Mereja

Category: Wireless

  • Magic Mouse Drains Keyboard Batteries

    So the holidays are over. The food portions are returning to healthy sizes but the damage is done. New Year resolutions you’ve been ruminating on for weeks must now be taken seriously. It’s time to get in shape. No more excuses! No more distractions. You have that nice new Mac so you think, “Hey, I’ll type ‘em up and print ‘em out! If they’re pinned up on the wall I can’t possibly fail!”

    Only, you might have a problem doing any typing if recent reports prove accurate. It seems the combination of Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard are a toxic mix. Over on the Apple Support Discussions forum users are reporting that, since installing their Magic Mouse, their Apple Wireless Keyboards have been guzzling power like there’s no tomorrow.

    Brand new, planet-killing alkaline batteries don’t make it through a full week. Tree-hugging rechargeables manage less. Users have been forced to revert to backup mice (mouses?) or switch-out their keyboards for a more traditional, wired variety.

    User cbcirrus writes;

    Apple Tech Support furnished three replacement aluminum keyboards (unfortunately one DOA and all three were three battery version). All replacement keyboards suffer from the low battery life issue.

    They now claim it is a bluetooth driver issue and the engineers are working on a solution, presumably a new driver or patch. One tech said engineering believes the magic mouse bluetooth is interfering with keyboard bluetooth communication and/or sleep mode. No estimate as to time frame for solution just a suggestion to use rechargeable batteries until issue is resolved.

    I haven’t been hit by the battery bug described here, but I’ve certainly had my own issues with the Magic Mouse / Wireless Keyboard combo which I suspect may be related. I’ve found that my Apple Wireless Keyboard interferes with my Magic Mouse. I simply can’t have both devices working at the same time in the same room without my Mouse pointer losing the will to live and being reduced to a stuttering, crawling, sorry excuse for a pointer.

    Changing wireless channels on my router and Time Capsules made no difference. In the end I had no choice; if I wanted to continue using the Magic Mouse, sans judder, I had to switch keyboards to the wired variety that originally came with the Mac Pro.

    About a month ago I found a thread on Apple’s discussion site explaining that — for 2009 Mac Pros — the problem doesn’t lie with the Broadcom bluetooth radio but with its drivers. Unfortunately, Apple isn’t privy to Broadcom’s firmware roadmap and can’t say when an update will arrive.

    Oddly, I cannot find that thread now. I suspect that at some point in the intervening weeks it has been edited/removed. If you can find it, please share in the comments below. I mention it here because it sounds awfully similar to the explanation above… perhaps the two issues are connected?

    Have you experienced issues with using the Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard together?

  • Qualcomm’s No. 2 Executive Departs Amid Shuffle, Metaplace Closes Virtual World, Startups Refill Coffers, & More San Diego BizTech News

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Although the news flow slowed to a trickle over the holidays, we’ve patiently collected all the high-tech news to get you ready to greet the New Year.

    —San Diego’s Qualcomm announced the resignation of its No. 2 executive, Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer, on Christmas Eve—a move that almost ensured minimal press attention. Lauer, who joined Qualcomm in 2006, says he resigned to become CEO at an unnamed company. With Lauer’s departure, Qualcomm reorganized its Qualcomm MEMS Technologies business to report to Steve Mollenkopf, who presides over Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. Earlier in December, the wireless giant announced that former president and COO Rich Sulpizio was returning to head Qualcomm Enterprise Services.

    —San Diego-based Metaplace has shut down its user-generated content website. Co-founder Ralph Koster announced the move before the holidays on his blog, saying the online marketplace and platform for users building their own social networking rooms “just hasn’t gotten traction.” Investors in Metaplace, which raised $6.7 million in a Series B round in 2008, include Charles River Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, Ben Horowitz, and Marc Andreessen.

    —Seacoast Science co-founders Louis Haerle and Sanjay Patel founded their startup in 2003 to develop new sensor technologies, including chemical sensors for cell phones under a program funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. But they told me they set out to avoid making a number of mistakes they had seen at Graviton, a San Diego wireless sensor company that failed in 2003 after burning through $66 million in venture capital.

