iPad 2 available at Radioshack tomorrow

Having trouble finding an iPad 2? That's no surprise with recent shortages, but look no further than your local Radioshack, where several stores have confirmed that the new Apple tablet will be in stock after eagle-eyed readers found the above ad in a local paper. The store closest to me has several units arriving later today, but these darn Malibu folks already gobbled them up by calling in ahead of time and putting them on reserve. Most stores don't allow that, but with all the rich people here, exceptions are made.

If, however, you've been looking for one, drop by your local Radioshack tomorrow before they're all gone. Because even with iPad 2s available in 500 stores, that's still only going to be a few per store.

[Macrumors]

HTC Thunderbolt Dropping Wi-Fi Hotspot Connections Intermittently?

We've received a few reports that the recently released HTC Thunderbolt has been selectively dropping it's Wi-Fi hotspot connection, even with good to great coverage. As you know I've got one on-hand, and just tried it out myself. In the process of writing this post, I lost my connection (3G, not 4G) twice, both while sitting still and not moving the phone at all. Meanwhile the connection has fluctuated between 2-4 out of four bars.

Have you new Thunderbolt owners had similar problems when in a good service area? The same happened for me yesterday while playing with the handset, but with a poor connection it didn't seem like a big deal. Now it does. Since I've been able to replicate the problem, here's how it works:

When using the Hotspot feature, my computer connects and it works fine for 5-20 minutes. Then suddenly web pages stop loading, and on the Thunderbolt a message saying how many connections the Hotspot app has pops up. It should of course only pop up when first connecting, which means that the connection was dropped. Then the connection will flicker in and out.

I've reached out to Verizon and HTC, and will update with their response. Let us know in the comments if you're experiencing similar problems.

Oh, that's why Kinect is so much more fun

Humor

Oh, that's why Kinect is so much more fun

And here I thought it was because most of us grew out of pretending to be Harry Potter. Or waiting an hour after every firmware update.

[Penny-Arcade]

Blackberry Playbook Officially Supports Android 2.3 Apps, Takes 200k Apps To The Bank

Rumors since CES about the Blackberry Playbook - from an iPad 2 killer to the biggest thing since sliced bread for enterprise users - included the possibility of the tablet being capable of running Android applications. Now, straight from the horse's mouth, RIM announces just that: the Playbook will support applications made for Android 2.3 through an emulator sort of application, thereby giving the app base around 225,000 available apps from launch (200k from the Android App Marketplace and 25k current Blackberry apps). Which is definitely a bold step in the right direction, but begs the question: isn't Android 2.3 old already?

Sure, most of us are still using 2.1 or 2.2, but the Motorola Xoom runs on Honeycomb, which is made specifically for tablets. Having a wide selection of apps available through the Android Marketplace really is great...but these are going to be phone apps.

RIM also announced that the Playbook will support C/C++, Adobe Flash and Air, and the Airplay and Unity 3 game engines. The developer SDK will be available this summer, presumably before the Playbook officially releases around the same timeframe.

Photography Page Online!

As I learn more and more about photography, I decided it would be a good idea to just show off my best works on the site. So now there's a photography page on the top bar. If that's too difficult a link to find, click here.

Here's the short history of photography for me. I started taking pictures seriously when editors started asking if I have a good camera for product shots. So I started borrowing my mom's Nikon D40x. Around the same time I'd just started classes at CSUN, so I signed up for a introductory photography class. The two went hand-in-hand. The first week we had an assignment and my teacher was amazed at how well I did. I used a photo similar to the shot above. Cheers all around made me feel like a pro.

Ironically, I had no idea what I was doing and just played around with various settings. But I did have my research on what cameras were good, and ended up giving a short 10 minute lecture to the class about DSLR brands. Fun stuff.

As I worked for Tom's Guide, I never had a need to produce high-quality and unique pictures. The site didn't really push photography much, and I was never asked to do something special. Some of the better ideas for shots I had were either too difficult or too time-consuming to do. In fact, I can't think of a single article that demanded any significant thought or effort into photography.

Then I pitched Gizmodo to review the Alienware M11xR2 and got the greenlight. I know Matt Buchanan is a photography freak, and that the senior staff drools over good pictures. Mark Wilson - who gave me the go-ahead to write the review - is especially big on photography, so I knew I had big shoes to fill. Joel Johnson even recently returned, and he oversaw the review's editing and photography (which I didn't know until after I submitted the review).

So when I sent in my shots and was told how good they were, it meant a lot. Now I aim to have at least one excellent shot - usually the headlining image - for every review. I carry my camera around more for great shots, because you never know when the moment strikes. In any case, my best stuff I'll put on the photography page for all to see.

Why you should never go to a convention sick

When you get sick, two things happen. One, you just don't care about most anything. Probably due to some chemical imbalance so we focus on getting better. This makes us uncaring in one of two ways. This way:

Or this way:

That would be fine, except for the second thing that happens when you get sick: you feel like crap. Guess how I turned out at CES?

