So did I get one?

If you mean the Viewsonic G Tablet which was for sale on Woot!, then the answer would be no, although I was quite tempted. It is the cheapest 10 inch Android tablet with a Tegra 2 chipset dual-core processor available at present. A few things made me decide against it:

1. It was only released in December 2010, but as Android tablets go this means it is "a bit old".
2. Although it can be hacked to run Android Honeycomb (3.0), the prices of Android tablets with Android Honeycomb pre-installed are dropping fast. Best buy has a refurbished Acer Iconia A500 Tablet (16GB) on special for $299. Okay, that's refurbished, but it is a Honeycomb tablet.
3. Admittedly the Viewsonic G Tablet is extremely hackable, but I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3G (the original 7 inch version) which is also really hackable, although I have only rooted it and enabled Non-Market Apps. The particular Galaxy Tab I have can be hacked further to have the same features as the European version, namely make phone calls.

Now that isn't to say that I may still get one...

Viewsonic gTablet on Sellout Woot yesterday

Well, the the Viewsonic gTablet was listed for sale on Sellout Woot yesterday, September 18, quite a few days later than I predicted, but less than a week. And yes, it wasn’t on the main Woot! Site, but that wasn’t bad for an educated guess…

Viewsonic gTablet on Woot tommorrow?

This is just a guess, and I may be wrong, but the Viewsonic gTablet may be sale on Woot! tomorrow, or failing that, in the next few days.
I don't work for Woot or Amazon, but I'm taking a guess here, based on Woot no longer selling the Viewsonic gTablet on Amazon - they were until a day or so ago. 

Almost bought one this week

Wow!, I almost bought a Nintendo 3DS two days ago! One of the main reasons I changed my mind was the price.

Today I saw that Nintendo is reducing the price of the Nintendo 3DS to $169.99, almost a third less than its current selling price of $249.99. This will be effective on on August 12.


http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20084670-17/nintendo-slashes-3ds-price-to-$169.99/?part=rss

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Jailbreak Me!

I really wasn't planning on Jailbreaking my iPad, but when "Jailbreakme 3.0" was released about a week ago I just couldn't resist. After waiting a few days for the bugs to be ironed out I navigated to jailbreakme.com on my iPad, clicked the "Free" button, and within seconds my iOS device was Jailbroken. It was so quick I thought it hadn't worked until I saw the Cydia icon.

Ironically I'd re-jailbroken my iPhone a few weeks ago using "redsn0w" after a few months of running without it being Jailbroken. I'd been psyching myself up for the release of iOS 5, which I expect may not have an untethered Jailbreak available for some time.

Before that, something was interfering with the Infinity Blade game on my iPhone - with "Dodges" just not being recognized - and I was trying to eliminate all possibilities. I'd previously encountered some problems with in App settings of the Activator library, when I found that a lot of my screen taps in the "Zombie Highway" game by RenderPlaz just not being recognized. Then it was a case of changing the Activator settings to only recognize hard buttons. So my favorite Jailbroken App SBSettings had to be activated by a volume up button press and hold.

The problems with Infinity Blade were much more difficult to diagnose - people on the Epic Games forums were reporting that the Dodging mechanism had been changed in an update. I took the drastic step of upgrading my firmware and not re-breaking my iPhone, and somewhere between that and the latest firmware the problems went away. Of course I not only lost the free SBSettings App (the quickest way to change a whole bunch of settings, as well as Power Off or reboot an iPhone), but also the paid Overboard and Multifl0w Apps, which I still sorely miss, especially Overboard.

I haven't dared re-installing any of these Apps on my iPhone, as they all depend on the Activator library. Also, it has forced me to scale back to the iPhone maximum 11 Pages instead of 14 (Overboard and a few other Jailbroken Apps remove the 11 Page limit). Also, with the firmware upgrade I was forced to prune a lot of the Games and Apps from the "Free App a Day" Feeds which I had been hoarding.

The really good 4th of July Game Sales since then have put a whole bunch of new games on my Springboard in "Games 2 try" folders.

Yesterday Apple released a patch for the latest security hole in Safari. This was the same hole which was used for the latest "Jailbreak Me" Jailbreak which was so easy to use. My iPhone and iPad are both patched with PDFPatcher anyway, so they my staty Jailbroken until iOS 5.

Sometimes you win

One of my favorite iOS games is "Infinity Blade". The same game is playable on both the iPhone and the iPad, so you don't have to buy it twice.
In the screen shot above, taken prior to the latest update, the "god-king" gets his...

(Infinity Blade and the characters depicted in the screen shot above are copyright Chair Entertainment and Epic Games, Inc.)

Originally Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Trading up...

So I sold my Dell Streak. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, in fact it was one of my favorite toys. I'd upgraded the Android OS firmware to the official 2.2 (Froyo), and rooted it. I had even bought "Need for Speed: Shift" when it was on special and really was into playing it on the 5 inch screen.

The problem was I really didn't want to re-purchase the huge collection of games and Apps I had bought (mainly on sales) for the iPhone. I was also eyeing the iPad, not the iPad 2, but the entry level Apple refurbished iPad with a new battery and outer shell and same guarantee as a new one.

Anyway, I cut a deal with my spouse - sell the Dell Streak so that it cost less to buy the iPad. So now I have an iPad. It is pretty amazing.

iPhone 4 times 2

Well, we are a two iPhone family - joining many other multi-iPhone families.
I got my wife a Verizon iPhone as a present (with prior approval if course). I managed to get my order in on the Verizon customer pre-order day. Hopefully the mobile voice service on Verizon remains as reliable as it has been up until now. When traveling you need reliable cellular service, and Verizon coverage has always been better that AT&T - I've had an iPhone since the iPhone 3G came out, and my wife had a Verizon phone, and it was always blindingly obvious which voice network was superior. It will be interesting to see how the data coverage compares.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Rooted

Last night I finally managed to "root" my Dell Streak. I was debating whether or not I should, but to do something as simple as a screenshot an Android device needs to be rooted. Apparently I could connect it to a PC and take a screenshot using the Android SDK, but that seems an awful lot of hassle for something that is so simple on the iPhone. Yes I know that iOS and Android are two totally different animals, but I've got quite used to easily taking screenshots. Anyway, it was relatively easy once I'd found out that I needed to use version 1.55 of "SuperOneClick", and not the latest version. It was definitely a quicker process than upgrading the Dell Streak's firmware from 1.6 to 2.2 (the latest firmware available for the Streak at the end if last year). That was quite a process, but I learned a lot about ADB Drivers and factory restores while doing it - I had a few glitches along the way, and the mini tablet was unusable for a day or so, but it was worth it. The 2.2 firmware has some nice features although the new Dell Stage launcher really didn't impress me, but the great thing about Android is that I was able to download and install an alternative launcher which suited me better.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Take a small Tablet

My Christmas present last year was a Dell Streak. Originally called the "Dell Mini 5", it is almost too small to be called an Android tablet. With its 5 inch screen, it is a large Android phone, the screen around half an inch larger than the Droid X. It is a cell phone because of Android licensing requirements, but I'm using it as a mini tablet.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Have a New Chair

Happy New Year, Have a New Chair, preferably an ergonomic one to reduce the backache.
In other news I'm eagerly awaiting the untethered Jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 on my iPhone.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone