C Spire Wireless: the new underdog 4G mobile network?
A new national wireless operator will open for business on Monday, and its name is C Spire Wireless.
To be fair, it's not really a new company, it's just the new name for Cellular South, the regional network operator whose CEO, Hu Meena, has been a defender of the "little guy" wireless carriers of the U.S. by refusing to share its LTE network with Verizon Wireless, and testifying against the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.
Blockbuster thinks the problem with Netflix is billing
After taking a serious beating in the DVD rental business by Netflix and Redbox for five years, Blockbuster was driven into bankruptcy and acquired by satellite TV company Dish Network.
But now, Dish and Blockbuster are attempting to gain the favor of disgruntled Netflix subscribers who have faced major changes to their subscription packages as the company spins off its DVD-by-mail rental business.
Smart move: Bing sticks with daily deal aggregator instead of launching its own
Six months ago, Microsoft's search engine Bing launched a mobile daily deals site called (what else) Bing Deals. The idea was that it wasn't a standalone Groupon or LivingSocial competitor, but rather an aggregator of other daily deal sites that partnered with the search engine. Today, Microsoft has launched the desktop version of Bing Deals, and it keeps up what began earlier this year.
Bing Deals aggregates more than 200,000 daily and local deal sites (including Groupon, LivingSocial, Tippr, and retailers like Best Buy, Nordstrom and Zappos) and lets users browse by retailer, location, keyword, or category.
To integrate Netflix into the new Facebook graph, you have to e-mail Congress
At f8, the Facebook developer conference in San Francisco today, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new Facebook "Timeline" layout, and the deeper, realtime integration of third party apps it will bring. This deeper integration is a part of Facebook's new "Open Graph."
One of the premier Open Graph partners is Sweden-based streaming music service Spotify, which launched in the United States just two months ago. Using the new open graph, the music that Spotify users are listening to is posted live to their Facebook feed, and their friends can click that post and join into the listening session live.
Facebook completely redesigns layout with 'Timeline'
If the population of Facebook users was outraged at the site's new layout unveiled yesterday, they're going to completely lose it over Timeline, the new Facebook experience that turns a user's profile into a literal life history timeline. In short, Facebook combined its social feed with the plugin-supported self-publishing of WordPress and magazine-style readability of Flipboard.
Instead of simply piling new Facebook information on top of the page, and hiding all the previous information, everything you do becomes a historical item that can be curated and published as your own personal story.
LightSquared reveals its own device for fixing GPS interference issues
LightSquared is a still-under-construction wholesale 4G network that utilizes the "L band" for part of its communications infrastructure. This block of frequencies was formerly used in satellite communications, and was re-banded for mobile broadband use in the FCC's project to add 300MHz of spectrum to wireless data communications by 2015.
Due to the L-band's close proximity to frequencies used in satellite communications, about half of the frequencies LightSquared planned to use in its network were shown to cause interference on some GPS receivers.
The world's average download speed: 580KBps [data]
Pando Networks, the content delivery network company that opened up its traffic data to show that Idaho has the United States' slowest Internet connections has released a "State of the World" tally of Internet speeds across most of the globe, revealing how 224 countries stack up in terms of network speeds.
Based on 27 million downloads by 20 million different computers between January and June 2011, Pando has come up with its own official average world download speed: 580KBps.
Amazon launches Kindle Library Lending program
Last April, Amazon announced the Kindle Library Lending program would let Kindle users borrow books from more than 11,000 U.S. libraries. Today, the program officially launched at all participating libraries.
Users can search their local library's website, and when they find a book, they can choose "Send to Kindle," which then redirects them through Amazon.com and syncs their book down to their e-reader or Kindle app for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, or to the browser-based Kindle Cloud Reader.
Kaspersky introduces ONE license for PC, smartphone & tablet security
Security company Kaspersky Lab on Tuesday announced a new program called Kaspersky ONE, where a single license covers the security software across all of a user's devices: desktop, notebook, smartphone, and tablet.
Having security on your PC should be a given. It's just a matter of personal preference which security suite you use. But when you own multiple PCs with vastly different hardware configurations, or multiple PCs and multiple mobile devices, comprehensive security is often not a priority. Kaspersky suggests that this is due to the hassle of multiple licenses for the different platforms we deal with.
Video Hangouts in Google+ get massive feature upgrade
One of the most forward-thinking features of Google's three-month old social network Google+ is its ability to set up multi-person live video chatrooms called "hangouts," here, users with webcams can convene over a youtube video, set up impromptu performances or instructional sessions, or just hang out.
Tuesday, Google announced four new feature upgrades to Hangouts in Google Plus.
Comcast launches $10 Internet access for poor families
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen this morning announced the official nationwide launch of "Internet Essentials," the program that will provide low-cost Internet services, affordable computers, and digital literacy training to families with children who are eligible for the National School Lunch Program.
"Broadband is our central platform in this 21st century for economic growth, innovation, and information. Broadband can be the great equalizer – giving every American with an Internet connection access to a world of new opportunities that might previously have been beyond their reach," FCC Chairman Genachowski said on Tuesday. "But roughly 100 million Americans are being bypassed by the broadband revolution. That's 68% of Americans who aren't connected at home. Compare that to South Korea and Singapore where adoption rates top 90%. Low-income Americans and minorities disproportionately find themselves on the wrong-side of this digital divide."
Video gamers crack code on AIDS-causing monkey virus
A protein causing AIDS in rhesus monkeys that hadn't been solved for 15 years was resolved by players of an online science puzzle video game called Foldit, which challenges groups of players to "unfold" chains of amino acids.
It took competing teams of gamers just three weeks to generate three-dimensional models of the enzyme, which is called M-PMV (Mason-Pfizer Monkey virus) retroviral protease.
Google Wallet pay-by-phone system makes early appearance
Google Wallet, the mobile payment system that takes advantage of Android's Near Field Communications (NFC) capabilities, launched on Monday.
Google first announced the service last May, and the search company showed how users could enter their credit card information into the Google Wallet app, and then tap their phone on an NFC reader to make payments. Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint were the first financial and carrier partners to go along with the service, and approximately 15 retail partners announced their support for the "single tap" payment program as well.
Nokia delisted from top 50 European stock index after massive drop
Finnish mobile phone company Nokia has been deleted from the Stoxx Europe 50 index, a benchmark index owned by Deutsche Börse and the SIX Swiss Exchange Group that tallies the top 50 largest European corporations.
Late in August, Stoxx announced that Nokia would be delisted from the Stoxx 50 index, along with three banks: Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit from Italy, and GRP Societe Generale from France. Meaning the former powerhouse mobile phone maker is no longer big enough to be considered one of Europe's biggest corporations.
President Obama signs 'America Invents' patent reform act into law
The America Invents Act, which passed through the final stages of Congressional approval one week ago was signed into law by President Barack Obama on Friday morning.
The Act represents the largest single overhaul to the U.S. patent system in almost 60 years, and is the result of more than a decade of legislation.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
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