Archive for November 20th, 2008
Converter Coupon Expired?
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Robert McDowell recently fielded questions from the public about the DTV transition in Philadelphia, including this one: “I thought I lost my converter coupons I received in the mail, but later found them in my desk drawer at work, the coupons had expired and I was told I could not get replacement, even though I told them I could send back the coupons I received. Is there a way to receive another coupon or am I just out of luck? Thanks ...
More Proof That Gadgets Are Good for You
See — as if we needed confirmation — gadgetry is good for you. Well, maybe I’m taking a small step here, but a new study from the MacArthur Foundation has found that all those hours that teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing. (And how to they get access to the Internet? Gadgets, of course!) “It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Miz...
Can Heidi Klum Save MediaFLO?
Today Qualcomm scored a huge coup for its MediaFLO mobile television service by winning the right to broadcast the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and to create a 27/7 channel devoted to the event. All MediaFLO subscribers will be able to watch the broadcast when it airs on Dec. 3. The fashion show pulled in a television audience last year of 6.5 million, exactly mirroring the number of people who are watching any form of mobile TV, which includes options other than MediaFLO. But as the F...
What’s a BlackBerry Without a Keyboard?
RIM’s recently released Blackberry Storm is a device that tries to outdo Apple’s iPhone by including a beefed-up OS, polishing up the interface and marrying it to a really fast 3G network (instead of AT&T’s pokey 3G network.) The device even has visual voice mail, and a cut-and-paste feature. And oh by the way, RIM got rid of the the keyboard and got itself a touch screen. Verizon seems to have orchestrated a nice launch and the early reviews give the Storm a thumbs up. If...
Ultra-wideband Players Get $20M to Merge
Today, Ultra-wideband chip makers Artimi and Staccato Communications announced $20 million in funding and a merger agreement, which seems like tying two leaky boats together, giving them some more gas and hoping they make it to shore. The combination of Artimi and Staccato brings together the two UWB companies that were rumored to be running out of cash (as most of the other players had received cash earlier this year). I have my doubts about the future of UWB, the high-speed personal area netw...
AT&T Controls the Future of Privacy — Seriously
I’ve spent the past few days pretty immersed in the SC 08 conference here in Austin, Texas, but I’m still embarrassed that I missed the formation of a new lobbying organization think tank called The Future of Privacy that’s being funded by AT&T. The group hopes to help policy makers and business leaders figure out how to manage online privacy. A big source of irony from the group, other than its purported focus on online privacy to benefit consumers and the industry alike,...
Event: Breakfast with Jeff Pulver and Friends in Minneapolis (today)
This morning I am in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and hosting another edition of Breakfast with Jeff Pulver (and Friends) at Sandy’s Place, at Best Buy, 7601 Penn Ave., Minneapolis, MN. Friends who are in Minneapolis are invited to join me at Best Buy HQ for breakfast, starting at 8am. Special thanks to Best Buy for being the sponsor of today’s breakfast. - - - Tags: breakfast, Personal Social Media Toolkit, Minneapolis, social media, facebook, Social Media Breakfast, Jeff Pulver ...
DISH Get’s DRM
So DISH Network keeps upgrading my DVR software without my asking. Tonight, I go to record a pay-per-view movie and the dialog box says, “You only have 24 hours to watch this movie before we remove it from your DVR.” Well, that stinks. We used to buy them and watch them at our leisure - usually within a week. DISH has increased prices across the board. They will lose AT&T as a distribution arm in February of 2009. Will AT&T take its 1M subs to DirecTV? DISH has been...
SC08 Video: Ciena Demo of 100-Gigabit Data Transfer
I’m a geek groupie when it comes to technology. I can’t actually produce any of these life-changing products, but I can recognize something cool when I see it. And the 100-Gigabit data transfer demo that Ciena was showing off at SC 08 in Austin, Texas, today was very cool. Unlike previous demonstrations, Ciena’s was a 100-Gigabit data transfer over a single channel, rather than one aggregated over multiple channels. The product isn’t available for commercial use yet (and...
Some More GMail Goodness
Of all the goodies that Google has rolled out over the few years, you could make a strong argument that GMail has done better and had more of an impact than anything else to come out of the Googleplex. After hitting the online e-mail scene at a time when Yahoo and Hotmail were well established, GMail has become one of the leading services, and led the way in pushing forward the envelope. Most notably was the decision right out of the gate to offer far more storage space than Yahoo or Hotmail. ...
Here Come The Crunchies (Again)
After a very successful debut last year, The Crunchies are returning to once again celebrate the best of entrepreneurship and new startups. With the economy being what it is, 2009 is going to be a tough year for everyone and I see events like The Crunchies as a big morale booster for those of us working in the trenches. The Crunchies are a joint effort by us, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch. More details will emerge in the coming days but for now, here are the rules and some f...
Vudu Does HD VOD Big Time
Vudu, a startup that sells and rents movies via its Internet-connected set-top box, has boosted High-Definition library to 1,100 on-demand titles – for now, outdistancing any cable operator’s HD video-on-demand service. To build what it claimed is the largest library of HD content available to consumers, Vudu added on average of 150 HD titles per week in October. The service requires a minimum 4-Mbps connection for instant playback of HD titles. Vudu is attempting to sell its $300...
SC08: The New Data Center Conference?
The folks in charge of the SC 08 conference being held in Austin, Texas, this week have trumpeted the phenomenal growth of the supercomputing show, with attendance up by almost 10 percent from the previous year, but I’m beginning to doubt that high-performance computing is driving this growth as much as the broad changes in the data center world. As Ori Aruj, CEO of switch chipmaker Dune Networks, told me when I asked why he was at the show, “This is no longer about high-performance...
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.