• RIM To Bring BlackBerry Messaging To The App Store

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Rants & Raves, Rumors 3 Responses

    Research In Motion is preparing to bring Blackberry Messenger to iOS through the App Store.

    RIM wants to own the messaging space, and that means being ubiquitous across all platforms. It’s a curious move: BlackBerry Messaging is one of the few reasons people still buy BlackBerry smartphones over an iOS or Android device.

    Ceding the messaging advantage to the competition? A curious move to say the least, especially since RIM is supposedly hopeful that their new BlackBerry tablet, the PlayBook, can help them get back some of their sales mojo. Does RIM see its future as being primarily in software over hardware? Are they already ceding victory to Apple and Google?

    [via: TUAW]

  • New Autobot ‘Sentinel Prime’ & More Spoilers of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

    // Gradly // blog, Movies, News, Rants & Raves, Superheroes No Responses

    We still haven’t seen an actual trailer for Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon yet, just some awesome Super Bowl spot & TV spot.

    In the meantime, Empire debuted a new cover featuring an Autobot called Sentinel Prime, who’s a “big brother and mentor to Optimus Prime.” Obviously he’s going to have to come in and help out. Other news from the mag is that TF3 won’t have “dorky humor” or “sand“, but they will give “weight” to the bots again: “when robots die, they’re really going to die and we’re gonna show that.” Damn.

    Bay describes this third installment as “kind of like a spy movie.” Bay also reveals the Ferrari is a Decepticon named Dreadbox, and there’s a bot that “the scale on one of them is jawdropping.” Can’t wait for more!

    Sentinel Prime – An Autobot who will debut as a red/black Rosenbauer Panther fire truck. Optimus Prime’s brother & Mentor.

    Transformers: Dark of the Moon is again directed by everyone’s favorite explosive director, Michael Bay, of the previous two Transformers movies as well as Bad Boys I and II, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and The Island. The screenplay was written by Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote the Revenge of the Fallen script but went solo this time, and also worked on The Ring, The Skeleton Key and Brothers Grimm screenplays. Paramount is bringing Transformers 3 to theaters everywhere in 3D starting July 1st, 2011 this summer!

    Michael Bay shared some plot details for Transformers: Dark of the Moon and they contain some pretty big spoilers.

    Spoilers

    • There will be no sand.
    • There will be no dorky humor (“We wanted to make the movie much more serious, more adult.”)
    • When a robot dies, it will actually die. And that death will be shown onscreen.
    • The robots will be given more ‘weight’ in the story (“They were missed in movie two. We’ve given them a strong back-story and pathos.”)
    • Sentinel Prime is “A big brother and mentor to Optimus Prime”.
    • The Ferrari is a Decepticon nicknamed ‘Dreadbox’.
    • Starscream and Shockwave will have new companions. “The scale on one of them is jaw dropping” – “It will be ‘what the Hell was that thing?”
    • The Apollo 11 ‘incident’ show in the teaser is a big government secret.
    • There will be no army. Chicago is left in the hands of the Autobots (but some heroes sneak in through the back-door so to speak).
    • The human gliders are used because they slip under the Decepticons’ radar – as do humans – so they’ll be the people who can hammer it to the ‘Cons and create an opening for the Autobots.

  • What Do We Expect in iPad 2?

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, iPad, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. No Responses

    There are a lot of expectations for iPad 2 hardware out there but ours largely falls in line with AllThingsD:

    Aesthetically, the iPad 2 is expected to be slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, with a larger speaker and an improved display designed to deliver a better experience in bright sunlight. It will likely run on a 1.2GHz, dual-core, ARM Cortex-A9 chip and Imagination’s SGX543 GPU architecture–a big improvement over the SGX535 Apple uses today. A Qualcomm multimode chip will allow it to run on both GSM- and CDMA-based networks around the world. And it will have double the RAM–512MB, same as the iPhone 4. Finally, it will feature those front- and back-facing cameras we’ve been hearing about for some time now–one for FaceTime and Photo Booth, the other for POV FaceTime and shooting photos and video.

    The star of the show might be iOS 5 preview which will likely showcase new voice navigation features with Siri’s AI, perhaps a new maps application and certainly Cloud/MobileMe/iWork/iLife integration.  And notifications have to be getting updated.

    We’re getting pumped.  12 hours to go.

  • @CEOSteveJobs Twitter Parody Account Suspended [UPDATED]

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Rants & Raves, Steve Jobs, Twitter No Responses

    Twitter has just used some of its magic potion to lay the ban hammer allover the @CEOSteveJobs parody Twitter account, which had approximately 460,000 followers and over 650 tweets at the time of deletion (boom, revolutionary). Chances of the suspension being removed? No idea.

    Update:

    The Account has returned as @falseSteveJobs