for bored mindz | bored4u.com | illuminati blog: January 2008

Saturday, January 26, 2008

700MHz: Early Weekend

Posted by samc on January 25th, 2008

The FCC’s 700 MHz auction is off for an early weekend break after four rounds of bidding. It has netted more than $3.7 billion — not bad for two days work.

The auction postponed a fifth round of bidding until Monday, reports RCR News. So far the auction has gathered bids for 921 licenses with some 178 licenses yet to receive a bid.

The eight C-Block licenses covering the 50 states continued to attract the highest bidding. One new bid in round four pushed the price to nearly $1.8 billion. A minimum of $4.6 billion is necessary to trigger the open-access provision for the C Block. Some observers believe Google will meet that minimum.

For a third straight round, the controversial national commercial-public safety D-Block license did not receive any interest and continues to have a potential winning bid of $472 million posted during the opening round of bidding. The FCC has set a $1.3 billion reserve price on that license.

A total of 62 MHz will be auctioned; 30 Mhz in the Lower 700MHz band, 32 Mhz in the Upper 700MHz band.

The FCC, using AWS bidding figures, says the auction could generate some $10-$15 billion for the treasury, but actual bids could — in theory — go much higher since 700 MHz requires only about one third the number of cell towers for similar coverage.

RCR News and Blog Runner have the latest.

source : dailywireless.org

WiFi Town St Louis Park

Sun Don’t Shine on Solar WiFi Town

Posted by samc on January 25th, 2008

St. Louis Park, Minnesota, has abandoned their innovative Solar Powered WiFi hotspots that they installed in the past year, reports the Star Tribune. Some $1 million worth of radios, poles and solar panels, erected because the city lacked rights to utility poles, will now be scrapped.

“The contractor’s default forces St. Louis Park out of planned citywide wireless Internet project,” says a notice on the city’s wireless site. In testing what Arinc had built, the city found that small portions of the network functioned well, providing a high-speed connection. But in other areas, the solar panels were placed in spots where they did not get enough light to power the radios’ batteries.

Salvaging The groundbreaking solar-powered, citywide wireless service could cost another $3 million, on top of more than $800,000 the city already has spent, reports the paper.

“We’re going to tell Arinc, ‘Come get your poles, take them out of the ground, stick them someplace where the solar panels won’t work at all,’” Mayor Jeff Jacobs said.

St. Louis Park may sue Arinc to do so. Next, the city must decide whether to begin anew with a different contractor or abandon the Wi-Fi project altogether.

The service, (FAQ), planned to use about 400 solar panels — each about the size of a stop sign — suspended 20 to 30 feet in the air on public rights-of-way such as roadsides. The panels would connect to batteries for service at night or on cloudy days.

The approximately 200 customers participating in the initial non-solar powered pilot program begun in April of 2006 will continue to receive service pending the City Council’s direction.

St. Louis Park has been working to get citywide wireless for more than two years. Since then, hundreds of residents have participated in a small-scale test run of a Wi-Fi network — one that was not solar-powered and not built by Arinc. Although it wasn’t without problems, the general success of that pilot program convinced the city to take the service citywide.

source : dailywireless.org

AMD new specs

AMD talks specs on Fusion, continues to release nothing

Posted Jan 25th 2008 2:03PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

At this point we've heard so much and seen so little of AMD's Fusion hybrid CPU / GPU chip that we're honestly starting to consider it vapor -- AMD first announced it in 2006, after all. Still, the company's VP of marketing chatted up PC World about new Fusion chips today, saying that a 45nm notebook-optimized version codenamed "Swift" based on the Phenom core would be the first off the line. That doesn't line up with the last roadmap we saw out of Sunnyvale, which had the first Fusion chip based on the workstation-class Bulldozer core, but hey, we'll let AMD say whatever it wants, just as long as see some actual chips sometime soon.

source : engadget.com

MacBook Air review

Posted Jan 25th 2008 4:44PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Features, Laptops

