Mobile phone manufacturer HTC has launched a new mobile known as the HTC Sensation, which includes hip-hop producer Dr Dre’s ‘Beats Audio’ technology. In July 2008, Dr. Dre released his high-performance brand of headphones (made by Monster), Beats by Dr. Dre. The line consists of Beats Studio, a circumaural headphone, Beats Tour, an in-ear headphone, Beats Solo & Solo HD, a supra-aural headphone, Beats Spin, Heartbeats by Lady Gaga, also an in-ear headphone, and Diddy Beats.

The Sensation XL model, which features a 4.7” screen, has been specifically optimized for its audio performance in a bid to capitalize on the increasing number of users who play music through their mobile phones.

HTC is under legal pressure from Apple, Inc. and is the first Android device maker sued by Apple. HTC’s own patent portfolio is minimal. Google sold a number of patents to HTC so that the mobile-manufacturer can sue Apple. Google bought nine patents from Motorola, Palm and other companies less than a year ago to create a defensive strategy, including helping HTC defend against lawsuits file by Apple, Inc. Google spent $12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility and acquire the firms 17,000 patents in August 2011.

HTC sued Apple in September, 2011 and filed a complaint at the US International Trade Commission. HTC alleges infringement of the patents obtained from Google.

In 2001, Dr. Dre earned a total of about $52 million from selling part of his share of Aftermath Entertainment to Interscope Records and his production of the hit song “Family Affair” by Mary J. Blige. Rolling Stone magazine thus named him the second highest-paid artist of the year. Dr. Dre was ranked 44th in 2004 from earnings of $11.4 million, primarily from production royalties from such projects as albums from G-Unit and D12 and the single “Rich Girl” by singer Gwen Stefani and rapper Eve.

Available July 15, 2011. Bottom line? Great for video, maybe not the best if you spend a lot of time chatting on the phone.

Works pretty much like the Apple iPad. Software looks a little cheesier, compared to iPad, but the device has Adobe Flash!

With Google Body users can navigate through a 3D anatomical model of human body. Several layers from skin, muscle tissues, bones, organs down to blood vessels and just nerves and combinations can be viewed to study human anatomy. Most of the body structures are labeled and can be searched with a text search on the web desktop version.

The first version is a female model, but a male version is coming soon. The free app works much like a Google Earth or Google maps.

See also …
bodybrowser.googlelabs.com

Mac Users Left Out with Captivate
Captivate owners who use a Mac rather than a Windows computer can’t update their phones yet because 2.2 operating system update is not being delivered wirelessly over the air by AT&T. Instead, users only install it by using a USB cable to connect their phones to a computer running Samsung’s Kies Mini software, which only works on PCs.

Other users of HTC Droid Incredible, for example, have reported that connecting the phone as a USB device does not work on a Mac, while it does work on a PC. Motorola’s Droid connect to a Mac without trouble.

Sprint started releasing 2.2 (Froyo) and then abruptly halted the update Thursday for its Galaxy S phone, the Epic 4G. According to Boy Genius Report, owners of phones that received the update have been reporting problems related to data connectivity, as well as SD card problems when attempting to access photos or music.

Users of other phones that were updated to Froyo 2.2 have also reported freezes, loss of contacts, inability to unlock the phone with a swipe (without taking out the battery and rebooting), and a frequently crashing SMS text program. The text messaging also acts quirky. Without actually crashing, using the keyboard results in no display of characters until the user clicks in the actual area where the characters were typed for the text message. In other words, clicking the keyboard creates invisible sentences. But when the area where the sentences are displayed, whole sentences suddenly appear.

Also, on occasions, when the text message SEND button is hit, nothing happens. If a user repeatedly hits the SEND button (with no feedback), eventually multiple messages are sent. For example, if a user hits the SEND button 10 times because there was no user feedback that a message was sent, then the recipient eventually gets 10 copies of the same message when the software finally decides to send the message.

Released and planned Android OS versions …
2.0/2.1 (Eclair), which revamped the user interface and introduced HTML5 and Exchange ActiveSync 2.5 support

2.2 (Froyo), which introduced speed improvements with JIT optimization and the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, and added Wi-Fi hotspot tethering and Adobe Flash support

2.3 (Gingerbread), which refined the user interface, improved the soft keyboard and copy/paste features, and added support for Near Field Communication

3.0 (Honeycomb), a tablet-oriented release which supports larger screen devices and introduces many new user interface features, and supports multicore processors and hardware acceleration for graphics. The Honeycomb SDK has been released and the first device featuring this version, the Motorola Xoom tablet, is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2011.

Upcoming versions of Android are:
2.4 (Gingerbread), an update to 2.3, anticipated to be released in April 2011.
Ice-cream sandwich, a combination of 2.3 Gingerbread and 3.0 Honeycomb into a “cohesive whole”, with a possible release in mid-2011

Putting Google Goggles to work on a business card with an Android phone (Motorola Droid), the app correctly identified the contact’s full name, website, phone, fax phone, and two e-mail addresses. Each result was accompanied by an icon that hints use for the information. You take a picture with the Goggles app, and you see the still image with a ‘laser line’ taking a scan of the still image. Seconds later the data and/or search result is produced.

A click on the search icon next to the name or the contact’s name produced a Google search result on that contact’s name.

A click on the icon next to the web address or the web address opened the web browser to the website.

A click on the phone icon or the listed phone number, dialed the phone number with the Motorola Droid.

A click on the e-mail opened the e-mail app with the contact’s e-mail address in the TO: field.

A click on ADD TO CONTACTS, added the contact to the phone’s contact database.

Putting Google Goggles to work on a print of the Mona Lisa painting produced a Google search result of ‘Mona Lisa’ with image and relevant text results.

Checking a couple of other photographs brought mixed results. A photo of Tiger Woods swinging a golf club produced a successful search result. Using Google Goggles on a picture of Chicago White Sox player Jermaine Dye on the cover of a White Sox program did not produce any results.

Google informs users that certain images, such as food, cars, plants, pets or animals, will not produce successful results. But they claim they are working on handling more image recognition. They claim users will be able to take a picture of a leaf and identify the species of the respective tree that Google Goggles just acquired.

For information on other features that The Cardinal didn’t test, and more information about Google Goggles, see the video from Google below …

Google Goggles video shows how to identify a landmark, a book, a business card contact, and a cool feature that uses the compass and camera (without clicking to save the image) to identify a business that you are ‘looking at’ through Google Goggles.

At its current level, Google Goggles is adept at identifying contacts from business cards, identifying paintings and pictures, and books from book covers. No doubt this helps with business and personal tasks for acquiring information.

According to a TechRadar UK article, Google Goggles is expected to go multi-platform, and will be available for the iPhone. Quoting Google source Hugo Barra, “Android is currently the platform our developers are a little bit more comfortable with.”

Imagine future possibilities. Image a leaf and get the name of the species of a tree. Image an exercise machine at the health club and get a Google search result on the function of that machine. Image a vehicle and get search results on the make and model of the car. Image the picture of an actor on a movie poster and determine the identity of the actor. Take a picture of a product at a store, get the search results, pick a website on the product, and bookmark it for reference later. Imagine all Wikipedia images referenced, so that a close match with a Wikipedia image would give fast access to that Wikipedia entry. Imagine facial recognition to access identity of pictures of faces on public websites — yes it works on a picture of some celebrities that that are displayed on a picture on a computer screen.

Imagine Google or the government knowing everything you imaged. Oh that’s creepy. Maybe I will turn my phone off at night. Just kidding … I think.