Saturday, February 20, 2010
10 Very Useful Google Services You Should Know
From Lost in Technology: In only a few years Google has become the king of the Web. It went from a college research project to the most popular search engine that rakes in billions of dollars every year. They’ve expanded to mobile, OSs and, in the past few days, promising the fastest broadband Internet to thousands of homes in the States...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Moto splits in two
From Fierce IPTV: Motorola's announcement this week that it would split two firms--one a mobile devices and home solutions group, the other an enterprise mobility venture--seemed to catch the telecom industry by surprise. That's a nifty trick, considering the announcement had been rumored and expected since last fall.
But, the overall reaction, mostly a mix of approval and confusion, with just a enough disappointment to spice things up, reflects that many Motorola observers had assumed a different outcome. Specifically, a good number of them had assumed that the company's set-top box unit (the "home" part of its existing Home and Networks Mobility unit) would be sold to a competitor or a private equity firm.
Instead, Motorola, under the split to be completed by early next year, is matching its STB solutions with its mobile phones products, which are looking somewhat revitalized by Android, and its cable modem offerings. Though the effort has confused some observers, it aligns various types of broadband consumer electronic devices under the same roof. It wasn't always the case, but increasingly all of these devices are moving both communications traffic and content traffic, and in some cases might being doing so between one another. They may even start using some of the same technologies. In the consumer devices firm, for example, you could see benefits such as mobile phone experts sharing Android knowledge with STB experts. Creating a consumer devices firm brings that part of Motorola into greater focus, an idea that brings the company closer to its roots and to an expectant future at the same time.
Dan's take: As mentioned in the article, Moto has revived it's sagging cell phone business by adopting Android as the operating system of choice. At the Mobile World Congress this week, Ericsson unveiled a remote that runs Android. Could Motorola be far behind with their own version?
For more:
Light Reading Cable has this report
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
What is 4G, anyway?
This is one of the best explanations of the new wireless technologoes I've seen. It explains in laymen's tems LTE, WiMAX, HSPA+ etc. and why you want it.
Gizmodo - Giz Explains: Why WiMax and LTE Wireless 4G Data Will Blow Your Mind
Reports of the death of the PSTN greatly exaggerated
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Enjoy my new video
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Clearwire In No Rush To Test "WiMax 2"
From Broadbandreports.com: According to sources at the IEEE, the 802.16m Mobile WiMax standard should be finalized sometime in the middle of this year. According to the WiMax forum, the technology can deliver 120 Mbps downstream and 60 Mbps upstream by using a 4X2 MIMO antenna configuration with a single 20 MHz TDD channel -- with even faster speeds possible using more sophisticated antenna configurations. However, according to Clearwire, the States' biggest Mobile WiMax carrier, they aren't in any hurry to test or deploy the technology, and company executives get vague when asked for a solid date: