The other day I got my Xbox 360 S, after taking advantage of Gamestop’s trade-in deal (you basically get more trade-in credit for your Xbox 360 when you trade it for an Xbox 360 S until 7/18/10.) Anyway, I did a quick unboxing on Twitter that many enjoyed and commented on. Here are the images and tweets I posted during that time.

• Unboxing my new Xbox 360 S! So excited. http://twitpic.com/1xvbvg http://twitpic.com/1xvbv9 2:10 PM Jun 18th via Twitter for iPhone
• I love the chrome on the new controller: http://twitpic.com/1xvccf 2:12 PM Jun 18th via Twitter for iPhone
• Components are in see-thru plastic; I miss the color coded ones. http://twitpic.com/1xvcpn
• And here it is: #Xbox 360 S http://twitpic.com/1xvd3s
• Here’s the 110 Volt power brick for those wondering. It’s about the size of the latest Elite model’s. http://twitpic.com/1xvdmf
• All set up. It’s super sexy in person, & now I only have two cables going to it (HDMI & Power) http://twitpic.com/1xvfde
• http://twitpic.com/1xvflt Friday, June 18, 2010 2:24:38 PM via Twitter for iPhone
• Now for the fun part. Transferring over my old HDD. Friday, June 18, 2010 2:25:57 PM via Twitter for iPhone
• The disc drive dings (internal speaker) when you open it! Most satisfying ding ever – think doors opening from Tron. #Xbox
• About to upload some high-res photos of the Xbox 360 S – to see what it looks like in an entertainment center.
• Already collecting dust, but it’s hard to see in person. (The flash seemed to catch them) http://twitpic.com/1xvkbf
• So shiny. #Xbox http://twitpic.com/1xvkon
• #Xbox 360 S http://twitpic.com/1xvl79
• The large vent at the top of the Xbox 360 S. http://twitpic.com/1xvlkh

Thanks to all that commented and checked out my live unboxing.

I just received my Rdio invite in my inbox and so far I’m loving the look and feel of the radio streaming service. Unlike Last.fm or Pandora, Rdio users can pick and choose the songs they want on demand and make a playlist to stream on their computer or mobile device (such as an iPhone or Blackberry).

Rdio gives you a free 3 day unlimited trial before asking you to signup for their totally unlimited service for $9.99 a month or web-only service for $4.99 a month. I’m going to be testing the service over the next few days so expect a full review soon.

Rdio also gave me 10 invites to give out. If you’d like one, make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed and comment below. It’s a first come, first served basis for the first 10 people. Good luck!

If you’re already on Rdio, follow me here!

The new look and design of iPhone 4 didn’t seem to come as much of a surprise, thanks to the countless leaks of the countless prototypes found these past few months. But that doesn’t mean the “surprise” factor that everyone knows and loves of Steve Jobs’ keynotes wasn’t there. If anything, the prior hype of it all brought up so many questions that increased the overall anticipation. Steve knew this and was happy to show the world what Apple is still made of.

We knew some things. Yes, that little dot on the front of the screen was indeed a front-facing camera and the whole style of the device made the other iPhone models immediately feel out of date. But before the keynote, we really didn’t know what was inside, and what was inside is what mattered most.

Let’s start with the screen. The prototypes found were either locked on a text or image based screen, or stuck at the “Plug into iTunes/restore” screen. There was no indication that that screen was actually a brilliant retina display,  and that the resolution was an amazing 960-by-640, larger and crisper than any mobile phone on the current market.

The processor has been beefed up to Apple’s own A4 processor, practically the same cpu that powers the iPad. This thing is going to be fast, and I expect to see an updated A4 in future generations to come.

One thing that didn’t increase was the flash memory, which stayed at a maximum of 32GB much like the higher-end iPhone 3GS. A lot of people are complaining about this but Apple is going to add a lot to their “cloud” thing they’ve been talking about lately. They are hoping for people to stream more and store less, which starts with the launch of the Netflix Instant Stream app later this summer.

iPhone 4 has a three-axis gyroscope in addition to it’s already stellar accelerometer. This will give the iPhone the ability to sense six directions of movement, much like the PlayStation 3′s SIXAXIS controller. Steve Jobs said that phones are becoming smarter about their environments, and this is something that will help with Augmented Reality and direction in the real world.

