CNET.com has come up with a short, but helpful handbook on teaching about the telecommunication industry jargon you tend to hear. IF you ever wnated to know what “throttling” was you have come to the right place. The Beginner’s Guide to Telecom Jargon

Hulu Plus officially announced as open is now being dropped to $7.99 per month instead of the $9.99 a month all the suckers paid last month. New users will get 1 week free trial, while the ones that got shafted will get 2 free weeks out of the deal.

Did I say deal? Hulu is dead to me more or less with this subscription fee, and I assume it will be to many others. Of course there are a lot of dumb people out there that will gladly pay $7.99 a month for something the rest of us get for free elsewhere. I’ll spend it on my one a day vitamins and my next 1 TB hard drive.

The only benefit to the less internet and consumer-savvy out there is that Hulu will offer full seasons of all the shows they have on the site. Of course these are all shows that are on normal TV and not the actual shows people actually do pay for outside their basic cable. We can assume that they will have a small leg up on Netflix in this regard, but with Netflix you get so much more anyways with movies and TV that it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to go the Hulu route. Especially since the site is awful.

TechCrunch published a story saying “Facebook is building a mobile phone…or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware.” Facebook quickly tried to discredit the story, with a spokesman telling CNET that “Facebook is not building a phone. Our view is that almost all experiences would be better if they were social, so integrating deeply into existing platforms and operating systems is a good way to enable this.”

One source familiar with the matter said the concept is in the very early stages and Facebook apparently has not determined whether to proceed. However, around Silicon Valley, Facebook is notorious for floating ideas that get leaked, but the company either walks away entirely or goes in a dramatically different direction.
For example, two years ago the company was said to be building a music service to challenge MySpace Music, but Facebook still has no similar offering. And while Facebook’s e-commerce product was originally rumored–and, it appears, sketched out so far as to be pitched to potential partners–as “Facebook Wallet,” a competitor to PayPal, the social-networking giant announced in February that it would partner with the eBay-owned PayPal for its transaction technology, a virtual currency called Facebook Credits. Next thing you know they will be selling the best diet pill.

Crazy ideas that probably aren’t all that worthwhile in the long run I’d say. Stick to what you know. Not every internet company that strikes it big needs to just into hardware. There are plenty of opportunities with their reach to just steal other people’s ideas and buy them out.

The millions of people who spend hours every day on a cell phone may have a new excuse for yakking. A surprising new study in mice provides the first evidence that long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves associated with cell phone use may actually protect against, and even reverse, Alzheimer’s disease. The study, led by University of South Florida researchers at the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), was published January 6 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. So even a Black Friday phone is probably your ticket to a long lasting memory, or not.

“It surprised us to find that cell phone exposure, begun in early adulthood, protects the memory of mice otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer’s symptoms,” said lead author Gary Arendash, PhD, USF Research Professor at the Florida ADRC. “It was even more astonishing that the electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones actually reversed memory impairment in old Alzheimer’s mice.”

After being awarded the format victory earlier this year, it appears that blu-ray sales aren’t chugging along as one might expect. Sales were down 40% from January to February, and only increased by 2% in from February to March. This is for stand alone Blu-ray players and does not include the Playstation 3 version which is a complete steal for the cost.

HD-DVD players have fallen off the map. Dropping 65% from February to MArch, obviously due to the loss of the alleged format war., and the fact that no major studios are releasing in this format anymore.

Most agree that the pricing is probably the main culprit. Blu-Ray players were priced at an average of $300 over Christmas, but now are ranging closer to $400. When you can still get a DVD player for about $20, or just go out and buy a Playstation 3 for $399, what’s the point of spending $400 for just a Blu-ray player? There is none. I’d rather buy a PS3 that can play games, store music, photos, link to my peripherals like my ipods, and get me on the internet. Odds are that Blu-ray players need to be closer to $200 before I would consider buying one.

