After a recent conversation with an apparently well-informed AT&T sales representative, it appears all but certain that AT&T will soon carry two HTC Android devices.  It’s not clear which ones exactly; the rep claims that one of them is the HTC Hero, but it’s more likely that the HTC Legend, the Hero’s successor, will be arriving, as it’s already been spotted passing through the FCC in the correct 850/1900Mhz 3G frequencies.  He also confirmed, as widely speculated, that a new iPhone will arrive this June.  Regardless, it seems that we will be finding out more very soon!  View the full chat transcript after the break.

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From XDA-Developers:

After months of development, member anaadoul has released the beta version of his Software Development Kit, which will allow users of resistive screens as found on just about any HTC device  to finally experience the interface-enhancing power of multi-touch functionality (every current HTC Windows Mobile device possesses a resistive screen, except for the HD2).
The SDK adds support for pinch-to-zoom, dual-finger dragging and swiping and gesture-based events. Adding support for these features may be completely revolutionary to how people use their Windows Phone: Windows Mobile does not natively support multi-touch but through this SDK, dual-finger navigation should be possible on any touchscreen device through its integration in an application.

Developers looking to find the SDK should look at the application thread, Anaadoul is also looking for developers who are willing to help him create a photo album that can showcase the dual-touch functionality made available by the new kit.

A video can be seen below.

Hey, we got linked to from Engadget!

Sadly, it looks like the recent budget cuts that President Obama announced during his State of the Union address have hit NASA where it hurts: the Ares spaceship program, set to replace the aging Space Shuttles in the next few years, appears to have been entirely cancelled.  In addition, planned future missions to the moon have been at least postponed if not entirely written off as well.  It is a shame that our nation, once at the forefront of space exploration, must once again take a backward step in the face of limited financial resources.

The HP Slate is slated (sorry, couldn’t resist) to offer more versatility, more power, and a lower price than the rumored Apple slate; it’s truly a do-it-all device.

On January 27, Apple will likely introduce a new tablet product. For the past two years, rumors have been circulating the internet about what that device might consist of. Many speculate that it will be an “enlarged iPod touch,” running a derivative of the iPhone OS. Others suspect it might be a “tablet Mac,” running a stripped down version of Mac OS X. This “middle ground” area that lives between the laptops and smartphones we use every day is a brand new market, and many companies have been working hard over the past year to define it.

When Apple entered the smartphone market with the iPhone in June 2007, it was already a fairly mature market. Four years prior, Microsoft had launched Windows Mobile 2003, a huge release that offered a full touchscreen smartphone experience with multi-tasking, robust email and music support, and syncing for music and TV shows. That same year, Palm launched the Treo 600, a remarkable device that offered an incredibly seamless solution for consuming media, email, and other content on the go. BlackBerry devices had been offering a refined mobile email experience for several years. Essentially, the iPhone entered a market that was already defined, and brought new levels of media consumption and refinement to the table, while lacking real applications, games, copy and paste, multi-tasking, and MMS (features that have all been added besides multitasking, which is expected to arrive with iPhone OS 4.0). (continue reading…)