Gigabit Wireless

Gigabit Wireless in LA

Posted by samc on September 11th, 2007

NextPhase Wireless, a next-generation wireless connectivity provider, today announced that it intends to begin offering select NextPhase customers in Los Angeles with a specialized wireless services plan providing for high capacity wireless broadband connectivity at speeds of up to one Gigabyte per second (the equivalent of 647 T1 lines or 1,000 DSL connections) using GigaBeam’s “wireless fiber optics”.

“Operating in the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz radio spectrum bands, GigaBeam’s technology provides the bandwidth normally associated with terrestrial fiber, with the benefits of wireless technologies, including faster deployment, significantly lower cost of ownership and scalability,” stated Robert Ford, Chief Executive Officer of NextPhase.

NextPhase anticipates that the initial wireless fiber deployment will be completed within 90-120 days.

“Following our planned deployment of advanced wireless fiber technology throughout the greater Los Angeles area, we will then replicate this in our other key service regions, with initial focus in California, Georgia, Florida, Nevada and New Jersey,” stated Tom Hemingway, Chairman and COO of NextPhase Wireless.

NextPhase operates its own WiMAX-ready wireless networks and providing advanced wireless technology solutions to both businesses and municipalities. It is currently providing wireless coverage in California and Nevada and Internet Service Provider (ISP) coverage in 19 states throughout the country.

Competitor FiberTower (First Avenue Wireless), said recently that it will provide wireless backhaul services from cell site to switch, in seven of Sprint’s initial Mobile WiMax launch markets.

FiberTower is a backhaul and access services provider focused primarily on the wireless carrier market, using its extensive spectrum footprint in 24 GHz and 39 GHz bands. First Avenue Networks merged with FiberTower Corporation in August, 2006, resulting in an installed base in 12 markets with more than 1000 sites. FiberTower bought the spectrum assets of bankrupt of ART (at 39GHz) and Teligent (at 24 GHz), and now owns licenses in the top 77 metropolitan areas.

Competitor XO currently has licenses in the 28 GHz to 31 GHz frequency bands covering 73 major U.S. metropolitan cities.

source : dailywireless.org

Vodafone & Omnifone

Vodafone signs Omnifone's MusicStation service for UK

Posted Sep 11th 2007 7:55AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio

So Vodafone made another little announcement during the unveiling of their iPhone-less Christmas lineup: an exclusive Omnifone music service deal for our more cultured, special British friends. The all-you-can-eat, MusicStation subscription download service will cost punters a weekly tithe of £1.99 (about $4.03) -- an investment which turns to dust once you cancel the subscription. Seems Vodafone, an early favorite for a pan-European iPhone exclusive, is now preparing to compete against a rival European iPhone launch with iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store in addition to Nokia's imminent Music Store. Good luck Voda-Omni-fone, you'll need it.

source : engadget.com

T-Mobile Germany iPhone?

Did T-Mobile Germany really leak the 3G, 16GB iPhone? Doubtful.

Posted Sep 9th 2007 9:39PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Cellphones

So you may or may not have seen the above supposedly leaked German T-Mobile ad floating around the internets today, which outlines a new iPhone featuring not only HSDPA, but double the current device's capacity (16GB), all for a paltry €499 (about $700 US) when released on November 12th. Is it possible? Sure, anything's possible, and these guys even show off an iPhone with German-translated icons. Still, we're not convinced. What's more likely, that Apple, which managed to keep AT&T almost totally in the dark right up until launch day, really sealed the deal with T-Mobile on a new iPhone that just happened to get leaked more than a month in advance? Or that this image -- a ridiculously easy photoshop job -- is every bit as fake as the Ich Lüge bullets from Heathers?

source : engadget.com

AMD fastest quad-core

AMD unveils "world's most advanced x86 CPU" -- the quad-core Opteron

Posted Sep 10th 2007 8:28AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Desktops

We know you've probably grown numb to these "world's best" claims uttered by processor manufacturers, but shortly after introducing the Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Edition, AMD is now unveiling what it calls "the world's most advanced x86 CPU." The quad-core Opteron touts a slew of enhancements including a "50-percent increase in integer and floating-point performance" and a boost in "virtualization performance." Interestingly, AMD goes on to brag about the chip's power saving abilities, as it utilizes Dual Dynamic Power Management, CoolCore, and Independent Dynamic Core Technology in order to provide a more energy-efficient device. Systems relying on the newfangled CPU have reportedly begun shipping "from global OEM and system-builder partners," so newfound greatness should be just an order away.

source : engadget.com

Aliens ROCK!

