What the hell? It’s been three years since I first joined this motley crew? I guess so. I’m a man of few words so I’ll keep this short. This is my last day with CrunchGear and TechCrunch. Thanks to Mike, Heather and John for giving me the opportunity to do something that I’ve grown to love over the last few years.

Ooh la la. A real deal Android tablet this summer? Am I dreaming? No! I’m so in love with this OS it’s disgusting. Put aside my sickening love for a freaking OS and consider taking a gander at AppsLib? It’s the Application Store for Android launched by Archos, which states that registration will begin on September 15 “following the launch of this initiative”. If that isn’t enough to whet your appetite then how about some specs for the Archos Android tablet?

The average mom and pop have judged digital cameras by megapixels alone since the beginning of time. Most people think that more megapixels means a better picture. A lot of the time brand, lens, or sensor type doesn’t factor into the buying decision and why should they? Manufacturers have long catered to this mentality by outing cameras that constantly have more megapixels than others. But today’s announcement of the 10MP Canon G11 point and shoot camera, Canon has officially dropped out of the race.

The predecessor to this camera, the G10, had a whopping 14.7MP on a small sensor. That’s a lot. But the camera also had issues shooting above 800 ISO and in low light. This can partly be blamed on the over-packed sensor. But the new G11’s 10MP sensor should resolve some of those complaints. However, the surprisingly low pixel count also caused us to dismiss an early leak. It’s not like Canon to drop the megapixel count on one of its halo cameras. This is from the same company that stuffed 21MP into the EOS 5D Mark II and leapfrogged the 12.1MP Nikon D700.

But finally the average consumer might start to understand that megapixels are not the sole factor in the quality of a camera. It might take some explaining from a salesmen, but they have been doing that for years.

I recently had the pleasure to help out on a music video shoot here in the northwest, noteworthy not just because a great video resulted, but because we were shooting with two RED One cameras plus a custom RC helicopter for aerial shots. It was interesting being behind the scenes and I thought I’d share a little of the fun. The video itself, for Mt St Helens Vietnam Band’s “Albatross, Albatross, Albatross,” can be viewed in HD over at Vimeo.

The opportunity to see a group of local freelancers and entrepreneurs coming together to make such an incredibly professional product was extremely valuable — technology has democratized and accelerated the independent film and music community to a degree I hadn’t realized. I was brought on because I had access to some special locations (most of the aerial and forest shots are near some family property in the San Juans) and so I could shoot a little behind-the-scenes video of the production. More details, video, and production stills below the fold.

Everybody’s making noise about the upcoming Apple tablet, and who can blame them? It’ll certainly be an interesting device, but the thing is that nobody really knows what it’s going to be. Flat, to be sure, and tablet-shaped in all likelihood, but beyond that it’s pretty much anybody’s guess. Analyst-at-large Gene Munster has made a list of predictions anyway, since his job is to turn ignorance into money.

So what does he think you can expect? Sales, for one thing. Via a house-of-cards sort of logic peculiar to analysts like himself, he determines the features, then the price, then the sales, then the revenue. Here are his nested prognostications, as summarized by Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. -John Wanamaker

Advertising and branding are very complicated and very unpredictable fields, and success can be measured according to any number of metrics. Modernista, the ad agency behind the soft-talking-lady ads that only occasionally seem to be talking about phones, seems to be measuring success based on attention. Of course, the attention is almost entirely negative, but that doesn’t faze them.

In an article in Ad Age, Executive Creative Director at Modernista, Gary Koepke, discusses the oft-maligned “Ms. Hope” spots.

The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing. Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.

“Polarizing” is industry-standard code for “universally mocked,” in case you’re confused.

So what is Booyah and what does it bring to the iPhone that no one else has done? Before we dive into that here’s a little background info on the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup. Founded by three former videogame industry vets from Blizzard, Activision and Insomniac Games, Booyah looks to shake things up with real-life achievements for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Booyah CEO Kevin Lee is an industry vet having worked on Ratchet and Clank, Diablo II, Resistance: Fall of Man before parting ways with Blizzard to launch Booyah with Brian Morrisroe and Sam Christiansen. Booyah’s main goal is “to motivate people to pursue their real-life passions while positively impacting themselves and the community around them. It’s the first achievement system for life.”

