Good afternoon. Hey, what ever happened to riding your bicycle like a normal human being, using it as a method to get you from Point A to Point B and, on the weekends, Point C? I don’t know and I don’t much care. If loading a 20-pound bike up with 200 pounds of stereo equipment brings joy to someone’s life, I say GO FOR IT! If your hundred-some dollar bike has $4000 worth of gear strapped to it, I say YES!!

More information and photos (some of which are truly amazing) at the link below.

Bicycles That Carry Powerful Beats, and Even a Rider or Two [New York Times]

Samsung has announced the r410. The latest slider from Samsung has a QWERTY keyboard, stereo Bluetooth, speakerphone (wow!), a built-in VGA camera with night shot, advanced voice recognition, IM and e-mail. Battery life is a paltry 2.5 hours, though. But it comes in red and black.

OK. If this is real — and there is some indication that it is — then we’ve got ourselves a genuine breakthrough. We reported that TAG is making a phone, but we had no idea that it would be a damn watch phone. TAG Heuer has pretty much gone the sports route, offering quartz pieces to unsuspecting rubes. However, if this phone/watch comes to fruition, they’ll have a hit on their hands.

Keep in mind that these are just mock-ups and there is no indication of how thick this thing is. The UI looks fairly basic — a crown for scrolling through selections along with an MP3 player mode. My question is this, however — how the heck did that stuff all that garbage into there and how do you talk into it. Dick Tracy, here we come.

First mockup images of Tag Heuer Mobile Phone [LuxuryLaunches]

Somebody over at Boy Genius Report has the hook-up. They’ve got the full specs for the new Blackberry 9000, although the one picture they have (also above) looks kind of shady. Anyhow, here’s the lowdown: 420×380 screen, 1GB of memory, a 624MHz Intel processor. It also has the 1-2-3 punch of GPS, Wi-Fi, and 3G, none of which are to be found on my phone. Depressing? Hell yes. But it seems like my medication (and yours) will be arriving in mid-2008.

BlackBerry 9000 specs revealed [Boy Genius Report]

We already knew about the parental controls, Xbox originals and the cyber stalking social networking feature and now we have a few more details on the fall update for you to ponder over until 2AM PST on December 4th. Inside Xbox will be a direct feed of current news straight from Xbox.com to your dashboard. The world is ending as we know it. You can have a full blown profile like you would on Facebook or whatever social networking site you troll. We’ll finally be able to watch full-screen movie trailers and there’s codec support for enhanced video. Navigation through Dashboard is said to be much easier with dedicated Game Store and Video Store buttons. We’ll see what the rest of the fuss is about on the 4th.

The Chocolate is still around? Looks like it. LG has released a brand new Choco in Blue Ice. It’ll be available next Friday, December 7 for the low, low price of $79.99. That is all.

Press Release

The time has come to say goodbye to Ed Zander, a dear friend of the CrunchGear family. And by "dear friend" I mean a guy we mentioned six times, were you to search for "Zander" on our site.

We’ve had a great ride, huh? Thanks for the memories, Ed. We’ll never forget the RAZR, RAZR2, ROZR, RUZR, RIZR, and all the other great phones whose models names contained the first letter of your soft and gentle last name.

Good luck to you in your next adventure, an adventure that begins on January 1, 2008.  We welcome your company’s chief operating officer Greg Brown with open arms, but we’ll never forget how you touched our lives forever. Goodbye, Moto.

Zander out as CEO at Motorola [Computerworld]

Artist’s rendering

I love financial analysts. They get “super-secret” news from “super-secret” sources — mostly the same sources we all have — and tell people to buy or sell stocks based on the same hunches we all have. The hunch du jour on Wall Street is that Apple’s stock will go up after the launch of an ultra-portable laptop at MacWorld in January. The ultra-portable we can believe. AppleInsider has the scoopz:

Earlier this month, AppleInsider cited well-respected sources who, following nearly two years of internal development on Apple’s part, are finally pinning the thin and lightweight 13-inch sub-notebook for an unveiling on January 15, 2008 as part of the company’s annual Macworld Expo announcements.

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This is a pretty neat mod from ShakerRacer that uses the N95’s accelerometer via Bluetooth. Are our recent N95 winners willing to rig an RC with Bluetooth and test this out for us?

For a group that’s so concerned about the money it loses due to illegal music downloading, the RIAA sure spends a hell of a lot on lawyers. Money that could be better spent on innovation instead of protecting a broken, backward, expensive distribution system.

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I found this here. I do not know what it is and I am very scared.

