I didn't even have to click the link to know this was a Ben Charney article. He's by far the worst reporter at CNET. 90% of his articles are chock-full of innaccuracies and false conclusions. This is just classic Charney reporting. It's amazing he still has a job - he gives CNET such a bad name.
At 3GSM this year in Cannes, I was briefed by a company called Kineto. Motorola is actually working on several different wi-fi/cell phone technologies, and Kineto's technology is one of them.
Personally, I think it'd be cool just to have a cell phone that could use my own WiFi at home and be cellular when I'm out in the rest of the world.
That's exactly what Kineto's technology is designed to do. Or, for business accounts, it would use your business' WiFi when workers are in the office.
Hopefully this would finally be a way to escape the "at-home dead zone" when I try and use my mobile down in the basement and I can get rid of that silly land-line once and for all!
That's exactly the point of Kineto's technology.
This could seriously hurt cell phone service providers.
Hardly. In fact, some of them are preparing to offer this service themselves!
The "at-home dead zone" is a top complaint among cellular customers. Until now, the solution has been building new towers near people's homes, which, as you get more rural, is increasingly expensive, since they know they are building towers that will always be underutilzied. It's basically a last-mile problem.
For people who can already get broadband at home, this is an elegant and cost-effective soltuon. Carriers love it, because it means less complaints about coverage at home, fewer towers they have to build in rural areas, and, in more urban areas, less congestion on their crowded networks.
This is already in real-world trials - it works. You should see carriers launching this commercially next year with bundled hardware - either Wi-Fi or long-range Bluetooth - and service plans that offer unlimited at-home minutes for very little money.
My proposed solution is for everyone to behave suspiciously. This will increase the noise level and reduce the benefit of investigations like this.
Sign books about explosives out of the library. Go around calculating the heights of buildings. Do stuff that's perfectly 100% legal, but still suspicious.
Funny? Funny?? Who in their right mind would mod this as funny? F--k you. And not because I disagree, but because my life quite literally depends on it.
"... reduce the benefit of investigations..."
Believe me, I do take privacy seriously, but this person is promoting intentionally and actively hampering the ability of the FBI to find terrorists. You are actually saying that we should all work ACTIVELY to help those with ill intent get away with their VERY deadly deeds.
How can you possibly defend such a position? How can the moderator possibly defend a "Funny" rating?? This not funny; this my mortality you're joking about.
I am a liberal, and I can't stand Bush, but I can't possibly fathom your stance, (poster or moderator,) which I feel actively encourages terrorism.
It's not GPS but rather triangulation of the phone from the cell towers.
Not true. All current CDMA phones sold in the U.S. (including all Verizon and Sprint phones,) have A-GPS, which stands for Assisted GPS. In most cases it's gpsOne technology that Qualcomm builds into all its newer CDMA chipsets.
It requires help from the network, but the phone DOES receive raw readings directly from the GPS satellites.
The "assisted" part is a location server on the network that tells the phone which satellites to look for, (based on the tower the phone is near and a database of GPS satellite orbits,) and the server also processes the readings into a location.
However, that's not what happens in the case of this "soda can phone". It's GSM, so it's either using tower triangulation (U-TDOA), or it could actually have a true GPS chip in it. Motorola's new WCDMA (3G) phones have this type of chip as well.
It's called SyncML - it's XML-based, and it does exactly what you want. It's even wireless and Internet-enabled. Here's one company offering SyncML services:
If I voluntarily hand over my real contact information (customer-initiated opt-in) to a business, I would EXPECT them to notify me of product recalls, regardless of their privacy policy. I would be upset if they didn't.
Things aren't recalled just because they don't work - they are recalled for safety reasons. Recalls are always bad publicity, so no cpmpany in their right mind does one unless they are directed by the government, or feel they will be soon.
This phone only supports WCDMA 2100, GSM 900, and GSM 1800. It does NOT support either North American frequency - 850 or 1900. So this phone is NOT compatible with any North American cellular networks. It's strictly a European/Asian 3G phone.
This is NOT intended to be a converged device as far as replacing any kind of PDA. Nokia does have a smartphone OS for such converged devices - Series 60 - but this phone uses an enhanced version of Nokia's Series 40 platform, which is NOT a smartphone OS. It supports Java, but that's it - nothing too fancy.
