The Droid is going to get an update (late this week) from the android 2.01 all the way up to android 2.1 however this isn’t going to be like the Nexus One.

We will not get any fancy animated backgrounds nor will you get the 3D grid of application icons. While we will be getting multi-touch so we can now have something like an iPhone, it is hard for them to say the Droid is getting 2.1. I know when I upgrade my windows operating system from Vista to 7 it was the same windows 7 that everyone else had, it didn’t matter that I custom built my computer. So why on earth can’t the droid get the full 2.1 android OS?

I don’t know, I only hope that this phone will eventually get an update making it more like a newer Android phone or I may have to buy a new phone after 1 year instead of 2. None the less the Android 2.1 should make our Droids faster so that will be a major plus. But I know I want to have everything the Nexus One has, not some blue light special. What about you?

Does your phone have 3G across the country? Droid Does. What else does Droid do? A lot actually, and with every new application that comes out the Droid can do more and more. That’s really the beautiful thing about the Droid it’s something that is just a blank canvas and you then create something unique that suits you.

Overview

What do you get when you purchase the Motorola Droid? Other than (obviously) the phone you get a 16GB microSD card pre installed, a wall/usb charger, and a standard Lithium Ion battery. But there is more to it than just what the box says.

The Droid has a full qwerty keyboard, both as hardware and software. You can use the software keyboard in both landscape and portrait while the hardware keyboard is used in landscape. Both keyboards have not given any real big issues, in fact in the time I’ve been using the Droid I have only had issues typing with the hardware keyboard when I was trying to type with my arm around my girl friend. Even then I was able to type just fine. The software keyboard has given me a few more issues, but honestly nothing I wont get used to. Both keyboards are really solid and the phone could be perfect with just one or the other, however getting to choose between either one is even better!

The Droid also comes with a pre installed 16GB microSD card, and don’t think that Motorola got cheap when it came to picking out the size of memory card to stick in this. Currently 16GB microSD cards are as big as they come, and consequentially also the most expensive. Now I know the first thing some people may think is “the iPhone comes in a 32GB flavor” well yes it does, however what happens when 64GB microSD cards hit the market? Or even when the 32GB microSD cards are up for sale? The Droid will allow you upgrade your storage, which is nice since you will be stuck with it for 2 years unless you like to break your contracts.

The Driod does have a 3.7″ screen, which makes my old LG Dare look like a midget. It makes videos on YouTube watchable, as well as makes it very easy to read my favorite websites such as Gizmodo and EmotionalNinja. There isn’t really much more to elaborate on about this screen, it is just amazing, just make sure you get a screen protector!!

The Droid comes with a 5 mega pixel camera which you would expect to take great pictures for a camera phone. Well it does not let you down, the pictures I have taken have all been crisp and clean. Just in case you forgot, a 5 mega pixel camera is actually all you need for conventional picture sizes.

The Good and The Bad

The Good:

• Free Turn by Turn GPS
• TONS of Free Applications
• Beautiful 3.7″ screen
• 5 Mega Pixel Camera w/ Flash
• Verizon’s 3G Coverage
• QWERTY Keyboard
• Touch Screen Keyboard

The Bad

• Battery Life does leave something to be desired, don’t expect to go more than a day on a single charge.
• Monthly price could be a little cheaper, starting at $90 is a little high..
• The camera has awkward moments where it doesn’t want to take a picture.
  

Conclusion

If you are looking to get a good solid phone I highly recommend the Droid. There are very few issues with the phone and quite honestly none of them are deal breakers. The Verizon network is by far the best network to be on if you live in the US or Canada. While I can’t say you should just get this while still under a contract, if your contract is up or ending soon the Droid should be at the top of your list.

Hollywood Video is closing down 500 of their stores, with the possibility of more. While this means nothing to me as far as where I will get my movies it does mean a good way to find some deals on movies.

I wasn’t really looking for DVD’s just to expand my Blu Ray library. While I only ended up buying 1 Blu Ray, it was for the bargain price of $12. The movie was I Am Legend and I just figured it’d be a good addition. They did have other movies such as The Dark Kinght, all of which should be about $12 however I did get worried because they had a tag on it for $17 but I think that may have just been an old one as all of the other ones were $14.98 w/ an additional 20% off.

