Tim Conneally

Just as the eagerly-awaited iPhone 3.0 software update became available, AT&T made an announcement that some subscribers' upgrade eligibility would be bumped up just in time for the iPhone 3G S launch this Friday.

AT&T addressed the subscriber frenzy today and said that any customers who would otherwise be eligible for an upgrade between July and September will be given their upgrade pricing effective tomorrow. This means that rather than make these customers wait one to three months, or otherwise force them to pay the full price of the new iPhone (an additional $200), they will be given amnesty, and be allowed to buy the device at its discounted upgrade price of $399 for the 16 GB model, or $499 for the 32 GB model when it goes on sale on Friday.

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Today, Samsung announced it has begun shipping its UT series of seamlessly stitchable 46" LCD monitors, the company's building blocks for JumboTron-scale displays.

Home theater enthusiasts are frequently presented with 150" and up single screen solutions that are touted as the recurring "pinnacle" of the home entertainment experience, but multi-monitor solutions can deliver just as giant of a screen with only a small gap for the monitor bezel. Samsung's UT series allows dozens of screens to be joined together into huge video walls with only a 6.7mm gap for the bezel between screens.

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Even though mobile phones are now practically issued at birth, with models designed for children, the elderly and those on public assistance, businesspeople have been subject to a 20-year old tax law that treats the devices as a luxury.

Earlier this month, the IRS issued notice for public comment on simplifying procedures for taxing employer-issued cell phones. The law classifies work-issued cell phones as a fringe benefit that are subject to income tax, and demands that employees keep a detailed record of calls made on their work phones that delineate business from personal use.

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As Clearwire announced just one month ago Atlanta, Georgia's WiMAX network has officially launched, and is the biggest United States deployment of the 4G technology to date, covering some 1,200 square miles with more than 400 cell sites.

Like Clearwire's Portland WiMAX network, Atlanta's core network equipment from access points to consumer equipment has been supplied by Motorola. Future deployments, however, will be built upon Cisco equipment, Clearwire announced early last May.

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Google's voice recognition technology took to the mobile sector with voice-powered search applications for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Naturally, Google's own mobile operating system Android has begun to reap special benefits of the powerful technology with some new voice-enabled features.

Yesterday, an unforced update to Android's native Google Maps application endowed the software with speech recognition capabilities. Addresses, business names, and attractions can all be searched by spoken word. The app is now one of several that tap into Google's speech recognition engine, such as the voice-to-text app which recently turned up in the Android Market, simply named Voice Text for Android. That app allows the users to dictate text messages.

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The US government is attaching new priority to the task of reducing nationwide energy waste, with one approach being to modernize the country's aging power grid. By creating a "Smart Grid," or a self-monitoring and balancing network of electricity, the US may be able to utilize all forms of power (solar, fossil fuel, hydroelectric, wind, nuclear) in a more efficient and less wasteful manner.

Because $4.5 billion of national stimulus funds have been allocated to the creation of such a smart grid, a host of companies have sprung up, ready to provide the technology. However, just as the forms of energy are coming from disparate sources, there are different communications networks, metering software and central management systems at play. Just one week ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its first preliminary List of Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, and according to the group, it could take several hundred different standards to achieve a secure, end-to-end interoperability across a fully implemented smart grid.

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Both Sprint and Verizon will be getting Research in Motion's new BlackBerry Tour 9630 later this summer. Both "America's most dependable 3G network" and "America's best 3G network" will make the device available for $199.99 with a two-year contract and related rebates.

The BlackBerry Tour is a hybrid of features found in other BlackBerry models, such as the Bold and the Curve 8900. Its chassis is slightly slimmer and lighter than the Bold, but larger and heavier than the Curve. The Tour measures in at 112mm x 62mm x 14.2mm with a weight of 130g, while the Bold is 114mm x 66mm x 15mm and 160 grams in weight and the Curve is 109mm x 60mm x 13.5mm and 109.9 grams.