All of the "GPS-enabled" US cell phones people have mentioned ARE capable of the type of service launched in Japan. It's just that the U.S. carriers haven't launched the services yet.
If you go into the Settings menu on any recent Sprint or Verizon phone, there's an option for "Location". If you turn it "off", it will tell you that your location is still broadcasted for 911 calls. If you turn it "on", your location is available to your carrier (Sprint or Verizon) at all times, and any other companies you have given permission to (via the service that doesn't exist yet).
The point is - the phone support is here. The network support is also implemented already - it's required by law for E-911. The only piece missing at this point are the "location servers" that tie in with the wireless web, which is where it actually becomes useful.
AT&T Wireless has actually launched this type of service, ("Find Friends" etc.,) but they're not using GPS technology, and they haven't implemented their equivalent yet. For now it only knows which tower you are near, which only gives it accuracy of a few miles (as opposed to 50 meters with GPS).
Although many will doubtless claim this is insignificant to MS - the fact they're further delayed in getting their own hardware out there will do them serious damage in the mobile device arena.
Not really. The Sendo device was crap anyway compared to the HTC device, which is now SHIPPING in Europe as the Orange "SPV". The truth is, before they met Microsoft, Sendo made low-end super-budget phones. They were in over their heads. HTC, meanwhile, has a long history of making great Microsoft hardware, including the iPAQ Pocket PCs.
Contrast this with MS, who have no platform
uh... Windows Powered Smartphone IS the platform. As I mentioned, it's shipping.
no 3rd party developers (as far as I know),
Windows Powered Smartphone is Windows CE-based, and very closely related to Pocket PC 2002. There are over 10,000 Pocket PC apps out there already - most of which could be ported to Smartphone in less than a day. That gives them a huge developer base.
and very little to offer over the established brands.
Probably not so much here, but to many people, Microsoft is a good brand. But that's not really the point of Windows Powered Smartphone. The idea is that Microsoft provides the OS, companies like HTC and Samsung provide the hardware, and the devices are actually carrier-branded. So the main brand on such a device would be "Cingular" or "AT&T", not "Sendo" or "HTC".
No, quite the opposite. LEPs/OLEDs are an emissive technology - they simply emit light, so they work just like tiny, plastic light bulbs. Power consumed is relative only to brightness.
As for people concerned about iMoD power consumption, check the Benefits part of the web site. Holding a still image, they consume almost no power - a tiny fraction (1/10 or less) of what a reflective LCD does. Doing full-motion video, they still consume 1/3 - 1/4 that of a reflective color LCD. (Reflective color LCDs are used in some PDAs and phones - very different from desktop or laptop LCDs.) This is comparing them with no backlights (sidelights, actually), so it is apples-to-apples.
And since iMoD is 3x brighter, (3x more reflective, actually,) it can be used in much darker environments with no back/side-lighting, which has obvious power benefits for mobile devices. LEPs/OLEDs, meanwhile, don't reflect light at all - they only emit light - so they inherently use many, many times more power.
I've thought about this before - in relation to antigravity. Think about all that would happen if someone announced tomorrow that they had discovered simple, cheap, safe antigravity technology - such that anyone could afford a personal vehicle that could hover and move in any direction, and "air barges" that could replace trucking.
- Millions of jobs would be lost in construction - we wouldn't need roads anymore.
- All fences would suddenly be useless. Anyone could access any piece of land anywhere in the world easily. People would have to deploy their own warning and air-defense systems to keep people off their property. Anything you don't want stolen would now have to be fully enclosed. A lot of land owners would not be happy.
- All upper-story windows, sylights, balconies, and rooftops would have to be secured. Not a huge deal, but it would change some things.
Perhaps the gov't could require a GPS system that would restrict the vehicles to designated "air roadspace", but of course then criminals would just use black-market vehicles that could go anywhere.
If the world didn't have some serious warning, and a few years to prepare, thieves would just have a field day. It would be anarchy.
It is not pure hype. It is technically a 3G standard, but just barely. Verizon readily admits that 144k is a peak "burst" speed, and they are quick to point out that users should expect 40-60k average (not 20-30k - that's more like GPRS). Sprint claims their tests with the same technology average 60-70k.