    —The head of Qualcomm Ventures, Nagraj Kashyap, told me that Qualcomm intends to organize a second round of its global QPrize program, but that the selection process for awarding funding to startup wireless companies will not be organized as a business plan competition.

    —A number of San Diego startups raised funding during the last few weeks of 2009. Daylight Solutions got $1.25 million, Edgeware Analytics got nearly $663,000, Ortiva Wireless got $1.7 million, and U.S. Local News Network raised $2.7 million.

    —Aptera Motors, the Carlsbad, CA-based carmaker, says in a holiday newsletter that it has been working with Energetx Composites, a composites manufacturing facility in Holland, MI, to supply the bodies for its three-wheeled cars. Aptera still is awaiting word on its revised application for a federal loan under the Department of Energy’s advanced vehicle technology manufacturing loan program.

    Comments | Reprints | Share:  
    Retweet
     Facebook
     Email
     Share







  • Bringing Order to the Address Book, Sensobi Targets Underserved Blackberry Mobile App Customers

    Sensobi Team
    Erin Kutz wrote:

    You’ve been scrolling through your phone’s address book for minutes now just to find the coworker you call the most. Because his name falls at the end of the alphabet, he’s buried behind dozens of other entries, many of whom you probably haven’t called in years. Shouldn’t a smart phone be smarter about managing your contacts?

    Enter Sensobi, a BlackBerry application that organizes your address book by analyzing who you talk to most and alerting you to the people you’re ignoring. Developed by a Cambridge-based startup of the same name—derived from a Zen term signifying simplicity and harmony—Sensobi tracks how many times users have called, texted, or e-mailed a person and assigns varying points to the different forms of communication. Lengthier phone calls score more points than brief chats, too.

    “We realized your phone knows more about you than anything else does,” says CEO Ajay Kulkarni, 30, referring to his and co-founder Andy Cheung’s inspiration for using a mobile phone to reconstruct and understand personal and professional relationships.

    The people with the most points appear at the top of the Sensobi address book, regardless of alphabetical order. Sensobi links content from text messages and e-mails to contacts’ names, so never again will you be left dumb when your boss asks you on the phone if you’ve seen his most recent message to you. “It helps you save face and facilitates a much richer conversation,” says Kulkarni, a 2008 graduate of MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

    It all started when Kulkarni wanted to find a way to make sense of the different business cards and phone numbers he had collected from classes, conferences, and past jobs, which included a stint as a bond analyst at Citigroup and positions at other startup companies. In December 2008, he teamed up with high school friend Cheung, 29, who had been laid off from his job as a developer at Right Media following Yahoo’s acquisition of the online advertising company.

    Sensobi's blackberry appThey opted to design their application for RIM’s BlackBerry—the phone Kulkarni says “doesn’t get as much love” from developers as its younger, flashier counterparts. There’s truth to his statement. In November, Apple announced that the iTunes App Store had passed the 100,000-app mark. By contrast, the fledgling BlackBerry App World—launched in April—has just 3,000 offerings.

    But Sensobi’s creators saw an opportunity in BlackBerry’s loyal and business-oriented consumer base, a group they’ve targeted through Twitter and tech blogs. “They’re starving for apps,” says Kulkarni. And Sensobi, officially incorporated in January 2009, has helped feed …Next Page »

    Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:  
    Retweet
     Facebook
     Email
     Share







  • Jaybird’s SB1 Sportsband Bluetooth Headphones Should Be Taken Literally [Headphones]

    Nothing remarkable to see here (for audiophiles anyway), but the design is undeniably sleek, sexy and slick. Called the SB1 Sportsband, these Bluetooth headphones are literally a simple band that wraps your head with about eight hours of wireless audio.

    And a bonus, for those of you who get a bit, well, heated while listening to your favorite tunes: The controls are moisture-protected. For you perceptive no-nonsense folks, that also means they’re handy in a rainstorm.

    Available now for $89, which includes call and Skype support. [Jaybird via Engadget]







  • Wireless N Support in Next Gen iPhone Implied by Apple Job Posting [Unconfirmed]

    After the iPhone 3.0 firmware update, we wondered whether the the next gen iPhone would bring a new chip with support for 802.11n. Now a job posting on Apple’s website is feeding that theory.