I did not check out the DVD’s too much as I already said, but while waiting in line I did notice Dan in Real Life was around $5, not too bad for a fairly new movie. My friend from work bought 5 movies for $40 which I assume were all fairly new movies.

If you are looking to expand your DVD library I suggest checking out your local Hollywood Video, while not all of them are closing there are a good number of them. Video Games are also on sale, but they are not marked so I didn’t even bother with that. I will be checking back at my local store (Woodstock) in 3 weeks when they just might have all of their newest Blu Ray releases and Video Games on sale. Use the Store Locator to see which stores are closing near you.

If you go shopping let me know what you ended up buying and how much it was. I’m very interested just how much money you can save from the list price.

How many times have you watched a movie with those high tech hackers that have those insane computers and thought to yourself “where the hell can I get one of those?”

If you don’t know what I’m talking about then pop in Live Free or Die Hard, or any other movie featuring hackers for that matter and you may get the idea. They are full of those crazy computers that just don’t exist. Sometimes their computer monitor will even be transparent! This is something I know for a fact doesn’t exist. Well I’m wrong, Samsung is planning on releasing a laptop within the next 12 months that will feature a transparent screen.

Sure this will probably end up costing you both your arm and your leg, but wouldn’t it be worth it?

[Source]

Yup Old School Xbox Live as we used to know it will cease to exist on April 15th, 2010. For those of you playing Xbox 360 games you are fine and safe, those will not be discontinued.

However those of you who love playing Halo 2 over Xbox Live will be unable to do so now. I am sure there are other games that people still play for the original Xbox but Halo 2 just comes to my mind pretty quickly when hearing this. Granted I stopped playing Halo 2 almost entirely once Halo 3 was released, I do realize that Halo 2 was quite the game to play on Xbox Live. Hell most people that played Xbox Live back in the day thought Bungie ran Xbox Live and it was created just for Halo 2.

I suppose I am just surprised they would discontinue this service since people have to pay to access it. How much does it honestly cost Microsoft to keep the Halo 2 servers up? I highly doubt it costs them much of anything. Here is the official statement from Microsoft:

Dear Xbox LIVE Members,

On April 15 we will discontinue the Xbox LIVE service for original Xbox consoles and games, including Xbox v1 games playable on Xbox 360 and Xbox Originals. I want to start by saying this isn’t a decision we made lightly, but after careful consideration, it is clear this will provide the greatest benefit to the Xbox LIVE community.
Seven years ago we laid out our vision for the connected console when we launched Xbox LIVE. We believed then that the power of the Internet to connect people would revolutionize living room entertainment. It started with amazing multiplayer games, and we’ve since seen that bet pay off again and again with the launches of Xbox 360, Marketplace, Netflix and powerful social features like Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. None of this would have been possible without the success of LIVE as a multiplayer gaming network.
There’s no greater example of the power of the Xbox LIVE community than the “Halo” franchise. “Halo 2″ has had an amazing run on LIVE, with a dedicated community more than five years after launch and well into the next generation of consoles. It has fundamentally changed the way we play video games. And while it’s difficult to see that run come to an end, the “Halo” franchise continues to act as the benchmark for multiplayer gaming in this generation, with “Halo 3,” “Halo 3: ODST” and soon “Halo: Reach” on Xbox 360.

Your Xbox LIVE community has grown to 23 million strong. And as we look down the road, we’ll continue to evolve the service with features and experiences that harness the full power of Xbox 360. To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox v1 games. We will contact the Xbox LIVE members directly impacted by this change and if this includes you, I encourage you to check your LIVE messages and associated e-mail account over the coming weeks for more details and opportunities. We view you as a partner in this process.

We’ll share more details soon, but in the meantime I want to assure you that the best is yet to come for Xbox LIVE. I believe we’ll look back on 2010 as a landmark year in gaming and home entertainment, and I couldn’t be more excited about what we have in store with “Project Natal” and LIVE. The LIVE community is the driving force behind everything we do, and it’s because of the community that ground-breaking experiences on Xbox continue to be possible.

