Wireless Blog

This morning, Morgan Keegan upgraded shares of Motorola from Market Perform to Outperform as the firm sees handset demand picking up.

The iPhone SMS bug is just one of a series that the researchers plan to reveal in their talk.

Rogers Communications Inc., which posted a 24 per cent increase in second-quarter earnings, is set to roll out another upgrade to its wireless network as it prepares for an onslaught of new competition.

A piece of anti-theft software built into many laptops at the factory opens a serious security hole, according to research presented Thursday.

The "Computrace" software, made by Vancouver-based Absolute Software Corp., is part of a subscription service that's used to find lost or stolen computers. Many people don't know it's on their machines, but it's included in computers from the biggest PC makers.

The software is built into computers at the factory because that embeds it so deeply that even the extreme act of uninstalling the operating software won't delete it. The software is included in a part of the computer known as the BIOS, which refers to programs used to boot the computer.

The service Absolute sells can be valuable because sensitive data can be purged remotely from a stolen machine. The computer is still able to reach out to a specially designated Web site for instructions even if a criminal is tampering with the machine.

But research by Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco with Boston-based Core Security Technologies, and presented Thursday at the Black Hat security conference here, shows it can cut two ways.

If a criminal has infected a computer that has the Computrace technology, he can take deep control of a machine.

That's because he's able to modify the computer's settings to maintain a connection with that machine even if the operating software is uninstalled then reinstalled -- an extreme way, but sometimes the only way, to make sure a computer is cleaned of viruses.

"You have something that's pre-installed, and considered non-malicious, that you can manipulate and turn into a malicious program -- that's pretty unique," said Ivan Arce, Core Security's chief technology officer.

Arce said Absolute can fix the problem with an update to the software that is then pushed out to affected computers. He added that users can disable the software's...

Motorola 's interest in Android devices is well known and we have another candidate rumored to be available from Verizon soon.

Each year, the International Design Excellence Awards highlight the best in design. It's not an easy achievement. Thousands of products are submitted each year, but only a relative few emerge with awards. Over the last decade, winners in the consumer products category have come from a cross section of the economy, from electronics and office supplies to toys and cleaners.

Entries are judged in seven categories: innovation, user benefit, benefit to society and the environment, benefit to the client, visual/aesthetic appeal, usability/reliability, and internal factors and methods, like implementation. Experts from a variety of companies and design firms form the jury, which puts submissions through two rounds of vigorous examination. Gold, silver, and bronze awards are doled out, and one product is singled out as Best in Show.

Apple Leads the Pack

Apple has been the biggest force in the design awards over the last 10 years. It has won awards for the iPod, iPod mini, iPod Shuffle, iPhone, iTouch, iMac, and Mac Mini. In fact, the company has become the epitome of excellence in product design. It's no coincidence that Apple went from an also-ran to a market powerhouse over the same period. Consumers obviously responded to the company's award-winning products, snatching them up by the millions.

The IDEA judges don't always hit the mark. Reliability and durability can sometimes be issues. Evenflo's Triumph Convertible Car Seat was recalled for safety problems. Some products just don't catch on. LG's AN110 Projector was heralded for its ultraslim, wall-mountable design -- very different than the chunky industrial-looking projectors that were once the norm. But if you search through LG's current catalog, it's nowhere to be found.

And sometimes the market changes so rapidly that innovative designs become dated almost overnight. Polaroid's I-zone instant camera, which printed out mini-stickers, started a hot trend, but the company has...

During a several-week test, I leaned heavily on the printing prowess of the wireless Lexmark X7675. But its ability to scan, copy, and fax -- not so much.

Sitting unobtrusively on a shelf near my desk, nary a wire in sight, the printer reliably churned out page after page of the notes, reports, charts, and articles so valuable to my everyday work. The software designed to help the machine with other tasks, however, let me down time and again.

The inconsistencies make it hard for me to recommend this inkjet printer, despite its notable strengths. Lexmark sells it for $200, though Amazon.com was selling it for as little as $115 in late July. Lexmark says it designed the X7675 to appeal to young and middle-age professionals who work at home or in a small office, want to print wirelessly from their laptops, and value professional-looking documents.

