Monday, March 31, 2008

LiMo Foundation

LiMo Platform Release 1 gets loosed, R2 to come later this year


Don't look now, but mid-2008 is almost here, and for those waiting intently for the release of a LiMo SDK, you're one step closer to having your dreams realized. Announced today, the LiMo Foundation has made available what it calls the "first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices." According to Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation, the consortium is hoping that R1 will "spur rapid innovation and contributions from all LiMo members," and it's restated that software development kits for Native, WebKit and Java operating environments are set to launch during the second half of this year. Not one to sit idly, the entity has also announced that Release 2 is currently "being specified and developed," and should escape testing and greet the real world in late 2008.

source : engadget.com

General Dynamics realtime 3D maping

General Dynamics UK touts near real-time 3D maps for soldiers

It looks like soldiers could one day have their own tab key of sorts to call up detailed, 3D maps at will, at least if the folks at General Dynamics UK have their way. As Physorg reports, they've developed a "near real-time" 3D map system that makes use of an array of different technologies including LIDAR, thermal imaging and x-ray backscatter techniques to not only display buildings and streets, but objects and people inside buildings as well. The use of LIDAR also promises to provide measurements of doors, windows, and alleys with "millimeter accuracy." All that obviously makes the system, dubbed Masthead, slightly less than portable, however, although General Dynamics says it'd be able to be carried in the back of a military vehicle or civilian 4x4, or in a plane for that matter. Of course, like most such projects, General Dynamics isn't just setting its sights to military applications, with it also touting Masthead's potential benefits for police forces in planning security measures for large events, to name one example.

source : engadget.com

AT&T shakedown

AT&T seeing executive shakedown?

Details are still shaky, but GigaOM is reporting that the futures of certain AT&T executives may also be dubious. In addition to a recently replaced CTO and recently departed USi CEO, apparently VPs are being offered exit packages or demotions (their choice!), possibly to trim some of the fat at the top of the pyramid before the US economy gets any crappier. We can't say for sure, but hey, those billions of dollars in 700MHz auction funds have to come from somewhere -- immediately, too, you don't want the FCC sending over hundreds of goons to kneecap thousands of employees. AT&T had no comment on matters both of downsizing and the FCC's mafia-like collection practices.

source : engadget.com

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Ad Funded MuniFi

Ad-funded MuniFi: Realistic?

Posted by samc on March 27th, 2008

It’s a bit behind schedule and somewhat over budget but, says Muniwireless, by the end of the month, the Minneapolis muni Wi-Fi network will be a reality. And, by all reports, folks there think it’s worth the wait.

The city of Minneapolis (pop: 369,051) is an anchor tenant on the system, operated by U.S. Internet, based in nearby Minnetonka.

USI has spent several million dollars on additional antennas and hardware to insure appropriate coverage, as Minnesota Public Radio reports (audio). US Internet had to increase the number of nodes per square mile from an average of 26 to 42 to combat interference and attenuation from some 200,000 boulevard trees.

As an anchor tenant, the city accounts for more than $1 million a year. So far U.S. Internet has signed up more than 5,000 subscribers. Company officials said 8,000 people have preregistered for the service. They predict the network will be self-sustaining once they reach 10,000 subscribers.

The Belair-based system proved its worth during the Minneapolis bridge collapse, say advocates, when the ability to put up live cameras and provide broadband emergency information became vital to police and fire agencies.

US Internet charges $19.99/month for 1 - 3Mbit/s with premium data rates of $24 - $29 per month. Cheaper than cellular, DSL or cable modems. Available city-wide.

Still, it’s hard to beat free. That’s the holy grail MetroFi hoped to achieve.

Portland signed a contract with Metrofi to build a “free” system in 2006 — without any “anchor tenant” dollar commitment by the city. MetroFi said they’d spend some $10 million on a 134 square mile WiFi network. But last fall MetroFi told the city it would stop building the network unless the city bought “anchor tenant” services. The system has stalled out with only 25% built.

The story has been repeated around the country. But most of those municipal wireless systems are based on a subscription model. The “free” model (with a premium $19/month ad-free option), is something new.

Yankee Group says cities with the population size and demographics of Minneapolis or Boston could realize as much as $7 million annually from advertising revenue once the network is fully built out.

