Gadgetory

this episode of technobuffalo is brought to you by carbonite is hulu going ad free is Google's reborn Google TV just around the corner and are a slew of hot smartphone set to heat up the summer it's techno Buffalo's rumor roundup hey what's going on everybody I'm Noah Kravitz editor-at-large for technobuffalo and this is the rumor roundup for today Friday August fifth 2011 first off a tweet yeah it's always tweets cousin these rumors a tweet from the official hulu support account has people wondering if the online TV service is gearing up to launch another pricing plan this one without at now if you remember from a couple episodes ago who's on the sale block right now everybody from Apple to I don't know Netflix Microsoft lots of people's names lots of companies names are being bandied about as potential buyers for the company but so far nobody has stepped up and paid the price in the meantime hulu support has been busy on Twitter answering customer questions and complaints about all those ads that show up in TV shows that they're already paying seven ninety-nine a month for on hulu plus well one of the responses let people know that hulu is apparently considering a new pricing tier that would be ad free now it was just a couple months ago that hulu knocked the price of hulu plus down from ten bucks a month to seven ninety-nine so maybe they'll reinstitute the 999 a month plan but have it be totally ad-free which i personally would like i can't stand especially because the online ads it's not just to lube but adds an online TV oftentimes you'll see the same ad every time those bad enough that especially if you're paying for the content there's no way to skip the ad but if i have to see the same i can't believe it's not butter at or whatever at it is no offense to i can't believe it's not butter over and over again during an old episode of the OC i just can't stand it anyway this also comes just days after Fox announced that they're going to be instituting a paywall to ensure that only verified cable subscribers get next day access to Fox shows online everybody else is gonna have to wait a few additional days so interesting to see what who does now they're still up for sale but they might be considering a more expensive ad free subscription plan speaking of TV google TV 20 was shown off at Google i/o a couple months ago in San Francisco I was there and I got a little bit of a preview of the next generation of Google TV based on Android 3x at this point based on Android 3 honeycomb and everything else going off the Android platform moving towards Ice Cream Sandwich where tablets and phones and Google TV set-top boxes can all live in a land of happy happy apps that work on many devices not just one at any rate the original Google TV not exactly a smashing success it may have cost logitech CEO is job you can read more about that on technobuffalo but the next version of Google TV looks much better there is a leak earlier this week or not really Ali quetta video of somebody who shoehorn a beta version of honeycomb onto the current google TV box and apparently hardware manufacturers including sony and logitech are ramping up to unveil new hardware to go with google TV 20 now the next version of the software itself will be compatible with existing boxes so if you've got a logitech revue or you've got one of those sony internet TV is powered by google you'll be able to update your software to run the new platform and a little birdie told me that while the new hardware is still a little ways away probably in time for this year's holiday shopping season the new software is getting pretty close to roll out so you might want to look into one of those $99 logitech revue boxes the prices were just slashed if you're interested in being one of the first on the block to try out the brand new version of google TV and of course what would a rumor roundup show be without a slew of mobile phone rumors first off a document uncovered earlier this week apparently leaked from an internal verizon memo regarding minimum advertised prices has four phones on high notice for launch in the very very near future first up is the HTC vigor which looks to be HTC if not verizon's flagship android phone for the rest of the year this one's going to have a 1.5 gigahertz qualcomm snapdragon dual-core processor their new line of dual-core processors with the audrina 220 graphics processing units inside of them and it also might have a full HD display 1280 by 720 on a smartphone also the document in question was a second HTC device which is probably just a color refresh to the incredible 2 although it does look pretty sharp and white and silver a new LG device which might be an updated version of the revolution which is an lte-enabled android smartphone on verizon that was launched earlier in the year but does not have a dual-core processor and then last but certainly not least is the fabled the mythical the oh where oh where are you droid bionic from motorola this phone was launched way back one at CES january it had everybody all excited it just looked flat out fantastic and then i went away and what happened to it and apparently it's gotten a refresh from the inside out beefed up specs a redesign case all sorts of stuff i guess there were problems with testing with the verizon LTE network who knows what exactly exactly happened but it showed up on this recent document there's some specs kicking around one nice thing is that it's apparently going to launch with android 23 up for Gingerbread on board instead of two dot to froyo which if you know what that means you know why you're excited and also now there's a twitter account using the model number of the bionic that's between cryptic messages probably written by some PR and marketing people talking about the launch being imminent so stay tuned for that but it looks like for hot new verizon smartphones or three hot new phones in one refresh color of a hot phone send me out phone coming in the near term you know computer disasters eventually happen to everyone your computer can crash you could get infected with a virus you might drop it it might get stolen it might burn up in a fire you never know what's going to happen in this world but if you get carbonite online backup before your computer disaster then there's no need to worry because your files will be backed up automatically and safely off site and it's really easy to get them back plus you get anytime anywhere access to your backed up files from any computer or on your smartphone or ipad with the free Carbonite app with carbonite unlimited backup for your pc or mac is just fifty nine dollars a year that works out to less than five bucks a month that's what the cost of one of those giant frappuccinos you're also addicted to but use the offer code techno to start your free 15 day trial you'll get two months free if you decide to buy all the details are at carbonite.com and remember to use the offer code techno that's te CH n 0 to get two months free with your purchase also in mobile phone land the packs the motorola packs for sprint has been leaked recently and this looks to be a dual core version of the motorola expert smartphone which is a candy bar phone with a keyboard on the front kind of an android for BlackBerry users and then of course iphone rumor time the latest has iphone 5 possibly being a much bigger deal than we expected which means it would be as big a deal as we originally expected before our expectations were lowered possibly not launching until october instead of September as everybody's been saying but also apparently rumored to be already in certain carriers hands for testing but clad not only in a dummy body but also in some kind of sealed briefcase that only certain people have the code or the lock or the fingerprint rubber it is to open up so who knows but if in fact the phone is out for testing it could mean that a launch is just a couple weeks away or it could mean that in the wake of the iphone 4 antennagate fiasco Apple saw fit to push iphone 5 out to carriers for testing a little bit further ahead of time you know that's the problem with these rumors shows it's all rumor we can make it up I might have an iphone 5 in my pocket but I probably don't alright thanks again to our friends at Carbonite for sponsoring this week's episode of rumor roundup that's all we got for this week until next time my name is Noah you can find out much much more about all these and all the other stories going on the tech world at TechnoBuffalo calm and of course tune in to ask the Buffalo and what's the app's new techno Buffalo content on revision3 every Monday Wednesday and Friday that's three times a week 34 revision3 see how that works out till next time we'll see you later bye bye you