    We’ve already seen that the newest iPod Touch has a Broadcom BCM4329 chip with support for 802.11n and FM transmission—something missing in our most recent iPhone generation—but we’ve also learned that the hardware is dormant, perhaps to be brought to life by later additions in software support.

    A recent Apple job posting teases that such software support might come soon along with some kind of upgrade allowing for 802.11n capabilities in the next gen iPhone, because it’s asking for a Wi-Fi software engineer to join the iPhone team and bring experience in:

    • Implementation of 802.11 a/b/g/n & related specifications.
    • 802.11i/802.1x Security protocols
    • Good understanding of wireless RF technologies & co-existence issues of 802.11 PHYs with other Wireless interfaces like Bluetooth.

    Ooh la la. Yes, it’s just a job posting and pure speculation regarding what we’ll see in the next generation of iPhones, but addition of Wireless N capabilities and support are a logical addition and seem rather likely.[Apple—Thanks, A!]







  • Sprint’s New Hybrid Pocketspot… In the Wild at CES?

    Reading this post at the usually reliable Engadget blog, we are pretty well convinced that a hybrid pocketspot might be the big news Sprint is teeing up next week at CES. Unlike some other folks, who seem convinced a WiMAX phone is in the offing, we’re much more bullish on the WiMAX/EVDO pocketspot (aka mobile router) product being a reality, in no small part because it’s an easier thing to build.

    And after all.. the Sprint invite sent out to press and analysts in early December talked about the event being the “hottest spot in Vegas” or some such construction. Why go through such prosaic leaps if you were just announcing a phone? Sounds like a new pocketspot to us, an idea we thought about earlier this month. (Yes, we have been long early on both pocketspots and hybrid plans. Looks like that call was a good one.)

    Whatever happens at the Sprint event next week, we’ll be there, and let you know when it happens… but we aren’t banking on using a WiMAX phone to make the call.

  • Want WiMAX for CES? Rent a Clearwire Modem from Cheetah

    Want to try Clearwire’s WiMAX wireless broadband service while you’re in Vegas for CES? Move now and reserve yourself a modem or modem-and-pocketspot combo from local provider Cheetah, which is teaming up with Clearwire to offer WiMAX rentals for as little as $12.50 a day.

    So instead of paying exorbitant hotel fees for slow, shared DSL or clogged Wi-Fi — or taking a crapshoot on what will likely be crowded 3G airwaves — you can instead have a mobile connection of between 3 to 6 Mbps on the download side, pretty much anywhere in Las Vegas.

    In addition to renting both USB modems (for laptops and netbooks) and desktop modems, Cheetah will also be renting a combo of a modem and Clearwire’s Clear Spot portable WiMAX/Wi-Fi router, which will let you connect a small workgroup of Wi-Fi devices. They are also offering a hybrid modem rental, which will fall back to 3G coverage in case you find yourself out of a WiMAX coverage zone.

    Single-day prices, according to the Cheetah site, are $12.50 a day for a USB WiMAX modem, $15 a day for a desktop modem, $17.50 for a modem/portable router combo, and $20 a day for a hybrid 3G/4G modem. Costs per day go down with multiple days, with a 4-day basic modem total hitting $39.84, or less than $10 a day for fast broadband access.

    Stay tuned to this bat-channel for a Twitter hashtag for Cheetah CES rental users… we will be happy to collect and publish a list of WiMAX download experiences! UPDATE: Let’s use #CLEAR4RENT and see how many people sign on and how fast they can connect…

  • Ringing in a New Year With Predictions for Hot Software Sectors

    Dennis Clerke wrote:

    The constrained venture capital markets and difficult environment for IPOs, will make 2010 a big year for M&A transactions. The leaders in hot new software sectors will be swallowed up at a premium, along with entrepreneurs tired of running on the treadmill as they get closer to retirement, will drive more M&A transactions than ever. I see these theses trends emerging:

    1. Emergence of “Social Commerce”—The continued propagation and expansion of social networks open a significant opportunity for new forms of online commerce. Expect to see integrated commerce applications embedded into the social networks that offer simplicity, security and a unique and integrated understanding of the social network participants. This will drive new forms of commerce with remarkable results in 2010 and beyond.

