At a research facility in Anyang, South Korea this morning, LG unveiled its Long Term Evolution (LTE) chipset, which it claimed is the first designed to provide mobile handsets with 4G connectivity.
The company claims the new 4G technology could provide downlink speeds of 60 Mbps and 20 Mbps and higher.
With the TiVo Pause Menu that launched today, even if a user is fast-forwarding through the traditional ad breaks on a time-shifted program, he will still be subject to "premium" ads designed to appear in the truncated space.
The new system, announced this morning, would enable ads to be served during fast-forward or pause states.
Novatel Wireless' Mi-Fi portable broadband hotspot is about the size of a triple-thick credit card, and does the job of a 3G modem and wireless router all in one unit.
Novatel Wireless' Mi-Fi portable broadband hotspotis about the size of a triple-thick credit card, and does the job of a 3G modem and wireless router all in one unit.
The Mobile DTV Alliance is hoping to speed up the adoption of phone-based consumption of TV by lightening up on its support of struggling format DVB-H.
Mobile TV is still waiting to be embraced in the US. We've come around to having YouTube available on our phones, and there are plenty of options for streaming radio, but Mobile broadcast TV is just not sticking.
In what appears to have been an amicable agreement for most involved, Bose Corp. announced today that its legal battle over QuietComfort noise-canceling headphone patents has officially come to an end.
Last year, sound technologies maker Bose filed notice with the US International Trade Commission (PDF available here) that Phitek, GN Netcom (later Jabra), Audio-Technica, Creative Labs, Logitech, and Panasonic were infringing upon Bose's patents for noise-canceling headphones.
Online metrics company comScore has released its updated set of holiday e-commercial sales figures, showing an increase in Cyber Monday spending over last year, with a notable lift in Consumer Electronics sales.
The recession has had a marked effect on consumer spending, with the average price of individual gifts dropping by some 5%. This caused an overall slowdown which some predicted would mean this year's total holiday sales would actually be less than last year's. However, comScore data showed that the "Cyber Monday" spike in online sales was 9% higher this year, bringing total 2008 holiday sales to just about the same level as 2007.
This morning, the Netflix service was officially made available to users of TiVo Series3, and TiVo HD XL users with the updated software and an existing Netflix subscription.
On Friday, the TiVo 11.0 software began to roll out, but other than a slight rearrangement on the main menu and the "11.0" insignia, there was little to speak of in the update. However, this meant that the updated boxes were primed for the Netflix On Demand service, which was announced at the end of October.
Yesterday, both Facebook and Google took their respective OpenID systems out of beta, continuing their neck-and-neck move away from "walled garden" status.
Back in May, Facebook, Google, and MySpace all debuted their open identification platforms which allow the sites to work with other services based upon a single login and user identity. However, there was immediate tension between Google and Facebook, which resulted in Facebook blocking Google's Friend Connect.
After being out in its homeland for nearly two years, Japanese company ZMP has released the SDK to US developers for its music robot called Miuro.
Miuro is Japanese consumer robotics company ZMP's answer to the Roomba. But instead of scuttering around to perform cursory cleanup tasks, Miuro scutters around playing music.
Comcast will reportedly be offering a Web-based bandwidth monitor beginning January 5 to accompany the usage limits made official last October.
The 250GB monthly bandwidth usage cap for Comcast subscribers that took effect in October received some minor fallout, but has been generally viewed as a reasonable limit to a household's bandwidth consumption. The cable operator has said the limit was simply a continuation of unwritten rules previously followed.
Download Opera 10 Alpha for Windows from FileForum now
The Opera team has unveiled an alpha version of its Opera 10 browser, intended to show off the speed and feature support of the new Presto 2.2 rendering engine.
Microsoft's Live Team has apologized for the bumpy rollout of the new Windows Live services that began yesterday, and acknowledged a number of problems that need to be fixed.
Yesterday, Microsoft began the rollout of the new Windows Live, which joins Microsoft's Home, Spaces, Events, Groups, and other services into a single, more Friendfeed-style social portal. However, the initial updates proved to be buggy and problematic for users.
This morning, the newly-demoted second-largest US phone carrier announced it's getting smaller still, shedding four percent of its workforce in another cost-saving operation for the economic recession.
The layoffs of some 12,000 employees will begin in December and continue throughout 2009, according to the company's statement this morning, however it was not specified which areas would be losing the most employees. AT&T noted that its wireless, video, and broadband sectors continue to add jobs, so wireline services will presumably be hit the hardest.
Download Songbird 1.0 Player for Windows from FileForum now.
The first complete version of open source desktop media player Songbird was released yesterday, combining the best features of popular players with the best of Web 2.0 content.
Research in Motion made an out-of-cycle announcement last night that its fiscal Q3 revenue would be 9% below Wall Street projections, citing economic conditions and product-related troubles.
RIM said in its statement that approximately 33% of the difference between expectations and actual revenue comes from the weakening of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar. The rest, it stated, is due to "lower than estimated unit shipments, which RIM believes is a reflection of general economic weakness in the United States and shifts in product launch dates within the quarter."