If people do not believe they are getting an education at Drexel which is commensurate to the very high tuition, why do they continue to attend? With that amount of money being spent, and the quote that financial aid is poor, I imagine students should be able to afford a different school.
You are very, very wrong, sir. Most students at Drexel come here, and stay, for one reason - Co-Op. At Drexel, the typical schedule includes three six-month paid internships in your field of study. This streches college to five years - but is well worth it when you graduate with 3 jobs, in your field, on your resume. No one at Drexel ever has to worry about getting a job when they graduate. Ever. Even in this economy.
However, Drexel does have a terrible top administration, that does care more about profit than their studentsor academic principles.
But I don't agree with arguments that a school should not be allowed to buy up domain names in an attempt to keep the most obvious avenues of criticism closed.
I disagree. Drexel, in this block of 300+ domain names, bought drexelsucks.com. IMHO, their only reason to aquire it pre-emptively, is to block student free speech.
(I currently provide a non-Drexel-controlled outlet for Free Speech at THESHAFT.ORG.)
Unfortunately, I don't have the list handy, (it was once published in our student newspaper,) but most of the domains captured were clear cases of cyber-squatting.
Some had legitimate potential uses, but most were clearly intended to prevent scenarios such as the infamous "drexel.com fiasco", (as it's known to University administration,) where a student-run website featured a bulletin board containing mostly anti-Drexel and vulgar comments.
But I am a Drexel student, and I have created a web site that addresses this issue, along with all of the other ways in which Drexel screws over its own students, parents, and faculty:
I am a student at Drexel, and the domain issue is just one the MANY ways the University screws over its students. We call it The Drexel Shaft.
Luckily, when Drexel bought all those domain names, they missed THESHAFT.COM and THESHAFT.ORG, which I quickly snapped up.
THESHAFT.ORG is now site dedicated to free speech about the actions of the Drexel administration and the many ways in which it screws its own students, parents, and faculty.
Well, for Drexel at least, what you say does not necesarily apply. Drexel is a private school. They bought Drexel.com for two reasons:
1. Previously, the site included a message board with a lot of students engaged in straight-out Drexel-bashing. Obviously, Drexel was not happy about this. I can tell you from direct experience that many Drexel administrators browsed the site daily, and got more enraged by the hour....
2. On the other hand, they supposedly wanted to start a for-profit distance-learning program, and they wanted to use the drexel.com domain name.
The first reason is bullshit, the second is legitimate, IMHO.
I have no idea what the ultimate motivation was, but I can tell you that the student who owned drexel.com now has a free ride - full tuition - that's the deal he got in exchange for drexel.com. Man, I wish I could get that for a domain I owned...
Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless are currently in a race to roll out 3G here in the USA by the end of this year. They are both using cdma2000, a 3G stadard which requires no additional spectrum.
I recommend Timbuktu. The enterprise version has extensive security policy management, and a private key system to ensure security over untrusted networks.
Four years ago, I worked at a helpdesk where we rolled out Timbuktu, (like PCAnywhere, but seamlessly cross-platform Mac and PC,) to the whole company. It worked beautifully and resulted in huge increases in employee satisfaction with IT, plus huge time savings on both ends. And that was with only one 70-person office.
As the above poster mentioned, the best solution turned out to be combined phone and remote support. A customer would call, and we'd connect to their machine. We would have them exmplain the problem and show us what they were doing first. If we could just guide and coach them over the phone and watch while they performed the solution, that was always preferable. We only took control of their machine if the solution was complex and not something they would ever need to do themselves.
(BTW, if you have multiple offices, and long-distrance calls are an issue, I believe Timbuktu can even set up IP voice connections to accompany remote connections.)
Just being able to watch their screen passively eliminated all of the communication problems that normally make phone support so difficult, and eliminated people sitting idle waiting for a techie to come to their desk. This type of combination support works better than anything else I've seen.
Security was a big issue with the company, but Timbuktu's extensive security policy management system gave us the flexibility we needed to satisfy our CEO's paranoid fears about being spyed on. Of course, employees had to give permission before we could connect to their machine.
I go to Drexel University, and there are a lot of other places / institutions with "drexel" in the name. Searching for "drexel" turned up nothing. theindex.com needs some work...
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't even have to click the link to know this was a Ben Charney article. He's by far the worst reporter at CNET. 90% of his articles are chock-full of innaccuracies and false conclusions. This is just classic Charney reporting. It's amazing he still has a job - he gives CNET such a bad name.