    2. Greater Performance for Online Advertising—The downturn in gross online ad spending has “weeded out” many undifferentiated online advertising businesses, but has also stimulated ad technology companies that make a measurable difference in converting ads to sales. Expect to see breakthrough technologies in the areas of ad placement and dynamic creative that will improve relevancy and yield from the historical conversion rates.

    3. Better Online Privacy Controls and a Move to Mobile Devices—Today’s myriad of online entertainment and productivity applications, combined with the move to greater “computing on the go” capabilities, have created a privacy conflict between web application providers and users. The application providers want to understand and expose data to improve online presence which, in many cases, is in conflict with individual privacy concerns. The situation is even more concerning for children and with mobile devices. Today’s litany of online games and social communities accessible through phones can result in personal information getting into the wrong hands. While some applications prevent this on PC’s, mobile devices are open terrain. Parents, parents, corporations and users will embrace new forms of privacy controls on mobile devices in 2010.

    4. Broad Adoption of Energy Management Applications—The concentration on clean technology and green energy has resulted in a new class of applications driving energy efficiency. Buildings account for about one-third of all energy use. It is estimated that 30 percent of this is wasted. In order to control energy use, you must measure energy consumption. Many sensor-based monitoring applications will be developed for this purpose. In 2010 you should expect to see a new breed of energy-oriented analytic applications that will help improve efficiency in the home, office, and in energy-intensive locations like data centers.

    5. Software to Manage Food Safety–There is a growing desire to get better information about what we are eating. Not just nutritional labels in the grocery store, but a complete history of food products covering the product from the farm to the kitchen. Consumers want to know more about the food we ingest, including where it comes from, potential exposure to pesticides, oversight of properly controlled transportation and more. To date we have relied on regulatory agencies for such oversight, but the system is far from perfect, as we witnessed with many food scares in 2009. Expect consumer-oriented applications on the web to play a bigger role in 2010 and beyond.

    6. Technology to Manage Water Use—With only 1 percent of the world’s fresh water available as drinking water, water capture, management and retention will become a big focus in 2010. Again, this requires measurement and testing that involves sensor-based applications, collaborative systems among agencies and better storage facilities. Expect to see highly integrated and analytical web applications that will be facilitated by wireless and mobile computing.

    [Editor’s Note: As the decade comes to an end, we’ve asked Xconomists and other technology leaders around the country to identify the top innovations they’ve seen in their fields the past 10 years, or predict the top disruptive technologies that will impact the next decade.]

    Comments (8) | Reprints | Share:  
    Retweet
     Facebook
     Email
     Share







  • Exponentials R Us: Seven Computer Science Game-Changers from the 2000’s, and Seven More to Come

    Ed Lazowska wrote:

    Forty years ago, in 1969, Neil Armstrong left footprints on the surface of the moon. It was an extraordinary accomplishment.

    Also in 1969, with much less fanfare and at much less expense, Len Kleinrock’s programmer Charley Kline sent the first message over ARPANET. (The message was “lo” – the first two letters of “login.” Then the system crashed.)

    With forty years of hindsight, which of these events has had the greater impact? Unless you’re really big into Tang and Velcro, the answer is clear. From four computers in 1969, the Internet has grown to more than half a billion computers and more than a billion regular users, and is impacting every aspect of our lives.

    “Exponentials R Us.” That’s the magic of computer science. It’s what differentiates us from all other fields. (To the extent that other fields are experiencing exponentials, it’s because of computer science – for example, the sensor technology and computational power that are driving biotech.) “Exponentials R Us” is the past, the present, and the future of computer science. If you think you can have greater impact doing something else, you’ve got your head wedged.

    With that as context – as the single most important message – here are a few things that have been particularly cool in the past decade:

    1. Search. Ten years ago, you would painstakingly organize things – label them and file them – so that you could find them. How 1990s! Today, you can search more than 500 Terabytes of the web (not to mention your own desktop) in 100 milliseconds.

    2. Scalability. In the 1990s, Jeff Bezos’s smiling face appeared in advertisements for DEC multiprocessor servers, because the scalability of Amazon.com was limited by the size of the largest computer that DEC could build. Today, that’s laughable—we use hundreds of thousands of piece-of-junk computers running innovative software to create arbitrarily reliable, available, and scalable web services.