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When Antares Audio Technologies founder Andy Hildebrand filed for the patent for his digital pitch correction technology more than ten years ago, I wonder if he ever thought that it would be such an inescapable and controversial part of modern music.

After the pop-consuming world was exposed to producer Mark Taylor's use of the inhuman, disjointed vocal effect on Cher in her 1998 single Believe, Antares Auto-tune and its scions became a mandatory fixture in any modern studio. Soon, it catapulted to the position of best-selling audio plug-in of all time. This tool could turn weak tones into strong ones, add vibrato to held notes, and turn a mediocre (or even terrible) singer into a good one, provided a certain willingness to overlook the cyborg-sounding artifacts.

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Apparently Palm is perfectly fine with cracking open the Pre and enabling tethering, but the smartphone company doesn't think Sprint will be too keen on the idea.

In the Pre Developer Wiki, the subsection dedicated to tethering has been pulled down at Palm's request, because "any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki."

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Many legislators believe the cornerstone to halting the illegal trade of copyrighted music, movies, and software is to work with ISPs. Now, rather than debut a new punishment for downloaders, like the controversial HADOPI law in France, British ISP Virgin Media will offer downloaders the option to pay up front.

Virgin Media announced today that it has partnered with Universal Music Group to launch a new tiered music download service. For a reported £10-15 a month, Virgin Media broadband customers will have unlimited MP3 downloads from an ISP-provided catalog. With that service in place, there will be a diminished need to resort to illegal downloading.

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At this week's World Copyright Summit in Washington, DC, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R. - Utah) spoke to the group of more than 500 attendees, and noted the Anti-Piracy Caucus' 2009 Country Watch List, which lists countries with the most intellectual property violations. There, he noted the latest edition of the list contains a familiar neighbor.

"This year, it was particularly disappointing to see that Canada, one of America's closest trading partners, was listed on the Watch List," Sen. Hatch said. "This is another sobering reminder of how pervasive and how close to our borders copyright piracy has become in the global IP community." Canada ranked in the top five problem countries along with China, Russia, Mexico, and Spain.

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Even though Apple used the graph shown above at WWDC this week to illustrate the iTunes App Store's dominance in the mobile applications space, it was missing a big contender that could make its presence much less commanding.

During the Digital Downtown Mobile Apps Shootout today, Vice President of Strategy and Analysis at Interpret LLC Michael Gartenberg reminded the audience that more than 25,000 applications have been developed for the Windows Mobile platform, a number slightly greater than Microsoft's estimate late last March. This figure stresses the impact Microsoft's mobile app store could have.

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As the United States sits on the threshold of the switch to digital television, we get to see the size of the "lowest common denominator" of television viewers who after more than two years of public discussion still have not readied their old TV sets for the new broadcast standard

The National Association of Broadcasters says that as of June 3, nearly 9 out of 10 broadcast-only households were completely ready for the digital switchover. According to Nielsen market research, the total number of US television households for the 2008-2009 season was 114.5 million, but homes that consume only free, over-the-air signals is just a small fragment of that. According to the SRI Home Technology Monitor quindecennial survey (PDF available here) found that in 2004, 18.9% of households were broadcast only. Using those figures, that would mean an estimated 2.16 million households remain unprepared for the digital switch.

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The American Cable Association represents small-town network operators, those who serve rural markets or more sparse populations, and speaks out on issues that are of special interest to their subscribers, specifically those issues which could result in increased subscription rates.

The group's latest issue deals with the site ESPN360.com, which features streams that rebroadcast various sporting events. However, if you are connected to the Internet through an un-affiliated service provider, which includes Comcast and Cox, all the streams on the site are blocked. The only official way to get access to the site's content is to switch to an affiliated service provider.

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If you thought Microsoft's partnership with HP in the Laptop Hunters ad series was a notable "outside of the box" relationship, another has shown up today: Microsoft has made its software available as direct downloads through Dell's five-month old online software shop.

This makes Dell the first official non-Microsoft download shop since Redmond opened The Microsoft Store's downloads late last year.

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