A Russian security company whose software can recover Wi-Fi encryption keys has started selling it to all-comers. John E. Dunn 17/01/2009 07:17:00 The Russian security company that caused a stir some months by ...
HONG KONG, Jan 19, 2009 -- Manbujia, a leading provider of WiFi roaming solutions for both customers and network partners, has concluded an inbound and outbound WiFi roaming agreement with CTM in Macau.
Verizon Wireless today announced it will launch network operations on Jan. 25 in northern Minnesota and northeastern South Dakota, offering nationwide service plans.
Femtocells, the tiny cellular transmitters that operate like hotspots in the home, may be the next big thing for cellular operators.
Sprint introduced their AIRAVE box (right), last summer, but Verizon’s not far behind, says Engadget. Their Wireless Network Extender is expected to be available in Verizon stores and online starting January 25 for $249.99.
The cell carriers like them because it saves them the expense of erecting new towers. You provide the backhaul.
Most femtocells today support up to four simultaneous users. PicoChip, Percello and Ubiquisys make the chipsets.
The little black box will puke out a cloud of CDMA covering up to 5,000 square feet of domicile with support for up to three simultaneous calls — enough for you, the hubby / missus, and little Joey / Susie to all be yapping away at the same time. Like Sprint’s solution, the Wireless Network Extender uses GPS to verify that you’re not creating little tiny Verizon networks in Laos, Kenya, or Uruguay and plugs into the internet source of your choice via Ethernet.
In other news, Motorola last week unveiled a WiFi hotspot that combines WiMax, Ethernet and VoIP. The Motorola CPEi 775 (pdf) will be available only to carriers initially and not offered for retail markets. The second generation CPEi 775 device incorporates adaptive switching techniques, making for easy installation, because it does not need to be rotated for optimal signal strength. It’s not yet available in Portland (I checked yesterday).
Sidecut’s Paul Kapustka likes Cradlepoint’s battery-powered Wi-Fi router with a WiMax dongle for backhaul (although it’s no Femtocell).
“I see every iPhone user as a future customer,” said Clearwire’s Chief Strategy Officer, Scott Richardson. Cradlepoint is expecting to release the device soon. No word on price. Here are more Clearwire videos.
Related Dailywireless articles include; Femtocell Comes Home, Sprint Rolls Out Home Femtocells, AT&T: Femtocells R Us, EdgePoint Femtocell, T-Mobile Expands Hotspot@Home, Ericsson: Wi-Fi is Dead, Dead, Dead, Femto Forum Expands, Sprint; Femocell at Home, Google Invests in Femocell Company, Hotspots for Cellphones and Cable/Sprint Pole Dance.
Cellphone carriers in Washington DC are fearful that a communicative citizenry will overwhelm their networks, says the NY Times. They have taken the unusual step of asking people to limit their phone calls and to delay sending photos. The carriers are also spending millions of dollars to temporarily and substantially upgrade their networks in Washington.
The Obama crowd — which could exceed two million — is expected to be mostly young, just the group accustomed to staying in touch by uploading photos, blog posts and tweets on Twitter.
Many news organizations, including The New York Times, are asking people to send photos of inaugural events via e-mail. The inauguration has the potential to be a wireless Woodstock. If, that is, the networks can handle it.
“If some of these estimates come true, people should anticipate delays with regards to sending text messages or making phone calls or getting onto the Internet,” said Joe Farren, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, an industry trade group.
“We can only bend the laws of physics so much,” Mr. Farren said.
To limit problems, the carriers are adding radios to the cell towers and bringing in trucks (Cellsites On Wheels) with on-board generators in case of a power failure.
“We know how many people can pack into a race track or concert,” said John Johnson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless. Given the enthusiastic crowds that Barack Obama has drawn throughout his campaign, Verizon cannot easily predict the call volume on Tuesday. “It’s unprecedented,” said Mr. Johnson.
Verizon has several mobile units in its reserve known as COWs and COLTs (Cells On Light Trucks).
“You drive it where it needs to go, park it, push a couple of buttons, the mast will deploy, the dish will deploy and our generator and satellite ensures we’re fully self-contained and independent,” said Tanya Lin, manager of emergency response team operations for Sprint. The company is bringing in two such trucks, in part to be prepared for any emergency that could compromise the usual infrastructure.
Sprint Nextel, which said it had been planning for the inauguration since April, has also increased capacity of its cell sites and terrestrial transmission lines to prepare the network to sustain 10 to 15 times the number of users it would serve on its networks during a normal day.
AT&T Mobility said it was spending $4 million to upgrade its networks. The company said that along the parade route, it was adding 80 percent to the capacity of its 3G network, its much-maligned high-speed data network; the company is improving its slower 2G network by 69 percent and increasing staff by 60 percent. It has increased coverage at 11 major hotels. And it has two satellite COLTs and two reserve satellite COLTs.
Social networks are also expecting a spike in traffic to their sites as inauguration attendees upload snapshots to Web sites like Facebook and Flickr and write to one another throughout the event.
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said the company was hoping to sidestep network hiccups. He is not expecting the same traffic spikes as during the election, when the site was flooded with as many as 10 messages a second, but says the service “will nevertheless be doubling our through-put capacity before Tuesday.”
