…in like the last hour! It’s like 1996 all over again!!11 Turn your office speakers up and lambaste your coworkers in  American English, British English, even Indian English. Seriously try that shit NAO!

Samsung is launching a touch screen cellular device that it hopes will compete with Apple’s wildly popular and equally expensive iPhone. The Korean technology company announced today its plans for the Instinct, which will be available to Sprint customers. The fully touch-screen device will be available in June. What will the Instinct be able to do for you? EVERYTHING. I’m lazy so here’s a lengthy block quote.

According to Sprint, the Instinct features a touch-screen with localized tactile feedback, called haptics, which allow the virtual QWERTY keypad and other operations to become “a sensory experience.” The mobile phone also features a Voice to Action button offering access to functions through voice activation, including call, text, picture message, traffic, movie, sports, news and search.

The device measures 2.17 inches by 4.57 inches by 0.49 inches and weighs less than 4.5 ounces, Sprint said. It features advanced functions like Visual Voicemail, which lets users listen to messages in their order of preference and manage them with a screen tap. It also offers support for corporate and consumer POP3 email accounts, multitasking that lets users play music in background mode while surfing the Internet, texting or playing games; a 2.0 megapixel camera with camcorder and expandable microSD memory of up to 8 Gb. Other features include stereo Bluetooth 2.0; an integrated world clock, SMS voice and text messaging with threaded text, phone as a modem, picture caller ID and Sprint Mobile Sync.

The Samsung Instinct marks Sprint’s first EV-DO Rev. A consumer device. It offers Web browsing, business and personal email access, picture sharing, commercial-free radio and other features at broadband speeds. Additionally, the device opens up access to Sprint exclusive services and multimedia content including Sprint Navigation, a system powered by Telenav with GPS-enabled audio and visual turn-by-turn driving directions, one-click traffic rerouting and more than 10 million local listings; and live search, delivered through Microsoft, which offers access to director information, GPS-enabled directions, interactive maps and one-touch click-to-call access.

The Instinct also boasts entertainment features like Sprint TV, which offers live and on-demand programming; Sprint Exclusive Entertainment, a made-for-mobile sports and entertainment video programming network; and Sprint Music Store, which lets users browse and wirelessly download full songs directly to the device for $0.99 each.

Lastly, the device offers Pocket Express, which gives up-to-date information on sports, weather, news, movie times and other customized options based on the user’s zip code.

The only thing that it won’t help you with is getting laid, but you’ll be so distracted by all it’s other features, you probably won’t care. And really who has time for sex or any other sort of human interaction if you’re going to be pestered by constant e-mails from your boss, clients, etc. all the fucking time? Sprint is hoping that the Instinct will win back some of their customers who jumped ship for AT&T when they became the US’s sole handler of the iPhone, but seeing as these defectors probably had to sign ridiculous contracts to do so (AT&T owns my soul too), I’m wondering if it’ll take a couple years before Sprint starts seeing dividends.

The battle is on, however, and Sprint is quick to fire the first shot, saying of the Instinct’s release that “slow ends in June,” a pot shot at the iPhone’s fickle functionality. Pricing is still not determined, but Sprint says the Instinct will be under $300; meanwhile, the cheapest iPhone is around $100 more.

Picture courtesy of Gizmodo.

In 2006, AT&T promised to return 5000 of the jobs it had outsourced to India back to America. However, according to CEO Randall Stephenson, America’s increasing stupidity is making it hard to fulfill that promise:

“We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company’s headquarters is located.

So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000, a target it set in 2006, the company said, adding that it maintains the target.

Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50 percent.

By “certain groups,” he of course means black people, American Indians and Hispanics.

Not surprisingly, this graph could basically be flipped upside down, and retitled, Imprisonment Percentages and be pretty damn spot on. It would be funny if it weren’t sad. But hey, at least our housing market is doing AWESOME!

You don’t want to mess with DVD Jon.

At 16, he released software which broke the copy protection on Hollywood films.

Now, at 24, he released software that lets iPod owners copy music and videos bought from iTunes and play it on other devices such as Nokia N-series mobile phones, Sony Ericsson’s Walkman and Cybershot handsets, as well as any smartphone powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system. His company, doubleTwist, maintains that its service is legal, but lawyers said that Apple would almost certainly seek to shut it down because the law now specifically targeted technologies which attempted to circumvent measures such as DRM (digital rights management).

Back in July, he found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without signing up for AT&T service. “The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and Wi-Fi work. Stay tuned!” he wrote on his long-running blog, which is combatively named So Sue Me. The post was entitled “iPhone Independence Day”.

And he looks like such a nice boy.