Wiimbledon 2009 has come and gone and I’m happy to report that it was a great success! We had 98 tournament participants and everything went off without a hitch. With the help of generous eBayers, tournament attendees and Barcade, we’ve raised somewhere in the vicinity of $5,000 for the Child’s Play Charity. On behalf of CrunchGear, Wiimbledon and Child’s Play, I’d like to thank the following sponsors for hooking us up.

This year’s Wiimbledon is fast approaching (Saturday the 27th), but it’s not too late to sign up for the tournament. Jump on over to the EventBrite page and register for the tournament. Wiimbledon is free to all, but you’ll have to pay to play. Barcade is once again hosting the event and they’ve committed to matching our donations to Child’s Play.

Now that everyone has had their say about the Palm Pre, I thought it wise to say a few words about the oft labeled “iPhone killer” that Sprint and Palm hope will bring each back from the edge of the dreaded deadpool. It seems as though every touch-screen device to launch since the first generation iPhone has faced an uphill battle and the Pre is no different. It’s unpolished, sure, but Palm’s webOS has managed to slip in right behind Apple’s iPhone OS, which is something the other smartphone operating systems have failed to do. But it’s not perfect and, let’s face it, nothing is ever perfect on launch day.

Here’s a quick update on this year’s Wiimbledon, folks. If you’re unable to make the event in Brooklyn on June 27th and you still want to help CrunchGear raise money for Child’s Play then donate your used gadgets to Gazelle. We’ve set up a “Gazelle for Goods” page and we’re hoping to raise $2500 for Penny Arcade’s charity, Child’s Play. Go dig into your desk drawers and find some old gadgets to donate! Don’t forget to sign up at Eventbrite if you want to play in the tournament and remember, it doesn’t cost anything to attend.

Wiimbledon Gazelle

Were visits to the doctor ever a pleasant experience as a kid? Of course not! Even regular checkups were a hassle and a nightmare, but those lollipops and model airplanes were totally worth it in the end. But my experiences differed greatly from the kids who were stuck in hospitals with life threatening illnesses and the like. It sucks being sick and stuck in a hospital with nothing to look at other than those sterile white walls, right? That’s exactly why we’re getting involved with Wiimbledon this year and donating proceeds to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play Charity.

What Steve Bryant and Lane Buschel started two years ago in Brooklyn has now become something more than just a Wii tennis tournament. I went last year and had an incredibly fun time watching folks in all manner of costume playing a little Wii, drinking a lot of beer and having a generally fun time. But we’re changing that around a little bit this year to include a fundraiser that will hopefully raise the single largest sum of money for Child’s Play ever.

It was inevitable and it sure took long enough, but Apple finally put some effort into supporting Exchange. Announced at WWDC, Exchange support is now built into Mail, iCal and Address Book in Snow Leopard. “You fill in your email address and password - and you’re set, across all 3 apps.”

Hold the phone! I know all of you were expecting a post about Twitter from Nintendo’s E3 press conference, but I’m afraid to report that it’s just Facebook today. Sorry.

You’ll soon be able to upload wacky images from your DSi to Facebook for all your friends to see. Isn’t that exciting? I LOVE FACEBOOK (and Twitter)!!!

Finally! Sprint has officially announced that the Palm Pre will be launching on June 6th for $200 after a $100 MIR and a two-year contract. You’ll be able to purchase a Pre from Sprint, Best Buy, Wal Mart, and Radio Shack.

When purchasing a Palm Pre you must add one of the following plans: Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan, which start out at $70. Also available on launch day are the Palm Touchstone and Touchstone back cover for $50 and $20, respectively. There’s a Touchstone Kit available for $70 that, you know, includes the dock and back cover. That’s it for now.

Ok, kids, here’s your chance to get a free pair of Radius Atomic Bass earphones. It’ll work with any mobile phone that has a 3.5mm port, but, like everyone else, Radius thinks that iPhone owners are the only ones that listen to music on their mobile. Check out the review for the non-iPhone model of the Atomic Bass if you care to know how they perform.

