What Are Your Requirements for Choosing a Bank? [Ask The Readers]


21
Aug
2008

The Simple Dollar personal finance blog's author runs through the features he placed a priority on when he switched banks. While many of them are nearly obligatory these days—online bill paying, FDIC insurance—others are worth thinking about. A 0.5 percent difference in checking account interest, for example, can easily be eaten up by non-network ATM fees, and shelling out $20 or more for paper checks can make other features a wash as well. For those who are just leaving college, entering a marriage, or otherwise switching banks, what would you experienced money-movers recommend looking for? What features made or broke your decision to stick with your bank, and what would make you switch again? Let's hear your take in the comments.


Video: BlackBerry Bold vs. iPhone Web Browser Showdown (It Gets Ugly) [Blackberry Bold]


21
Aug
2008

We've seen the BlackBerry Bold and iPhone head-to-head before, as well as the Bold's greatly improved browsing powers over past BlackBerrys, but not side-by-side in a web browser race. It actually gets pretty ugly, uglier than we thought it would.

With both running on Wi-Fi and a cleared cache, in a test using Slashdot, the iPhone is actually able to open an entirely new page before the Bold finishes with the first one. The Bold renders everything correctly, it just takes a looooong time to do it. The Bold's got some fairly heavy duty hardware though, so an update from RIM should be able to give the browser a much-needed jolt. [Mobile Computing Mag via jkOntheRun]


Radioshack Flyer Indicates Xbox 360 Price Cuts on Elite, Arcade Systems [Dealzmodo]


21
Aug
2008

The price cut rumors we've been hearing for September look to be gathering even more steam, as this Radio Shack ad shows drops to $399 for the Elite system and $199 for the Arcade. That's down $50 on the Elite and $80 on Arcade, making your choices a nice smooth progression of Benjamins—$199/$299/$399. The drops are rumored to hit early next month. UPDATE: We've also just heard from the folks at setteb.it, who have news of an official 60GB upgrade to the 20 GB Xbox 360 system at the same price, €270 in Italy. [Joystiq]


In-flight Cell Call Ban Advances in Congress


31
Jul
2008
A bill that would stifle in-flight cellular calls permanently is headed for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Parents Can Control Kids’ T-Mobile Use


31
Jul
2008
T-Mobile becomes the latest carrier to allow parents to set limits on calls, text messages, and downloads for their children.

New iPod Nano to bring back slim design?


30
Jul
2008
Is it retro if it's just two years old? Apple may be heading back to the long, lean Nano design after a year with the short, fat Nano on store shelves.

Review: Tetris for iPhone


30
Jul
2008
Tetris is one of the most esteemed casual games in history. Unfortunately, this version for the iPhone and iPod touch is too buggy to enjoy.

Giz Explains: An Illustrated Guide to Every Stupid Cable You Need [Giz Explains]


30
Jul
2008

We put up with too many cables. There are at least four different kinds of USB plugs, two kinds of FireWire and like a million different ways to connect something to TV or monitor. Modern gadget life can be kind of retarded in this way. Why not one kind of cable, or just a couple? I don't know. But until everyone gets on the same appendage-to-hole scheme, in the meantime, you can use this: an illustrated guide to pretty much every kind of cable you will see in current gadgets and what it's used for (unless, you know, Sony springs a new one on us overnight, which is honestly possible).

USB Type A Universal Serial Bus, the gold standard. The whole idea behind it is that this one interface will connect everything (except the stuff it doesn't), killing off the old guard, like parallel and serial ports. It moves data, and in the case of USB 2.0—which is pretty much the standard now—it does it faster, and with some extra specs for power. Clarification: USB 2.0 adds in the Battery Charging specification 1.0, which allows for dedicated charging and other power goodness. This particular connector is the type A variety. It plugs everything from your iPod to your digital camera into a computer, or whatever else. If you haven't seen this before, what are you reading this on?