At 3GSM this year in Cannes, I was briefed by a company called Kineto. Motorola is actually working on several different wi-fi/cell phone technologies, and Kineto's technology is one of them.
Personally, I think it'd be cool just to have a cell phone that could use my own WiFi at home and be cellular when I'm out in the rest of the world.
That's exactly what Kineto's technology is designed to do. Or, for business accounts, it would use your business' WiFi when workers are in the office.
Hopefully this would finally be a way to escape the "at-home dead zone" when I try and use my mobile down in the basement and I can get rid of that silly land-line once and for all!
That's exactly the point of Kineto's technology.
This could seriously hurt cell phone service providers.
Hardly. In fact, some of them are preparing to offer this service themselves!
The "at-home dead zone" is a top complaint among cellular customers. Until now, the solution has been building new towers near people's homes, which, as you get more rural, is increasingly expensive, since they know they are building towers that will always be underutilzied. It's basically a last-mile problem.
For people who can already get broadband at home, this is an elegant and cost-effective soltuon. Carriers love it, because it means less complaints about coverage at home, fewer towers they have to build in rural areas, and, in more urban areas, less congestion on their crowded networks.
This is already in real-world trials - it works. You should see carriers launching this commercially next year with bundled hardware - either Wi-Fi or long-range Bluetooth - and service plans that offer unlimited at-home minutes for very little money.
...this my mortality you're joking about. ...
should be:
this is my mortality you're joking about.
Sorry...
My proposed solution is for everyone to behave suspiciously. This will increase the noise level and reduce the benefit of investigations like this.
Sign books about explosives out of the library. Go around calculating the heights of buildings. Do stuff that's perfectly 100% legal, but still suspicious.
Funny? Funny?? Who in their right mind would mod this as funny? F--k you. And not because I disagree, but because my life quite literally depends on it.
"... reduce the benefit of investigations..."
Believe me, I do take privacy seriously, but this person is promoting intentionally and actively hampering the ability of the FBI to find terrorists. You are actually saying that we should all work ACTIVELY to help those with ill intent get away with their VERY deadly deeds.
How can you possibly defend such a position? How can the moderator possibly defend a "Funny" rating?? This not funny; this my mortality you're joking about.
I am a liberal, and I can't stand Bush, but I can't possibly fathom your stance, (poster or moderator,) which I feel actively encourages terrorism.
Not true. All current CDMA phones sold in the U.S. (including all Verizon and Sprint phones,) have A-GPS, which stands for Assisted GPS. In most cases it's gpsOne technology that Qualcomm builds into all its newer CDMA chipsets.
It requires help from the network, but the phone DOES receive raw readings directly from the GPS satellites.
The "assisted" part is a location server on the network that tells the phone which satellites to look for, (based on the tower the phone is near and a database of GPS satellite orbits,) and the server also processes the readings into a location.
However, that's not what happens in the case of this "soda can phone". It's GSM, so it's either using tower triangulation (U-TDOA), or it could actually have a true GPS chip in it. Motorola's new WCDMA (3G) phones have this type of chip as well.
It's called SyncML - it's XML-based, and it does exactly what you want. It's even wireless and Internet-enabled. Here's one company offering SyncML services:
http://www.mightyphone.com/
If I voluntarily hand over my real contact information (customer-initiated opt-in) to a business, I would EXPECT them to notify me of product recalls, regardless of their privacy policy. I would be upset if they didn't.
Things aren't recalled just because they don't work - they are recalled for safety reasons. Recalls are always bad publicity, so no cpmpany in their right mind does one unless they are directed by the government, or feel they will be soon.
Minor detail: this phone will only work on Korean wireless networks.
All of the "GPS-enabled" US cell phones people have mentioned ARE capable of the type of service launched in Japan. It's just that the U.S. carriers haven't launched the services yet.
If you go into the Settings menu on any recent Sprint or Verizon phone, there's an option for "Location". If you turn it "off", it will tell you that your location is still broadcasted for 911 calls. If you turn it "on", your location is available to your carrier (Sprint or Verizon) at all times, and any other companies you have given permission to (via the service that doesn't exist yet).