Nobody likes cable companies, but now you have a reason to loathe Comcast a little less. New England Comcast customers can pay $2.95 a month to get the TiVo interface in their cable box in addition to the normal $16.94 a month charge for a DVR, ratcheting the cost up to about $19.89.

This is a good move for Comcast because it makes them look less like backwards Neanderthals and it’s a good move for TiVo because now their R&D team can eat again and build up some energy to produce an HD product that people actually will buy. It’s just not win-win for that $2.95 burning a hole in your pocket every month, but you don’t count.

Comcast to Charge $2.95 Extra for TiVo DVR Service [Mulitchannel]

Entries are rolling in and you guys are GREAT at making up stuff about stuff. Take this one, for example:

The teenage years are by far the best and easiest part of parenting. At the age of 16, teenagers are finally able to get a job like they have always wanted. By that age, they are very responsible with money and will offer to use it to help their parents pay down the mortgage rather than waste it by buying video games and a car. Also, the education they are getting in high school will turn them into geniuses, enabling them to get full academic scholarships to the best Ivy League schools, insuring that they get very high paying jobs as soon as they graduate. By then, the parent’s financial problems will be over, because their child can support them forever.

Vote early and often, friends! To recap, readers of CrunchGear know full well that 95% of the time we have no idea what we’re talking about. Well, we want you to get in on some of that action by reviewing something you’ve never seen, touched, or even know exists. Two posters with the most comments, votes, and number of votes, wins either an 80GB iPod Classic or a 80GB Zune 2. Here’s what to do.
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Realizing that putting past episodes of TV shows online may actually increase television viewership, MTV Networks has decided to "make every clip from every episode" of South Park available online. I’m not exactly sure why they didn’t just say "every episode" but I hope that’s what they mean.

Anyway, it’s thought that other programs from MTV Networks’ archive might soon be available as well, depending on how well the South Park initiative goes.

While you’re waiting, you can turn yourself into a South Park character, just like I did. Man, I gotta get me one of those shirts in real life. Sweeeeet.

MTV to offer all South Park clips online [Reuters]

I dig the DS. I have the original one and it looks like a brick but every once in a while I’ll whip out a little Castlevania, just for nostalgia’s sake. Now, however, the Japanese will be able to do even more with their DSes. We, on the other hand, can stroke them and pet them and hug them, but we won’t be able to download TV, books, and manga.

The service, called DSVision, requires a MicroSD card kit and lets you send content from the DSVision site to the SD card. You then pop the card into your DS and run around reading your manga. It should cost about $35 and shows will be able $10. There should be about 10,000 titles by 2010 and 300 titles at launch. Again, we don’t get to officially play with it, so suck on it, us, right?

Digital download service for DS to launch in Japan [PocketGamer]

This one makes more sense than the others, but it’s still weird as feck. Whatever you’re smoking over there please feel free to send it my way.

What do we at CrunchGear love more than gadgets? Besides booze. Women. Hot women. Geeks disguised as hot women to be exact. It seems there’s a list of whose who in babelicous geekdom each year and we welcome that and we know you do to. Enough of the jibber jabber, right? I present to you this year’s top 10: hottest women in tech, according to Askmen.com.
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The New York Times is reporting that Sprint has said thanks but no thanks to an offer from Providence Equity Partners and South Korea’s SK Telecom which would, in effect, replace Sprint’s management team and infuse $5 billion into the company.

The deal would have also allowed SK Telecom and Sprint to "significantly cut costs by jointly purchasing handsets and examining network infrastructure."

A letter from Providence Equity Partners said that the investment would "signal to the public that Sprint Nextel represents a compelling opportunity" but made no mention of how replacing the entire management team would look to the public.

Sprint Is Said to Reject Offer by Investors and SK Telecom [New York Times]

Google could announce its intention to bid on that sweet, unused spectrum as early as later today, according to the WSJ. We’ve all pretty much assumed Google was going to do so, especially in light of Android, but at least we now have a date. The auction is scheduled to take place on January 24 and the FCC imposed a December 3 deadline for companies to announce their intention to bid.

A Google cellphone network, subsidized by ads and using Android phones? Yeah, that might work, especially if the phones aren’t the usual, “Oh, you want an unlocked phone? That’ll be $999, please.”

Google ready to bid on mobile airwaves: report [Reuters because the WSJ article is for subscribers only]

I Love (TwistTogether) Lamp
Tech toys are now kids toys, for better or worse
50% of the world has a cellphone, so say the numbers
Comics: You have died of Dysentery
What’s Worse: Windows Vista or Paris Hilton?

Comments are the greasy oil that keeps the blog machine running. Here are three great (and 100% unedited) comments recently posted by your fellow readers.

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