Wireless Blog

Sprint Nextel Corp. said late Thursday it has canceled a proposed $3 billion convertible stock offering that it had announced the day before.

Verizon Wireless announced it completed its purchase of Rural Cellular Corp., bringing to a close a yearlong transaction that sparked complaints from consumer advocates and Sen.

Comstar-United TeleSystems , Russia's leading integrated telecommunications service provider, has chosen Nortel's mobile WiMAX solution for its network in Moscow.

If you trust the chatter from the techies' sewing circle, Apple is poised to make several new product announcements next month. According to industry insiders and analysts, Mac fans can expect a redesigned MacBook and MacBook Pro, along with revamped iPods.

The Mac laptop line has not had many significant changes in roughly six years, and there is also a good chance that the price point may finally drop to around $999, keeping Mac competitive with PCs. iPod nanos and shuffles may see increased storage and perhaps a reshaping of the iPod touch, and also another price drop.

Early adopters, however, will have to wait a little longer before queuing up for a MacBook touch. The technology is still a bit out of reach, but could arrive in less than two years.

Analyst Expects Changes

Apple fans know that company announcements, such as new product launches and revamps, have been made in September for the last three years. And according to reports, Apple's sales and marketing teams released a statement to retailers advising them to replenish MacBook and MacBook Pro stocks, which usually signifies that Apple is preparing for changes. Stir this is in with the spicy earnings call last month by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer hinting at a future "product transition," and you've got the ingredients of a tasty product launch.

Gene Munster, an analyst at investment firm Piper Jaffray, has confirmed the speculation, writing, "We expect redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros, and a new iPod touch." He noted that an event has yet to be announced, but he fully expects Apple to re-enter the under-$1,000 market where Mac iBooks once started. He also speculated about redesigned MacBook Pros and pointed out that there hasn't been a major design change since the first PowerBook G4 was released 5.5 years ago.

Regarding the iPod,...

After some snooping into the core of an iPhone 3G, a hacker has reported finding a blacklist of sorts that could allow Apple to remove malicious or unauthorized applications from iPhones.

Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the books iPhone Open Application Development and iPhone Forensics Manual, found a URL buried in Apple's firmware that links to a file dubbed "unauthorizedApps" where malicious or simply bad apps might go once they disappear from the App Store.

"This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off," Zdziarski wrote in a Web posting. "At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances this had been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down."

Making the List

A particular iPhone app that received huge attention was created by coder Armin Heinrich. He posted an app called "I Am Rich" to Apple's App Store and tagged it with a $1,000 price tag. The app, which displays a red ruby to indicate to others that you can afford it, has not had a great response and has been described by observers as stupid.

As of Wednesday, Heinrich's app was not available for sale in the U.S., according to a pop-up message. Since then it has mysteriously disappeared, leaving users wondering if "I Am Rich" made its way to the blacklist or if Heinrich himself pulled the plug.

Other apps that have disappeared include BoxOffice (renamed to Now Playing) and NullRiver's NetShare. BoxOffice gave users movie show times, movie descriptions, and images from RottenTomatoes.com, while NetShare allowed people to use a wireless device to tap into an iPhone's Wi-Fi connection. NetShare broke AT&T's service agreement for connectivity.

Developers of both apps have said they never received any...

A senior executive at Google’s Android project has ruled out the prospect of joining forces with rival mobile open-source operating system consortia such as the LiMo Foundation, reports Information Week.

“Unification for the sake of unification is not the path we decided to go down? having too many people on the design phase, especially early on, would have hurt the project,” Eric Chu, a group marketing manager with Google’s Android group, told the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco this week.

“Instead of adding in compatibility for everything, we think it is important to clarify for developers the best possible direction and make it open-source so it is available to more people,” he told Information Week in a later interview. Chu’s comments appear to quash recent analyst speculation that Android, LiMo and Symbian Foundation could join forces to create a single open-source platform.

LiMo said on Monday that it has signed 11 new member companies in recent weeks and said that the number of mobile devices running the LiMo OS now totals 21.

According to statistics published in February 2007, Symbian OS had a 67% share of the smart mobile device market, with Microsoft having 13% and RIM having 10%. A pretty good lead right out of the box.

Symbian is in more than 200 million phones, across 235 models, with tens of thousands of third-party applications already available.

There are 1.5 billion TV sets in the world. 900 million personal computers, desktops and laptops. The internet had 1.3 billion users at the end of 2007. But mobile subscribers topped 3.3 billion.

Related Open Source articles on Dailywireless include; New LiMo Handsets, License to Print Money, Android and Symbian Merger?, Verve: Newspaper Salvation?, Location Apps: Here. Now., Google Walking Maps, Open Source Convention in Portland, Marketing 101: It’s The Phone, Open Warfare at OsCon and Open the Box.

Wayport announced today its first camera partnership with Nikon around the launch of its newest Wi-Fi enabled camera, the COOLPIX S610c.

The COOLPIX S610c is the first Wi-Fi camera to utilize the Wi-Fi Protected Set-up (WPS), making it easier than ever to send and store images and videos via Wi-Fi.

By using the S610c’s One Touch Email button and Nikon’s my Picturetown, consumers can share their images and videos.

Each S610c ships with a free subscription to Wayport’s Wi-Fi service valid until August 31, 2011, allowing consumer access to the service’s 10,000 hotspots.

The new camera and agreement with Wayport allows S610c users to share photos anytime, anywhere without wires or computers. The S610c’s wireless service will be provided by Wayport, allowing consumers to share their images and videos from over 10,000 Wayport locations nationwide including more than 9,700 participating McDonald’s restaurants and major hotel chains.

The COOLPIX S610c will be available nationwide beginning September 2008 with an MSRP of $329.95. It features 10 megapixels, a 3.6x Zoom, and 3.0-inch LCD screen and Optical Vibration Reduction (VR).

The WiMAX Forum today commended the Department of Telecommunications of India (pdf) for sharing the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz frequency bands for both 3G (cellular) and WiMAX technologies.

The auction will distribute two 20 MHz blocks in both the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz bands. The government also announced that blocks in the 700 MHz and 3.3-3.6 GHz bands will be auctioned as they become available.

“WiMAX technology will meet a number of needs for India’s diverse population, bridging the digital divide while providing a platform to meet the future demands for 4G mobile broadband services,” said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum.

India’s Tata Communications, formerly known as VSNL is planning to expand its WiMAX coverage from the current 60 towns to 115 this financial year. The company has outlined some US$2 billion in CAPEX over the next three years. About half the expenditure will be on a WiMAX network which will cover 15 cities by 2009. Currently, WiMax services are available only in Bangalore, where some 600 base stations have been deployed.

The WiMAX Forum plans to add an Indian certification lab to its existing network by the end of 2008. The WiMAX Forum has certified eighteen Mobile WiMAX products in the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz bands and estimates that its labs will certify more than 100 WiMAX products by the end of 2008.

Lenovo has announced a new netbook, the Ideapad S10 which will run Windows XP and launch in early October for $399. Gizmodo reports, the S10 is a fairly standard Netbook. It runs Intel Atom processors on a 945GSE chipset with GMA950 graphics, and has a 10" 1024×600 LED-backlit screen.

Wireless options include WiFi and Bluetooth, but a 3G or WiMAX option is notably lacking. An ExpressCard slot is available to provide it, though. Lenovo claims battery life of three hours with a 3-cell battery or six hours with an expanded 6-cell battery, in league with the X10s subnotebook rivals. Card reader and webcam are standard. The S10 weighs only 2.4 pounds, but will use standard DDR2 and 2.5" hard disks; purchasers will have the choice of 512MB and 80GB for $400 or 1GB and 160GB for $450.

While many might still be questioning the usefulness of Wi-Fi cameras, I'm not one of them and neither is Nikon.