Alienware offers up dual 64GB SSD Area-51 m9750

Posted Sep 10th 2007 11:55AM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Gaming, Laptops, Storage

You've got to stay on the bleeding edge of component offerings when you're trying to charge the prices that Alienware does, so it's no surprise that the Dell subsidiary is the self-proclaimed first manufacturer on the market to stuff dual 64GB solid state disks into a consumer PC. Of course, you'll be paying out the nose to add 128GB of un-RAIDed SSD goodness to an Area-51 m9750 gaming notebook -- just about $2,000, nearly doubling the machine's base price. Those feeling a little "stingier" or perhaps requiring more storage space can also opt for a 64GB SSD / 200GB 7,200RPM HDD combo as well, which only tacks another $1,400 onto an entry-level rig. Still, despite the steep cost, we're sure that there are more than a few folks out there who can't put a price on having the fastest read times in their guild.

source : engadget.com

iPhoneSIMFree

iPhoneSIMfree's end-user solution tested, it works!

Posted Sep 10th 2007 12:54PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Cellphones

So last Friday we got two things from iPhoneSIMfree: the demo version of their software SIM unlock solution, and the promise that it would be available for purchase today. We can't confirm that anyone's actually received their iPhone unlock orders, but we did get to test the release version of the software unlock today -- the very same thing people all over will be paying to unlock their devices with -- and, not surprisingly, it works like a charm. In other words, while we can't vouch for any of the vendors selling the software, we can vouch for the software itself working exactly as advertised. We've got the full unlock on video, which we'll be posting shortly.

source : engadget.com

Solar-powered plane

Solar-powered plane breaks unmanned flight record

Posted Sep 10th 2007 1:48PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Transportation

According to a BBC report today, a UK defense firm called Qinetiq has developed and tested a lightweight, solar-powered plane which has just broken the world record for longest unmanned flight. The plane, known as the Zephyr, spent 54 hours in flight using only self-recharging solar power, thus breaking the 30-plus-hour flight of the previous record holder, the US Air Force's Global Hawk surveillance craft. Although the record has been smashed, the plane won't be eligible for entrance into the "official" record books due to a late announcement of the feat, though another 33-hour flight might make the cut. The plane -- which has a wingspan of 59-feet -- is controlled from the ground after a hand liftoff, and is capable of cruising at 58,000 feet. According to the designers, the Zephyr is, "Going to go a lot higher and a lot further," and added that, "You ain't seen nothing yet." Indeed, ICEMAN, indeed.

source : engadget.com

TOO FUNNY!!!

Cablevision CEO a Verizon FiOS Customer?

Posted by kdawson on Saturday September 08, @03:56PM
from the for-research-purposes-only-of-course dept.

Keri_Love writes "Cablevision and Verizon are in the middle of heated battle trying to sign up customers for the coveted 'triple play': it's fiber-to-the-premises vs. cable for broadband, television, and phone. Cablevision is slinging lines like 'We're not afraid of your fiber!' Tech blogger Mike Murray discloses evidence that Cablevision's CEO may be enjoying FiOS at home. He writes: 'Click the picture to the right showing a Verizon FiOS can and drop directly above Cablevision's CEO Chuck Dolan's Oyster Bay, Long Island mailbox.' He's not scared! He's a customer!"

source : slashdot.org

Forensic Computer

IT: Forensic Computer Targets Digital Crime

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 09, @12:07AM
from the taking-a-byte-out-of-it dept.

coondoggie writes "A European consortium has come up with a high-speed digital forensic computer dedicated to the task of quickly offloading and analyzing computer records. The TreCorder is a rugged forensic PC able to copy or clone up to three hard disks simultaneously, at a speed of up to 2 Gb/min., far faster than alternative equipment. The PC not only provides a complete mirror image of the hard disk and system memory — including deleted and reformatted data — but also eliminates any possibility of falsification in the process, meaning that the evidence it collects will stand up in court."

source : slashdot.org

AMD NDA Scandal

Your Rights Online: AMD NDA Scandal

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 09, @12:58PM
from the all-your-words-are-belong dept.

crazyeyes writes "Just two weeks ago, a Thai journalist walked out of the hush-hush AMD event in Singapore over a controversial NDA that required him to 'send any stories to the vendor before his newspaper can publish it.' AMD categorically denied it happened, but today, we not only have proof that it happened, we also have the sordid details of the entire affair. Here's a quote from the editorial: 'First off, the non-disclosure agreement covered everything confidential said or written over the next two years on the product, and had a duration of five years, during which anything published or used in marketing would have to receive written approval from AMD before it could be used. Worse, at the end of the five years, all copies of the information made would have to be returned to the chipmaker.'"

source : slashdot.org

Google Video Ads

Google Mulling Video Ads In Search Results

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 09, @08:30PM
from the are-we-evil-yet dept.