The market for portable WiFi devices and location-based advertising is growing, so there may be room for cautious optimism. But the future is uncertain. Consumer demand and technological progress is always a wild card.

source : dailywireless.org

China Mobile goes TD-SCDMA

China Mobile Goes TD-SCDMA

Posted by samc on March 28th, 2008

China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier with over 376 million customers, announced that it will begin testing the country’s homegrown 3G standard — TD-SCDMA — next week. The carrier said it will issue 20,000 handsets and 5,000 data cards to select customers with free airtime. China Mobile will also offer an additional 40,000 handsets in stores for $7.13 a month, with outgoing calls costing some 6 cents a minute.

China Mobile said the testing will begin April 1 and run through July in eight cities, including Beijing. The government hopes to roll out 3G services before the summer Olympics begin this August.

China is the world’s largest telecommunications market with some 362 million landline subscribers [27 per 100 persons] and some 565 million [42 per 100 persons] mobile cellular subscribers.

TD-SCDMA stands for Time Division – Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access. China began developing its own 3G standard in 2001, in an attempt to compete with other 3G standards including WCDMA (3G). In fact, the government has delayed 3G licensing in part to allow more time for TD-SCDMA to catch up with competing standards. TD-SCDMA uses Time Division on a single channel with time slots allocated for downlink and uplink. CDMA is used within each time slot.

Some criticize the Chinese government for its anti-market practice. China Mobile was directed to develop eight cities out of 10 for the Olympics with TD-SCDMA. But China Mobile, the largest GSM operator in the world, may be able to avoid paying significant WCDMA intellectual property fees and the government could help develop the technology for sale outside the country.

Proponents of TD-SCDMA technology say it has 3 unique advantages in relation to W-CDMA and CDMA2000:

  • Efficient use of the spectrum. GSM and CDMA use frequency pairs (one transmit, one receive), but one channel tends to be unused in GSM and CDMA. More people can use limited spectrum.
  • It’s inexpensive. In TD-SCDMA it is possible to integrate the whole radio (incl. the GSM radio) into one single integrated radio chip because isolation requirements between receive and transmit circuits are non critical in TD-SCDMA.
  • Compatibility to fall back to GSM is much simpler than combining GSM and W-CDMA or GSM and CDMA2000.

Mobile WiMAX also operates with TDMA, but uses COFDMA rather than CDMA.

According the Telecom Magazine, it is estimated the number of cell phone users will continue to grow an average of 54 million a year and reach nearly 900 million by 2013. During that time 3G users will rise from 0.5 percent in 2008 to 25 percent.

Some observers believe China Unicom will merge with China Netcom sometime this year. If China Unicom sells its CDMA operations to China Telecom, the number of 3G licenses would be reduced to three: China Mobile for TD-SCDMA; China Unicom for WCDMA; and China Telecom for CDMA EV-DO.

According to global trade body GSM Association, about 80% of cellular users world-wide use the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) technology, or 2,571 million people. The second largest mobile technology, CDMA (Code Division, Multiple Access), had 421 million users by the end of September, 2007.

Last year, on passing 2 billion GSM users, the GSM Association said China was the largest single GSM market in the world, with more than 370 million users, followed by Russia with 145 million, India with 83 million and the USA with 78 million users. In India, mobile has even become the fastest selling consumer product - pushing bicycles to the number two spot.

India’s wireless subscriber base is now set to become the second largest in the world, after China’s, by mid-April, reports EE Times. India’s 250 million wireless subscriber base will likely surpass that of the 256 million wireless subscriber base in the U.S. during April 2008.

This year, worldwide mobile telephone subscriptions reached 3.3 billion — equivalent to half the global population, according to research firm Informa.

source : dailywireless.org

South Korean police GPS handsets

South Korean police aiming to equip all new handsets with GPS?


Presumably taking a note from Japan, it's being reported that South Korean police are backing a highly controversial plan that would equip each new mobile sold in the nation with a GPS chip. Reportedly, Song Kang-ho, chief of the investigation bureau of the National Police Agency, has stated that the government has "already submitted a related bill to the National Assembly," and the general idea here is to crack down on the rise of kidnapping and various other crimes against children and women (not much different than we Americans having such a chip for E911, really). Granted, there's not a lot of supporting evidence that this is actually set to go down, so until we see it inked in stone, our skeptic hats are remaining in place.

source : engadget.com

iPhone Pwned project

Video of the iPhone Pwned project in action


Those crafty kids on the iPhone Dev Team have already hacked the 2.0 firmware, but now they're getting ready to release the oh-so-creatively-named PWNED tool, which takes iPhone hacking to the next level by patching the bootloader to let you load any firmware image you want -- even images not signed by Apple. That means custom patched firmware can now be loaded directly from iTunes, which simplifies the jailbreaking / unlocking process tremendously, and also means that a patched version of the 2.0 firmware is coming soon. We're putting the tool through its paces right now and we'll have a hands-on with it (and the Dev Team's patched 2.0 firmware) as soon as we get it all working, but check out some highlights after the break, and hit the read link for more info.

source : engadget.com

Obama, Hillary, McCain bloodline to Illuminati

Obama, Hillary, McCain bloodline to Illuminati


This could make for one odd family reunion: Barack Obama is a distant cousin of Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.

Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society found some remarkable family connections for the three presidential candidates -- Democratic rivals Obama and Clinton, and Republican John McCain.

Clinton, who is of French-Canadian descent on her mother's side, is also a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette. Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, can call six U.S. presidents, including George




W. Bush, his cousins. McCain is a sixth cousin of first lady Laura Bush.

"You'd think with all that singing talent in the family she'd be able to carry a tune," Clinton's senior adviser Philippe Reines said. "But now it makes much more sense how she snagged a Grammy."

Clinton won for best spoken word Grammy in 1997 for "It Takes a Village." Obama also won a Grammy in that category this year for the audio version of his book, "The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream."

Genealogist Christopher Child said that while the candidates often focus on pointing out differences between them, their ancestry shows they are more alike than they think.

"It shows that lots of different people can be related, people you wouldn't necessarily expect," Child said.

Obama has a prolific presidential lineage that features Democrats and Republicans. His distant cousins include President George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison. Other Obama cousins include Vice President Dick Cheney, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

Obama often jokes about his cousin Cheney at campaign appearances.

"His kinships are across the political spectrum," Child said.

Child has spent the last three years tracing the candidates' genealogy, along with senior research scholar Gary Boyd Roberts, author of the 1989 book, "Ancestors of American Presidents."

Clinton's distant cousins include beatnik author Jack Kerouac and Camilla Parker-Bowles, wife of Prince Charles of England.

McCain's ancestry was more difficult to trace because records on his relatives were not as complete as records for the families of Obama and Clinton, Child said.

Obama and President Bush are 10th cousins, once removed, linked by Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod, who died in 1662.

Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, linked by Edwin Hickman, who died in Virginia in 1769. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, declined to comment on the senator's ancestry.

Clinton and Jolie are ninth cousins, twice removed, both related to Jean Cusson who died in St. Sulpice, Quebec, in 1718.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society, founded in 1845, is the oldest and largest nonprofit genealogical organization in the country.

REAL ID act

Real ID Act - Sam Ettaro joins the discussion

The REAL ID Act of 2005 stipulates that after May 11, 2008, "a Federal agency may not accept, for any official purpose, a driver's license or identification card issued by a State to any person unless the State is meeting the requirements" specified in the REAL ID Act.
The Act includes the following requirements:
A driver's license or identification card must include certain specific information and features.
A driver's license or identification card cannot be issued unless certain specific documentation is presented.
The state must verify all documentation presented with an application.
Driver's licenses or identification cards issued to persons who are present in the United States only temporarily can be valid only for the amount of time for which the persons are authorized to be in the United States.
Controls and processes must be established to ensure the security of the issuance process.
Each state must maintain a motor vehicle database and provide all other states with electronic access to the database.
The REAL ID Act also stipulates that the technology incorporated into the driver's license or identification card must meet the following requirements:
It must support physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the credential for fraudulent purposes.
It must be a common, machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements.
The Department of Homeland Security has the authority to issue regulations and set standards for compliance with the REAL ID Act.
Smart Card Technology and Identity Applications
Smart card technology is currently recognized as the most appropriate technology for identity applications that must meet certain critical security requirements, including:
Authenticating the bearer of an identity credential when used in conjunction with personal identification numbers (PINs) or biometric technologies

Sam Ettaro discussing Alex Jones

Bernard, Sam Ettaro, Raina discussing Alex Jones/Aaron Russo

This is a segment of the aftershow yesterday. We ran an hour longer. Go hear the whole thing. Mr. Ettaro has done some great work and was a Host on WTPRN (Jones' network) and the National Media Director for Aaron Russo. America Freedom To Fascism.

Martial Law is coming to America

JACK MCLAMB : MARTIAL LAW COMING TO AMERICA

JACK MCLAMB WAS THE HIGHEST DECORATED POLICE OFFICER IN PHOENIX HISTORY.


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