During the week, contestants take part in competitions to decide who holds the power in the house, who gets to eat, and who wins luxury items such as letters from home or items to make life trapped inside the house a little easier.

Julie Chen hosts once again this season as 13 new competitors enter the house to compete for the rumoured $1Million dollar prize! (traditionally first prize is only 1/2 Million so it will be interesting to see if they’ve actually increased the prize this time)

Tune in on Thursday, July 8th, to meet the new houseguests and I guarantee you’ll be hooked in no time!

But since I’ve installed the official Twitter For Blackberry Application on my Blackberry Storm (9530) I’ve become a tweeting fool! This program makes it so simple that even when I have nothing earth moving to say I find myself sending it out to the world!

A simple toolbar across the top of the screen gives me access to all of the things I do on twitter in a regular session including viewing my timeline, @mentions, direct messages, lists, searching for users, and a few other things.

The application ties in nicely with your blackberry as well, putting a little “t” icon on the desktop when a new tweet, @mention, or DM comes in. My only issue, and this is because of the device I use, and not the application, is the speed at which the Twitter For Blackberry brings down the tweets. My phone doesn’t support WiFi so it’s doing everything over the cell network which is painfully slow!

System Requirements
To use Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones, you will need the following:

• 64MB BlackBerry smartphone
• 750KB of available BlackBerry smartphone memory
• BlackBerry® Device Software Version 4.5 or later

Overall, I highly recommend the application and the pricetag (FREE) is a really good incentive to get it for your blackberry device! You can download Twitter For Blackberry here.

Here’s the clincher though, shortly after China’s clinic opened, it came under investigation by the Chinese Health Ministry after the death of a teenager was linked to the “beating and confinement” treatment he was receiving at the clinic. The Chinese Health Ministry has released a statement saying that corporal punishment and other punishments involving restricting personal freedom are to be strictly prohibited at the clinic.

No reports have come out of people being mistreated at the UK and US clinics so far, and I’d imagine that we won’t see any either following the scandal surrounding the Chinese clinic.

One has to stop and question the Chinese about their motives for beating people to rid them of their internet addictions. In this author’s opinion, it would have probably been just as easy, and far less publicized if they had just set up an online course to teach people to fight their addiction… oh wait…

This seasons Survivor features 20 returning castaways from previous episodes. Your favorites like James and Tom come back to take on the nasty players like Jerri and Russell! Starting February 11th, 2010 you’ll be able to tune in every Thursday night and watch as good vs evil, until just one is left standing to claim the $1 Million dollar prize.

I haven’t watched the last few seasons of Survivor, but I won’t be missing this one! With 2 of my favorite players, Rupert and Colby, coming back for another go at the prize money, it’s sure to be an interesting season full of backstabbing and fierce competitions!

Jeff Probst once again returns as host of the show and will have a tough time mediating the teams and keeping them from seriously injuring one another during the challenges. Be sure to check it out every Thursday night starting February 11th, 2010 on CBS!

Our big question is WHY? Why are you shutting down the feeds for the competitions?  It takes us about 2 minutes to discern the outcome of the competition once the feeds come back online so you’re not doing it to keep us from knowing the results. At least I hope you’re not because it isn’t working if you are!

Some people say you’re worried that we won’t watch the show if we see the competitions online but I know this not to be true.  Die Hard Fans (the same people who are willing to pay for the feeds) NEVER miss the show (11 Seasons I’ve been watching and have never missed an episode).  Part of the fun of watching the show is seeing the things that have happened on the feeds that you DON’T include in the show. It’s like a game for us!

As for production problems during the competitions, those are the types of things we get the feeds to see. If there is a competition that takes 3 hours to complete because things go wrong and you have to restart or redo part of it then let us see that.  We know that things don’t always go smoothly… nothing ever does!

In conclusion, all we are asking is that we be allowed what we’re promised when we purchase the feeds, to be a “fly on the wall” in the Brother House and to have “24/7 access” to everything that goes on.  If the feeds are down for 3 hours, then we’re not getting our money’s worth as far as this Fan is concerned!

Dell has long been rumored to be making a smart phone, and this device is pretty close to a smart phone.  Some of the things it would need to be competitive with the iPod would be Music and Movie playback, built in wifi and browser, and heck, why not a camera as well. The iPod has a pretty firm hold on the Mobile Media market so this device would have to come out of the box as Spectacular if it hopes to catch up.

Dell supposedly started development of this device a year ago so lets hope they’ve put in some serious overtime and we get a REAL competitor to the iPod Touch! The device could go on sale as early as the second half of 2009, according to the Wall Street Journal’s sources, so keep your eyes on the Dell website!