See you on LIVE,

Marc Whitten

What do you think about this move by Microsoft?

Alright while this isn’t really a review of the Motorola Droid, I want it to be a quick overview of somethings I have noticed so far with it.

I really love this phone, which it’s hard to call it a phone because it just does so much. I have just started using it as of 30 minutes ago, and already have gone on Facebook and synced up every single person in my contacts, and they are now in my  phone, ready for me to call or drunk text whenever. This feature alone blew me away because honestly who doesn’t want every person on their Facebook to be in there phone?

Another great thing is I can connect to my local internet connection, which I’m sure every other smart phone can do too, but just to be able to do that is great because I don’t have to wait around the 3G, which while it’s fast it’s not as fast as my home connection so why should I wait an extra 4 seconds to watch a youtube video? Actually I don’t know, it could be an extra 4 minutes with the 3G, I haven’t really used the 3G that much yet.

The keyboard is also fantastic, both the touch and the solid, hard one as well. I have been using the actual keyboard more, just because it’s really easy to use and while the software keyboard is good, it’s just really cramped in the portrait angle so it makes me nervous I’ll hit the wrong key (which I have done a bit thus far with the software keyboard.)

One final thing I wanted to touch base on is the marketplace to get apps, holy shit-tank-turkey-loving-jew! There are a lot of FREE applications that I can download. Forget about the iPhone with it’s many many apps, I can get just about anything I want, for free. While there are paid apps which I would imagine are pretty nice, I don’t see myself needing to pay for one, but just in case I do, the most expensive one I saw so far was only $5. OH BY THE WAY, THIS PHONE HAS FREE GPS THAT KICKS A JEWS ASS!!!!

Anyway that’s really all I have so far, expect a full review later this week after I have played around with it some more. But so far I have to give this a 95% I just hate the fact that I’m paying $90/month for this. But oh well it seems to be worth it.

Public Enemies summarized by NetFlix:

In the shadow of the Great Depression, criminal minds are thriving, notorious men like John Dillnger (Johnny Depp), “Baby Face” Nelson (Stephen Graham) and “Pretty Boy” Floyd (Channing Tatum) and it’s up to J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and the FBI to bring them down. Michael Mann directs this gritty crime drama based on the book by Bryan Burrough. Christian Bale, Giovanni Ribisi and Leelee Sobieski co-star.

I am not going to review the movie itself, Roger Ebert did a much better job than I could probably ever do. While I did enjoy this movie, I just wasn’t impressed with the Blu Ray itself. But because I like to make things some what organized how about a list, we all love lists right? Here is what you get with your copy of Public Enemies
on Blu Ray.

• Larger than Life: Adversaries
• Michael Mann: Making Public Enemies
• Last of the Legendary Outlaws
• On Dillinger’s Trail: The Real Locations
• Criminal Technology
• Gangster Movie Challenge
• Feature Commentary w/ Michael Mann
• U-Control (but seriously, who wants to grab there remote to press a button middle of the movie? I know I don’t)

While these are a good amount of extras for a movie, I remember a time when DVD’s had special features as well. As far as this movie having more special features than a DVD, I have to say it does not, nor do I feel that for special features alone it is worth it to get this movie on Blu Ray.

But how about the quality? I didn’t notice that great of a picture on my TV and there was a very annoying light that would flicker throughout the movie during some darker scenes. It annoyed me so much I had to pop in Transformers 2 on Blu Ray to make sure it wasn’t my TV doing it, I was happy to find out it was just the movie. Unfortunately for the movie this made me HATE the way it was shot / edited, if you have seen this movie on Blu Ray let me know if you also noticed the picture flashing at parts. The picture itself was pretty grainy, and I’m not watching on a 720p tv, it’s 1080p and it’s 50″ so I see no reason why this picture should be grainy when it’s on a 50gb Blu Ray Disc. I understand that they may have shot the movie to look like that but seriously would having a clear picture take anything away from the movie? No it would have made it so I could see a nice clear picture no matter where I was sitting. So picture quality sucked.

How about the sound? This is where the movie does excel, I was very pleased with the sound quality and I was just using my TV’s speakers in “surround mode” it sounded very good. While I am not sure what the DVD sound quality is like, if you own a surround sound system I highly recommend you look into getting the Blu Ray copy over the DVD.

So where do I stand with this movie? I’m happy I got this through NetFlix, I didn’t see it in theaters so it was a great way to see the movie. I was not impressed with the picture but it really excelled in the sound and those of you who like your share of special features wont be left without anything. I give Public Enemies
on Blu Ray a C+. If the picture would have been nice and crisp this would have easily gotten a B+ however since the picture was noticeably grainy I can’t give it a terrific score. If you enjoy crime dramas, or are just looking for another movie to make your Blu Ray library bigger I’d say get this, otherwise I’d rent the movie first.

I really felt like having something more geeky for my Windows 7 desktop background so I decided to search the internet for a bunch of really nice wallpapers and I wanted to share my findings with you. I just don’t see why you should have to go through a bunch of hard work when I already did it for you ENJOY!

Bioshock

Classic Arcade Games

Counter Strike

Crysis

Fallout 3

Final Fantasy

Halo 3

Modern Warfare 2

Let me know what video games you would like to see featured in my next edition of Must Have Video Game Desktop Backgrounds!

Is Google Chrome not working properly? Are you looking to make some extra money? Well Google is now offereing between $500 and $1337 (wonder if they made that amount on purpose) for the first person to report Google Chrome bugs. So if you find something that is breaking Google Chrome, or if Google Chrome isn’t doing something right just report it to Chromium and if you are first one to report this issue you can be rewarded a pretty hansom sum of cash while making the Chrome browser even better.

[[Gizmodo]]

Firefox is by far one of the best web browsers you can use today. With the limitless amount of plug-ins and it’s ability to read web pages that are not coded 100% by the book make it an amazing browser to use. Not only that but Firefox has had far less issues with security holes than some other browsers (such as Internet Explorer)

With Firefox you don’t just download this browser and that’s it. You have the ability to download or create your very own theme for the browser itself. While I have not yet gotten a theme (I’ve been too busy) it’s incredibly simple to do from when I used the themes wayyyyy back in the day. You just find the one you like, click the install button and it will download and install the them in just a few seconds. That’s all you have to do and just by doing that you go from the old boring look to a new fancy exciting look!

Now Firefox wouldn’t be what it is today without it’s ability to let the user download plug-ins (also known as add-ons) for it. At the time of this writing there are well over 5,000 add-ons you can install to Firefox. Yes some of them might be completely useless, however a very good majority of them are excellent, whether you need it for web development or just something for you photos or music Firefox has it for you.

As I already mentioned Firefox does not have many security issues. In fact I can not remember ever watching CNN report about how Firefox had a security hole, so big that someone could just take over your computer. With Internet Explorer on the other hand I do remember hearing this, which is why I find it odd that over 60% of my visitors still use Internet Explorer!

But last and certainly not least (for me anyway) Firefox reads HTML like a college student reads a book. What I mean by this is it can interpret HTML that is not coded 100% and still display it the way it should be. With Internet Explorer on the other hand you have to spell everything out for it. I have had to spend many many extra hours fixing my tables just to make Internet Explorer kind of display it correctly. Firefox (and even Google Chrome) had no problem displaying the pages correctly. Now that’s just me, there are plenty of other people who I am sure have had this issue to, not only that but my tables were generated in Dreamweaver, a very well known and widely used WYSISYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor.

So what I’m trying to say is, I develop my websites to work with Firefox (as well as Google Chrome) and when it comes to Internet Explorer I tend to spend another 10 to 20 hours looking through code trying to figure out why the heck it isn’t displaying my page correctly. It only makes sense to switch over to Firefox, the superior browser. Or at the very least, Google Chrome, a nice, friendly light weight browser that also doesn’t suck.

Why did you choose the browser you use?