Tim Conneally

Today, the Federal Communications Commission announced that its Spectrum Task Force expects up to 90MHz of spectrum to be freed up for wireless broadband by July in the commission's strategy to unleash 500MHz by 2020.

"This initiative is an opportunity to make additional spectrum available for mobile broadband by promoting greater spectrum efficiency and flexibility," said Julie Knapp, Co-Chair of the Task Force. "The Spectrum Task Force remains firmly committed to maintaining robust mobile satellite capability that serves important needs like disaster recovery and rural access. I am confident that we can achieve all of these goals and create a win-win solution."

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Research in Motion's BlackBerry App World brought the popular line of business smartphones into the business of mobile apps early last year. This week, the company unveiled App World 2.0, which introduces a number of new features that improve the user experience.

One of the problems with App World was that the only way you could buy apps was with a PayPal account. Following the 2.0 update, users will have the option to bill app purchases to their wireless carrier's calling plan, or to directly charge to a credit card.

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Today, the newest version of popular open source blogging software WordPress was released. Version 3.0, also known as "Thelonious," has undergone a significant number of improvements, such as the inclusion of new standard APIs that let theme developers easily implement new backgrounds, headers, menus, custom posts, and more.

All of the new APIs are shown off in the new default theme called "Twenty Ten."

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Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Notice of Inquiry that begins the public process of comparing possible frameworks for broadband Internet regulation.

The Commission seeks comment on the following issues:

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Shortly after announcing its second Android device, the HTC Aria, AT&T today announced its third: The Samsung Captivate.

Samsung says the Captivate is "a Galaxy S smartphone," meaning it's very similar to the phone we got to try out at CTIA that is expected to come to T-Mobile later this year.

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With all of the news coverage about the Gulf Coast oil spill, it is an opportune time for the U.S. Department of Energy and electric car manufacturers to address early tech adopters about the future of electric vehicles.

The Department of Energy has issued grants to build 15,000 240-volt home charging stations across the U.S. to form the first electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This network of charging stations will ultimately become something of a beta test for future electric transport. Data collected from these charging stations will be used by the Department of Energy to learn what kind of backbone will be needed for widespread electric vehicle usage. The data will include average charge time, energy usage and the starting and ending time of the charging process.

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Today, the first WiMAX femtocell standard has been published, opening the door for wireless equipment manufacturers to start making products that enhance WiMAX coverage on a smaller scale.

Femtocell devices act as tiny cell towers and are capable of improving wireless coverage in areas where traditional towers have difficulty penetrating, such as deep inside buildings or in areas with high out-of-channel interference. Femtocell products for consumer 3G wireless have been available for a couple of years and include the Sprint Airave and AT&T Microcell, but until now, WiMAX dead zones have had to remain so.

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Earlier today, HTC said its Android-powered Desire smartphone would be coming to select regional operators in August without naming who they would be.

Now, Cellular South has announced that it will be getting the device, which sports a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and Android 2.1 with the HTC Sense UI. The regional carrier did not announce pricing or exactly when the Desire would launch.

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T-Mobile has begun the beta of a new function called "Device Tune-up" for Android devices running version 2.1 and below.

According to the wireless carrier, "Device Tune-up is built to run in the background at all times and 'tune-up' the device by closing unused services that are running. [It] is different from most task killers because it does not require you to do anything. Device Tune-up will default to 'on'.  While on, Device Tune-up proactively closes services to help the device and battery perform at their best. Most pre-loaded applications will not be affected by Device Tune-up. "

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As announced at Tech Ed 2010 in New Orleans a little more than a week ago, Invitations for the first beta of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) have reportedly begun arriving in potential testers' mailboxes.

The beta of SP1 is expected to begin in July, with the release to market some time in the fourth quarter.

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Mobile phone leader Nokia today lowered its outlook for Devices and Services in the second quarter of 2010, citing increased competition in the smartphone space and the recent drop in the value of the Euro.

Nokia expects the second quarter to be at "the lower end of, or slightly below, its previously expected range of EUR 6.7 billion to EUR 7.2 billion," with no growth in its market share volume.

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Though Sony Ericsson does not have a presence in the United States market for Android smartphones, the company's contributions so far have been very impressive in the global market.

Today, Sony Ericsson announced that it is expanding its line of Android-powered Xperia smartphones with the new Xperia X8, which falls in between the X10 and the X10 mini in size and functionality. The X10 Mini and Mini Pro have 2.5" screens, and the X8's is an even 3" in size.

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At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) today, Satoru Iwata, President and CEO of Nintendo gave the world its first glimpse of the Nintendo 3DS, which was first announced in March.

The next generation of Nintendo handheld will continue in the dual display/single touchscreen design tradition, but will use a 3.5" 3D widescreen for the top display. The 3D imagery displayed there will not require any special glasses.

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Even if you're not a big Twitter fan, it's easy to appreciate that nearly any device can be connected to it. Because it's such a simple text-based service, many unlikely devices have their own Twitter clients, like the Commodore 64, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the Nintendo DS. Just for fun last month, I connected an old Sony Clie NX-70V running Palm OS 5 to Twitter, and it actually worked reasonably well.

So today, owners of the Amazon Kindle can manually update the software of their E-readers to Version 2.5, and can start Tweeting. This is especially useful because the Kindle has a free connection to Sprint's 3G network, and you post semi-standalone Tweets (I'll explain further) or links to longer text segments.

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The latest installment of Office, Microsoft's long-running productivity suite was slated for a June release, and today is the day it lands in retail.

Yesterday, popular office supply store Staples sent out a mass email saying "Microsoft Office 2010 is Here!" with a link to a pre-order site, but we checked three local Staples stores in the Baltimore metro area, and none of them had the software stocked on shelves yet.

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