    3. Digital media. Text. Music. Images. Video. All of it is digital. Downloaded and streamed. Seamlessly edited. With you at all times. Interactive. “It’s just bits.” It’s totally different.

    4. Mobility. A decade ago, your mobile phone was a brick, and all you could do with it was make calls (if you were lucky!). Today, high-bandwidth connectivity to all of the world’s digital data is ubiquitous. Ain’t no escaping it, for better or for worse. …Next Page »

    Comments (9) | Reprints | Share:  
    Retweet
     Facebook
     Email
     Share







  • Verizon Wireless laying down LTE plans

    image Verizon wireless is the United State’s current 3G king with the largest 3G map, well it seems that 3 might become a 4 very soon. BGR just yesterday announced that a webcast starting 11 AM ET on Wednesday, January 23, 2010 which is today will have all this info. The webcast will go over the new 4G specification for devices that will run on Verizon’s 700MHZ LTE network.

    The Updates will include information on address network access, SMS requirements, data retry tests, lab and signaling conformance, and details on the device approval and introduction process.

    The current speed the LTE network is aimed at is about 12Mbps,and they are  planning to launch LTE in 25 to 30 markets in 2010 and maybe even take over their current 3G map with LTE by the end of 2013. We’re sure there will be a map for that when Verizon’s 4G finally launches.

    This will make Verizon the largest 4G network in 2010 because Sprint has yet to roll their network into a wider market. They are taking a long time to get a 4G device on there network out, but they have been working on some Windows Mobile Wimax devices which should be coming soon. This news is good news which should mean that we might start to see some 4G LTE and Wimax Windows Mobile devices soon.

    Source:BGR

    Share/Bookmark

  • HTC Touch HD VS HTC Eris

    IMAG0012The HTC HD is one of the best known Windows Mobile phone and was the first to break the big screen phone barrier. The HTC Eris is one of the Droids that Verizon Wireless is offering, so a battle between the two is, I think, needed. I like to keep things short and sweet, so this will only touch on 3 rounds: hardware, software and user experience.

    Hardware

    The HTC HD was released over a year ago with the high end technology of its time. The Eris was recently released with the high end compressed technology of these times, but can the past beat the recent?

    -Processor
    Both devices sport the same timeless 528Mhz QUALCOMM processor, but the Droid feels a bit snappier than the HTC Touch HD.

     -Camera
    Both devices have 5MP in the bank and they both use it very well. The HD has slightly older technology with no flash, but still looks good and take decent videos. The Eris is more recent and the software makes the hardware a lot better.

    -Size
    These two devices have a very nice and slim shell. The HD has a both slim and sexy long device with a huge screen in front of it. The Eris has a nice little slim design going for it and that is great for people that don’t have much pocket room to spare like me.

    -Screen
    The HD was one of the first devices to go over the 3.5" phone screen limit, but only with resistive, not capacitive. The Eris kept it simple with a nice and elegant 3.2" capacitive screen that does the job while still keeping it small.

    -Fin
    Both devices have great hardware going for it and this one is a tie because they have the same camera and their sizes are really similar, but the Eris uses its processor slightly better and the HD’s screen is bigger, not always better. HD-5, Eris-4.5

    Software

    The Droid Eris was released with the fastest growing and best looking OS Android. The HD was released last year with TF3D which is the best and most useful UI Windows Mobile phone’s have, mine is updated to Windows Mobile 6.5.1 with TF3D 2.5.

    -User Interface
    The Droid comes with HTC’s new sense UI that was made just for sexiness and usability. The HD that I am currently using has Windows Mobile’s version of sense UI called Manilla 2.5 that is made also very sexy, usable and is very informative. The Eris’s Sense has an added feature that allows you to switch settings from social to work and your own custom version. The Sense has everything you need from a twitter feed, message, weather and all the information you need. The Windows Mobile Sense version has everything the Android version has including all the settings. In the UI section the devices are fairly equal.

    -Applications
    This section of the review is a little hard to judge because even thought Android has more app available in their store, Windows Mobile has more available elsewhere. I will have to make this short- WM has 20K+ applications all spread around, Android has 10k+ in their app store.