Meanwhile, Sprint is preparing for Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa on Feb. 1. The company, the official wireless sponsor of the National Football League, has added 18 cell sites to enhance coverage, and three Cell Sites on Wheels – or COWs – will be in place near Raymond James Stadium with an additional COW covering downtown Tampa.
Sprint says it spent more than $49 million throughout Florida in 2008, including more than $11 million in the greater Tampa area. More than 70,000 fans are expected to attend Super Bowl XLIII.
Mike Arrington of TechCrunch declared last year it was time to invent a $200 internet tablet using open source hardware and software.
The second prototype has been unveiled. It features a 12-inch touchscreen powered by a Via Nano processor, 1 GB of ram and a 4 GB flash drive. It runs a browser and nothing else on top of a custom Linux build. The device also has wifi, an accelerometer (so when you turn the screen on its side you can view more of a web page), a camera and a four cell battery.
Resolution is 1024×768, allowing most websites to be viewed in full width. But the cost has sneaked up to $300. Still, it’s a remarkable achievement. Developers built the working prototype virtually out of thin air.
Viliv, like dozens of other vendors, displayed its X70 Atom Communication MID at CES (above). The handheld features a 1.33GHz Atom Z520 CPU, a 7-inch WSVGA touchscreen, 30GB/60GB hard drive or an 8GB/16GB SSD, Windows XP or Linux, 1GB of RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth, SDHC slot, optional WiMAX/HSDPA modules, USB port and a built-in microphone. But it won’t come cheap.
With the open source Android from Open Handset Alliance now running on $350 Netbooks, a $300 internet tablet doesn’t seem like a stretch.
In-Stat forecasts that in three years, Android will be in 97 million to 164 million handsets, while competitor Symbian will sell about 150 million units — in other words, a neck-and-neck market. But, “Symbian, from our perspective, is probably not the platform of choice for smartphones going forward,” says Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat.
Chip designers/vendors in the OHA include Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Intel, Broadcom, ARM, Marvell and Invidia, among others. Software companies include Google, eBay, Nuance and PacketVideo, among others.
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who voiced an open call last July for a "dead simple touchscreen Web tablet that boots right into the browser," costs $200, and is open source, has reported that a second -- and better -- prototype for such a device is now up and running. He calls it the CrunchPad, and others have described it as a netbook without the keyboard.
'Open Source the Specs'
In his original posting, Arrington asked for help in creating the new device. "Nothing fancy" like the $2,500 Dell Latitude XT, he wrote. "Just a MacBook Air-thin touchscreen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel." And, once built, he proposed to "open source the specs" so that anyone could build one.
Arrington said he wanted one to sit on his lap so he could easily and comfortably browse Web pages related to TV programs -- or, since the device would play Flash video, he could watch movies or TV shows from Hulu, YouTube or Joost. Music playing, video chatting, and e-mail would round out the capabilities. By focusing on the browser, Arrington said, the device could use very low-end hardware.
In August, Prototype A was built with an aluminum case "twice as thick as it needs to be," and performance that offered more potential than actual. "It barely booted," Arrington admitted, but it was enough of a demonstration that he knew he wanted one that worked well.
Now the project has a team lead, Louis Monier, the founder and chief technical officer of AltaVista and former head of eBay's Advanced Technology Group. And Prototype B is now ready.
'Browser as OS'
Prototype B sports a 12-inch, 1024x768 touchscreen,...
CANNES : After years of futile efforts to stop digital pirates from copying its music, the music business has started to copy the pirates.
Called LotusLive, the new offering marries Lotus' capabilities with collaboration, social networking, and Web conferencing features that can extend outside a corporate firewall. It will enable users to create networks with customers and partners, store and share documents online, and get e-mail via the Web from any computer.
Skype, SAP, LinkedIn
The new hosted services are integrated with other software that IBM customers might use. Salesforce.com's customer-relationship software is tied into LotusLive, as are Research in Motion's BlackBerry phones, Skype video and voice communications, business management tools from SAP AG, and social-networking site LinkedIn.com. LotusLive users, for instance, can search LinkedIn for collaborators, then work with them via LotusLive.
A trial version of LotusLive has been tested by 15,000 users, according to IBM, although this is only a fraction of the 145 million licenses for Lotus Notes.
Business tools, especially those built around collaboration, are increasingly integrating their services into the cloud, as the Internet is known. Google, Microsoft and others have made similar announcements.
IBM has big hopes for LotusLive, saying it wants the online suite to become "your one-stop virtual office for all of your day-to-day business requirements." By sharing documents, meeting virtually with potential customers, and connecting with other companies such as suppliers, IBM said LotusLive can "reduce start-up time" and enable businesses to free up IT resources.
Collaborating, Conferencing, E-Mail
LotusLive's services are intended to integrate with each other, and to move beyond Lotus' current capabilities. For example, IBM said LotusLive Engage, an integrated suite of collaboration tools, is "not a new meeting service." Rather, it's "just a smarter one."
Online meetings can now include file storage and sharing, instant messaging, and chart creation in...
The prepaid phone industry added an estimated 5.5 million customers last year. Cathie Rowand A think tank's idea could save 25 million consumers money.
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