An Apple expert and hacker has shown that the iPhone, in all its various forms and moltings, is child’s play to compromise. This comes despite assurances from Apple regarding the 3GS’s encryption feature. Bad news for businesspeople of the 21st century, who have glommed onto the iPhone and its service halo like no other device. The wonder-phone has certainly changed the way smartphones and other devices are made, but this isn’t the first time Apple’s security measures have been described as being seriously lacking.

It seems that with a little creative coding, or access to an insecure computer, the iPhone can be cracked wide open. The encryption doesn’t really even enter into the equation, since you can just have the phone read off the information you want. There hasn’t been much of a reason to hack iPhones yet — you might get a few Facebook passwords, or some contact info, but now that the phone is gaining traction in the business world, there may actually be something worth stealing on them. And it’s not very hard to do. I like this quote: “I don’t think any of us have ever seen encryption implemented so poorly before.”

Here’s something to mull over while you get ready for bed. The Street is reporting that Apple will launch the highly anticipated (and rumored) tablet with Verizon. Now, we’ve heard rumors that Verizon could be getting a CDMA variant of the iPhone at some point in the near future, but no one in China has leaked such a thing.

According to Scott Moritz’s sources, Apple and Verizon “won’t be as tightly integrated” as Apple and AT&T and the rumored tablet has been ready for roughly a year. The kicker here is that, Verizon would subsidize the cost of the tablet without giving potential customers sticker shock.

Well, it’s a big day for Microsoft! Their first official retail stores are dated and partially located, Gates mentions that Project Natal is coming to Windows, and now it appears that Apple has cried uncle with the Laptop Hunters ads. Actually, it probably depends on who you ask. Microsoft will say that its shopping farces were effective, not just on consumers but on the competition as well. Apple might say that their prices have become more competitive after a recent price drop on certain models, so the ads aren’t accurate any more — if they say anything at all.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. But a little whining from Apple isn’t going to stop Microsoft from running the ads. After all, Apple didn’t stop running its “Twice as fast, half the price” ads after they admitted its claims weren’t “statements of fact.” Why should Microsoft stop running a consumer dog-and-pony show that has them coming out on top?

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.

It surely didn’t escape anyone’s attention Twitter is on track to becoming a mass phenomenon globally. The service is also growing nicely in Japan where it has been embraced by the geek community in particular (Japanese is the only alternative language Twitter is available in until today).

And today a small group of those Japanese geeks, members of the so-called Koress Project, have announced the development of the Akiduki Pulse box, a device that automatically posts your heart rate to Twitter [JP].

Video and more info after the break.

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.

Reuben Langdon is a motion capture artist in motion pictures and games — you’ve probably directed his actions without knowing it in such games as Resident Evil 5 and Dead Rising. Most recently he’s been working on James Cameron’s epic CG film, Avatar.

He took some time out of his busy backflipping schedule to talk to us about motion capture, having his own studio, and working with Cameron on the biggest and most ambitious CG movie of all time.

Releasing odors in movie theaters to enhance the viewing experience is an idea that’s been around for decades now. Now NTT Communications, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan’s telecommunications behemoth NTT, takes the idea to another level: The company today announced the development of a “fragrance communication” system that makes it possible to send smells over the web.

NTT Communications is currently recruiting monitors for their so-called i-Aroma service, which will go through a test run from mid-July to the end of August. i-Aroma is based on a USB device (15cm tall) that contains six base oils, which are mixed and vaporized depending on the online commands the diffuser receives. As a result, a number of different fragrances will waft from the machine.

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)!!!

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.

This last Friday, a few of the developers behind Microsoft Surface took some time out of their schedules to meet with us and talk about what’s coming in their Surface Service Pack 1, due to be rolled out today. Now, it’s called a service pack for a reason — as opposed to a fun pack — this update is a response to the requests and concerns of the community using and developing for the Surface, so it’s not about flashy new gizmos and eye candy, but usability.

There are still a few new visible features, and it’s always fun to play with a Surface, so there’s a nice video for you to watch if you’re interested in how the Surface is changing and how Microsoft is responding to developer feedback. It’s easier to show them than explain them at length, so check them out in the exclusive video inside.