    -Fin
    This section, I wanted to keep it short.  The Eris and the HD in terms of software, is pretty similar, but I would have to say this is also a tie. The HD gets 4.5, because even though the User Interface is not really as good compared to the Eris, it still has a huge community behind it and thousands of applications. The Eris also gets a 4.5 also because even thought its User Interface is stellar, it still does not have as much applications available at the moment, but that will change very soon.

    User Experience

    A phone is nothing without having a great user experience. The Eris has a nice and very consistent users experience, so you will not have a problem. The HD is also a very elegant device, but you will not always have a very constant experience.

    -Out of the Box
    The HD is well know for the software that HTC adds to it when it ships and that makes for a great out the box experience.  The phone when you receive it, you get everything you will need for a normal use, you also get their very famous TF3D.

    The Eris also has a very good out the box experience. It comes with everything you need except some essential programs like file explorer and some other things that make installing your applications easy.

    -Installation
    This will be a very short comparison. The Eris is a lot easier experience to get applications and install them than the HD. The Android Application store is one of the easiest way of getting all your applications and installing them in good time. I took me about 30 seconds of searching for the exact application I needed and all I did then was press install then while on VZW’s 3G network it took 10seconds to download and 5 seconds to install. The HD was a little more complicated, I opened the application, then MS wanted me to install some update, then they asked me to sign into my live account and then I had to wait while it searched for the App I wanted then waited for it to load and finally install. The experience was clearly not as nice.

    –Fin
    The out of the Box experience has to go to the HD, because it has everything I need from file explore to Mobile Word and more. The Installation has to go to the Eris, because it does make downloading the application a pleasant and smooth process. HD-4 Eris-4

    Conclude

    This one was close going with what was mention in the comparison. There is a lot more I could have covered on this comparison, but I like things short. The HD has to win on this one, because it just has it all from sexiness to usability. The Eris is a really good device, I love the screen and how smooth it works, but it still has some things it needs to add before it can go against the HD, and next time it will be the HD2, so it really will not be fair.

    Read my full review of the Eris at MobileOSNews

    Share/Bookmark

  • What about mobile broadband and cell coverage?

    rural phoneWhat about mobile broadband and cell coverage? It’s question that has come up quite a bit for me lately. I don’t have an answer but I had a few moments in the last two weeks to realize that tackling it will help bridge a digital divide and ignoring it is going to widen it.

    To start, I had an interesting email conversation from John Shepard about a week ago. He had been to a meeting of economical developers from Southwest Minnesota when one employer pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and said “this is no longer a luxury. It is essential for every one of my employees”. Someone at the meeting else noted that, “We talk a lot about broadband, but nobody under age XX is tethered to a cable anymore”. His experience complemented a conversation I had had in Owatonna talking to a group of manufacturers. We were talking about social media. None of them blogged and none of them tweeted but they all read texts from employees. Texts were easy to send and easy to receive; texting required no training nor more time on the computer. They all had their phones or handhelds on their hips.

    Our conversations seemed to fall in line with Representative Juhnke’s comments to the Ultra High Speed Task Force and their recommendations (about minute 55 of video of the Nov 6 Presentation and overview of final report of the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force). He was pretty passionate about the need for mobile broadband coverage and even cell coverage throughout the state and asked about wireless access. The Task Force Chair (Rick King) addressed the question by talking about how they were technology neutral – and so long as wireless can maintain speed goals (4Gwill, 3G can sometimes) they support it, which I think makes sense from the perspective of the report – but Junke’s question was even more basic he spoke of the “two Minnesotas”; one where you can’t get cell coverage. I think it’s difficult for many of us to imagine living there. As he brought up – who is going to move a business to an area without full cell coverage? Juhnke promoted uniform deployment of all services across the state.

    Ann Higgins, who is always timely, sent me an article that echoed Rick’s point and hit on the need for ubiquitous and fast coverage. The article focused on the progression towards 802.11n wireless – the  reasons driving that progress are important here too, “Because more powerful and bandwidth intensive applications that stream video are demanded from sources like the iTunes App Store and Android Marketplace, the importance of Wi-Fi is growing considerably.”

