vibe

NEW YORK--The iHaters must be pulling their hair out.

Demand for the iPhone 5 appears to be white hot, so much so that lines are already forming outside Apple stores. In the very early hours this morning, people hoping to buy the handset were swaddled in sleeping bags and heavy coats and camping out in front of Apple's 5th Avenue store.

They began gathering in front of the location, also known as the Cube, on Friday, a full week before the devices are scheduled to go on sale. If the iPhone 5 follows the same pattern as other popular … Read more

Many of the newer Android phones on the market are missing a notification light. This isn't a huge deal if you check your phone every 5 minutes, but what if you're in a meeting or listening to something when the alert goes off? For these situations and others, here's a selection of three awesome notification apps that help you notice every message or missed call.

NoLED will allow you to set custom notifications, like icons or dots that appear on a black screen. The whole screen is considered "on," but only the icon is … Read more

BlackBerry data disruptions hit North American users, Apple devices can update to iOS 5 today to get iCloud, Wall Street protesters are leveraging a new messaging app, and Sony locks down accounts to fight another hack attack.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Making microdonations on the Web is a little harder than it once was. Many of the services I would have included in this roundup have shuttered in the past year. In fact, there are just a handful of viable such services left.

Regardless, each of the services listed below will help you connect with the charitable organization (or person) you care about most. You can choose a cause, decide how much to donate, and you're done. It's a really simple process. And if you're in the mood to share, it should be a rewarding one.

#BeatCancer Although the #BeatCancer initiative that asked for users to include the hash tag in their tweets to raise cash for cancer awareness is over, the organization's site still allows users to make donations to four different cancer organizations. They include organizations dedicated to breast cancer awareness, childhood cancer, an organization dedicated to better research, and a group that provides support for cancer patients.

You can use the site to donate whatever you'd like to any of the organizations. You can also get the word out about the organizations by clicking on the "spread the word" option in each donation widget. Upon doing so, your Twitter account will be populated with a link for others to donate to the same organization. It's a convenient way to be social and contribute to the fight against cancer.

ChipIn ChipIn is a fine way to start raising money for the charity you care about. It also provides an easy way to get all your social-networking friends to dole out some cash.

When you get to ChipIn, you'll need to input the cause you're trying to raise money for. You can also input how much cash you want to raise over the term of the fundraiser. From there, you need to input your PayPal account. It works well, but it's the social element that might help most. With the help of ChipIn's Facebook widget, you can put your donation box in front of all your friends. You can also add plug-ins to your Web site. Overall, ChipIn makes it quite convenient to make and receive microdonations.… Read more

Today's episode of The 404 Podcast starts with a big change in the show title format. That's right, we're now announcing the date with the episode number and name. Can you feel the excitement! Well, if that didn't do the trick, check out this funny headline from the first story of the day: "Woman fired for eating boss' meatball." I don't even think that requires any further explanation, but you can read the whole story here

Now that you can invite friends to Google Voice, maybe Wilson will be generous and spread the love. Google Voice is great for users that want to consolidate several phone numbers into one. The service also transcribes voice mails, assign personalized greetings by caller, forward voice mails, and many more convenient features that help you screen your communication with the outside world. Do you have a Google Voice number already? Let us know what you think of the service, and share the wealth, will you!?

Models, high schoolers, and crime scene investigators will love this next story: Polaroids are making their triumphant comeback in 2010! A group called The Impossible Project is taking the reigns and collaborating with Polaroid to reproduce a limited edition of the Instant Film in mid 2010. If you can't wait that long, they've also partnered with Urban Outfitters and have the classic film and a special edition Polaroid camera kit available in stores now.

Finally, we definitely want to show our support to Drew Olanoff and Drew Carey for actually making philanthropic use of Twitter! Drew Carey will give away $1,000,000 to the LiveStrong foundation if his Twitter account receives a million followers by midnight on December 31, 2009. In the small chance that he doesn't get the million followers by that time, the amount will be prorated according to how many he ends up with. In other words, if he finishes with 600,000 followers, the LiveStrong foundation will receive $600,000. Right now he's at 92,017 followers--with The 404's help, we can get him closer to that million!

Oh yeah, do yourself a favor and go check out Loaded today to see Natali talking about the Love Vibes iPhone app that rates your lovemaking skill...or lack thereof.

According to a recent Philips press release, the Aria and Opus GoGear MP3 players announced for Europe last February are coming to the States, joined by a wallet-friendly newcomer named the GoGear Vibe.

The Philips GoGear Vibe is due out in April, priced at $49 for 4GB, and $59 for 8GB. You can pick the player up in either black or white (the white model looks pretty cool, actually), each featuring a 1.5-inch color screen and support for music, photos, video, FM radio, and voice recording.

If you need an MP3 player with a little more meat to it, … Read more

TradeVibes, a site that aggregates information, news, and opinions about start-ups, raised $900,000 in seed funding from a group of angel investors that includes serial technology investor Ron Conway, early Google employee Aydin Senkut, and the Kinsey Hills Group.

Mill River Labs, the company behind TradeVibes, is certainly well-connected, given that its four founders were early employees of PayPal. Conway, who was an early investor in Google and PayPal, will act as an adviser to the company, along with YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and Ariba co-founder Ed Kinsey.

Mountain View, Calif.-based TradeVibes launched its free site in beta … Read more

When we first saw a photo of someone wearing these "Vibe Body Sound" earphones by Outi, we thought they'd been put on backward. So we didn't stare or say anything for fear of humiliating the poor sap, just as mom always taught us.

Then it turns out that it was the right way to wear them after all, because they use that body-conduction technology we keep hearing about. This pair clips to the skin and cartilage of the outer ear just above the lobe and sends the sound vibrating through the skull, according to Coolest-Gadgets.

We'… Read more

Can the combined power of Vibe magazine, MySpace, and KickApps' social multimedia platform uncover the next great MC? That's the plan, and they're all hoping three is the magic number.

Vibe Verses 3, an online rap battle that lets aspiring MCs upload videos of themselves spitting rhymes, launches today.

The viral contest, promoted on both Vibe.com and MySpace, is using KickApps video widgets to let rappers and their fans embed the clips in MySpace profiles and other Web pages.

Participants in the contest select from one of 23 beats, then make a video of themselves performing their … Read more