Bombula writes to let us know that Google is "finally succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar" and getting ready to implement image and video ads in sponsored searches.

source : slashdot.org

Keyloggers!@! WTF???

Your Rights Online: Mandatory Keyloggers in Mumbai's Cyber Cafes

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 09, @10:16PM
from the just-don't-press-any-keys dept.

YIAAL writes "Indian journalist Amit Varma reports that Mumbai's police are requiring the city's 500 Internet cafes to install keystroke loggers, which will capture every keystroke by users and turn that information over to the government — nearly in realtime by the sound of it. Buy things online, and the underpaid Indian police will have your credit card number. 'Will these end up getting sold in a black market somewhere? Not unlikely.'"

source : slashdot.org

PHP5 vs CakePHP vs RubyonRails

IT: PHP5 Vs. CakePHP Vs. RubyOnRails?

Posted by kdawson on Monday September 10, @02:38AM
from the please-choose-one dept.

OldJavaHack writes "If you could start a website (with MySQL for persistence) from scratch and you had a choice of PHP5, CakePHP, or RubyOnRails — which would you choose and why? Things to consider in your decision: 1. Maturity of solution; 2. Features; 3. Size of community of skilled users (to build a team); 4. Complexity/ease of use (for neophytes to master); 5. Greatest strength of your choice, and the greatest weaknesses of the other two. Here is a comparison of capabilities."

source : slashdot.org

IBM joins OpenOffice.org

Linux: IBM Joins OpenOffice.org Community

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 10, @08:34AM
from the get-your-conspiracy-theories-warmed-up dept.

Petrushka writes "In a press release today, with accompanying press FAQ, IBM announces a change in its relationship to the OpenOffice.org development community. The upshot is that they're making a long-term commitment to OOo; no organization has paid off any other organization for this; they're devoting about 35 of their developers in China to OOo; and they'll be contributing accessibility code from Lotus Notes to improve current support for assistive technologies. You may recall that an alleged shortage of assistive technologies that work with OOo has been one of the big criticisms leveled against the idea of governments standardizing on the OpenDocument format, which is a file format that OOo and several other office suites support."

source : slashdot.org

AMD Barcelona Chip

AMD Finally Unveils Barcelona Chip

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 10, @09:11AM
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.

Justin Oblehelm writes "AMD has finally unveiled its first set of quad-core processors, three months after its original launch date due to its "complicated" design. Barcelona comes in three categories: high-performance, standard-performance and energy-efficient server models, but only the standard (up to 2.0 GHz) and energy-efficient (up to 1.9 GHz) categories will be available at launch. The high-performance Opterons, together with higher frequencies of the standard and energy-efficient chips, are expected in the out in the fourth quarter of this year. But it's far from clear that this is the product that will help right AMD's ship."

source : slashdot.org

haha! AT&T just great!

Hardware: Turned Off iPhone Gets $4800 Bill from AT&T

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 10, @09:44AM
from the gotta-hate-when-that-happens dept.

Tech.Luver writes "Jay Levy says he has been stung by Apple's iPhone pact with AT&T after he took an iPhone on a Mediterranean cruise. They didn't use their phones, but when they got back they had a 54-page monthly bill of nearly $4,800 from AT&T Wireless. The problem was that their three iPhones were racking up a bill for data charges using foreign phone charges. The iPhone regularly updates e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be available when the user turns it on. "

source : slashdot.org

Google Sued!

Your Rights Online: Google Sued Over Deceptive Search Results

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 10, @12:26PM
from the we-come-from-a-land-down-under dept.

biggles266 writes "Internet goliath Google claims to rank search results by relevance, but the search engine engages in deceptive conduct by selling off the top positions to commercial partners, a Sydney court has heard. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) is taking world-first legal action in the Federal Court against Google Inc over allegedly deceptive conduct related to sponsored links on its websites. The ACCC has brought a two-pronged case against Trading Post and Google — including subsidiaries Google Australia and Google Ireland — for potentially misleading consumers. The consumer watchdog alleges Google does not do enough to differentiate "organic" search results — those ranked by relevance — from sponsored links which appear at the top of the results page."

source : slashdot.org

AjaxWindows! web OS

Web OS, ajaxWindows Launched

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday September 10, @04:02PM
from the then-your-internet-connection-dies dept.

BigRedFed writes "Michael Robertson, of mp3.com fame, Linspire.com fame (or infamy depending on your view point) and more recently, ajax13.com has released another interesting piece of web software. ajaxWindows they are calling it and it's an almost full fledged web based OS that you can use to transport around your documents and mp3 collection to any device with an internet connection and a full web-browsers"

source : slashdot.org

Sun CEO

IT: Sun CEO Says NetApp Lied in Fear of Open Source

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday September 07, @09:59AM
from the ph34r-m3 dept.