Printing Is Quiet

On many of those counts, the product succeeds. With the help of a common home-network router, the printer can establish a wireless connection with a PC. The setup software Lexmark includes on a CD that accompanies the printer makes establishing this connection relatively painless. (You can also print via a USB cable and eschew the wireless capability, but for some that may defeat the purpose of buying this machine.)

Lexmark's setup software successfully guided me through loading black and color ink cartridges, setting up a Wi-Fi connection to my laptop, and printing a test page, all without the need for a paper manual. There's a bit of technical knowledge required (you need to know the "SSID" name of your Wi-Fi network and its "WEP" password), but users who've set up a home computer network will have that data readily available.

Printing was quiet and acceptably fast for black-and-white pages -- though this isn't a high-speed printer. Printing...

Helped by deep cost cuts, Motorola Inc. on Thursday posted an unexpected profit for the second quarter after several quarters of losses, and said it expected things to keep improving this year.

While sales continued to decline from last year, Motorola said the cost cuts, including 8,000 layoffs so far this year, set the stage for a comeback from its long-suffering cell phone unit. Its shares surged on news of the outlook.

The Schaumburg, Ill.-based electronics company earned $26 million, or 1 cent per share, in the three months ended July 4. That's up from $4 million, or break-even per share, a year ago.

The latest results were boosted 2 cents per share by various one-time effects, but even so, Motorola exceeded its own forecast, which called for a loss of 3 cents to 5 cents per share, excluding the cost of its restructuring initiatives.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had on average been looking for a loss of 4 cents per share.

Motorola's sales fell 32 percent from a year ago to $5.5 billion from $8.1 billion a year ago. Analysts were looking for revenue of $5.6 billion for the latest quarter.

"We will further improve earnings in the second half of the year," co-CEO Sanjay Jha told analysts and investors on a conference call.

For the third quarter, the company now expects results in a range from a loss of 1 cent per share to a profit of 1 cent per share. Analysts had been expecting a 1-cent loss.

Motorola shares rose 60 cents, or 9 percent, to $7.17 in morning trading after rising as high as $7.68 earlier, the highest level since October. The shares had already risen 58 percent this year, as investors have overcome the worst of their pessimism and have started to look for signs of a turnaround.

Motorola's sales have been on...

Less than a year after T-Mobile and HTC released the first smart phone using Google's Android operating system, the wireless operator and the handset maker are back with a sleeker device that takes advantage of recent software updates.

The myTouch 3G has plenty of hardware and software kinks -- and a $200 price tag that's $50 higher than the predecessor, the G1, both with a two-year contract. But advances to the operating system may draw a smattering of cheers.

The myTouch, which goes on sale Aug. 5, looks similar to the G1, but replaces the bulk of its predecessor's slide-out keyboard with a slimmer, lighter frame that sports a touch-screen keyboard like that of the iPhone. Its face is still dominated by a long screen, but it has a few more buttons below the screen, including one that offers a shortcut to Google's search engine.

Besides being lighter, the myTouch has better battery life than the G1. It's rated for up to seven hours of talk time, two more than the older phone, and it had no trouble lasting through a day of use that included talking, listening to music, surfing the Web and checking e-mail.

It is also zippier overall thanks to the Android 1.5 software, which T-Mobile began rolling out to G1 users as well in May.

Taking photos on the G1 using the first iteration of Android was often sluggish and painful, as you never knew when the shutter would finally click. It's faster on the myTouch, though still slower than it should be.

You can also take videos now, something I could do on the G1 before the software update with a less-than-impressive third-party application, and there's a quick link for budding auteurs to upload them to Google's video-sharing site YouTube.

One helpful new feature specific to the myTouch is the ability to...

Time Warner Cable Inc., the nation's second largest cable TV operator, is planning to launch a high-speed wireless Internet service in the fall with Clearwire Corp.