The point is - the phone support is here. The network support is also implemented already - it's required by law for E-911. The only piece missing at this point are the "location servers" that tie in with the wireless web, which is where it actually becomes useful.
AT&T Wireless has actually launched this type of service, ("Find Friends" etc.,) but they're not using GPS technology, and they haven't implemented their equivalent yet. For now it only knows which tower you are near, which only gives it accuracy of a few miles (as opposed to 50 meters with GPS).
Although many will doubtless claim this is insignificant to MS - the fact they're further delayed in getting their own hardware out there will do them serious damage in the mobile device arena.
Not really. The Sendo device was crap anyway compared to the HTC device, which is now SHIPPING in Europe as the Orange "SPV". The truth is, before they met Microsoft, Sendo made low-end super-budget phones. They were in over their heads. HTC, meanwhile, has a long history of making great Microsoft hardware, including the iPAQ Pocket PCs.
Contrast this with MS, who have no platform
uh... Windows Powered Smartphone IS the platform. As I mentioned, it's shipping.
no 3rd party developers (as far as I know),
Windows Powered Smartphone is Windows CE-based, and very closely related to Pocket PC 2002. There are over 10,000 Pocket PC apps out there already - most of which could be ported to Smartphone in less than a day. That gives them a huge developer base.
and very little to offer over the established brands.
Probably not so much here, but to many people, Microsoft is a good brand. But that's not really the point of Windows Powered Smartphone. The idea is that Microsoft provides the OS, companies like HTC and Samsung provide the hardware, and the devices are actually carrier-branded. So the main brand on such a device would be "Cingular" or "AT&T", not "Sendo" or "HTC".
No, quite the opposite. LEPs/OLEDs are an emissive technology - they simply emit light, so they work just like tiny, plastic light bulbs. Power consumed is relative only to brightness.
As for people concerned about iMoD power consumption, check the Benefits part of the web site. Holding a still image, they consume almost no power - a tiny fraction (1/10 or less) of what a reflective LCD does. Doing full-motion video, they still consume 1/3 - 1/4 that of a reflective color LCD. (Reflective color LCDs are used in some PDAs and phones - very different from desktop or laptop LCDs.) This is comparing them with no backlights (sidelights, actually), so it is apples-to-apples.
And since iMoD is 3x brighter, (3x more reflective, actually,) it can be used in much darker environments with no back/side-lighting, which has obvious power benefits for mobile devices. LEPs/OLEDs, meanwhile, don't reflect light at all - they only emit light - so they inherently use many, many times more power.
I've thought about this before - in relation to antigravity. Think about all that would happen if someone announced tomorrow that they had discovered simple, cheap, safe antigravity technology - such that anyone could afford a personal vehicle that could hover and move in any direction, and "air barges" that could replace trucking.
- Millions of jobs would be lost in construction - we wouldn't need roads anymore.
- All fences would suddenly be useless. Anyone could access any piece of land anywhere in the world easily. People would have to deploy their own warning and air-defense systems to keep people off their property. Anything you don't want stolen would now have to be fully enclosed. A lot of land owners would not be happy.
- All upper-story windows, sylights, balconies, and rooftops would have to be secured. Not a huge deal, but it would change some things.
Perhaps the gov't could require a GPS system that would restrict the vehicles to designated "air roadspace", but of course then criminals would just use black-market vehicles that could go anywhere.
If the world didn't have some serious warning, and a few years to prepare, thieves would just have a field day. It would be anarchy.
Relevant links:
http://news.verizonwireless.com/
http://www.verizonwireless.com/express_network/
It is not pure hype. It is technically a 3G standard, but just barely. Verizon readily admits that 144k is a peak "burst" speed, and they are quick to point out that users should expect 40-60k average (not 20-30k - that's more like GPRS). Sprint claims their tests with the same technology average 60-70k.
In response to:
If people do not believe they are getting an education at Drexel which is commensurate to the very high tuition, why do they continue to attend? With that amount of money being spent, and the quote that financial aid is poor, I imagine students should be able to afford a different school.
You are very, very wrong, sir. Most students at Drexel come here, and stay, for one reason - Co-Op. At Drexel, the typical schedule includes three six-month paid internships in your field of study. This streches college to five years - but is well worth it when you graduate with 3 jobs, in your field, on your resume. No one at Drexel ever has to worry about getting a job when they graduate. Ever. Even in this economy.