Lucas123 writes "In reaction to NetApp's patent infringement lawsuit against Sun, CEO Jonathan Schwartz today said in his blog that NetApp basically lied in its legal filing when it said Sun asked them for licensing fees for use of their ZFS file system technology. In a separate statement, Sun said NetApp's lawsuit is about fear over open-source ZFS technology as a competitive threat. 'The rise of the open-source community cannot be stifled by proprietary vendors. I guess not everyone's learned that lesson'."

source : slashdot.org

Jobs back to USA

IT: Indian Software Firm Outsourcing Jobs To US

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday September 07, @12:23PM
from the turnabout-is-fair-play dept.

phobos13013 writes "NPR is reporting Indian software maker Wipro is outsourcing positions to a development office opening in Atlanta, Georgia. Although it sounds good for US job growth, the implication is that firms outside the US appear to be dominating more and more in the global economy, even from developing and underdeveloped regions of the world. Similarly, salaries of IT professionals world-wide are projected to stagnate or possibly fall due to the large pool of qualified applicants in the market today."

source : slashdot.org

4gb RAID

LaCie intros 4TB Biggest Quadra RAID drive

Posted Sep 5th 2007 2:05AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Storage

LaCie's 4TB Biggest Quadra certainly isn't the largest drive to rock the LaCie badge, but it does give users four ways to sync it up with their PC or Mac. The four-disk RAID drive touts FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces, supports RAID levels 0, 0+1 and 5, and will automatically shut down if temperates get too high. Reportedly, the device will ship with backup and recovery software and is slated to land in October for $2,199, right alongside the $1,099 2TB and $1,599 3TB versions.

source : engadget.com

iPhone rebate!

Steve Jobs gives all iPhone owners $100 back

Posted Sep 6th 2007 3:19PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Cellphones

El Jobso is "confident" Apple's made the right decision to lower the price of the iPhone yesterday -- and really, we can't fault them for knocking some cash off the top to attract new buyers, why is cheaper gear a bad thing all of a sudden? But even given the outcry, we definitely didn't see this one coming. In another open letter to his people, Jobs states that he's giving all iPhone owners a $100 Apple gift certificate (details to follow in the next week -- it goes without saying this will only apply to people who bought before the price drop). Well, that's mighty kind of you Steve. And definitely unprecedented in the consumer electronics industry that a company would give cash back to early adopters -- those most accustomed to buying a gadget first, asking questions later, and bottling their complaints when said gadget later drops dramatically in price.

source : engadget.com

iPhone unlock

iPhoneSIMfree shows us demo of iPhone unlock app, back end -- now due Monday

Posted Sep 7th 2007 4:31PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Cellphones

So the iPhoneSIMfree guys have some news today. First up, they called to let us know they did in fact delay the launch of their iPhone SIM unlock software (which was clear by the fact that no one has it yet) -- but it's now due Monday.

Today iPhoneSIMfree also sent a couple of publications (including this one) a demo version of their unlock app and trial access to their back end reseller tool. The demo software and reseller tool do not yet actually unlock phones since iPhoneSIMfree hasn't yet flipped the switch on the activation service end. But as proof that their end-user app does exist, the demo app shown here coursed through its normal routines (about 3-5 minutes start to finish) to show us what an unlock should be like.

Their reseller backend tool, which we also have shots of, allows bulk purchasers of iPhoneSIMfree unlocks to add customers' IMEIs to the unlock whitelist. Once added, apparently resellers merely have to just provide their customers the unlock app, which initiates the remote unlock service -- the whole thing is a little like Windows Activation where only whitelisted IMEIs can proceed with unlocking. Naturally, we documented all this on an iPhone -- but again, to be clear, the iPhoneSIMfree app that was sent out won't unlock iPhones. That all supposedly goes down on Monday.

Gallery: iPhoneSIMfree shows us demo of iPhone unlock app, backend -- now due Monday

VeriChip

VeriChip chipping 200 Alzheimer's patients for RFID VeriMed trials

Posted Sep 4th 2007 11:15AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Wireless

Maybe it's our inevitable future, but we still can't help but feel a bit icky at the thought of VeriChip implanting VeriMed RFID chips into 90 volunteers suffering from Alzheimer's. The two-year trial program, VeriMed Patient Identification Project, will involve 200 patients, and apparently so far everybody is pretty upbeat about the idea. We first heard about this a couple months ago, but it seems things are really ramping up. The chips are designed to manage the records of the patients and their caregivers, and VeriChip is confident that it'll be growing into other "high-risk patient categories" soon.

source : engadget.com