And of course the camera has been upgraded to 5 megapixels with an ambient light sensor (to automatically adjust images to look their best). It now has an LED flash and can shoot 720p video at 30 frames per second; though, that might eat up the memory quite quickly.

These were the biggest improvements on this year’s iPhone, and most of the upgrades were internal. Even though people found non-functional hardware prototypes, did they ruin the secret for everybody and hurt Apple in the long run? No, but Apple needs to be more careful next time just in case something big is revealed, such as a new AppleTV or the next version of the iPad.

So was it beneficial for the bloggers, especially Gizmodo, to analyze and blog about the found prototype. Yes and no.

Yes. Those posts provided literally millions of pageviews and extreme advertising revenue for the site.

Yes. Most people, excluding extreme Apple fans, love to know about things before Steve talks about them. Those people will probably go back for more Gizmodo when another Apple product is about to launch.

No. Giz wasn’t invited to WWDC 2010 nor the Apple Keynote. They probably won’t be invited to anything Apple related ever again, unless Apple has the heart to forgive them.

No. A lot of people despise Gizmodo for what they did, saying that they were involved in the purchase of stolen property and technically committed an illegal crime. Jason Chen, the blogger behind the whole ordeal, had his house raided. It’s going to be hard for him to get a job elsewhere if he ever has to discontinue his career with Gawker Media (Gizmodo’s parent company).

So will you be getting iPhone 4?

I’m working on moving over my blog to the new host (GoDaddy) so older posts will be temporarily unavailable. are back, but thumbnails are missing. I’ll be working on restoring those today.

Have you been waiting for Darksiders to drop in price? Well, now it has, thanks to GameStop slashing $20 off the retail price in their online store. I also a coupon to share which will bring it down to $35.99 with shipping, and you’ll also get $10 GameStop credit for a future purchase. Check the rest of the post for details:

Darksiders at GameStop. This applies to a new Xbox 360 or PS3 copy – don’t even look at the used, it’s more expensive at the moment. When purchasing the game new, you’ll get $10 of GameStop credit for a future game purchase/pre-order and when you use coupon FEB10OFF you’ll get an additional 10% off .

Beat single-player games quickly? Sell it back to Amazon for $31.25. This means you can get to play through Darksiders for about $5 and still have that $10 GameStop credit. Thanks to ssjmichael for the tip.

Hey! Follow me on Google Buzz!

Google Buzz is a bit of old with a lot of new. It takes the features that people love out of other social networks, improves them, and mushes it all together for you to read and interact with inside your Gmail Inbox. Though it has been receiving some positive buzz lately, there are still many skeptics out there that don’t see a use in it because to some, reading tweets on Twitter, for example, seems more at home. But Google Buzz is much more than a place to check out content provided by other sites. It’s also a social network in itself, and if you have been living under a rock this past decade and haven’t bothered with the whole MySpace, Facebook, Twitter thing, that’s okay.

You can make a Google Buzz account and post whatever you want, wherever you want, and however you want – the vitals of technological convenience that any social network should have if it wants to leave any sort of mark in the industry.

Google Buzz is a new social network – so what? Social Networks come and go these days and it seems that right when you are getting used to the “new” one that everyone is playing with on their iPhones, something better comes along and you are forced to switch over. You have so many “friends” that you just have to check at two or three different social networks daily, don’t you? Don’t you? Yes, you know you do, and it gets to be too intense sometimes. Google wants to fix this problem, let’s see if they do.

Let’s start with Orkut, Google’s own Facebook/MySpace competitor that hasn’t really made much of an impact yet. You can post things, it has friends lists, really good discussion tools, and has that familiar social network feel. But what has Google done to themselves? Google Buzz has all of the features listed above and even more, and Google knows they are going to have to add heavy Orkut integration soon. Should Orkut be afraid? More than anybody; Orkut is going to slowly be phased out as Google Buzz grows and we will soon see most of the Orkut features in Google Buzz – but it’s okay, they are both owned by Google.

Many people haven’t realized that Google Buzz has an amazing location aware posting system. You can post (much like a check-in on other sites) from wherever you are from your mobile device or computer – it then notifies your followers on Google Buzz where you are. Ever since Apple allowed in-browser location support in iPhone OS 3.0, Google has been loving every minute of it. They updated their mobile Google Maps page, allowed Google Search to see where you are, and even finish Google Latitude – another simple Google tool that allows you to see where your friends are – much like Brightkite and foursquare.

