Over at the terrific Boy Genius Report, they’ve got /18/motorola-droid-update-schedule-detailed/”>the reported details on the upcoming update to the Motorola DROID. This update will bring the DROID to Android Software version 2.1.

Sadly, as exciting as that is for DROID owners, the rollout details are somewhat underwhelming, especially if you’re not a an of waiting. Check ‘em out:

• At noon EDT on 3/18, 1,000 users will receive notification of the update
• At 11:59 PM EDT on 3/18, 9,000 more users will receive the update notification
• After the first 10,000 users receive the update on 3/18, there will be a 24-hour period when no additional upgrades will be delivered
• On Day 3 (3/20), 200,000 users will receive the update notification at 11:59 PM EDT
• This schedule will continue each day thereafter until the update has been delivered to all users
• And here are a few conditions needed for the update to be applied:
• An OTA download requires 40% or more power availability
• If the device is not connected to an external power source or 20% or more power if it is connected to an external source
• If roaming, the customer will not receive the update

So it seems those of you getting the update the “legit” way will have some time to wait. Those of you who can’t wait that long and will acquire the update by other means, well, you’re wait won’t be as long. Happy updating.

If you’ve never been to Austin, TX during South by Southwest (SXSW), let me assure you AT&T’s network pretty much sucks during the fest. Sure, it has something to do with the sheer number of users concentrated all in one place but still, that doesn’t make it any better. So, to prevent a repeat of last years’s problems (To put it mildly) AT&T is going overboard to ensure a similar wireless network debacle doesn’t happen again this year.

To avoid a second such disaster, AT&T is pulling out all the stops (Well, most of them anyway) and bringing in a lot of additional equipment for the SXSW conference including:

• Bringing in three temporary cell sites that are positioned in areas expected to see high traffic.

• Installing a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) at the Austin Convention Center. The DAS is comprised of 50 antenna nodes that provide the equivalent coverage of eight cell sites.

• Improving the cell sites in the surrounding area by utilizing 30MHz of spectrum for 3G instead of the standard 10MHz and upgrading the system to include the 850MHz band and HSPA.

• Improving the backhaul by beefing up the fiber optic connections that serve the eight cell sites of the DAS and the three temporary sites.

These all seems like great steps in the right direction for the company but still, you have to wonder if it will be enough. Even with AT&T’s recent victory in a PC World survey of network performance, many of us who use the network every day haven’t really seen much of a difference. It still kinda sucks.

When you’ve got thousands of power users with iPhones all in one square mile and all trying to use the network at the same time, will it be able to handle the load or will it fail once again? I guess we’ll find out next week. Any bets?

It’s Tuesday so that must mean it’s a day for lawsuits, at least where Apple, Inc. is concerned. Case in point, our favorite fruit flavored technology company is suing hardware maker HTC for infringement of 20 patents concerning the iPhone user interface and its hardware and architecture. The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. International Trade Comission and in the U.S. District Court of Deleware.

Steve Jobs himself had this to say about the lawsuit: “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Jobs. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” Yeah, he seems a bit miffed about the whole thing.

Although the Google Nexus One is not mentioned specifically in the lawsuit and HTC does make several other Android handsets, some could argue the touchscreen models interface does look quite a bit like the iPhone’s. Still, “quite a bit” does not necessarily a lawsuit make. Could it just be a bit of posturing to warn others away from trying to steal Apple’s ideas or to slow down the progress Android is making in the marketplace? Maybe.

Apple has the right to defend it’s ideas and the cash to try and punish those it deems responsible for stealing said ideas. However, I was kinda hoping to get my hands on a Nexus One when it is released for Verizon. I hope this lawsuit doesn’t hold that up. Neither HTC nor Google has issued a statement yet concerning the lawsuit.

Seeing as how I use AT&T daily in Los Angeles and find the 3G service to be spotty and occasionally non-existant, I have a bit of a hard time believing that AT&T’s 3G network speed is actually the fastest. However, based on a recent study conducted by PC World, that seems to be the case.

The study, a collaboration between PC World and wireless analysis firm Novarum, took place from December 2009 to January 2010, and compares the four major U.S. wireless carriers (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile) in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle on both mobile phones and laptop data cards

Highlights of the study include:

• AT&T: average download speed 1410 Kbps, average upload speed 773 Kbps

• Sprint: average download speed 795 Kbps, average upload speed 396 Kbps

• T-Mobile: average download speed 868 Kbps, average upload speed 311 Kbps

• Verizon: average download speed 877 Kbps, average upload speed 434 Kbps

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The number one seller of DVDs in the country, Wal-Mart, has apparently seen the writing on the wall and is again getting into online distribution of movies and other video content by purchasing Vudu, the four-year-old-company that has deals with every major movie studio and 40 independents. According to the article, Wal-Mart is paying an undisclosed sum for Vudu, which abandoned its hardware business a few years ago and instead is focusing on software embedded in millions of televisions.

As you may know, Wal-Mart has tried this kind of thing before. In February 2007, it announced it was becoming the first major retailer to offer digital movie downloads. Sadly, that didn’t work out so well with the company shuttering the business in the first year. Wal-Mart also launched a by-mail DVD service to compete with Netflix, but gave up on that as well when it partnered with Netflix later.

