsoft on the other hand, as it stands today, hasn’t integrated and type of real gesture in Windows. Which means the drivers are going to have to compensate for this, further more meaning the user has to relearn his or her mouse. Does your grandmother want to browse eBay or learn how to configure and re-learn how to use her mouse. The answer is very obvious.

Beyond those points this mouse does have some pretty nice features that placed at a $49.95 price point. The mouse is based off of Microsoft-specific BlueTrack technology which allows you to use the mouse on more than just your desk. The lighter grey bar in the center is the scroll wheel replacement, it allows you to scroll both horizontally and vertically through the displayed content. Lastly the Press Release describes the mouse to have a year and a half worth of battery life in four colors: Coal Black, Storm Gray, Sangria Red and Rust Red.

So what do you think about this? Are you going to buy one or wait till Windows really supports this kind of hardware? Leave a comment with your mind set for this product!

Following the best efforts of all parties, we are saddened by this development… We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry,eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now…

-Mike Edwards, Borders Group President

Lets face the facts here, the only person who has ever told me she preferred the feel of a book over a Kindle or iPad was my past English teacher. FYI that was before she bought her Kindle that she carries with her everywhere and has mentioned she loves it repeatedly. Secondly, books aren’t like movies. A movie when you buy it, which even this action has seen a dwindling re-occurrence, you most likely will watch it more than once; a book on the other hand I, and the majority of society, have never read beyond the first time.

This news started to break in January when Borders started adding delays to publishers and later filed for bankruptcy. Under the terms of the agreement reached, Borders at any time during the waiting period could be sold if a bid was submitted. The only viable option that arose from this situation was one from Hilco and Gordon Brothers liquidation company. With all of this out on the table if the deal is accepted by Borders Group the liquidation of all of Borders’ 399 stores (such an odd number) will start as soon as this Friday and the final closing of all stores would be set for September.

The close to 11,000 person strong workforce not only manning the corporate offices but the retail stores will, obviously, be left without jobs. Now the question might arise of “Why didn’t they just jump onto the eReader bandwagon?” Well, unknown to most people, they in fact did. they created a very weak and basically non existant partnership with Kobo but the device, just like their partnership never really took off.

So, now that your interests are peaked, to enter the contest you have to Like their Facebook Page (and or) Follow their Twitter account as well as share the news on your Twitter account. For every milestone amount of both likes followers they reach they are going to give away an iPad to a random either fan or follower (respective to what service the milestone is achieved on). In their blog post they defined a milestone as 5,000 followers/fan increments.

So what are you waiting for? Click the links below to go to both their Twitter and Facebook pages to enter! For more information regarding the giveaway check out the source link.

PressReader Facebook

PressReader Twitter

FolderEnhancer

Repo: BigBoss

Price: $2.49 USD

Whether you like Apple’s stock folder layout or not, FE is an essential app that allows you to customize your folders to your liking. Also, if you have ever jailbroken before you know that the slowed speed of opening folders is far to slow to be considered functional. FolderEnhancer fixes that and then some.

Genesis

Repo: ZodTT & MacCiti

Price: Free

Overall, this is one of the best themes for the Retina display devices. It has an amazing attention to detail as well as a great overall design.

MultiIconMover

Repo: BigBoss

Price: Free

When Apple first announced folders my first thought was “UGHH, I Ham going to have to individually move each app into the folder I want it to be in…” So, when MIMover came out I was over joyed. Now if the name doesn’t explain it enough, this tweak allows you to select multiply apps and move them all at once.

PhySwitch

Repo: BigBoss

Price: $1.99

The idea for this tweak is simply genius. Everything, control wise for the most part, is done through the touch interface for iOS. SO the simple idea of including the volume rockers into the task switching process is actually a nice change. Of course, you can still swipe up and down through the apps it is really neat to be able to use the volume rockers.

SB 2 Cloud

Repo: BigBoss

Price: $1.99 USD

If you use TinyGrab for the Mac or PC you will really appreciate this one! This application automatically upload any screen shot you take directly to either CloudApp or TinyGrab’s servers for sharing.

The above apps are just a couple of my favorite and most loved tweaks, themes and applications. If you have any suggestions for either new jailbreakers or experience users just trying to refresh their device please leave them below in the comments.

This is like a “Whats on my iPhone” video, only with my Android! Watch the video and all the links talked about will be right below the video!

[youtube SnvH2KlGWeU]

Partnering Sprint as the first exclusive carrier

Personally, I think partnering with a third place carrier with terrible customer service is a bad idea. I think that they should have went to AT&T or even Verizon as their launch partner. If they went to AT&T, they would have increased their GSM market share.

Terrible Advertising

Have you seen their advertisements? If not, watch this and you’ll see what I mean.

Click here

I don’t think Palm ever watched their own ads before. This is just absolutely horrible. Palm should what the Pre is capable of — such as, 3D gaming, multitasking, their notifications system, Synergy, the FaceBook app, and the browser. Not some creepy lady, which is in the middle of no where and telling us nonsense. There was even one commercial advertising the mirror back on the Pre.  That’s just ridiculous.

Hardware Issues

See that? That Pre has some major hardware issues. First off, Palm did make some enhancements to the build on the Pre Plus, but it’s still not the best. The whole phone is made out of cheap, flimsy plastic. The slider mechanism is also flimsy. Palm should really add some aluminum or some chrome bezels just to make it look sleek.

Overall, those are my thoughts why the Pre is doomed. Comment below and tell me why you think the Pre is doomed .

Ok, we all heard about the iPhone “4G” leak, it became viral within hours, then Dell, and other companies followed. Now, either Apple poked a pin hole into a high pressure line that burst or these leaks aren’t done on mistake. Though these prototypes all look cool and modern, just like they all do, but it leaves us bloggers and consumers some curiosity. Don’t forget “curiosity killed the cat”! Now I know people have there opinions about these so called “leaks”. My personal opinion is that, well, the iPhone was real ( we all know that, and so does the Gizmodo’s reporters door), but the fact that a day or two after Dell leaked three phones and then other companies followed in a what i can coined “faucet parade”. So, what is your opinion about this “leaking” pipe?

Marc Billow

Tech Cores Blogger