All of the features that you find on Google Latitude, Brightkite, and even foursquare, are already found inside Google Buzz. Do these sites need to be afraid? You bet. Almost no other social network out there has a location aware check-in feature built in, unless that’s the sole purpose of the network (like Brightkite and foursquare). Because Google Buzz has this already built in there will be no use for an external network to tell other networks like Twitter or Facebook where you are so your friends can see. Why would you go to another site to tell another site that has all your friends where you are?

Now let’s get to the obvious one: FriendFeed. FriendFeed has been doing what Google Buzz is now doing for a long time now. It has support for hundreds of social networks and takes all of the different live feeds and puts them into a single timeline for you to follow and post from. It has support for followers and over the years it has gotten even simpler to use. So should FriendFeed be worried about Google Buzz? Nope, Facebook just bought them.

Just to throw this out there, there’s a good chance that you’ll eventually find the features of FriendFeed that we know and love natively inside Facebook. This means that you won’t have to install a million apps and import RSS feeds from all of your other social networks to get it to show up in your stream. This will be Facebook’s answer to Google Buzz, and will be the only thing saving Facebook from becoming another Pownce.

What about Twitter? Unfortunately, unless Google decides to buy them like they have talked about before, the simple social networking site may start to lose more and more traffic. Google Buzz does what Twitter does and a lot more. Unless Twitter decides to add support for multimedia like Facebook and Google Buzz instead of just tweeted links, and possibly even a native location aware check-in system, then people are going to ultimately grow tired of their 140 character limit.

So let’s see what happens as Google Buzz gains momentum and support for other social networks. Will these mentioned sites hurt? Probably. Will they get more popular when Google Buzz gets support for them? Probably not. Google isn’t trying to take over the Internet, it just kind of happens.

Hey! Follow me on Google Buzz!

Everything is running smoothly. You’ve installed WinterBoard to make your theme look shiny and sweet. Perhaps you’ve installed some Android apps such as AndroidLock to add some of the beloved features found in Android to your iPhone. **Maybe you’ve even purchased MyWi to tether your iPhone to your laptop & actually take advantage of your “unlimited” data plan.

But what happens when your Jailbreak breaks? It’s happened to all of us, and is bound to happen to you if you are constantly changing your theme functions or installing new repositories and unofficial Apps.

What does one do when their phone goes into the dreaded “Apple Screen of Death” and their iPhone becomes an  iDoorstop? Is all lost? Nope. It’s software, and software is always reversible.

So let’s start by trying to figure out what you actually did to your poor iPhone to make it stop breathing. ***Afterward, I’ll guide you through what to do to bring your iPhone back up and running in no time.

Before you do any of this, and especially before you jailbreak your phone for the first time, make sure to back it up in iTunes. You’ll need that backup for later if your phone becomes unresponsive.

Editor’s Note: I’m not going to tell you how to Jailbreak your phone. Check your good ol’ friend Mr. Google.

Here is a list of known issues that will cause a Jailbroken iPhone to crash and become unresponsive:

• Installed a bad or unsupported repository in Cydia or Rock My Phone. A repository is a feed of items (apps) that become accessible to you once you add the link to the “list” hosted somewhere on the internet. If this list isn’t made correctly, or if it’s just not yet supported by Cydia or Rock (the Jailbroken equivalents of the App Store) then your iPhone may become confused and crash. Don’t install Cydia repositories inside Rock and vice- versa.
• Installed an app over an app. If one of your apps isn’t working correctly, you may need to reinstall it. But DO NOT simply download it again and install over the one you already have installed. If you do, the permissions of the disk inside your iPhone will become corrupt because two things are trying to access them at the same time – the system, and then the current reinstall process. If you don’t want to “brick” your phone then make sure to remove the app first. This can easily be done inside Cydia or Rock.
• An App didn’t install correctly. Yeah, something happened, and more than likely something became corrupt. Sorry, friend, it’s time to restore or re-jailbreak. See below.
• Installed a bad App. One of the downsides to Jailbreaking is that you can now install almost any iPhone supported App out there. But these Apps aren’t tested and verified by Apple – they are made by just about anybody and can contain malicious code or are buggy enough to crash your whole system. Unless you know the ins and outs of SSH, it’s just to restore or re-jailbreak. See below.
• Trying to update your Jailbroken iPhone. Don’t even think about it. If your phone is Jailbroken, why would you even think about installing an official Apple update over it? That’s a guaranteed break right there. Just wait for someone to crack the update or remove your Jailbreak and install if you rather have the official software update. See below.
• Something else. Random OS crash, out of memory, overheating, almost anything that can cause a computer to crash can, and will, cause your iPhone to crash. In most cases, especially with a Jailbroken iPhone with newly made changes, your phone will go into restore mode and you’ll be forced to start over. See below.

