Archive for July 15th, 2008
How Realistic Is BT’s Fiber Broadband Plan?
Unless you’re using Enron math, BT’s new plan to connect 10 million homes — roughly 40 percent of the United Kingdom — with fiber networks at a cost of £1.5 billion doesn’t quite add up. At today’s conversion rate, that’s about $3 billion — or $300 to wire up each of these proposed 10 million homes. BT hopes this will help it stave off competition from rivals who have started to use their new backbones and the latest technology to eat into its br...
ACN IRIS 3000 Videophone & The State of the Videophone
I’ve come across the new ACN IRIS 3000 videophone a few times recently and thought I’d write about them. I’m a big fan of videophones even if there doesn’t seem to be any true adoption of industry standards that lets one videophone talk/video to another. Not to mention I reported first how Vonage’s OEM’ed videophone, VisiFone, from Viseon hit the scrap heap due to Viseon’s implosion. I was hoping to see Vonage’s VisiFone interoperate with Packet8...
Logitech Wireless Keyboard for Nintendo Wii
Logitech has announced a wireless keyboard for the Nintendo Wii console that enables users to chat online when playing games like “Animal Crossing.” The keyboard was unveiled during the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. Combine the Logitech Wireless Keyboard for Nintendo Wii with the new Wii MotionPlus more accurate motion sensor — or even the current Wii controller’s accelerometer technology – and who needs to type an emoticon such as “:(” when you...
Social Media Article in Unified Communications Connection News
I’ve been quite busy writing recently on a number of fronts, and this is one I think you’ll enjoy - not just for my thoughts, but all the other good content that’s there as well. A couple of months back, I was approached to contribute to Tech Target’s Ask the Expert series, and I’ve done a few of these for them. I’m actually doing a few more for them now, and will post about them in due course. Since then, they’ve bumped me up a bit and have also asked m...
In Technology Era, Rogue IT Threatens Governments
Today an employee of the San Francisco Department of Technology awaits his arraignment while information technology workers try valiantly to gain access to the new network of computers that keep the city humming. Terry Childs, a disgruntled city employee gave himself sole access to the city’s new fiber wide area network, and wouldn’t divulge his password to police even after being threatened with arrest. City officials and other IT administrators are still locked out, and are worrie...
iPhone Microsoft Exchange Email Problems
Paul Robichaux, is a Microsoft MVP, a Mac user since 1984, an iPhone user since July 8th of last year, and an Exchange admin since 1995. So he’s got the technical credentials to know what he’s talking about when he blasts the new iPhone’s issues with Microsoft Exchange integration. Here’s a teaser: I should point out that Exchange ActiveSync is a protocol that supports lots of different content types and protocol option. Apple, like most other EAS licensees, has impleme...
Sprint Bets Big on Super-fast Broadband
On the Internet, you can never be too fast or carry too much data, which is why Sprint is crowing about its plan to convert its core network to deliver data at 40 Gbps using the 40 Gigabit Ethernet technologies. The carrier will use Cisco and Ciena gear to deliver 40 Gig E Gbps over its existing fiber network worldwide. To help put the speeds in context, a 40 Gig E backbone will be able to carry 3.2 terabits of data per second. That’s a lot of cloud services or HD video via iTunes, but In...
Blu-ray Buy 2 DVDs, Get 1 Free Promotion
Cool Blue-ray promotion from Amazon I thought I’d share. Buy 2 Blu-ray DVDs get 1 DVD free. Sweet! I keep threatening to buy a Blu-ray player, specifically a Sony PS3, but I just can’t seem to pull the trigger. Could have something to do with the $1500 Jeep transmission repair. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-siz...
Fact-Check Follies
Dave Farber published a link to factcheck.org on his IP list. Looks like a lot of good stuff there on political lies, etc., but the one fascinating “fact” article that got my attention said that trains can move 438 tons one mile on a gallon of fuel. I dug into it, and it came up short. Factcheck documented the 438 ton-miles per gallon claim nicely. So hey, it’s a fact. But then they try to frame this fact in the context of railroads versus trucks, and they completely fail to a...
The iPhone Line Book Club
While there are plenty of iPhone line-standers poking at a variety of digital devices to pass the hours, a number of iWaiters are working on their summer reading lists with some books. You remember books, right? Square-ish things made of dead trees with words (often written by dead people) in them? Steve Jobs doesn’t seem to have much faith in books. He told the NYTimes earlier this year: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t r...
Spreed for Speed
Whenever I think of speed-reading, memories of late-night television info-mercials come to mind with promises of being able to read Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in hours. This perception will be one of the major challenges facing Toronto-based Spreed, which just launched a mobile application called Spreed News that increases how fast you can read content on wireless devices such as the iPhone. Spreed’s approach is it organizes words in groupings so they can be quickly and, ...
Delver: A New Social Search Engine Launches
Give Delver a try. According to their website: Delver is an intelligent social search engine that enables you to find, experience and benefit from the wealth of information created and referenced by your social world. Their mission is: …to empower you to easily discover and benefit from the collective wisdom of your social world. Your circle of friends and extended network are increasingly creating and sharing useful information and media online through: blogs, videos, reviews, artic...
Service Provider Views - VoIP in the Tier 2/3 Market
My latest Service Provider Views column is running now on TMCnet. It’s the first segment of a two part Q&A interview with John Macario, and our focus is on the Tier 2/Tier 3 carrier market. His firm, Savatar, provides some leading edge research on the SMB market, and he shares his insights on how these carriers are going to market with both their residential and SMB customers. Lots to talk about - that’s why it’s a two part interview. You can read Part 1 here, and we’...
A Life in Transition: Dont Rush Your Destination
There will be times in our lives when we will find ourselves in between the things we used to do and the things we will be doing. Sometimes this happens because we have a need for a change and we force the change onto ourselves. And sometimes this happens because of circumstances outside of our own control. These are the moments in our lives where we are given another chance to look back at the person we have become, the paths that we have traveled, take inventory of who we are and who we may wa...
Utah actor arrested in laptop theft; caught answering Skype video call
This is for IPEVO’s Caroline Andreolle who chatted: "love the law and order post!!! can’t wait to have one where they’re like… wheeler? the perp’s on skype right now!!" Caroline, I’m not making this up. In today’s news… Michael Birkeland, a comedic actor and generally well-liked guy, was arrested Friday for stealing a laptop from Utah Valley University. The instructor Skyped his stolen laptop, the MacBook Pro answered with video,...
Real World of Warcraft: Is Offline Part of The Plan?
Dense games are fun games. Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game developers give solo players things to do, but for a game to really succeed players need people to play with. If player density isn’t high enough, you have to condense things, as once-great FPS/MMO Planetside did earlier this year. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is a juggernaut with 10 million players scattered across hundreds of servers — 226 copies of Azeroth in the US alone — and a relatively low churn rate...
How iPhone Could Resurrect Wireless Chip Makers
The iPhones have been unboxed and torn down, so now it’s the Wall Street watchers’ turn to tally up who won and who lost among the companies that provide chips for the envy-inducing device. The big winner is Infineon with four chips, including GPS and 3G radio. Little-known chip firm TriQuint also won, with three power amplifiers inside the phone. Wi-Fi was once again provided by Marvell, but Broadcom scored low, with only a touchscreen controller and no GPS (which we had been exp...
The Amazing Josh Hamilton
Disclaimer: This is not a post about technology. Instead, it’s a post about one of the most inspiring stories around; the amazing comeback of baseball player Josh Hamilton, who set a record yesterday when he hit a staggering 28 home runs during the all-star game home run derby. In and of itself, it’s a tremendous feat but it’s even more amazing when you consider Hamilton spent three years out of baseball while battling two terrifying demons: alcohol and drug addiction. At 19, ...
Palm 800w — Life Beyond Apple, BlackBerry
Palm keeps turning out really solid products, but never seems to be able to recapture the magic of the introduction of the first Palm Pilot. Now, here’s a smart fruit phone (Apple, BlackBerry — get it?) alternative for you — the Palm 800w for Sprint. Here’s what CNet had to say about it: The good: The Palm Treo 800w brings the addition of Wi-Fi and GPS. The Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone also offers EV-DO Rev. A support; a higher resolution touch screen; a slimmer design; ...
Guns N’ Roses Back on Rock Band
Not to be outdone by the earlier American incarnation of the Stones, now Guns N’ Roses is getting their game on with a new song on Rock Band 2. Now isn’t it a bit ironic that Slash’s “old band” is taking on Guitar Hero, which features the top hatted guitar slasher on its cool video game? But it also shows us how much the music business has changed when a video game will debut a song — can ya believe it? Would GNR been a better choice than Aerosmith for Guitar...
Subscribes
Archives
-
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- November 1999
- January 1970
Sipy...
-
News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.