Gadgetory

welcome to the buzz report I'm Brian Cooley in from Hollywood who's busy this week burning everything she owns made by sony first the gadget of the week it's the blackberry 9900 no that's not the wrong picture that's it didn't change much the screen is now touched though but still 2.8 inches so why bother it runs BlackBerry OS 7 which looks a lot like well blackberry OS six it's got 4g support but given how Verizon's 4G network rather famously bonked a few days ago most consumers are kind of waiting on that it is thinner just a little thinner bottom line this is not the reset device that rim needs to put out there to affect trends like this NPD data that shows that just fourteen percent of new smartphones sold in the u.s. in q1 where BlackBerry's Android and iPhone or putting rim across their knee you know on second thought gadget of the week should have been paint for cats kitty okay top of the news all week continues to be the sony playstation network and curiosity customer records breach first of all it was 77 million records at first then got revised up to over a hundred million records that have been accessed illegally sony says it waited two days before contacting anyone five days before meeting with the FBI and flat out blew off a request to attend a hearing on data theft at the US house a couple days ago and still there hasn't been official word one from Sony CEO Howard Stringer maybe because he's just too busy working parties as a will ferrell look alike you see what i mean it's not just me is it anyway this is one of the big personal data hacks in internet history and sony's handling of it reminds me of something oh yeah the way toyota bungled their unintended acceleration situation now sony can fumble away its dominance in portable audio and more over the last few years but when the ball they're handling is my privacy dropping it is not their choice okay I'm as tired as you are by now of all the tortured sidebar angles the media is fishing up on the whole bin Laden story but I got one to add the miscalculation he and his crew made that got him killed was the internet so think about it it's 2011 in Abbottabad Pakistan a fairly modern military city and what may be the nicest pad in town has no internet or phone or wireless signals coming out of it possibly the only modern residence left on earth that doesn't and we weren't going to make something of that memo to al-qaeda both of you in this day and age the most conspicuous thing is not being connected okay here's a story you have not heard for at least 20 years fewer American homes now have a television the Nielsen folks tell us this they say a hundred and fourteen point seven million US households now have a television that's down 1.2 million households from a year ago and I bet this isn't the last time we hear this trend going forward you see a TV is not a device anymore it's a behavior it's wherever you relax and take in something that is more or less long form more or less well produced and whether that's a TV on the wall or not doesn't really matter anymore you might use a laptop or a tablet even a smartphone that part of TV doesn't matter and honestly the idea having to take myself to this big flat thing bolted on a wall to watch TV you might seem a little weird just a few years down the road and let me leave you this week with one that'll make your blood boil cuz that's always fun rent-to-own Shane Aaron's is being sued by a family the Boyd's that rented a laptop from them okay that's all fine and dandy but when they failed to make the final payment on it the collection dude from Aaron's supposedly arrived at their door with a picture of the dad sitting at the laptop a few days before now where'd that come from well it turns out Aaron's rent them a laptop rent-to-own with software installed on it that was regularly taking webcam shots grabbing screen caps and doing keylogging the family that was spied on is obviously making this a class action case if they can and if you're sitting in an aarons rental machine right now I imagine your bowel just turn to water smile but the stupidest move by aarons has to be showing up at the door with a photo that proves you had surreptitious software installed on by the way the reason that the boyd family's computer payments were in arrears they say it's because Aaron's bungled the final payment nice that's the buzz report I'm Brian Cooley Hollywood's back next week thanks for watching