So now you know what you did and what probably caused your iPhone to die. Let’s bring it back from the dead. Check out the Restore or Re-Jailbreak guide after the jump.

Restore or Re-Jailbreak.

The main question that everyone always asks is “Can I permanently damage my iPhone by Jailbreaking?”

Well, gardware wise, there’s an extremely slim chance. I have yet to see one, but a malicious, unverified App could use so much processing and memory resources that could cause the iPhone to overheat. The iPhone has a security function built in to shut the phone down in case of such a tremendous spike in heat to protect it, but technically, there’s a slim chance the hardware inside can become permanently damaged. Apple looks at the code in all of the Apps that hit the App store and they see if that App could ever be a cause of hardware failure. If it looks good, they approve it. If it looks bad, or if it’s made by Google and has to do with voice, they reject it. When you install a Jailbroken App, Apple isn’t and probably has never looked at it.

Software-wise, absolutely not. Like I said before, software is always reversible and no matter what you install on your iPhone you’ll be able to restore it. If you have any type of software problem on the iPhone, unless you cracked the hardware boundaries and flashed the whole device to your own homebrewed creation, your phone is fixable.

DFU mode (Device Firmware Upgrade), or as some like to call it “Recovery Mode” because it sounds comforting, is something that will always be there. If your root system becomes corrupted to a point where you can’t boot your phone, all you have to do is put your iPhone in DFU mode, connect it to iTunes, and restore. It’s a guaranteed fix.

In most cases, your iPhone will know there’s something wrong and will automatically put your phone in DFU Mode. It looks like the picture above.

If your iPhone is confused to a point where it has absolutely no idea that it’s broken (a common characteristic in insane people), then you’ll have to force it into DFU mode. It’s easy: 1) Open up iTunes on your computer. 2) Plug in or dock your iPhone. 3) Hold the screen “lock” key at the top and the “home” button on the bottom. Your iPhone will reboot. 4) Keep holding down your home button and your iPhone will put itself in recovery.

In a few moments iTunes will recognize it and you’ll be able to restore it to that backup I told you to make earlier on. You made one, didn’t you? If not, then you’ll just have to start over with a fresh iPhone OS install while at the same time losing your MMS, photos, Apps, etc. iTunes will guide you through this the rest of the way until your iPhone is back up and running.

Now, call your mom. She’s been waiting and your phone can now actually make a call.

After you know all is well, if you want, you can go ahead and Jailbreak again. Just don’t do whatever you did in the first place to break it. Now for the legal stuff:

* I do not encourage you to Jailbreak your iPhone. It is illegal and will void your warranty with Apple.
** I am not responsible for any additional data charges you may incur while using unofficial apps and/or tethering your iPhone without the appropriate plan.
** I am not responsible for any damage or software issues your iPhone may experience by following this guide.

When a brand new product comes out on the market, especially if it is made by one of our favorite companies, we just have to have it. I’m not talking about the new cellphone model that Motorola comes out with every week, I’m talking about something brand new and extremely over-hyped that places itself in the back of our mind until we have it in our hands.

For example, remember the Xbox 360 launch? It was one of the first consoles ever that caused people to camp out in the blistering cold weeks before just to snag one of the ten consoles that a brick and mortar store received. The PlayStation 3 and the Wii caused similar effects upon consumers, but they weren’t nearly as competitive as the Xbox 360 launch.

But what happened with the Xbox 360? There were massive failure rates – over half of the consoles sold to early adopters overheated and had to be replaced. Microsoft responded by redesigning the system.