Now, with Vudu, Wal-Mart competes not only with iTunes and Netflix but also with Blockbuster, TiVo, Amazon and others that allow consumers to rent or buy movies digitally. Vudu currently has 20,000 titles in its library, 3,000 of which are in HD or HDX, a proprietary format Vudu says is comparable in quality to Blu-ray.

Having only seen Vudu in stores and at trade events, I can’t really vouch for the quality of the video. It just seemed okay. Plus, this seems a little late to the game what with iTunes and Netflix already having a large foothold into the living room. Still, Wal-Mart is a giant retailer with years of experience growing a successful business so it will be interesting to see how they utilize this latest acquisition.

There’s no denying Twitter’s popularity. It’s everywhere and many people use it all day, every day. So, if you need to Tweet while on the go, you need an smartphone with a Twitter app on it. The iPhone has several, with Tweetie and Twitterific probably being the most popular.

That’s great, but what if you’re using a cool Android powered smartphone like Verizon’s DROID? Fortunately, there’s a app for you too in the form of Seesmic. And now, the folks who make Seesmic have updated their app with some cool new features.

Among the new features are multiple account support with cross-posting, extra large font size, auto-correction of typing, automatic profile updates, on device twitter password management and optional timeline position memory so you jump back to the last tweets that you were reading.

The latest version of Seesmic is available now for free from the Android Market. If you check it out, be sure to come back and let us know how it compares to other Android Twitter apps like Twidroid and Tweetcaster.

Got an iPhone or an iPod Touch? If so, it’s time to connect them to iTunes to get the latest version of Apple’s operating system for these devices. This latest version, dubbed 3.1.3, addresses a number of issues including the following:

CoreAudio
Playing a maliciously crafted mp4 audio file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution

ImageIO
Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution

Recovery Mode
A person with physical access to a locked device may be able to access the user’s data

WebKit
Accessing a maliciously crafted FTP server could result in an unexpected application termination, information disclosure, or arbitrary code execution

WebKit
When WebKit encounters an HTML 5 Media Element pointing to an external resource, it does not issue a resource load callback to determine if the resource should be loaded. This may result in
undesired requests to remote servers. As an example, the sender of an HTML-formatted email message could use this to determine that the message was read.

The update also offers the requisite “stability and usability enhancements.” Confused? Don’t worry, just update and things will be fine. Although, if you’re worried, you could wait a couple days to see if this latest update breaks something else, which sometimes happens. For more on this update, visit Apple’s Security Update site.

In the wake of the recent release of the Motorola Droid and HTC’s Droid Eris, smartphones featuring Google’s Android software are some of the biggest sellers in the market right now. So it comes as no surprise to geeks and Google fanatics alike that this week, Google officially unveiled its very own Android-powered smartphone:  the Google Nexus.

The device, the first smartphone completely designed by Google and manufactured by HTC, features Android 2.1 software and a host of other interesting features such as a 1Ghz processor, Google’s latest map software, an 800 x 480 display, a 5 MP camera with LED flash, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and pretty much any other thing you might want in a smartphone. For the full specs, check out this page. Of course, it is powered by Google’s Android software which also gives you access to thousands of useful applications to enhance your Nexus.

Initially, the Nexus will be released for T-Mobile or unlocked in the US but will also come to Verizon and Vodaphone later this year in the Spring. To order, head on over to Google’s very own order page and get one for yourself.

Most people who love a particular phone but are forced to use AT&T know that their network performance can sometimes leave something to be desired. Yes iPhone owners, I’m talking to you. Poor network performance, inability to use 3G data and the ever-present dropped and failed calls are pretty consistent issues when using AT&T — at least in many areas.

But now it seems the network is listening and is going to try and do something about it. No, they are not introducing a radical improvement to their network or anything like that. Instead, they’ve rolled out a tool for the iPhone that will allow users to report any failure to their service. This application, called Mark the Spot, uses geo-location to pinpoint your iPhone’s location and then asks the user to identify the type of problem they are experiencing.

Supposedly this data will be used by the carrier to help pinpoint trouble spots that they can then take steps to improve. While I would prefer an actual improvement in network performance, i guess this is a step in the right direction. This application is now available in the iTunes store so go it it.

I wonder if they’ll get very many reports?

As Apple often does, everyone’s favorite fruit-flavored computer company quietly give their flagship line of professional computers, the Mac Pro, a bump in speed. They also included new storage options such as 2 TB 7200 RPM drives for the towers as well in this bit of enhancement magic. For the quad-core Mac Pro (but not the eight-core model), you can now order a 3.33 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor which, if you don’t know, is pretty darn fast.

This baby has 8 MB of fully shared L3 cache, Hyper-Threading technology, an integrated memory controller, Turbo Boost for short bursts of speed up to 3.6 GHz and can really blow the doors off any kind of intense rendering tasks like you find in Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro or similar. In short, if you’re a high-end graphics or video professional, your job, and making those tight deadlines, just got easier.

We were wondering what had happend with Apple’s top of the line Mac since the introduction the new 27″ Intel Core i7 iMac in October. Traditionally, the Mac Pro is the performance king and it was a bit odd that the line had not had an update. Fortunately, Apple has remedied that situation now. The new Mac Pro options are available today at Apple’s online store.