Filed under: in sixty seconds

• Another tale of hot peppers, fingernails, and searing pain. Someone needs to create the perfect pepper preparer.
• A tasty recipe for aioli fiends: Grilled Asparagus with Lamb and Mustard Aioli.
• Yesterday, I went out for some great sushi, but maybe I should’ve gone here — Toronto sushi joint review: Toshi Sushi.
• Wine and barbecues … the perfect match? Montgras Reserva 2006 Carmenère, Chakana 2007 Malbec, Lockwood Vineyard 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, Aresti Winemakers’ 2004 Assemblage, and Georges Duboeuf Chateau de Javernand 2006 Chiroubles.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Restaurants, Food News

According to the Dallas/Ft. Worth NBC affiliate station, Bennigan’s, a nationwide restaurant chain with nearly 800 locations, is closing the doors on all their stores, effective immediately. Calls to the the national headquarters, located in Plano, TX, are going unanswered and managers have been asked to call their staff members to tell them not to come in.

Upon hearing that they were shutting down, I placed a call to Philadelphia’s local Bennigan’s. My call was answered on the second ring, and while there was definitely noise of activity on the other end of the line, the woman who answered my call confirmed that they were closed for business as well.

I’ve never eaten at a Bennigan’s, so I can’t speak to the food, but my heart does go out to all the people who will lose their jobs because of this closure. How do the rest of you feel about the sudden closing of this chain?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones

Man, Sprint just can’t catch a break lately — the beleaguered wireless carrier was just told that it would have to pay some $73M in refunds to customers for improperly charging early-termination fees. The ruling, from a California state court, will basically set off a flood of similar cases if it stands — but Sprint still has two weeks to respond to the ruling before Judge Bonnie Sabraw, and you can bet Yellow Swoosh will appeal if it loses in the end. Interestingly, Verizon was facing a similar lawsuit earlier this year and chose to quickly settle — a lesson Sprint, with far less revenue and shrinking profits, might do well to learn from.

[Thanks, Roger A]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Just as July began, we heard that Sprint would finally begin shipping its Airave signal booster nationwide before the month ended. It cut things close, but we can’t deny that the rumor proved true. Starting right now, Sprint users with horrendous service in their own homes can begrudgingly cough up $99.99 to have the base station sent directly to you. From there, you’ll have to throw down $4.99 per month for extending your coverage but still using your plan minutes, $10 per month if you’re looking to make unlimited calls (through the Airave) with a single Sprint phone or $20 per month for unlimited calling for multiple lines. Critics have already harshed on the $50 increase in price from when it launched in Denver and Indy last year, not to mention the relatively high monthly fees, but we suppose you can take it or leave it depending on how regularly you drop calls from your couch. Oh, and don’t even think of using this overseas — the required GPS module makes sure you’re in the US before enabling calls.

[Via PhoneScoop]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones

For those invited to private launch parties in New York and Chicago last Thursday, you’ve probably been playing with your shiny new US E71 all weekend. For everyone else, today’s the day. The Americas version of the handset — which includes GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and HSDPA 850/1900 support — is finally on sale to the general public through a variety of retailers. Now, the only problems are sneaking out of the office early, finding a store with stock and coming up with approximately $500.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Want downloads on your Touch Diamond to exceed the pace of a molasses-covered snail when on North American soil? Well, if you already have a Touch Diamond, you’re outta luck — but future buyers have another version to look forward to that packs HSDPA on the all-important 850 and 1900MHz bands. We don’t have any word on when this is coming, where it’s going, or how much it’ll run, but hey, it exists. That’s a solid start.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones

Unless you hit the jackpot at an Apple Store, you aren’t apt to see this many iPhone 3Gs in one place without planning a meetup. As the story goes, one particular lady picked up one of Apple’s latest handsets, took it home and began checking things out. Curiously, a trio of images were already on the Camera Roll. Upon viewing them, she noticed two snaps overcome with blur and the one you see above — likely a rare look into an iPhone 3G factory. Not that we haven’t see Apple products give away their place of origin before, but still interesting nonetheless. Now, scurry along and check out your own roll to see if any hidden treasures are waiting.

[Via TUAW]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones

Seeing as Apple’s FairPlay DRM has already been cracked for music and movies, it’s not at all surprising that people are starting to poke holes in the FairPlay-based iPhone App Store. The first loophole is pretty simple, since it doesn’t appear that FairPlay links the iPhone hardware to specific Apple IDs: just log into iTunes from any of the machines authorized to use your account, and every app you’ve purchased will be available for free re-downloading to any attached phone. Since music and movies wrapped in FairPlay can be transferred to unlimited iPods and iPhones, we’re guessing this little trick will work indefinitely, but we wouldn’t depend on it.

Continue reading iPhone apps pirated, shared — but not GPL’d

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones

Rumors of Dell playing a role in the smartphone industry have been around for what seems like ages, but each time the fire dies down, another can of lighter fluid emerges to get us all wondering again. In a recent interview with Om Malik, the bigwig had more than a few interesting things to say on the computing industry as a whole. Still, what intrigued us wasn’t the talk about being a founder or changing up Dell’s game in order to rebound — no, it was Michael’s remarks on the handset sector. When asked if there was a “desire” on its part to work with Android or Symbian, Mr. Dell stated that the company “is kind of working on that,” although it wasn’t ready to “publicly disclose” plans. Granted, he also asked us “not to expect anything anytime soon” when referring to a phone, but would you really expect any CEO with a trick up his / her sleeve to say anything different?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Downloads, Back to School Guide 2008

The first thing you should do when you get your new laptop is uninstall all that free trial crap that gets loaded on by the manufacturer. Six Months of Earthlink, two weeks of Adobe Photoshop Elements, McAfee Anti-Virus, one month of MusicMatch… who needs it? Not you! (Besides eventually charging you money, a lot of these programs you didn’t ask for can slow down your computer.)

Now that you’ve cleared out some room on that hard drive, start installing some of these free and useful applications, many of which are open source (meaning anyone can view and alter the code of the program to improve or customize it if they have the skill or desire). Here are ten (or so) applications that will let you do almost anything you could need to on your computer, without you having to spend a dime.

Firefox (XP/Vista/OS X/Linux)

The most important item you can install on any computer.

The Firefox Web browser will probably be the application you use the most on your laptop. Now don’t get us wrong — Internet Explorer 7 isn’t awful — it’s just that Firefox is that much better. Particularly attractive is the ability to add new features through extensions, which are small-add ons to Firefox that allow you do do everything from block advertisements to save chunks of Web sites to your Google Notebook.

We’ve discussed some of our favorite extensions before, but here are some other ones we like: If you use Gmail, then check out Better Gmail from the folks over at Life Hacker. Better Gmail adds a host of new abilities to the Google mail service, including new keyboard shortcuts or even a completely new look. We also like the Remember the Milk extension for adding a to-do list to your Gmail inbox. Also worth checking out (if you’re a Windows or OS X user) is PicLens, which turns any photo site — including Flickr, Google Image Search, or even MySpace — into an interactive 3D wall of images that makes scrolling and scanning huge numbers of photos easy and fun.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This