What did they do? Well, for starters, they implemented a new cooling system to make sure that the “Red Ring of Death” was a thing of the past. Sure, I’m sure it still happens here and there, but it’s not the market mess that it was the first year that the Xbox 360 was out.

So it’s a year later and Microsoft is fixing the consoles and preparing the huge shipments of the new ones with the new cooling system. The PlayStation 3 is about to be launched and everyone is talking about HDMI. “The PlayStation 3 has HDMI and is truly HD unlike the Xbox 360″, they said. “I’m going to get a PlayStation 3 because component cables suck,” they said. So what did Microsoft do? They took this perfect time of reconstruction to add HDMI and even larger hard drives to compete with Sony.

Hey, those of you who camped out in the cold, took off work and school, and even that guy who was followed home from an Xbox 360 launch and got robbed, guess what? Your crappier console is going to have problems and not have some new features because you early adopted! Sounds fair, right?

This is a perfect example of how early adopting is a bad thing to do. Sure, you can be one of the first to use it, but if you wait, something good may happen. A new generation is always around the corner which will almost always include new features and functionality for the same price or even cheaper. And to those of you who paid $600+ for a PS3 on eBay the first week that came out, I truly feel sorry for you. The PS3 now has more harddrive space and functionality than ever, and they’ve been in stock only a few weeks after you got yours on eBay.

When GameStop asks you if you want to pre-order the next Xbox, the Xbox 720 or whatever, say no. The next generation of gaming is going to be the same or worse. Everyone sees now that controlling the market and keeping supply under demand increases hype, and thus allows the market to flourish with software sales before hardware. Thanks, Nintendo.

Does this apply only to gaming? No! Think about the iPhone. Thousands camped out outside of malls and Apple Stores to get their hands on the first generation of the device – the one that didn’t have 3G. Apple dropped the price $200 only a few months after it came out. Thanks to Steve Jobs and his Open iPhone Letter, Apple did offer a $100 store credit for those who got it first, but they were still out another $100. Also, less than a year later, the iPhone 3G was announced which deemed the first generation pretty much useless. Then, less than another year later, the iPhone 3GS came out, which is the only version of the iPhone that runs iPhone OS 3.0 smoothly.

But what about the people with extra cash in their pockets that needs to own absolutely ever generation out there? They are the fortunate ones in the technology world, I suppose, but companies need to think about everyone by increasing the lifespan of their products. Apple especially leaves out features just so they can have a new update next year and make everyone buy the almost same product again.

So just remember this. If you early adopt, you will be disappointed. If you buy, for example, the iPad (3G version) now, which lacks some features that were hoped for and it is all during the transition of everything to 4G and beyond, you will be disappointed. It doesn’t have a camera – within a year it will. When something is announced, let everyone else get it first and see how things go. If there’s no announcement of a change to the lineup shortly thereafter (6 months), then grab one. If a new generation comes out, then you’ll be the cool kid on the block. It pays off to wait.

Check out Apple’s site for the full list of specs and features. Most of them have been previously discussed about on many different sites and there wasn’t nothing really of surprise, except there is no camera and the pricing is insanely generous (starting at $499). Hey, for the amount of hype this thing got, Apple seemed to deliver.

Also, click here to watch the full keynote in High Quality.

For those of you who have been following some of my recent projects, you’ll know what DigiDose was. For those of you who haven’t, it was a gaming/technology blog that hit a pretty high point but then fell due to some political issues of our talented team. DigiDose has been collecting dust for a while, but because of Apple’s supposed “tablet” related news later today, DigiDose has been getting a tens of thousands of hits because of one single picture:

This Apple Tablet mockup was sent to us by an anonymous tipster during the time that I ran DigiDose. We created a post with it alongside some other pretty good mockups to show what the Apple Tablet may look like. Though recent news shows that the Apple Tablet may be either called the iSlate or now even the iPad, this mockup introduces some of the looks and features that the device will probably have.

I’ve decided to host this image on my blog now so that you all can comment and view it here – if you search Twitter for “DigiDose” you’ll see that this image is being passed around in extreme numbers and even sent to news sites such as CNN. I’ve also redirected any DigiDose traffic that would have gone to that image to this post.

If you are the original author of this mockup and can prove it let me know. If not, just enjoy this slick rendition of what will hopefully be announced later today and please, discuss away.