Author Archive

Firefox 3 gets official Guinness world record

Posted in Browsers by Darrin Olson on July 3rd, 2008

Firefox 3 gets official Guinness World Record for most downloads in 24 hour periodIt’s now official. Firefox 3 has been officially entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the most downloaded software in a 24-hour period. Last month on the first day of its release Firefox 3 was downloaded over 8 million times; 8,002,530 to be exact.

Of course, Firefox3 didn’t exactly have any competition since this was a new world record category that they just made up, but we can’t deny that over 8 million downloads in a day is an impressive feat in any case.

“The notion of going for a world record, as gooky and nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea. It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world.”, said Mozilla Marketing head Paul Kim.

Firefox …

Latest PS3 udpate causing problems, pulled by Sony

Posted in PS3 by Darrin Olson on July 3rd, 2008

Sony pulls Playstation 3 version 2.40 upateThe latest firmware 2.40 put out just Tuesday for the Sony Playstation 3 was apparently pulled shortly after its release due to multiple reported problems caused by the update. If you’ve already gotten the update and things are working fine you are one of the lucky ones, otherwise if you seem to be faced with a bricked console you’ll need to be getting in touch with Sony support or possibly trying to fix it yourself.

Sony confirmed Wednesday that they had official pulled the available update within an hour after its release due to the reported problems, which they say were experienced by a “limited” number of PS3 gamers. The most common problem appears to be that the console gets “stuck” when booting and doesn’t get past that “wave” background display, never reaching the XMB. Some argue that formatting the PS3 hard disk will fix the problem which you can attempt, but at your own risk.

Dell launches line of Studio laptops for creative types

Posted in Notebooks by Darrin Olson on June 26th, 2008

Dell Studio Line laptopsDell today launched the new “Studio” line of laptops following the trend of more consumers who would like a little more style and customization available for their portable computers. Kicking off the Studio laptops Dell launched the Dell Studio 15 and Dell Studio 17, which come with a 15.4″ and 17.1″ display, respectively.

Both notebooks carry the drop hinge and “wedge” shape seen in the XPS laptops from Dell and both come in a range of vibrant and loud colors, capacitve touchpad and multimedia buttons that light-up when pressed, and an optional backlit keyboard. They also have the option of built-in broadband connections through Sprint or Verizon, Blu-ray drive, slot-loading drives and you can even get a mercury-free LED display if you ask. Dell has put some thought to your laptop accessories as well, offering mice, backpacks, sleeves and earbuds that are colored to match.

JVC launches Dual iPod Docking Station

Posted in iPod Accessories by Darrin Olson on June 23rd, 2008

JVC NX-PN7 dual iPod docking station clock radioToday JVC finally officially launched that dual iPod docking station we saw earlier this year at CES which has the ability to dock two iPods at the same time. The NX-PN7 stands out from the crowd of endless iPod accessories since it can hold not one but two iPods, or an iPod and an iPhone, charging and playing from either of them.

The dual iPod dock also features an AM/FM clock radio and video out to output your video media to a television. And don’t forget that bit of “flare” they added to the device with the illuminated strips that can show one of nine colors. JVC appropriately has set the retail price of the NX-PN7 to about double the price of a single iPod dock, at $149.95.

Motozine ZN5 from Motorola and Kodak

Posted in Mobile Phones by Darrin Olson on June 23rd, 2008

Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5 from Motorola and KodakRumors of the Motozine from Motorola have been floating around for quite a while and the company today has finally made an official announcement for the new cameraphone. The Motozine ZN5 was created with a partnership with Motorola and Kodak to create a device that contains high-quality features of both a phone and a camera.

Kodak included a number of features on the camera-side of the mobile handset including a 5 mega-pixel sensor behind a sliding lens cover, Xenon flash, built-in integration with Kodak Gallery, on-phone image stitching capabilities to create large panoramic shots and an option 4GB of external storage.

