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Rob Beschizza at 6:20 am • 
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Nokia's latest ultra-cheap candybar phone looks like a good replacement for my trusty e-ink Moto F3. A month's battery life on standby, an FM radio and an LED flashlight add up to a perfect "backup" phone for long-term blackouts, natural disasters and zombie holocausts. [Engadget]
Xeni Jardin at 9:51 am • •
From the wonderful blog "Vintage Scans," a page from Lifemanship lesson from Stephen Potter, 1957 (11th impression). Potter was a British writer known for dry, mocking, self-help books, and the TV and film projects they inspired.
Cory Doctorow at 12:00 pm • •
This undated ad for the Erotica, a pornographic land-line telephone, was supposed to make its owner feel like Hef every time he (or she) clamped a badly rendered, unwieldy sculpture of a naked woman to his (or her) head. I think it probably underperformed relative to the promises made in the ad, and yet it represents a fascinating glimpse into a theory of action as embodied by an optimistic manufacturer in days of yore.
Mark Frauenfelder at 12:04 pm • •
[Video Link] Burner is an iPhone application that lets you generate temporary phone numbers. This would come in handy, for example, if you are selling something on Craigslist, and you don't want to give out your permanent telephone number. The app costs $1.99, which gives you a "burner" number that's valid for 7 days, 20 talk minutes, or 60 texts, whichever comes first. You can buy additional credits in the app.
Rob Beschizza at 9:36 pm • •
Government Attic's latest FOIA haul is a compilation of FBI documents concerning the security of telephone services, 1952-1995. The collection is posted as a single 66MB monster PDF. Get cracking! On reading the PDF, I mean.
Xeni Jardin at 9:59 am • •
Apple has gathered gadget bloggers and tech journalists to unveil an update to the iPhone. Gizmodo, GDGT, and Engadget have boots on the ground and/or liveblogs in the ether (some are covering remotely). Ars Technica and MacWorld liveblogs are down at the time of this blog post. Oh, wait, Gizmodo and GDGT liveblogs are down intermittently too. Geez.
Rob Beschizza at 7:32 am • •
Motorola's long-awaited Android flagship, the Droid Bionic, is out tomorrow.
At Gizmodo, Brent Rose says it's similar to other recent 4G models such as Samsung's Galaxy S II, with fast-performing hardware in a thinner body. Unfortunately, it has a "super harsh" display and "just falls flat" when using certain features. He also reports lots of pre-installed junk.
The software side is a mixed bag of "Hey, that's cool!" with "Arrgh, please kill me!" On the cool side it has some robust security features, including onboard and SD storage encryption, remote wipe—why isn't this a standard part of Android yet?—and tons of control for your IT admin. Your office really has no excuse to not to let you use this phone. On the bad side, there is just a ton of bloatware on this.
At Engadget, Tim Stevens reports that it's a "bit drab" in the style department but seemingly an excellent performer, and reserves judgment until full testing is complete.
TechCrunch's Jordan Crook says that there's no doubt at all about it being a snappy performer, but finds it a bit large and isn't impressed by the smudgy finish.
USA Today's Mark W. Smith says that it's a winner.
For those who have been waiting out the 4G smartphone race this summer, hoping for a hit with the Bionic, your wait has been rewarded. This one is worth buying.
Joshua Topolsky at This Is My Next awards it 7.5/10 -- "Essentially as good and as bad as other recent Motorola entries" -- and says its not the killer handset expected by fans. Overpriced, too.
The Bionic has a 4.3" display, 16GB of internal storage and a 16GB microSD card, an 8MP camera with 1080p video, and weighs 5.6 oz. Available tomorrow on Verizon, it is $299 with a 2-year contract.