It fits in a manila folder, you can slide it under a door, and if you threw it hard enough you could probably chop someone in half with the thing. It's the thinnest, and if we may say so, sexiest laptop around today: the MacBook Air. But looks aren't everything to everyone, and despite all the rhetoric about being a no-compromises ultraportable, Apple did leave plenty on the cutting-room floor in its quest to make an absurdly thin ultraportable that doesn't skimp on a full size keyboard or roomier 13-inch display. But, as many potential buyers have been asking themselves since last week, is the Air right to be your next machine? Read on, we'll tell you what we think.

source : engadget.com

Patent granted on smartphones

Patent granted on smartphones, everyone sued

Posted Jan 25th 2008 11:58PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Cellphones

What would you do if the US patent office gave you the go-ahead on a far-reaching, non-specific application filed for a "mobile entertainment and communication device"? If your answer was that you would immediately draw up lawsuits against almost every major electronics manufacturer that even looked at a smartphone funny, you get a cookie. Yes folks, as impossible as it is to believe, the holders of the aforementioned patent have just sued Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, AT&T, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, and Samsung... amongst others. So eager was this company to sue, in fact, that legal papers were filed a day before the patent was granted, and subsequently had to re-submitted. The real sucker-punch here is that the patent simply combines a list of prior technologies jumbled into one product, a practice which has recently been ruled against by the Supreme Court. Still, we doubt it will stop the holders from trying to nab a few dollars in settlements, staying the work of real innovators, and generally making a mockery of our patent system. Bravo!

source : engadget.com

Friday, January 25, 2008

Solar WiFi

Sun Don’t Shine on Solar WiFi Town

Posted by samc on January 25th, 2008

Salvaging The groundbreaking solar-powered, citywide wireless service could cost another $3 million, on top of more than $800,000 the city already has spent, reports the paper.

“We’re going to tell Arinc, ‘Come get your poles, take them out of the ground, stick them someplace where the solar panels won’t work at all,’” Mayor Jeff Jacobs said.

St. Louis Park may sue Arinc to do so. Next, the city must decide whether to begin anew with a different contractor or abandon the Wi-Fi project altogether.

The approximately 200 customers participating in the initial non-solar powered pilot program begun in April of 2006 will continue to receive service pending the City Council’s direction.

source : dailywireless.org

Vermont Fiber Co-op

Posted by samc on January 25th, 2008

Twenty two towns in rural Vermont are planning a regional fiber-optic network. It could be ready by the end of 2009, reports MuniWireless.

The East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, ValleyFiber, Vermont Telecommunications Authority and Vermont Rural Broadband Project are participants.

The East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network announced the plan this week. The Vermont Telecommunications Authority would provide credit and regulatory assistance. Low-interest loans would allow the $70 million, subscriber-funded network to achieve a positive cash flow in four to six years.

The Institute of Local Self Reliance issued a report, Municipal Broadband: Demystifying Wireless and Fiber-Optic Options reviews the merits of just such networks. Earlier attempts to serve rural areas with broadband, including state-funded pilot wireless systems, have fallen short of fiber-optic’s technical advantages, says the paper.

Three statewide broadand wireless networks have been proposed in the United States include the states of South Carolina (31,000 square miles), Vermont (9,249 square miles), and Rhode Island (1,044 square miles). But changes in state leadership and developments in technology, such as commercial WiMAX by Clearwire and Sprint as well as future 700 Mhz options, have apparently put those plans on the back burner.

Is FREE state-wide wireless access achievable? Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon — if the stars align around 700 MHz.

source : dailywireless.org

AT&T hotspot

AT&T hands out free hotspot access to broadband customers, ups its bandwidth

Posted Jan 24th 2008 2:35PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Wireless, Networking

AT&T, continuing to be the open, giving, and free-wheeling loony that it is, has decided to bestow cost-free access to its 10,000+ WiFi hotspots (for its broadband subscribers, that is). Effective immediately, if you're tossing money the company's way for any high-speed access, you can hop onto wireless networks in retail shops, restaurants, and airports free of charge... provided they're AT&T networks. We know its a lot to handle, but get this -- the telco has also upped the speeds of its U-verse service to a whopping 10 Mbps downstream / 1.5 Mbps upstream configuration, undoubtedly warming the hearts of AT&T subscribers hankering for a little more bandwidth to sustain their ever-increasing 'net needs. It's like the holidays all over again.