Alesis’ ProTrack creates a digital voice recorder with your iPod

Posted in Digital Audio by Darrin Olson on June 23rd, 2008

Alesis ProTrack Digital Audio Recorder for the Apple iPodAlesis has come out with a product recently that takes advantage of the popularity and significant storage capacity available in the Apple iPods with a new digital stereo recorder that integrates with the media player. The ProTrack Stereo Handheld Recorder has sleds built into the design to securely dock your iPod inside and use it to store and playback digital audio recordings.

The ProTrack comes with two built-in stereo condenser microphones to pick up ambient sound, or you can plug in external mics or line-in audio sources to the 1/4-inch jacks. The recorder, like the iPod itself, is truly portable and runs up to five hours on four AAA batteries and can fall back on an AC power adapter if needed. They’ve even included a threaded mount on the bottom to hold it steady with things like a camera tripod.

Subscribe! It’s free, easy and the right thing to do

Posted in RSS,Services by Darrin Olson on June 21st, 2008

Subscribe to SlipperyBrick.comIt’s been brought to our a attention that a few of our visitors who enjoy reading about the latest in technology and gadgets at the ‘Brick aren’t all that familiar with our available feed and email subscription. Due to this we thought we’d take a moment to answer a few of the questions we’ve received regarding feed and email subscriptions for SlipperyBrick.com.

What is a feed?
Our feed is a scaled down version of the SlipperyBrick.com website that has all of our latest articles including the text and any associated images. The feed data gets updated immediately each and every time we release new information. It costs you nothing to subscribe to and you can unsubscribe on your own at any time.

Apple’s iTunes store serves 5 billionth song

Posted in iTunes by Darrin Olson on June 19th, 2008

Apple iTunes reaches over 5 billion songs downloadedApple is touting themselves as the world’s largest online music retailer and these numbers are tough to argue with. As of Thursday the company announced that iTunes has reached the 5 billion mark and beyond for the number of online song downloads since their launch in 2003. It seems like it was only a year ago that they reached the 3 billion mark. In fact it was not quite a year go last July when they announced they had reached 3 billion downloaded songs.

To get an idea of just how many songs that is, customers had to have downloaded a little over 2.5 million songs per day on average since the site launched. In reality 2 billion of these were done in just the last 10 months, making it over 6 million per day for the past year.

Firefox 3 downloads reach over 8 million

Posted in Firefox by Darrin Olson on June 18th, 2008

Firefox 3 downloadMozilla has announced that they have set a new world record with over 8 million downloads of the Firefox 3 browser from Tuesday to Wednesday of this week, and they are just waiting for the Guinness folks to come around and verify the numbers. While we do like Firefox here at the ‘Brick and use it as our default browser, we did have a few questions about this record attempt in general.

For starters, there was really no Guinness record for the most number of downloads to begin with, so beating a record that was not there was a shoe-in for the company. Also, if someone wants to shoot it down it just might not be all that hard since Adobe says that 8 million Flash Player installs is just an average day. YouTube servers out over 100 million videos each day and what is the torrent download count at, like over 5 billion?

Nintendo again dominates sales, Wii shortage ensues

Posted in News by Darrin Olson on June 13th, 2008

Nintendo dominates game console sales in May 2008 with Wii and DSAccording to the latest NPD Group report for game sales in May, this is the fourth month in a row that Nintendo has come out on top for the number 1 AND number two spot for console sales. The Nintendo Wii and the handheld Nintendo DS were the two top-selling hardware units for May, 2008.

Nintendo sold over 675,000 Wii consoles in May and almost 453,000 Nintendo DS’s, which would probably explain all the new colors and designs they have been coming out with lately for the DS. Sony’s Playstation 3 followed with a little under 209,000 units sold and Microsoft sold 186,600 Xbox 360 units during the same period.