• 528Mhz Processor
• 3.2″ Touch Screen - 320×480 Resolution
• Trackball w/Enter Button
• GPS
• Bluetooth
• 5.0 Megapixel Camera
• Plays MP3 audio, MPEG4 Video
• microSD Card Slot

With more and more competition showing up in the mobile smart phone space, it should work out well for customers looking to purchase a touch smart phone because we all know that competition drives prices down! But even with prices going lower, many feel that the iPhone is still the best choice for a touch phone simply because of the VAST number of applications that can be downloaded from the Apple App Store. They are miles ahead of the competition in this regard and this gives them a BIG advantage over their competitors…plus Apple seems to have the hype behind it with most people never even hearing about the release of the HTC Hero.

Stay tuned for more information on other Smart Phones as they become available!

For those who don’t know, Big Brother is a reality television show, where, in each series, a group of people live together in the Big Brother House, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 16 participants. The housemates try to win a cash prize by avoiding periodic evictions from the house. The idea for the show came during a brainstorm session at the production house of John de Mol Produkties (an independent part of Endemol) on September 4, 1997.

This year we’ll be watching to see who becomes the supreme winner of the $500,000 first place prize! Stay tuned right here starting July 9th for ALL the details!

You can see the Big Brother 11 player stats here.

A standard web search reveals a lot of different, very useful information about your search topic. Of course you get the standard results which link to the sites on the internet, but they also throw other information at you like “Best Match”, related Images, and on the side bar they even list Categories that go along with the search. I did a quick search for iPhone ( hehe, top product from Microsoft’s top competitor ) and was impressed to see that the “Best Match” was in fact Apple’s website. There were a bunch of pictures of the iPhone, and down the side were listed categories such as “Accessories”, “Software”, “Ringtones”, etc which when clicked show more specific iPhone links related to the category.

The image search works well, and they have changed the screen layout around a little bit to make it so that you don’t have to leave BING.COM to view the images. Images are shown in a standard rows and columns table when you first get your results but once you click on the first image to view it, it loads the page that the image appears on within the right side of the screen and moves all of your image results to the left sidebar where they appear to be in an unlimited scroll section. You pick an image from that section and it loads the page containing that image in the right side. This is reminiscent of the days when frames were a popular way to divide up your web page.

The video search seems to work well also. I like that once you are presented with a list of videos that match your search term, clicking on one of the results starts the video playing right away. You have the ability to look through the video results without having to load a new page to view each one. This makes it quick and easy to find the video you are looking for.

Mapping is pretty much the same as it is everywhere. Type in a business name or address and the map appears in the box with a balloon that contains all the know information about said company or address layered over the map. One thing I was impressed with is that my street was actually on their map… although spelled wrong! Google doesn’t even have my street on their map so I guess I have to give points to Microsoft for that one!

Another section to try out is the news section. It works similar to a standard web search except that only search news sources so when your results come back they have the source listed right below the result so you know if it came from the “Globe and Mail” right away.

All things considered, BING.COM is an impressive search engine. I think all of the features above are available in Google though and I can’t see anything in BING.COM that is going to make people want to switch from their old Faithful Google to Microsoft’s latest attempt.

Maybe if Microsoft offered to pay everyone a dollar each time they did a search… that might work!

Today, Microsoft announced their newest initiative in video games, Project Natal. This project eliminates the need for controllers all together when gaming and instead uses Gesture Based input to interact with games. You’re saying, hasn’t Nintendo already done that with the Wii? Well, sort of! Microsoft’s product doesn’t require you to hold a control in your hand to see what you’re doing.  It uses a new piece of equipment to actually watch your BODY and determines what you are doing using that input.

Besides knowing your moves, Project Natal also features Face Recognition so it’s possible to walk in front of the Project Natal device and have it know who you are without you doing anything. It also has voice input so you can start games, and give other commands by just speaking.

There aren’t a lot of details out on the hardware itself yet, but Microsoft has revealed that it will use an RGB camera, Depth Sensor, Multi-Array Microphone, and a custom processor.  According to the reveal today at E3, the device itself is a box around 5 inches wide, 3 inches high and 3 inches deep which you sit on your entertainment center… similar to the Wii sensor.

The movie above gives a complete overview of the device and shows you how well it should work! This technology enthusiast however believes nothing until I see it for myself.  When something seems too good to be true, it normally is! Microsoft was not ready to talk about release dates yet so there is still a chance that this will be vaporware anyway! We’ll have more details as they become available so check back often!