However, Drexel does have a terrible top administration, that does care more about profit than their studentsor academic principles.
But I don't agree with arguments that a school should not be allowed to buy up domain names in an attempt to keep the most obvious avenues of criticism closed.
I disagree. Drexel, in this block of 300+ domain names, bought drexelsucks.com. IMHO, their only reason to aquire it pre-emptively, is to block student free speech.
(I currently provide a non-Drexel-controlled outlet for Free Speech at THESHAFT.ORG.)
Unfortunately, I don't have the list handy, (it was once published in our student newspaper,) but most of the domains captured were clear cases of cyber-squatting.
Some had legitimate potential uses, but most were clearly intended to prevent scenarios such as the infamous "drexel.com fiasco", (as it's known to University administration,) where a student-run website featured a bulletin board containing mostly anti-Drexel and vulgar comments.
But I am a Drexel student, and I have created a web site that addresses this issue, along with all of the other ways in which Drexel screws over its own students, parents, and faculty:
THESHAFT.ORG
I am a student at Drexel, and the domain issue is just one the MANY ways the University screws over its students. We call it The Drexel Shaft.
Luckily, when Drexel bought all those domain names, they missed THESHAFT.COM and THESHAFT.ORG, which I quickly snapped up.
THESHAFT.ORG is now site dedicated to free speech about the actions of the Drexel administration and the many ways in which it screws its own students, parents, and faculty.
That's why Smart Students take a domain that doesn't have "Drexel" in the name...
You want: THESHAFT.ORG ...for all your Drexel University free-speech needs!
No, no - wrong site. I am a Drexel student, and I have created a site that specifically addresses the Drexel Shaft...
You want: THESHAFT.ORG
(I'm a Drexel student.)
Well, for Drexel at least, what you say does not necesarily apply. Drexel is a private school. They bought Drexel.com for two reasons:
1. Previously, the site included a message board with a lot of students engaged in straight-out Drexel-bashing. Obviously, Drexel was not happy about this. I can tell you from direct experience that many Drexel administrators browsed the site daily, and got more enraged by the hour....
2. On the other hand, they supposedly wanted to start a for-profit distance-learning program, and they wanted to use the drexel.com domain name.
The first reason is bullshit, the second is legitimate, IMHO.
I have no idea what the ultimate motivation was, but I can tell you that the student who owned drexel.com now has a free ride - full tuition - that's the deal he got in exchange for drexel.com. Man, I wish I could get that for a domain I owned...
Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless are currently in a race to roll out 3G here in the USA by the end of this year. They are both using cdma2000, a 3G stadard which requires no additional spectrum.
Sprint PCS 3G FAQ
Verizon Wireless Press Release
I recommend Timbuktu. The enterprise version has extensive security policy management, and a private key system to ensure security over untrusted networks.
Four years ago, I worked at a helpdesk where we rolled out Timbuktu, (like PCAnywhere, but seamlessly cross-platform Mac and PC,) to the whole company. It worked beautifully and resulted in huge increases in employee satisfaction with IT, plus huge time savings on both ends. And that was with only one 70-person office.
As the above poster mentioned, the best solution turned out to be combined phone and remote support. A customer would call, and we'd connect to their machine. We would have them exmplain the problem and show us what they were doing first. If we could just guide and coach them over the phone and watch while they performed the solution, that was always preferable. We only took control of their machine if the solution was complex and not something they would ever need to do themselves.
(BTW, if you have multiple offices, and long-distrance calls are an issue, I believe Timbuktu can even set up IP voice connections to accompany remote connections.)
Just being able to watch their screen passively eliminated all of the communication problems that normally make phone support so difficult, and eliminated people sitting idle waiting for a techie to come to their desk. This type of combination support works better than anything else I've seen.
Security was a big issue with the company, but Timbuktu's extensive security policy management system gave us the flexibility we needed to satisfy our CEO's paranoid fears about being spyed on. Of course, employees had to give permission before we could connect to their machine.
This is old news. I can't recall where I read it first exactly, but it was probably here at The Standard, where it appeared almost a month ago.
I go to Drexel University, and there are a lot of other places / institutions with "drexel" in the name. Searching for "drexel" turned up nothing. theindex.com needs some work...