Everything Wrong With The PSP...And Its Commercials

Kevin Butler? Proof that a giant company like Sony can come back into the public limelight after years of abuse. Then again, all the Playstation 3 really needed was some good marketing. It's a more powerful, albeit more expensive, game console than the Xbox 360. And it offers just about everything the 360 has, often for less. And the only major region the PS3 has undersold the 360 thus far is in the US.

How To Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly

One question I'm frequently asked is this: how do you keep your computer running smoothly all the time? I have two solutions, based around two different schools of thought on computing. Both are simple and anyone can do them.

Alan Wake Semi-Review: I...JUST...CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

Alan Wake has an 83 metacritic score. Yet the only thing I can think about when I read through this list is how many of these publications are even more than full of it, or have seriously never read a decent book or seen a somewhat good movie. I think this for one sole reason: I couldn't play through Alan Wake.

What Alan Wake does is take a narrative, which by itself is pretty decent (my younger brother played through the entire game and liked it, up until the end), and undermines every line of dialog, ever cinematic and every action on screen by telling the player that he/she is a complete idiot. After two full levels, I was offended enough and ripped the disc out of my 360, promptly put it back in it's Gamefly envelope, and it's now sitting in my mailbox.

I don't know where the hell Remedy gets off on describing every little detail as a thought Alan has. We don't often get to read the minds of people in real life, nor in film or books, or even most stories of any sort. Sure, there are exceptions, and often those exceptions work great. Here, it doesn't. Not only is Alan a criminally dull participant in his own game, he's blessed with an enlarged Prefrontal Cortex which transmits his thoughts at the worst opportune moment. Had I wanted to play a game that told me everything that was happening, I'd have let my brother come in and tell me what to do, when to push buttons, when to fire, etc.


The reason I just can't take it anymore is because not only is the narrative effectively ruined by Alan, the actual writing is pretty awful it itself. The book he wrote, from what I gathered in two chapters, is crap. Much of the dialog is garbage. Characters are, besides for Barry, not characters at all, just graphically designed automatons. I don't know what's worse, that the most anticipated narrative-driven title about a writer is poorly written, or that the writer himself is equally bad.

Perhaps my old editor's mantra was true: there's no such thing as a bad writer, only a bad editor.

Point being, I couldn't finish the game. I barely got past the second chapter. I don't want to play any more, and refuse to. I don't see how so many "reviewers" could have liked Alan Wake...then again, I guess I do.

Inception Review

Mind-thrillers, or films which dance around an idea that we all have at one point or other in our lives, are often the most complex and most emotionally draining and intensive movies we can see. Inception is no exception, and if the trailers raving that it’s from Christopher Nolan mean anything, we know that seeing this film means watching perfection.

For Nolan, this means perfection to a fault.

Attempting to be this decade’s The Matrix, Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, a sort of industrial espionage agent working for a nameless mega-corporation to discover the secrets buried deep within the minds of the biggest corporate enemies. In his attempt to return to his children, Cobb embarks on a journey deeper into the mind than anyone has ever gone, doing something no one has ever done.

This film takes viewers on a sort of roller-coaster experience, doing its best to describe what we are capable of dreaming about. In this respect, Inception is stunted by, ironically enough, a general lack of imagination and interesting characters. While Nolan’s The Dark Knight raved fans with the late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, no characters in Inception were captivating. Performances were fair enough, though possible rising star Ellen Page failed to provide any flair, instead playing the role of know-it-all psychologist.

The blandness of the characters, with the exception of the ever charming Ken Watanabe, is offset by visual spectacles and mental gymnastics that will cause any viewer to think through their own personal experience with dreams, and perhaps even judging reality. However, the dreams shown were nearly always drab, unremarkable segments that at the most resemble famous cityscapes. Some visual effects were exciting to witness, such as Escher's Infinite Stairs or seeing the world fold upon itself, with a ceiling another person’s floor. These unique designs are far too rare, and although clocking in at 2:28, I’d have liked to have seen more.

A tale of dream invasion, thought privacy and the power of the mind certainly resonates with today’s audiences, and indeed I expect some to come home to a sleepless night, pondering this film’s true meaning, coming to grips with reality as we see it. Therein lies the strength of Inception, driving home the idea, which like a virus that infects our very being, our dreams feel real until we wake up, and perhaps we’re all just dreaming right now, in this very instance, waiting to wake up.

Yet while Neo’s story gave us a bland hero in Keanu Reeves, it also gave us a great orator, tumbling us further down the rabbit hole with Laurence Fishburne. His speech of which pill to take, red or blue, was infinitely more memorable than any one scene in Inception, which ultimately leads us to its biggest flaw: in the end, no one will care. We may all question our sanity, but a few days after seeing the movie we’ll go back to our lives as if we’d never seen it. With no defining characters, no incredible moments, and only a clockwork, almost robotically made film, Inception left me feeling empty. An utter lack of humor, a general disregard for emotion and a cast equally limited makes Inception a mediocre film at best.