    Finally, I noticed that the mobile broadband question was raised in the recent report by the US Broadband Coalition as well:

    Mobile broadband access is growing in prevalence and popularity, both as a primary and as secondary for of Internet access. Recent research shows that African Americans and Hispanics are much more
    active in using wireless devices to connect to the Internet and data services than others. While there is general consensus that some applications and services are better suited to mobile broadband connectivity and other are better suited fixed connections and larger devices, there is little study to access the merits of using mobile broadband devices and connections as a primary vehicle for digital inclusion populations.

    Again I don’t have an answer – but wanted to raise the question.

  • Verizon jumps on prepaid data bandwagon

    dataOh pretty netbook lady, you go about your daily life with your face buried in the goings-on of your hectic corporate lifestyle, unwilling to avert your gaze from the tiny 10.1-inch screen that dictates your graceful movements for even a mere moment in time.

    Look away, pretty netbook lady. Observe the world around you. I have a feeling that once you do, you may wonder how you ever let your life become about smart tweed jackets, tightly-pulled hairstyles, and monthly mobile data plans for the netbook that seems permanently attached to your delicate hand.

    Take a step back from it all, pretty netbook lady. You don’t need to completely give up your corporate lifestyle, but it’s time for you to LIVE! damn it. LIVE! And in order for you to be able to immerse yourself back into the corporate world from time to time, Verizon now offers pre-paid wireless data plans for casual use.

    Available in daily, weekly, and monthly increments, the plans aren’t cheap by any means. You’ll get 75MB for $15 (daily), $30 for 250MB (weekly), or 500MB for $50 (monthly) and Verizon will begin rolling out the service on November 15th, packaged with a USB modem for $130. You can afford it, pretty netbook lady. You can afford it.

    Full press release:

    Reliability Meets Flexibility With Prepaid Plans for Verizon Wireless’ Mobile Broadband Service

    Customers Can Choose From Daily, Weekly or Monthly High-Speed Internet

    BASKING RIDGE, N.J., Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ – Verizon Wireless today announced three new Mobile Broadband plans that will be added to the company’s Prepaid portfolio. Customers will be able to get speed when they need it on the Verizon Wireless 3G network with pay-as-you-go plans for daily, weekly or monthly access. The new Prepaid options are ideal for those who need access for occasional or seasonal use whether on vacation, enjoying a weekend getaway or for students away at school. Verizon Wireless gives customers the following service options:

    • Daily – $15 for 75 MB
    • Weekly – $30 for 250 MB
    • Monthly – $50 for 500 MB

    Prepaid Mobile Broadband will be sold in a convenient grab-and-go package with the Verizon Wireless USB760 modem for $129.99. The USB760 comes with a high-performance internal antenna, removable memory of up to 8 GB and support for Windows® 2000, XP, Vista and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5 (Leopard) or Linux. Prepaid Mobile Broadband will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores beginning Nov. 15 and at select national retailers beginning Nov. 20.


  • Nokia files suit against Apple, claims patent infringement

    Nokia phone talking to iPhone

    Nokia makes the world’s most widely-used handsets — by a wide margin — and they went on the offensive to defend their technology announcing a lawsuit against Apple, Inc. The claim, filed in Delaware district court, alleges 10-counts of patent infringement for technologies used in all iPhones produced since 2007. Nokia’s press release states, “Apple’s iPhone infringes Nokia patents for GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards.” No other specifics about the suit have been released. After Apple’s recent earnings blowout announcement we can guarantee you one thing: if these claims have any merit Apple will be settling.

    Read

  • Bose hops on the wireless streaming bandwagon

    soundlink_bl_lgWireless has always been the new exciting thing in consumer electronics. Remote controls, game console controllers, Sony’s wireless power transfer, and now Bose is getting in on the action. The latest in their Wave System series, SoundLink allows you to stream audio to the unit from your computer.

    The unit is physically indistinguishable from the rest of Bose’s stereos. But the magic happens in the provided USB key. Plug into your computer running Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS 10.4, and you should be able to hear beautiful music coming from your Bose unit up to 60 feet away.

    At the end of story, it’s pretty much just a Bluetooth-capable Bose Stereo. So don’t get too excited. But if you have $549.95, why the frak not?