Filed under: Cellphones

Take one look at the room rates at the Malibu Beach Inn, and you'll fully understand why you'll be treated to a loaner iPod touch for the duration of your stay. For those who already own an iPhone / iPod touch, they'll be given access to a web application that was built for the Safari browser to give guests all sorts of remote capabilities. For instance, ordering up room service, setting a wake up call, requesting luggage, renting a limo and flipping the door placard to "Do Not Disturb" no longer requires any strenuous work; instead, users can simply hit a few buttons and be on their way. The hotel chose a web app in order to avoid the Apple certification process and to make it available on other hot devices in the near future. But then again, if you can swing this place, you've probably got a butler handling the front-desk inquiries, anyway.

[Via Fashion Funky, thanks Daisy]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Ohio searches for state-site attacker

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Last summer, Sprint was the laughing stock of the major US carriers in terms of customer service. Fast forward 15 months, and the very same carrier is now sitting atop the pile. A recent report compiled by Pali Research has found that Sprint's wireless customer care response times were best in class, and just 2.5 years ago in its first survey, Sprint was dead last. The carrier answered a whopping 91% of calls that researchers placed to the care center in under 30 seconds, while 99% of calls were answered within 2 minutes. If you're curious how the other guys did, try this: Verizon grabbed the silver with 85%, T-Mobile followed with 43% and AT&T took home the award of shame with just 33% of test calls answered within half a minute. So, the real question is: have you Sprint customers noticed an uptick in service levels? And are you AT&T subscribers growing increasingly impatient?

[Via phoneArena]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Announcements

In case you missed it, the new Engadget Podcast came out this weekend! Click here to be magically transported to sweet, succulent, podcasty goodness.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Prior to the G1's stealth launch, Google's on-device Android Market was a busy place, teeming with some 50-plus apps seemingly ready to win the hearts and minds of early adopters anxious to outfit their G1s with... oh, you know, simple pleasures like a video player or the ability to change the UI's font size. We guess that wasn't part of Mountain View's strategy, though, with all but 13 applications having been removed today -- presumably a knee-jerk response to the knowledge that phones were starting to make their way into paying customers' hands. Truth be told, this was probably the plan all along; the Market had gotten a little dirty from both developer and Google testing, and we're figuring they were just looking to tidy things up a bit to make it presentable on launch day before it got nasty dirty with a flood of developers outside the confines of Google's own Android Developer Challenge. Either that, or there's some deep, dark conspiracy lurking involving the unceremonious removal of any content that upsets Schmidt, Brin, or Page.

Update: We're hearing this is all due to an update to the Market -- older apps that haven't been updated to meet the Market's specs aren't available at the moment. Thanks, everyone!

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments