Motorola, Inc. today announced that it has released its next generation Push-To- Talk over Cellular solution, optimized for CDMA 1x networks equipped with EVDO Rev A data capability.
Chrysler announced last week that its UConnect Web in-car Internet service will be available starting August 25 as a dealer-installed option.
Samsung's i8510 'Innov8' recently set the bar for hardware features but could that remarkable spec soon become the new norm...? Showing it can trade specifications with the best of them is LG's 'KC910' - the ...
It’s tough to keep up with all the mini-notebooks, notes Gizmodo.
Not to worry. Liliputing has a comprehensive list of Ultraportables, Netbooks and Mini-Notebooks. The database is designed to make it easy to compare current and upcoming models.
The City of Milpitas, California is developing a contract to let Silicon Valley Unwired, a non-profit organization that includes the city of Milpitas, Google, and I-Net Solutions, to provide free municipal Wi-Fi service.
“There would be no fee for the public to use the network,” Bill Marion, Milpitas’ Information Services director, told the council this week. Marion said Milpitas would likely see about 7,000 Wi-Fi users a month for a network that would provide 10 square miles of service coverage. I-Net Solutions would provide technical support.
Milpitas’ new Wi-Fi operation would be similar to service already offered by Google in Mountain View.
In May, EarthLink jettisoned its Wi-Fi systems, which included more than 300 installed Wi-Fi antennas in Milpitas worth nearly $1 million. It remained operational even after the firm departed the city. It was formally transferred to city control.
Since May, City of Milpitas has used the Wi-Fi system for police and fire public safety use as well as continued free public Wi-Fi usage at the city’s community center, sports center, senior center and council chambers, reports state.
Apple has provided spammers with a "dead simple way to easily spider their iDisk property to retrieve the entire MobileMe user name list," Michael Arrington charged Thursday on his TechCrunch blog.
Every MobileMe user gets a public iDisk file-sharing site where they can post files for their public or private use, Arrington explained. Even if users set their pages to private, "it still shows the username if you go to the page," Arrington said. "There is no way as a user to hide or delete your public folder. If you are a MobileMe customer, you have one."
A simple dictionary attack to gather e-mail addresses by appending @mac.com or @me.com should be trivial.
Well-Known Tactic
Apple confirmed that users cannot remove their account names from iDisk. A spokesman discounted the risk, saying, "We've never had a complaint from a customer about people spamming them because of their iDisk public folder name. There is no way to remove your account name from the iDisk folders. I'm very sorry."
That's a very weak response, according to Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Network Security. "Every public Internet service needs to be concerned with this kind of information-gathering tactic," he said. "It's both a well-known and long-standing issue that some people just don't see where the problem lies."
The data on an iDisk is "enough information to seed spam and phishing databases," Storms added.
'Unneeded Disclosure'
"Simply put, this is unneeded information disclosure," Storms asserted. "The right thing for Apple to have done would be to default to the closed state. Everything should be set to private unless the user chooses differently." Instead of telling the world that the user has selected the "private"...
Poland Orange, Poland's largest mobile operator, has launched a pre-iPhone 3G marketing campaign that is paying dozens of actors to stand in line to buy one of the new devices, according to a Reuters report. And Orange isn't trying to hide it, either.
"We have these fake queues in front of 20 stores around the country to drum up interest in the iPhone," a spokesman told Reuters. The wire service reported no queues at T-Mobile's Era stores, which will also began selling iPhone 3Gs on Friday.
The Orange spokesperson told the Associated Press that "the aim was to 'warm up' the atmosphere around the launch of the iPhone."
Following the Beatles' Footsteps
AT&T didn't need to resort to such marketing stunts when the iPhone 3G launched in the U.S. on July 11. Apple sold one million iPhone 3Gs in just three days. Twenty-one countries have been selling the iPhone 3G since July 17. Of course, no one knew the iPhone 3G was going to run into problems with reception and Apple's MobileMe synchronization service.
Will this stunt spur Polish consumers to purchase iPhones? Or will it somehow backfire on Apple -- even though Orange is setting up the campaign?
"If you're as antique as I am, you may recall that when the Beatles first came to America, they premiered on the Ed Sullivan show," said Rob Frankel, a branding expert with clients like Honda, Microsoft, Sony and Marriott hotels.
"What a more naive American public didn't know was that most of the girls in the audience were hired and paid to scream as part of the hype," he said. "And it worked, big time."
"This is really nothing new, though. For centuries, various civilizations have watched as the families of kings and noblemen paid...
New York State should ditch a $2 billion plan for a statewide wireless network for emergency workers, unless the already delayed system can be fixed, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said on Thursday.
“After three rounds of failed testing, it is apparent that this system is not ready to move forward. M/A-COM has not met its contractual obligations and New York can’t afford to spend $2 billion on a system that doesn’t work right,” he said. “M/A-COM has to deliver what it promised,” DiNapoli added.
The state-wide network would enable emergency first responders, such as police and firefighters, to talk to each other. It would use Project 25 radios, an interoperable, 2-way radio standard that allows different voice users to communicate. It also enables slow (9.6 Kbps), data transmission.
The New York State Office for Technology (OFT) is expected to decide whether to accept or reject the first phase of the network build-out in two counties by August 29th. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart (right), has taken over as the director of the Office of Technology and said that the Aug. 29 deadline, for thumbs up or down on the contract, is firm.
M/A-COM doesn’t get a dime if it’s thumbs down. Plus, a $50 million letter of credit filed by M/A-COM with the state may be tapped for what the state has spent already in anticipation.
When the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki awarded the contract in 2005, some lawmakers questioned whether the company was the best choice. M/A-COM was represented by former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, a close ally of the governor. Some of those lawmakers thought that Motorola’s proposal would have been a better choice. A spokesman for Motorola said on Thursday that the company had completed or was working on similar systems in 28 states.
New York’s statewide wireless emergency communications system would not include any construction in the protected wilderness areas of the Adirondacks and Catskills. Tyco International subsidiary, M/A-Com, bid roughly $1 billion for the 20-year contract. They planned to use as few as four towers in the Adirondacks and the Catskills, and none in protected areas.
That was sharply fewer than the bid from Motorola which proposed 400 towers for the project. Motorola’s bid was roughly $3 billion. New York officials said the different approach to building new towers was the major reason for the vast difference in the bids.
In the Tyco proposal, repeaters are an essential element in avoiding the construction of towers. Repeaters are used throughout the country as a standard way of giving greater amplification to the transmissions of hand-held radios.
Tyco Electronics’ M/A-COM business won the contract in 2005, the biggest New York state technology contract ever awarded.
The statewide network was expected to be completed and fully operational by July 2010. M/A-COM said in March it successfully completed coverage testing in the two New York counties that comprise the first region of the network to be built.
But more recent testing, carried out by the state, is more critical. The system is a year and a half behind schedule and has suffered from technology problems, according to Jennifer Freeman a spokeswoman for the comptroller. “It’s very likely this contract is not going to go ahead unless the issues are fixed,” said Freeman. The state will spend $60 million less on the project over the next two years, as the result of a special legislative session that ended this week.
Tyco Electronics said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters that the audit “includes a number of inaccuracies” and said it would “correct any remaining outstanding issues related to the first phase of this program.”
In rural Chautauqua, it worked. But in populated Erie County, with tall buildings and crammed cellphone towers, there were numerous gaps in coverage and the system was deemed not successful. In May, more tests found roughly the same problems, only fewer of them.
Officials from M/A-Com expressed confidence the issues could be addressed, and said problems in Buffalo had been caused by interference from other radio transmissions. The system has been tested in neighboring Chatauqua County, which is mainly rural, and officials there had no complaints, said Victoria Dillon, an M/A-Com spokeswoman.
The gaps were “localized in a few sites, like cell carriers, a TV station in Canada,” Ms. Dillon said. Michael R. Mittleman, the state official overseeing the project for the Office of Technology, agreed.
Comptroller DiNapoli advised New York should go back to the drawing board unless M/A-COM can fix problems.
If M/A-COM fails the final evaluation in Erie and Chautauqua counties, it is uncertain what direction the state could take next. It could seek to still improve the M/A-COM solution, rebid the project that could add further delays or just scrap the whole idea of a statewide wireless network.
The Oregon Telecommunications Coordinating Council (ORTCC) got together with the Oregon State Interoperability Executive Council — as many states have done — to develop a similar $500 million state-wide public service network (which later grew to $650 million). It would be a voice-oriented network, used exclusively by first responders. Federal Engineering, which is advising the New York Network, was awarded Oregon’s contract to create a presentation (Real Video) and review the scope, goals and costs of the Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network project. Like many such projects, the choice came down to two dominant Project 25 providers, Motorola and M/A-Com.
Finding the money to build a state-wide, interoperable (and narrow-band) radio network exclusively for first responders, is a problem for virtually every state. The state-wide infrastructure can cost billions, while thousands of Project 25, 2-way voice radios, costing $3,500 each, can cost additional hundreds of millions of dollars — billions in the case of New York. Where is the money coming from?
Nobody seems to know.
Some believe the solution lies in the nationwide, broadband 700 Mhz channels, which the FCC unsuccessfully tried to auction recently. That would provide 20 Mhz of broadband spectrum that could be shared by both public service agencies and ordinary mortals. In the FCC’s plan, the winning bidder would build a nationwide network at no cost to state or federal governments. The FCC will likely try auctioning the frequencies again next year.
Related DailyWireless articles include; NY State’s Wireless Net Broken?, Topoff 4 Begins in Portland, Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Emergency Communications, New York State’s $1B Wireless Net, State-wide Wireless Broadband Access, Grand Rapids + Clearwire, InterOp Takes a Holiday, Lockheed in $10B Wireless Project, Networx!, Public Service Bands, Oregon Unwired, Statewide Interoperabilty Plan, InterOp Command, The $500M SafetyNet, This is Only A Test, State-wide Wireless Broadband Access, Webcasting Concerts, Big Brother Blimp, Solar Powered WiMAX & WiFi, The OTHER Public Safety Band, The Infinite Zoom, Microsoft’s 3D Photo Flyby, Microsoft’s Amazing Virtual Earth, Microsoft Buys Vexcel, Mapping Goes Live, HDTV from Aircraft, Panoramic Video, Scanners 3D, Vessel Monitoring, Border Surveillence, Gigapixel Imaging, Virtual Earth Adds Cities, Panoramic EventCam, Border Surveillence, Cities As Game Grids, Traffic Radio Goes HD, Earthquake First Responders, What Up at Where 2.0, Road Trip 2.0, Yahoo Mobilizes Globe, Tracking Vehicles: Good to Go, Transportation’s Big Show, Mapping Highway Data, Traffic Mapping, FCC: Nextel Gets PCS Spectrum, Public Service Moves to 800Mhz, Public Safety Shuffle, Decision in Nextel’s Court, Consensus Plan from FCC?, Localizing Consensus Plans, Verizon Jaming Public Service Fix, FCC: Nextel Gets Spectrum Credit, FCC: Nextel Gets PCS Spectrum, Nextel’s Consensus Move, Nextel Accepts Consensus Swap, Freq Consensus?, 700MHZ Goes Live, General Dynamics Wins IWN Contract, McCain Wants Commercial 700 MHz for Police, and FCC: Moving on 700MHZ Public Safety Interop?New York’s $1B Wireless Net, Oregon’s $500 Million Statewide Wireless Network and FCC: Limited Open Access, No Wholesale Requirement for 700 MHz.
Analysts chalked up the less-than-manic reception to the high price of the iPhone 3G as well as the cost for 3G data service in many countries.
'Acting' Like It's a Must-Have
In India, an iPhone 3G retails for more than $700 with bundled service -- hardly affordable for middle-class Indians with a per-capita income of only $3,000. As a result, Vodafone, the India iPhone provider, is expected to sell the phone on installment plans.
Elsewhere, 3G data expenses for a year's subscription easily make the iPhone 3G three to four times more expensive than competing cell phones and plans.
Such is the case in Poland, where local carrier Orange hired actors to pose as people waiting in line in front of its stores. Orange officials admitted they pulled the stunt to fuel interest in the launch. Competitor T-Mobile, which also offers the iPhone 3G in Poland, played the launch straight with no queues -- real or fake -- outside its Warsaw storefronts.
Reports from New Zealand put the cost of the iPhone 3G at more than $1,000 with bundled service, but they are selling. Some stores in South America ran out of the device on launch day, and iPhone 3Gs showed up on Argentina's eBay.
Slow But Steady Overseas
Reports from the United Kingdom and Germany, where the iPhone 3G was launched at the same time as in the U.S., have the device selling, but not flying off the shelves. The UK's exclusive carrier, O2, is even tripling minutes and text-messaging limits to help sales. 02 reportedly wanted to sell 200,000 units by this time...
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