So here’s how you can win.

A few weeks back I hopped onto my first Virgin America flight with Aircell’s Gogo service on-board. It wasn’t the first time I’ve reviewed Gogo and if you recall I was on the first commercial Gogo flight with American Air. The plan was to interview James Weatherson, Virgin America’s inflight entertainment engineer, while I was up in the air, but there was a scheduling mix up and the interview never went down. So we opted to do it the old fashioned way. Below is my brief conversation with James about Red and where it’s headed.

CrunchGear: Other than some content changes, I haven’t seen a whole lot of new stuff for Red. What can we expect to see this year from VX?

It’s a madhouse here at Pace U., but I managed to grab a couple photos. Not my hands, but you can see how big this new DX really is.

South Paws might feel like they’re being left out with only right-hand side controls, but you can flip the Kindle DX upside and it auto-rotates so the controls are on your left (upside down though).

Oh, and Pace U. has been confirmed as the sixth University for the pilot program.

Video coming shortly.

The mystery behind what Amazon will announce on Wednesday has taken another twist. The WSJ is reporting that Amazon will, indeed, announce a University textbook specific model with a larger screen at the press conference later this week. So where did this come from and what else can we expect?

One Lev Gonick from Case Western Reserve University has confirmed that Amazon will be providing the university with larger screen Kindles next school year. And Arthur Sulzberger Jr., New York Times Co. Chairman is said to be sharing the stage with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the event on Wednesday which quasi-confirms the rumors of a newspaper specific Kindle.

The news over Amazon’s upcoming Kindle announcement broke late last night and this morning a gaggle of reporters and journalist types, including myself, received invites via e-mail to confirm the news. On May 6, Amazon will hold its press conference at Pace University in New York City, which happens to be the site of the NYT HQ back in the 19th century (factoid from Kaffka).

Remember Rob Spence? You know, the Canadian filmmaker dude with a camera prosthetic eye AKA Eyeborg? We just sat down with him for a few minutes and he talked to us about his Eyeborg project and what the heck he’s doing south of the border. Hit the jump for our exclusive pics and video.

Update: Images are now included.

As I mentioned earlier, Honda is in town to demo their two walking assist devices for the first time in the US. I was given the opportunity to test both models out in midtown Manhattan this afternoon. The applications for both models are pretty obvious and Honda has been testing the Bodyweight Support Assist at their Saitama factory since November of last year.

They both offer a surprising amount of support while walking, crouching and traversing stairs. The BSA is pretty awkward at first but you get used to it after a few seconds. Yes, I’m staring at my crotch more than usual and duck walking, but it’s a bit strange to have something like the BSA between your legs while you’re trying to walk.

What you won’t see in the video is how to get the device on. It comes with shoes that are attached to the legs that, you know, you put on. There are two switches on each thigh section of the legs that you switch on and then you pull up the saddle between your legs and off you go. I won’t lie, it’s a little awkward, but you get used to it. It’s also surprisingly lightweight at around 6.5 lbs.

Update: The entire presentation including the Q&A is now available to watch after the jump.

I can’t tell you how much stuff I have lying around my apartment and office that I’ve been meaning to unload for the last few months or even year. I’ve used Flipswap and Gazelle in the past with varying degrees of success - $20 vs $45 for an old Nokia from college – and now NextWorth is getting in on the used gadget recycling game with added categories.

They originally started off with the iPod and iPhone and now they’re taking in old BlackBerrys, digital cameras, GPS units, video games and video game consoles. I quickly checked to see what I could get for my Nintendo DS Lite and NextWorth’s offer is $14 more than Gazelle with an offer of $44.72. They seem to have competitive offers for mobile phones as well.

Here are two quick videos I took on my BlackBerry of the PUMA in action. To recap – the PUMA is a two-wheeled Segway that can drive up to 35 miles on a single charge (35 cents per charge) and is capable of going up to 35MPH. Oh, I just overheard one of the higher ups say that PUMA will have a beefed up suspension to handle rough terrain like NYC’s pothole riddled streets. Hit the jump for both videos and a hands-on gallery.

RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis is slated to take the stage later today in Las Vegas at the CTIA show and all eyes will be focused on RIM’s answer to Apple’s App Store. While we wished that RIM had held off on the launch of BlackBerry App World until Lazaridis’ little talk, there’s nothing that could have prevented this announcement from hitting at midnight. So, ladies and germs, I present to you BlackBerry App World. Please ensure that you have a PayPal account, OS 4.2 or higher and a trackball or SurePress touch screen (aka Storm) BlackBerry before proceeding.

Come chat with me on Ustream on my Virgin America flight and watch people walk by! I’ll be turning on my camera every hour or so and I’ll be chatting live from 35,000 feet.

I’ll also be IMing with Virgin America’s IFE engineer James Weatherson around 6PM PT today and I’ll post a transcript. He’s in charge of the Red entertainment system on-board all VA flights and we’ll find out what we can expect to see from the in-flight entertainment system this year.

If you have any questions you’d like me to ask him, feel free to leave a comment.

Update: We’re streaming live for the rest of the flight. Come join the conversation.

Update 2: James wasn’t able to join us, so we’re going off the air. We’ll update if he manages to get online. Otherwise, we’ll have an in-person interview later this week.

The term Locavore is one that I’m not very familiar with - and to be honest, I was under the impression that throwing out a blanket term like “eating organic” was good enough. The whole organic movement hit the mainstream as I was making an exodus from the west coast, so concrete and constant car honking have muddled my green/hippie roots.

The thought of going to a farmer’s market or even grocery shopping in an actual store makes me cringe a little bit when I can order groceries online and have them delivered. But Buster McLeod’s Locavore iPhone app has me thinking twice about what I’m putting into my body. I mean, I don’t think Panda Express or any other fast food slinging joint is healthy or tasty like Greg does (Editor’s Greg’s Note: It is true. I do loves me some Panda.), but I probably don’t buy things that are local either and that’s just as bad.

So what exactly is Locavore you ask? According to the iPhone app’s description a “Locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius.” In other words, a locavore tries to purchase and consume only locally grown foods with the idea that they tastes better and are better for you.

Sony and Google’s tag-team tactics might not hurt Amazon and its Kindle reader, but this is certainly a step in the right direction. For who, exactly, we’re not so sure. Sony announced a bit ago that Google has opened up more than half-a-million of its books to Sony’s eReader. The catch? All of Google’s archived books are about as old as your granddad, if your granddad were 80-years-old.

I have no idea what is going on, but my buddy Mike just sent this to me and I’m hoping to spread the word. Sometime yesterday he received a Norton Program Alert saying, “PIFTS is attempting to access the Internet.” Being the nerd that he is, he did an nslookup on the IP and it came back to SwapDrive, which is a Symantec owned company. He then posted on the Norton/Symantec forums, but had his threads deleted and account terminated.

Alaska Airlines has announced that they’ve started testing Row 44’s satellite-based Wi-Fi service on a handful of Boeing 737-700s. The first trial flight will take place between Seattle and San Jose (leaves Seattle at 2:20 PT today and returns on Flight 329 from San Jose back to Seattle) and the service will be free for 60 days. After today that aircraft will shift routes, which includes anything going up and down the West Coast and Alaska. No exact date has been attached to the trial (but I would assume it’s today or sometime this week) and pricing hasn’t been set, but I’d imagine it’s close to what VA or AA is charging for Aircell’s Gogo service. Now watch the boring video after the jump.

The Network (that’s what I’m going to call all the “Crunch” sites from now on) covered the private beta launch of ZumoDrive last month, so there’s no need to get into details again, but we wanted to inform you that the service is now available to the public.

Update: Seems we jumped the gun on Monday, but everything is now live. Hit the jump for screenshots.

We should be getting our review units any minute. Is there anything in particular that you want to know? First, check out this and this then leave your questions in comments. Thanks!