LTE at one year: 19 networks, 6 smartphones, 7 tablets
This week, the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) and 4G Americas released ecosystem reports that illustrate the progress of the 4G network technology LTE a little more than one year after the first commercial networks went live in Norway and Sweden.
Currently, there are 19 LTE networks up and running out of the 173-180 that network operators have committed to, or just about 10% of its eventual worldwide footprint. These networks are run by 17 different operators in 12 different countries: Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Norway, Poland, Sweden, USA, and Uzbekistan.
In light of new data caps, Netgear acquires AT&T's DSL equipment provider
Network hardware manufacturer Netgear on Friday announced it will be acquiring all the assets of Westell Technologies' customer broadband networking equipment division for $33.5 million in cash.
Netgear will acquire a "select" team of Westell employees (including the CNS engineering and testing team,) most of its customer base, 19 patents and patent applications, as well as all its products completed or in development.
New York Times digital subscriptions & the impossible fight against free content
On March 28, the New York Times will put a new "freemium" subscription model in place for users accessing news on NYTimes.com. Every month, 20 articles are free, and all further articles are locked unless the user pays a subscription charge: $15 every four weeks for the website and a mobile app, $20 for Web access and an iPad-specific app, or $35 for all access.
In a letter to readers, New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said, "It's an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Times, one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world and on any platform. The change will primarily affect those who are heavy consumers of the content on our Web site and on mobile applications."
Microsoft cleans up in both U.S. search and video traffic
Online market research company comScore released its Video Metrix online video content ranking for the month of February. The rating tallies up the total online video audience for the U.S., determines how much it consumes per capita, and ranks the top video content providers.
February's total 170 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content for an average of 13.6 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.0 billion viewing sessions in February.
Sprint outlines new features of CDMA Push-to-Talk service
Sprint has announced it will launch CDMA-based Push-to-Talk technology in the fourth quarter of this year, the network operator announced it would be phasing out its iDEN technology over the next two years, and the new service, called Sprint Direct Connect, is intended to be its replacement.
Sprint began discussing CDMA-based Push-to-Talk communications more than three years ago, and briefly attempted to replace Nextel's iDEN-based PTT with a service from Qualcomm called QChat. Ultimately, though, the carrier abandoned the technology and moved on.
Exchange Online 2010, Office 365 to get free BlackBerry services
Microsoft on Wednesday announced that BlackBerry mobile e-mail for Exchange Online 2010 is now free for all new customers to the Business Productivity Online Suite, and when Office 365 launches later this year, it will include Hosted Blackberry Services for free.
Previously, Microsoft placed an additional $10 per month per user charge for syncing Exchange Online with BlackBerry devices. According to the company's announcement on Wednesday, current paying customers will soon be given options to take advantage of this change.
Samsung keeps 'MIDs' alive, ships Galaxy Player to U.S. in Spring
At an event in New York City today, Samsung announced its Galaxy Player portable media players will be available in the U.S. this Spring. The Android 2.2 devices come in 4" and 5" screen sizes and offer most of the same features of the high end Galaxy S smartphones or the Galaxy Tab, but lack the option for cellular connectivity.
Though Samsung has wide variety of portable media player styles this year, the Galaxy Players will fall alongside Archos' line of Android-powered "Internet tablets," in the MID (Mobile Internet Device) category; a sort of portable grey area that falls between traditional mp3 player design and the current mobile tablet/slate design trend.
Lexar ships first 128GB SDXC cards
Micron Technology's flash memory subsidiary Lexar this week began shipping its first 128 GB SDXC Memory cards, the highest capacity SD memory media thus far.
Lexar says this line of SDXC cards offers a Class 10 speed rating with a minimum guaranteed speed of 20MB per second, also known as 133x.
Visa to let users send money using only recipient's email address or mobile number
International credit and payments company Visa Inc. on Wednesday announced eligible U.S. customers will be able to send funds to each other's Visa accounts, whether credit, debit, or prepaid, with as little information as their e-mail address or mobile phone number.
This new personal payments service was made possible by "technical enhancements" to Visa's global payment processing network, and the creation of a new transaction type. When the service goes live, it will compete with the likes of PayPal and Square.
Google Crisis Response adds Japanese convo mode to Translate for Android
Responding to the continuing disasters in Japan, Google on Tuesday published a new version of Google Translate for Android that supports Conversation Mode to translate Japanese into 50 different languages in a quick, live fashion.
Google Translate for Android was first launched in January, showing an impressive early version of live, speech-to-speech translation between English and Spanish.
Communication with disaster-stricken Japan now free across the board
Since Friday's devastating earthquake, coastal Japan has been battered by tsunamis and aftershocks which have caused billions of dollars in damage to the country's infrastructure, and have triggered a series of explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency today said it is launching a series of missions to assist the Japanese government in monitoring the radiation from Fukushima Daiichi and the potential danger that could spread from the explosions that took place there.
Qik one-ups FaceTime with Video Connect for iPhone, iPad 2
At the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin Texas today, Qik, the streaming video service acquired by Skype in January debuted its latest iOS application, called Video Connect.
Unlike other Qik apps released for the iPhone, Video Connect isn't just a video chat client, but a portable video communications suite that includes on the fly editing, live streaming video effects, video mail, as well as instant social sharing and automatic desktop synchronization.
Verizon Wireless' first LTE phone, HTC Thunderbolt strikes March 17
Tuesday morning, Verizon Wireless and HTC announced Thunderbolt, their first smartphone supporting the LTE 4G protocol, will be available this Thursday, March 17 for $249.99 with a new two-year contract.
Thunderbolt is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and Android 2.2. It has a 4.3" WVGA screen, an 8 Megapixel rear-facing camera, and 1.3 Megapixel forward-facing chat camera, 8GB of onboard storage and support for microSD cards up to 32 GB.
100 Million WebOS devices a year is HP's scale, says CEO Apotheker
Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Leo Apotheker on Monday outlined the future plans for his company, which involve three main priorities: public/private hybrid cloud computing, connected devices of all types, and finally, management, security, and analytics software.
As the "consumerization" of the enterprise space takes hold, HP is going to provide products and services that can handle the needs of both the consumer and the enterprise user.
Internet Explorer 9 RTM launches at SXSW, hours ahead of global availability
As expected, Microsoft launched the Release to Market version of Internet Explorer 9 on Monday. The rollout began earlier in the day with a launch in the UK, and was heralded at an event at SXSWi in Austin, Texas. The browser will be available in 39 languages across the globe, and can be downloaded at Beautyoftheweb.com or right here in our FileForum at midnight EST March 15.
"The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on," Internet Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovich said on Monday evening's event in Austin. But with HTML5 letting the browser tap into a system's GPU for hardware acceleration, the browser can actually do just a little better than that. That was chipmaker AMD's angle on Monday.
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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