If you are one of those that looks for anything cheap like discount hotels in Vegas, a computer with out all the bells and whistles, etc. then you probably aren’t going to run out and buy an iPod just because of the name. I have the 60 GB iPod Video and have for a couple of years now, but I can’t exactly recommend it highly. The only reason I am probably still using it is because all their accessories are so expensive that I have no other choice but to keep with it. Especially after buying the Bose Speaker system for it last year.

/mp3 players aren’t all that different really. In the case of the Zune and the iPod you are really just paying an extra $100 for the name. If you are like me you probably don’t even watch video at all on your .mp3 player. I’ve never had a strong desire to watch video on a 3 inch screen myself, and would make a guess that many others do not either. Most people don’t really need space for 15,000+ songs on their .mp3 player either. So why spend $3-400 on an .mp3 player unless you want to be cool?

If you don’t care about looking cool and just want your music then check out these MP3 Players for $50 or Less.

1. Nintendo Wii
2. iPhone
3. ipod
4. XBox 360
5. Playstation 3

Prove me wrong.

Back in October, Apple put a limit of 2 on the maximum amount of iPhones one could purchase at any time. Recently it has been noticed that the limit has been raised back up to five.

So, either they’ve ramped up production, which would make sense following the European launches, or demand has waned. Finding one an a Mobile phone comparison site UK isn’t easy since they aren’t available, but many other solid options still are. There haven’t been any indications that demand has fallen off with the $399 purchase price so this has to be ruled out.

Apple is apparently still worried about the resale market, however, since it’s sticking with its policy of only accepting credit cards for iPhone purchases. That was the reason given for the decision to stop accepting cash: that the company wanted to discourage unlocking and unauthorized resales of the iPhone. Regardless of this Apple has been moving towards getting more apps available for purchase for the iPhone that will allow peopel to do virtually anything on it like playing with game emulators to simulating a popcorn machine.

I’m still not there with the iPhone yet. I am more than happy with the old Blackberry, and I have never been a fan of touch technology for various reasons. Mainly that I don’t feel like wiping the damn thing down every 5 minutes.

Apple has finally made something that hackers are interested in. With the popularity of the new iPhone it probably isn’t a surprise that a hacker has figured out a way to take advantage of the new toy. The iPhone is a multimedia and Internet-enabled 2.75G quad-band GSM mobile phone by Apple. The iPhone’s functions include those of a camera phone and a multimedia player. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, text messaging, web browsing, Visual Voicemail, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. The digital camera is a 2.0 megapixel camera, but doesn’t allow the user to capture video just yet.

So what is the hack? Jon Johansen, who is considered a well-known hacker has displayed his results on how to “activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without giving any of your money or personal information to AT&T NSA. The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and WiFi work.” His posts can be found at his blog So Sue Me.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said it was necessary to activate the iPhone on AT&T’s network to ensure optimum performance. Using the phone without AT&T’s two-year service contract was unauthorized under the phone carrier’s exclusive network service contract with Apple, Siegel added.

“Any other use of the device is not authorized and we can’t guarantee the device will perform as intended to. We’ll monitor situations like this and if necessary we will take appropriate action,” he said. “Our terms and conditions are very clear.”

Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment and a company called Digital Cinema Implementation Partners is developing a way that theaters can quickly add a film to an extra screen if demand for such a movie occurs when it gets sold out on one screen. The process is trying to make it so theaters can deliver what the audience wants as quickly as possible.

“Our goal really is to have the easiest, fastest, most reliable, most cost-effective content delivery technique possible to the theaters we represent,” said Travis Reid, Chief Executive of Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, which is working with Warner Bros. and Universal.

Sounds like a pretty great idea to me. Look at what the techology involves:

The process, still in the early stages of development, would use satellite and broadband delivery systems to beam digital films directly to theaters, rather than have them copied onto hard drives and delivered by hand, as for the most part they are now, said Darcy Antonellis, Warner Bros.’ executive vice president for distribution and technology.

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