Rachel’s favorite actress, turned singer released her second album today(cleverly called Volume 2). Zooey Deschanel, the actress from Almost Famous, Elf and 500 days of Summer, has teamed up with M. Ward a singer-songwriter who rose to prominence in the Portland Oregon music scene to become She & Him. There first album received a strong response from critics but peaked at 71 on the billboard charts.
The bands style is a throwback to 1960′s and 70′s AM style crooning. The second album is very similar to the first, even though there is little progression from the first album it is just as catch and fun. My personal favorites are “In The Sun”, “thieves”, and “Gonna Get Along Without You Now”.
Up until this point it has all been speculation, but the speculation was that the Nexus One (a.k.a. The Google Phone) could turn the wireless industry on its head. How could it do this you ask?
Google was rumored to be producing a phone that would run exclusively on VOIP or voice over internet protocol. To put it more simply the phone would make calls exclusively over then internet, negating the need for a wireless carrier almost entirely. This would allow for worldwide unlimited calling (such as Vonage) from a mobile phone at a very cheap price. Think of the price you pay for a data plan on most cell phones, normally about 30$ a month. That 30$ would allow you to access the internet and in partnership with The Google Phone would give you all you needed to make unlimited calling to anywhere in the world.
Now that a few people have seen the phone first hand we know that it will not bring the wireless industry to its knees, at least not yet. The phone has been sent out to a few bloggers for review and they have confirmed that it will have a VOIP option but it will not be exclusive. The phone however will be sold Completely Unlocked. As google loves “open source” it will not have contracts with any specific carrier, and will completely eliminate the need to “hack” your phone in order to use it on another wireless carrier, or in another country for that matter.
So what are the Specifications of this groundbreaking phone?
The Google Phone (Nexus One) has Bluetooth, Wi-FI, and expandable memory through a microSD memory card. It will support both AT&T, and T-mobile 3G data in the U.S. It had earlier been declared that Google plans to sell it online, and that the phone is unlocked.
The handset will have a Snapdragon processor, a platform developed by “Qualcomm” for use in smartphones and mobile computing devices. It is known for its low power consumption leading to a longer battery life. But the most important feature that Snapdragon brings to the table is that it has a clock speed of 1GHz, twice the processor speed of Motorola DROID.
Apart from that, the experts have revealed after much exploration that the phone is optimum for listening to music, as it has a noise-cancellation chipset, and a stereo FM speaker.
The camera has auto-focus with LED flash, white balance, and anti-banding. The phone also has Open GLES 2.0 capability for graphics. This is significant news for gamers, as it puts the graphic capability of Nexus One at par with the iPhone.
There is also a magnetic compass (AK8973,3-axis Magnetic field sensor/AK8973 Orientation), an accelerometer (BMA150, 3-axis Accelerometer), and a proximity and ambient light sensor (Capella CM3602)
The phone supports quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, and comes with UMTS/HSUPA, the frequencies used for this is 850/1700/1900. This puts the download speed of the phone at 7.2Mbps, and the upload speed at 2MBps.
