Wireless Blog

Lenovo has its sights set squarely on Apple with a new ultrathin laptop, a mainstream notebook, and a very iMac-ish desktop system.

Here’s a park bench that incorporates a solar panel, along with a rechargeable battery, a night-light and free wifi access.

A 32 watt Unisolar panel ($500), a deep cycle battery ($200), and WiMAX/WiFi ClearSpot ($140) might do the trick for around $1000. Handy for newspaper reading, too. Put your name on the plaque.

Put them on every block. Who needs municipal WiFi? DIY.

Mike Boyd dispensed with bureaucracy and did it himself for the City of Hillsboro Oregon (map). He now has 33 Meraki units installed by various businesses who provide free WiFi for the public. You can host a Outdoor Meraki repeater for $199 and advertising is free to places hosting a unit.

Charles Sirois and Brent Belzberg, two of Canada's leading venture capitalists, have been selected to oversee a new fund that will have more than $300 million to invest in promising private companies.

Lenovo’s IdeaPad S12, arriving in August, will be the first Netbook with the Nvidia Ion processor. With power similar to the 9400M chipset already in Apple’s 13-inch MacBooks, IonNetbooks promise full-HD video output and actual gaming performance.

The Ion-packing S12 with a 12.1-inch, 1,280×800 screen and Atom N270 processor will cost $499. For 50 dollars less, an Ion-free S12 can also be yours. The Ion claims a 10x performance boost on existing Netbook integrated graphics with “nearly identical” power consumption. HD H264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 “won’t be a problem,” say Nvidia.

The S12 runs Windows XP Home, has a 160GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive, 1GB of RAM, a 4-in-1 card reader, 802.11 b/g wireless and a 1.3-megapixel webcam with Veriface face-recognition login security software. The 3.7-pound S12 has a six-cell battery, an Express Card slot, 3 USB 2.0 ports, a multitouch trackpad, HDMI port with the Ion model, a full-size keyboard, and Lenovo’s Quick Start, VeriFace, and OneKey Rescue System for making backups.

In other news, MSI is preparing to launch its Wind U115 in the US soon, reports Liliputing. With a 9 cell battery and the low power Intel Atom Z530 CPU, it may run up to 25 hours on batteries.

I enjoy using the Nokia N810 device from time to time to surf, use some old Palm apps with GarnetVM, and watch movies.

The Android 1.5 software platform is now available for downloading. It brings new features, improvements, and enhancements to Android-powered phones such as T-Mobile’s G-1. The free “Cupcake” upgrade will be pushed over-the-air to G1 phones over the next two weeks, according to T-Mobile, but you could install it manually yourself.

Highlights include:

• Fast, smooth typing with the on-screen virtual keyboard
• Easy access to favorite apps, contacts, bookmarks, and more via home screen widgets and live folders
• Video recording, playback, and sharing
• Full web experience with enhanced browser
• Hands-free calls and listening with stereo bluetooth
• Lots of UI refinements and performance improvements to the overall phone experience
• New APIs and elements to enable even more innovative apps from developers

Here’s a full list of new features and changes and the Android Developer Blog.

Android 1.5 enables video recording and YouTube uploading, among other things. Ustream’s Mobile broadcasting app currently lets jailbroken iPhones and Nokias transmit live video. It joins Qik, which already does the same thing. Perhaps mobile hotspot routers like the MiFi from Verizon and Sprint ($269) or the Clear Spot from Clearwire ($139), will soon enable live streaming via Wi-Fi from Android phones, too. Or is that wishful thinking?

In other news,Engadget Mobile got its hands on some AT&T internal documents, and one of them shows a new AT&T Android phone called the Lancaster. Like the HTC Dream, this model comes with a slide-out keyboard, though the front looks similar to the design of the newer HTC Magic.

For years, mobile phone users have been asking, "Can you hear me now?" Soon they'll be asking, "Can you find me now?" Over the past year, there has been a quiet revolution in the development of so-called "location-based services," or LBS to the cognoscenti.

Verizon has started selling netbooks by offering a subsidized, lower price in exchange for a two-year commitment to a data plan.

Broadcom Corporation has announced an end-to-end unified silicon and software solution for 802.11n enterprise wireless networks.