source : engadget.com

WD 320GB per platter

Western Digital intros 320GB-per-platter 3.5-inch hard drives

Posted Jan 24th 2008 3:04PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Storage

It looks like Western Digital's hard drives are about to get a good deal denser, with the company now rolling out its first 3.5-inch WD Caviar drives based on 320GB-per-platter technology. That, as the company points out, is the very same areal density seen recently in WD's 160 GB-per-platter 2.5-inch Scorpio drives, which topped out with a total of 320GB of storage due to the obvious size constraints. While the 3.5-inch drives have plenty more room to grow than their smaller counterparts, Western Digital seems to be starting things out slow, with only a single-platter 320GB drive available at the moment. That'll apparently be followed by upgrades across WD's various product lines throughout the year, including drives at "additional capacity points.," Unfortunately, the company doesn't seem to be ready to specify exactly what those points may be just yet, although The Inquirer speculates that we should see three-platter 1TB drives from the company before everything is all said and done.

source : engadget.com

Apple wants to light up your iPod

Apple wants to light up your iPod touchpad?

Posted Jan 24th 2008 7:10PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Portable Audio

Apple's been known to cover all its bases in the patent department, meaning this is certainly no guarantee we'll be seeing light-up iPods in the near future, but all the same we can't ignore the fact that a patent just popped up that has Apple postulating on backlit click wheels. While having a comet of light following your finger around the wheel is certainly interesting -- if potentially annoying -- things get more intriguing with the possibility of multitouch, but the patent isn't clear enough to tell if that's exactly what Apple is driving at. It's all well and good, but in these heady touchscreen days, are clickwheels slowly going the way of the ~~dinosaur~~ button?

source : engadget.com

Mylo 2 on sale

Sony mylo 2 on sale

Posted Jan 25th 2008 8:59AM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Handhelds

All ~~five~~ of you who have been waiting patiently for Sony to upgrade its mylo Personal Communicator should be pleased to learn that the revised internet tablet has finally gone on sale at SonyStyle. With its high-res 3.5-inch touchscreen, 1GB of storage, and improved Flash support, the $299 mylo 2 does indeed offer a number of attractive feature bumps over its predecessor -- however, we're still a little wary of how Sony's positioned this product in the market. But hey, what do we know: apparently they pushed enough first-gen units out the door to give this restyled number a shot. Starts shipping on the 28th, in either white or black, says Sony.

source : engadget.com

Thursday, January 24, 2008

2,240 police officers, 460 patrol cars, 1 helicopter mobilized for car chase in Osaka

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A little bit out of topics but WOW ! Let's imagine that, 1 helicopter, 460 Police patrol cars over 2240 police officers just in order to catch a guy by car... And even with an army of men it took the a stunning 2 hours to catch the guy who intact crashed into a bridge column...

And here you are the most interesting part of the all story, is that this "gentleman" just drove in Osaka by night without stopping at any traffic light.... Now if the Japanese government can put 2240 officer to chase an average joe, let's imagine what will happen if they have to find a terrorist.

Note : The photo below are not related to the event.

Sharp 3.44cm thick LCD

Sharp unveil 21 new LCD TV with the Amazing X Series of 3.44cm thick

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This afternoon Sharp invited us to the launch of their new line-up of LCD TV with the AQUOS X Series, E Series and D Series.

While the E and D series are somehow common we will focus our attention to the stunning X Series which is available in 37, 42 and 47” and has a thickness of only 3.44cm !

All X Series TV are of course Full HD (1920x1080), has a Double-Speed LCD (120Hz), offer an amazing contrast ratio of 15000:1 and 12-bit BDE color value rendering, a 1Bit Digital amplifier and 3 1.3a HDMI input.

Anyway here you are over 30 pictures of this press conference !