2004 October

There is nothing quite as irritating as getting someplace with a Wi-Fi hot spot only to discover that the hot spot is not really so hot. I don’t know about where you live, but most place that I have visited here in my own town offer pretty lousy Wi-Fi.
After talking to other people about this, […]

Now this is a mouse with a full time job! The Stowaway® Travel Mouse is said to work both with your PDA and with your PC as well. Since the mouse is a Bluetooth mouse, it will basically work as an input device for anything that is Bluetooth enabled.
Would I buy one? Perhaps, it […]

Remember those Nextel phones that you can press a button to use like a walkie-talkie? Well it looks as if Nokia has the same idea and wants to take it up a notch. Nokia’s Push to Talk over Cellular (PoC) service is going to be available in Europe here in the near future.
This is […]

The Audia-x FM Transmitter looks a lot like a little portable audio player of sorts. In reality though, it is actually a transmitter instead. The overall concept is that you can play your favorite tunes off of this device over your speakers using the FM band.
Sounds new and exciting, but it actually is just a […]

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Federal Communications Commission gave its approval Tuesday to Cingular Wireless LLC’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc., completing the federal regulatory blessing necessary for creation of the country’s largest cell phone company. The move follows Monday’s announcement that Justice Department antitrust regulators approved the deal. Both agencies attached conditions […]

Personally, I believe that the Pentagon City mall has the right idea by offering its patrons full access to Wi-Fi throughout the mall’s common areas. It shows that more and more consumer stops are finally getting a clue.
People like to be where the Wi-Fi is. Not just for their notebook PCs, but also for their […]

Obviously, Apple was the last to the party with a color screen, but now that they’ve emphasized photos over video, you can bet everyone else will, too. Case in point: Gateway’s new MP3 Photo Jukebox, a smart-looking 4GB hard disk-based player (no 5GB?) with a 1.6-inch color display. The highlight features look very nice: MP3, […]

Gnomie Sven writes:
I’ve bounced all over the cellular network going from analog (remember that?)
to TDMA, to GSM, and now to CDMA. While GSM
sounds the best (landline quality), it’s a weak signal that gives you lots
of dead-zones if you’re not in a metro area. Its data-only frequency, GPRS, suffers the
same fate if not worse. […]

EB Games will be offering a unique game buying service in select stores beginning in December of this year. They will be putting Wireless Game Portals into 100 retail stores in the US where consumers can buy and install popular game titles directly onto their handheld. The service will support many devices, including Windows Mobile […]

This morning Kyocera Corp. announced that several models of their cell phones had batteries that could explode. THEIR MESSAGE IS: STOP USING THESE PHONES IMMEDIATELY!!!
The models involved (as far as has been announced) are: the 3200 series, The Blade, The Rave, The Slider, and The Phantom.
These models may have batteries that were counterfeit and supplied […]

The article from the Seattle P.I. brings up a great point that Pandas do not really have a need for Wi-Fi. This is no secret, but the people that take care of them might benefit from this technology.
Giving the researchers the ability to communicate, keep track of each other, plus a whole lot of other […]

Gnomie Sven writes:
Last week, you probably saw the posting on WiMax entitled WiMax, now with Rogaine for
hair growth! Basically, it said that WiMax (also known numerically as
802.16) has no chance and that Intel was trying to pull a fast one all of us
with its release of it “under our noses…”

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, Taipei, Taiwan (Oct. 25, 2004) - The Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group (EBL-WG) today announced a major milestone for its low power display panel initiative, confirming an average annual shipment of more than 6 million low power 12.1/14.1/15.0 XGA display panels at 3 watts or less, about 12 percent of […]

“Mobile search gained another convert as Yahoo Inc. on Wednesday extended Web, local and image search to wireless devices.
“Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo joins archrival Google Inc. in the mobile search space, though the two companies so far have taken different approaches. Google earlier this month launched a beta of Google SMS, which lets users conduct […]

The Director of Technology of the Mobility Division for Microsoft (whew, what a title), Mike Wehrs, spoke at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2004 conference recently and outlined Microsoft’s strategy for mobile devices. A lot of new information was given and I have outlined the highlights here:

The Apple iPod started it and the phenomenon of putting hard drives into personal gadgets is getting ready to heat up. Audio players paved the way and the appearance of numerous Personal Media Centers for viewing video on the go have helped consumers realize how useful having gigabytes of storage on their gadgets can […]

Don’t freak out folks, I am not insinuating that there are going to be armies of Wi-Fi enabled librarian-bots roaming the streets collecting overdue books from hapless children. That would be sort of cool, but that is not what I am getting at with this post.
No, instead I am speaking of a trial by fire […]

Right off the bat, public Wi-Fi being offered for free would be great. That is until the city gets the bill, that is. One possible solution is to combine a public/private endeavor to help offset the huge public costs involved with setting up a citywide Wi-Fi network.
I think having private funding would help tremendously. However, […]

The ultimate audio Bible - Read and listen to the Bible on your iPod! Now you can take God’s Word with you anywhere you go. Using iPod’s ‘Notes’ feature, you can read and hear the Bible on your iPod. Each book is logically organized so finding the chapter you want is a breeze. The audio […]

Panasonic Mobile Communications is unveiling its first Wideband Code Division Multiple Access cell phone for the international market, the company says.
A prototype of the handset, called the Z800, was on show at the PT/Expo Comm China 2004 telecommunications exhibition in Beijing, according to a company statement. Launch plans for the handset were not announced.
Panasonic Mobile […]