O2 UK offering free iPhone 3G with spendy plan

Posted in iPhone by Darrin Olson on June 12th, 2008

O2 in the UK offering free iPhone 3G with certain plansI think most of our readers probably know that nothing like this is really ever free, but O2 has announced that when the new iPhone 3G launches in the UK on July 11 they will be offering it for free with certain monthly tariffs. Both the 8GB and the 16GB models will be given away if you want to pay a little more each month for an 18 month contract.

The new tariffs from O2 in the UK are already published and are offering the 8GB iPhone 3G free with a £45 (~$88) or £75 (~$146) monthly plan, and if you are going with the £75 plan you might as well get the 16GB model since it comes with that plan at no cost as well.

Google co-founder books space flight

Posted in Science by Darrin Olson on June 12th, 2008

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, trains for a space flight in zero gravity.According to the Space Adventures tourism company out of Virginia, Sergy Brin, cofounder of Google, has put a $5 million deposit down for a vacation in space aboard a Russian spacecraft. The total trip will cost $35 million dollars and the launch date is scheduled for sometime in 2011.

Brin joins a small number of elite individuals who have both the desire to travel into space and more importantly the deep pockets to make it happen. Richard Garriott’s trip with Space Adventures is still coming up this fall. Brin’s $5 million deposit also makes him the founding member of a new Space Adventure club called the Orbital Mission Explorers Circle. The membership appears to work something like a vacation timeshare, but for space. Brin and any other new members that join get preferential options to the mission seats or can sell the seat to another space traveler if there schedule just doesn’t allow for traveling to space that day.

Apple iPhone 3G official specs

Posted in iPhone by Darrin Olson on June 9th, 2008

Apple iPhone 3G in black or whiteSteve Jobs and Apple officially announced the new iPhone 3G today set to ship July 11, Shortly after the 2nd version of the popular mobile handset appeared on the Apple Store giving some long-awaited answers and putting many rumors to bed about the changes to the iPhone.

Lots of applications and lots of games were highlights of the presentation today for the iPhone, showing off what can be done and what has been done with the iPhone SDK. Also included in this model is GPS mapping, support for more business-centric applications like Microsoft Exchange and of course the faster 3G wireless connection. Based on these features it’s very apparent that Apple was listening to requests and complaints after the launch of the original iPhone. Major issues like a maps with no GPS and an internet browser with too slow of a connection to use are no longer, or at least much less of an issue.

3G iPhone officially announced, rolling out July 11

Posted in iPhone by Darrin Olson on June 9th, 2008

Apple 3G iPhoneToday at WWDC Steve Jobs made the official announcement we’ve been waiting for – the 3G iPhone. For the most part the new model looks very similar to the original, but along with the high speed connection Apple did add in some other improvements.

Some of the new features highlighted today include a full plastic back, improved audio, a flush headphone jack, even thinner edges, solid metal buttons, GPS and all of this for a $199 price tag for the 8GB model. Apple is boasting that with the new 3G connection web pages load 2.8 times faster than the previous iPhone model and is faster than both the Nokia N95 and the Treo 750. The battery is expected to give 5-6 hours of web browsing, 8-10 hours of talk time (5 hours of 3G talk) and 24 hours of audio playback on a single charge.

Klipsch launches more affordable Image X5 headphones

Posted in Headphones by Darrin Olson on June 4th, 2008

Klipsch Image X5 headphonesAccording to Klipsch, they had such a great response to the Klipsch Image headphones after the release during CES 2008 that they decided to come back with a slightly larger and less expensive model called the Image X5. The company is renaming the original Image headphones as the Image X10. Klipsch boasted the “X10″ headphones as the “smallest, lightest full-range earphone design” available, and the new X5 model is larger by only about a 2mm diameter and carries a price cut of about $100.

Klipsch says the slightly large design makes the X5 less expensive to manufacture than the original Image headphones, and that lets them make their super-small headphones affordable to more consumers. Aside from the larger overall size, the X5 still has a lot of the great features found in the more expensive X10, including 5 different sizes of the silicon Ear Gels, a balanced full-range armature driver, the tuned bass-reflex system and a pretty cool look.