USB Type B The USB Type B plug is basically a USB connector for peripherals—you've probably seen it jacked into a printer or scanner.

Mini USB It's a type of USB connector for smaller devices like cameras and phones—it takes up less real estate than a port for a Type A connection, obviously.

Micro USB Even smaller than the above Mini USB. Since it's, like, even smaller, we're starting to see it adopted by LG, Motorola and others—hopefully this is the last time they all switch power adapters on us, till wireless power makes adapters unnecessary.

IEEE 1394 (aka FireWire) An alternative to USB, Apple popularized the IEEE 1394 interface as FireWire (Sony called it i.LINK). You're probably most familiar with it on a digital camcorder (or an old school iPod), since it's really speedy for data transfers. You're looking at the four- and six-pin versions of FireWire 400. The six-pin version delivers power, the four-pin version (originally favored by Sony) doesn't.

FireWire 800 A revised, faster version of FireWire introduced in 2003, it doesn't use the same connectors as the original, making it rare for non pros—and an unnecessary pain the ass.

RJ45 The kind of plug you're used to seeing on the end of a Category 5, Cat5 enhanced or Cat6 (commonly known as Ethernet) cable, which is plugged into your router or computer's networking port. Cat5e is an update to Cat5 that supports faster Gigabit Ethernet. Cat6 is the next-gen standard that will handle speeds twice as fast as Cat5e, and has stricter rules about noise and crosstalk. Interestingly, the most recently approved IEEE 1394 spec (aka FireWire S800T) uses RJ45 connectors as well.

eSATA External Serial ATA is a branch off of the Serial ATA interface that connects your hard drive to your computer if it was put together in the last couple of years. As you can guess from the name, the difference is it's an external port, but it delivers the same insane data transfer speeds as the hookup to your hard drive. Faster than USB or FireWire, it's basically for external hard drives for quicker data transfers. You'll be seeing it more as more laptops include a port for it, usually one that can also be used with USB. There's even talk of bus-powered eSATA coming in the next year or two.

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface is another one of those "it'll connect everything except all the stuff it doesn't" deals, but for high-definition audio and video. It basically replaces DVI (see below) plus S-Video and all that other analog crap. Laptops, desktops and even high-end cameras and other gadgets are getting HDMI. Besides fat bandwidth, another benefit is control: The Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) profile already lets machines send commands to other products over HDMI—that or something like it could be very useful in the PC space, too.

DVI The digital successor to VGA, Digital Visual Interface is a video connection you'll most likely see dealing with computers or computer monitors, at least until they're all replaced by HDMI. Older HDTVs have DVI ports too. It can have a few different pin arrangements, depending on whether it carries a digital (DVI-D) or analog (DVI-A) signal or both (DVI-I, for integrated). The analog deal on some types is to make them easy to adapt for use with a VGA monitor, but it's less and less noteworthy. There's also a dual-link version that carries more data for high-res displays. These are helpfully depicted at Wikipedia.

Mini and Micro DVI are dumb, shrunken, Apple-only versions of DVI. Why dumb? Because they're essentially proprietary formats. HDMI will make them obsolete before long.

DisplayPort is the newest video interface on the block, and its plane of existence is basically in the computer-to-monitor realm only. It's not even close to mainstream yet, but Dell is backing it, among others, so you might wanna know it. It can carry a whole lot of data, but it's got DRM built into the spec, so it's a double-edged sword.

That's enough cable to strangle most of California, but by all means feel free to add in your own cable trivia down in the comments.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about cables, plugs, holes, bird or bees to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.


Microsoft: Windows 7 on track


24
Jul
2008
Windows business head Bill Veghte says the new operating system, "tracking very, very well," is still scheduled to ship within three years of Vista's January 2008 debut.

Time to drop cable television? Not so fast


24
Jul
2008
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Couch potatoes love television, but some simply have no interest in watching sports or kids shows. So why should they pay for it?