local

MetroPCS said today it is partnering with a consortium of broadcasters to bring live local television to its wireless customers later this year.

The prepaid mobile service provider is working with Mobile Content Venture, a group of companies with a string of local broadcast networks, to bring the content through a service called Dyle Mobile TV. Samsung Electronics will make the first smartphone to use the Dyle app, although the company hasn't divulged the handset's name.

Broadcast companies have long been looking to get into the mobile television business. More importantly, the companies needed a reason to keep … Read more

BBC News is a well-designed app for browsing through stories and video from one of the world's most respected news sources. The app also prominently showcases BBC Radio, with a button for listening to live radio while you're browsing.

BBC News is one of the better news apps available, with an attractive and efficiently organized interface that's easy to navigate--and that reacts intelligently when changing between vertical and horizontal layouts. You can browse through headlines and thumbnail pictures around categories such as Top Stories, Technology, and Features & Analysis (you can easily scroll between and within categories … Read more

Daily deal-aholics now have another avenue for purchasing discounted local offers, thanks to the arrival of the new Google Offers app for Android.

Simple and straightforward, the app immediately serves up a list of location-specific deals upon first launch. You can swipe up and down through the list, or tap any deal to see its price, number of purchases, and time remaining. From the deals list, you can also swipe left to see your Google Offers history, including Purchased, Saved, and Used or Expired deals.

The Google Offers app (download) is available now for free in the Android Market. And … Read more

Writer Walter Kirn tweeted something mid-summer that rang so poignant and true, I immediately "favorited" and re-tweeted: "The brilliant dark governing insight of social media is that most people prefer socializing alone."

Sure, all of this newfound sharing and real-time communication is awesome indeed. But the very same digital tools that heighten our reach and accessibility are somehow alienating us from each other more so than ever before. Human-to-human connection and communication, it seems, tends to get too intermediated by gadgets and gizmos.

Today, there's a new social network rolling out nationwide to help bridge … Read more

Now that we've reviewed all of the flagship LED TVs this year, it's time to round up the winners to date.

With one very notable exception, these TVs aren't as good in our book as the very best plasmas, but each delivers excellent or very good performance overall. So without further ado, here they are in descending order of picture quality--beginning with the best TV we've seen in years.… Read more

Testing GPS devices can be a grind--a dull, boring grind. So when a device comes along promising to revolutionize portable navigation devices, I tend to perk up and take notice. The TomTom Go Live 1535M is one of those attention-getters.

When this portable navigation device (PND) was announced a few weeks ago, I was intrigued by its integration of travel apps that enable the user to tap into Yelp, Trip Advisor, Expedia, and Google Local Search services for up-to-date point-of-interest data and reviews via the same Live data service that beams in its HD Traffic data. I was even more … Read more

Facebook is cozying up to major brands in a big way.

The latest is Wal-Mart.

The social-networking giant announced it's teaming up with the world's biggest retailer with an aim to make shopping more local and personal. Together, they introduced "My Local Walmart," a new Facebook app designed to give millions of Wal-Mart shoppers information on their favorite and closest Wal-Mart stores nationwide.

More than 3,500 Wal-Mart store-specific pages are launching on Facebook, allowing consumers to more easily locate the right store nationwide via ZIP code. The app aims to deliver the latest deals, product … Read more

As we describe in detail in our explanation of the confusing world of LED backlight configurations, our favorite variety is known as (deep breath) "full-array with local dimming." It's also exceedingly expensive to implement, at least to judge from the sticker prices of the only currently shipping 2011 HDTVs to offer this feature: Sony's XBR-HX929, Sharp's Elites, and the LG 55LW9800 reviewed here. The LG is unique among the three as the only one with passive 3D TV capability--combining local dimming with the brightness, crosstalk, and practicality advantages of polarized 3D glasses. If you want … Read more

Amazon's daily-deals service, AmazonLocal, will soon be arriving on the discounted Kindle and Kindle 3G with "Special Offers," the online retail giant announced today.

AmazonLocal was first introduced in June. Like Groupon, LivingSocial, and others, the service provides daily offers to subscribers. However, unlike its chief competitors, Amazon hasn't hired a full-fledged sales team to handle the service. Instead, it has inked deals with other companies, including LivingSocial, to deliver its deals to users.

AmazonLocal is available in a host of cities around the U.S., but it has a long way to go to catch … Read more