Of course, this comes on the heels of yesterday’s news about tiered data pricing Verizon will roll out on July 7. Those plans are rumored to offer 2GB/mo for $30, 5GB/mo for $50, and 10GB/mo for $80.

Therefore, if your are interested in getting an LTE phone on Verizon (like the Samsung Droid Charge, the HTC Thunderbolt, and the LG Revolution), it might be wise to make a move soon.

If you are interested in a new Android phone, you can always check out gogoraleigh’s Ultimate U.S. Android Phone Spreadsheet. It sorts out the carrier and pricing information for 44 Android phones that are either currently or soon-to-be available.

Murph’s transition into Managing Editor, along with Tim Stevens’ new role as Editor-in-Chief, comes after a large series of transitions at Engadget this year. In early February AOL, Engadget’s parent company, purchased the Huffington Post, and has executed a massive reorganization that resulted in the departures of several Engadget personalities. However a new day means a new era, and Stevens and Murph have a full cupboard and numerous opportunities at their disposal. Hopefully Murph’s more prominent role on the site and the engadget podcast will mean better exposure for the RTP area in the San Francisco heavy world of tech journalism. This could get very interesting…

All of that is nice, but what is really worth checking out is the latest generation of the phenomenal Ford Sync system, called MyFord Touch. The new version continues Sync’s fantastic bluetooth connectivity for phone and audio, and expands the abilities of navigation and climate control. Two new features include turning the car into a WiFi hotspot and iTunes tagging support from the HD radio. There is also support for USB keyboards, RSS feeds, an additional USB socket, an SD Card slot, enhanced podcast support, and more. For more information, see Mashable’s excellent writeup of MyFord Touch, as did Joelfeder.com.

Clearly the next battleground for car makers is on the dashboard, and Ford has the early lead here. Be sure to take this opportunity to see what is going on in this space.

The Raleigh Convention Center will be the first venue for the Plug-In Conference that will be held outside of California. The shift in location was envisioned as a way to offer wider access to potential attendees. Next year’s conference will be co-organized by EPRI, Progress Energy and Duke Energy. 

“We decided to offer a bit of geographical balance to our conference schedule as a way of exposing more people to the significant progress made toward integrating plug-in hybrid and other electric vehicles into the transportation system,” said Mark Duvall, director of Electric Transportation at EPRI. “The Research Triangle area is an appropriate location that is well-known as an incubator of entrepreneurship, innovation and thought-leadership.”

The Plug-In Conference was launched in San Jose in 2008, moved to Long Beach (Southern California) in 2009 and returned to San Jose this year. It attracts automotive manufacturers, component suppliers, electric utilities, government agencies, the environmental community and academia to exchange ideas and gather information needed to make key decisions related to plug-in hybrid and electric transportation.

Plug-In 2010 includes high-level plenary sessions and 21 breakout sessions and mini-panels focused on driving, connecting and launching technologies required to fully commercialize and integrate electric drive into the marketplace.

The exposition floor, which includes vehicles, electric infrastructure and batteries, and related components, features more than 40 exhibitors. July 27 is Public Night, an open forum where visitors can see the exposition floor and participate in a panel discussion. For more information about Plug-In 2010, organized by EPRI and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, visit www.plugin2010.com.

(and don’t go squatting plugin2011.com just because this group hasn’t gotten the wherewithal to buy it yet!)

The list of use-cases goes on. That’s why some Evernote fans in the area are organizing a meetup on Wednesday, June 23 at the Tribeca Tavern where even more use-cases can be bounced around. More information is online as well as on Twitter (#CaryEvernoteMeetup hashtag). Please signup today so that the group can get an organizer party pack from Evernote.

4G service is only available in 33 cities. New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, Miami, Denver, and Pittsburgh are among the cities that don’t have coverage, but Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill do! The full list of included cities is after the break:

• Abilene, TX
• Amarillo, TX
• Atlanta
• Austin, TX
• Baltimore
• Bellingham, WA
• Boise
• Charlotte
• Chicago
• Corpus Christi
• Dallas/Ft. Worth
• Greensboro (+ Triad)
• Harrisburg, PA
• Honolulu
• Houston
• Kansas City
• Lancaster, PA
• Las Vegas
• Lubbock, TX
• Maui
• Midland/Odessa, TX
• Milledgeville, GA
• Philadelphia
• Portland
• Raleigh (+ Triangle)
• Reading, PA
• Salem, OR
• San Antonio, TX
• Seattle
• Temple/Killeen, TX
• Waco, TX
• Wichita Falls, TX
• York, PA

This year Sprint plans to expand to markets like Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

A long-awaited feature is the ability to lock/unlock rotation. It is hidden in More | Settings. I’m not sure if this is new in 2.0, per se. While it is nice to have the ability to change rotation, it still is not what I suggested. I’d like to see WRAL’s app behave like Safari where it rotates for three orientations, but does not the phone’s top side is down. Safari’s configuration is the best when lying in best, to be honest.

Finally a word of warning; this app is very crashy (even more than normal iPhone apps!). The majority of the time that I skip to the next story the app crashes. Several times it crashed when jumping in and out of news sections. Unless you are incredibly excited about the sharing features, I’d wait until 2.1.

In other news…sluts are more likely to get an STD.

Download speeds will be up to 6 Mbps. Unlike Verizon’s Mifi dongle, this service will be received via two types of USB dongles: Motorola USBw100 USB card (WiMax-only) and the Franklin Wireless CMU-300 USB card (dual 3G/WiMax). More options are said to be available after the service’s launch.

Note (10/15): Also being launched on December 1 is Time Warner’s CradlePoint device, which will also deliver Road Runner Mobile. The device is a portable wireless router that connects up to the internet wirelessly, much like Verizon’s Mifi.

The introduction of fob-based internet connectivity makes things interesting, especially for people who live alone. With this kind of device and a Wifi-capable “phone” device, one could use Skype for their telephony over wifi and avoid having to exhaust all of their patience with a terrible cellular phone carrier (I’m talking right at YOU, AT&T!)