Open Street Map on iPhone

Open Street Map on iPhone

Posted by Sam Churchill on November 14th, 2008

If you are a fan of Open Street Map you will be thrilled to learn that there is now an iPhone App that allows you to record your tracks and upload them directly, says Aidworker Daily. OSMTrack is only $0.99.

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It allows anyone to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

It was inspired by sites such as Wikipedia — the map display features a prominent ‘Edit’ tab and a full revision history is maintained. Ground surveys are performed by a volunteer, on foot, bicycle or in a car, although a bicycle is the mode of choice for many volunteers mapping urban areas, using a GPS unit, and some combination of notebook, voice recorder and digital camera and questioning of passers-by.

This data is then entered into the database. Some contributors are systematicalaly mapping whole towns over a period of a year. Mapping Parties are organised to bring a number of mappers together to map a particular area for an evening or a weekend to intensively map an area.

OgleEarth follows the mapping beat as does Google Mobile.

Google has been busy with several iPhone announcements recently, says the iPhone Blog, including OS 2.2 updates for Street-View, Transit and Walking Directions for the Maps App, the release of Google Earth for the iPhone, and an optimized version of the Google Search page for the iPhone.

source: dailywireless.org

Out with the old regime, in with the old regime

Friday, November 7, 2008

Out with the old regime, in with the old regime

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, Nov 7, 2008


Meet some of president elect Obama's leading foreign and domestic policy advisors and likely administration members, every one of them a prominent member of the Council On Foreign Relations.

Will these people bring about "change" or will they continue to hold up the same entrenched system forged by the corporate elite for decades?

Susan E. Rice - Council on Foreign Relations, The Brookings Institution - Served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Clinton from 1997 to 2001. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright is a longtime mentor and family friend to Rice. Critics charge that she is is ill disposed towards Europe, has little understanding of the Middle East and would essentially follow the same policies of Condoleeza Rice if appointed the next Secretary of State or the National Security Adviser.

Anthony Lake - CFR, PNAC - Bill Clinton’s first national security adviser, who was criticized for the administration’s failure to confront the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and now acknowledges the inaction as a major mistake.

Zbigniew Brzezinski - CFR, Trilateral Commission - Brzezinski is widely seen as the man who created Al Qaeda, and was involved in the Carter Administration plan to give arms, funding and training to the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Richard Clarke - CFR - Former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Bush. Notoriously turned against the Bush administration after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Also advised Madeleine Albright during the Genocide in Rwanda.

Ivo Daalder - CFR, Brookings, PNAC - Co-authored a Washington Post op-ed with neocon Robert Kagan arguing that interventionism is a bipartisan affair that should be undertaken with the approval of our democratic allies.

Dennis Ross - CFR, Trilateral Commission, PNAC - Served as the director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton. A noted supporter of the Iraq war, Ross is also a Foreign Affairs Analyst for the Fox News Channel.

Lawrence Korb - CFR, Brookings - Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Has criticized manor of the invasion of Iraq but has detailed plans to increase the manpower of the United States Army to fight the war on terror and to "spread liberal democratic values throughout the Middle East".

Bruce Reidel - CFR, Brookings - Former CIA analyst who wishes to expand the war on terror to fight Al Qaeda across the globe. Considered to be the reason behind Barack Obama's Hawkish views on Pakistan and his Pro India leanings on Kashmir.

Stephen Flynn - CFR - Has been attributed with the idea for Obama's much vaunted "Civilian Security Force". Flynn has written: "The United States should roughly replicate the Federal Reserve model by creating a Federal Security Reserve System (FSRS) with a national board of governors, 10 regional Homeland Security Districts, and 92 local branches called Metropolitan Anti-Terrorism Committees. The objective of this system would be to develop self-funding mechanisms to more fully engage a broad cross-section of American society to protect the country's critical foundations from the widespread disruption that would arise from a terrorist attack."

Madeline Albright - CFR, Brookings - Currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors. Secretary of State and US Ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton. Did not take action against the genocide in Rwanda. Defended the sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein. When asked by CBS's 60 Minutes about the effects of sanctions: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Of course, had John McCain become president, being a member of the CFR himself, his administration would have been replete with CFR representatives also. Max Boot, Lawrence Eagleburger and Henry Kissinger, to name but a few, are all CFR members and were all advisors to the McCain campaign.

Please do your own research and add more names in the comments section of this report. It is important to document how these people are a part of the engine of global elitism and do not represent change. Only with this understanding will others wake up to the false left-right paradigm and be able to create the environment for real political change.

source : ekbtv.blogspot.com

Bridge over 2012

Saturday, November 8, 2008

The Bridge Over 2012

The materialistic culture is failing; tremendous changes are coming that will create chaos worldwide. Eventually a new culture based on spiritual values will form. Why not just join that culture now? Our community is the bridge.

source : ekbtv.blogspot.com

Switched On: Peek of popularity

Switched On: The Peek of popularity

by Ross Rubin, posted Nov 7th 2008 at 5:49PM

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Last week's Switched On delved into Celio's REDFLY, an austere smartphone accessory designed for enterprise users who manage their digital lives on their smartphones. REDFLY has faced scrutiny from the geek elite who have noted that, for about the same price as a REDFLY, one can get an independently functioning netbook that does so much more. A similar argument has also been levied at Peek, a wireless e-mail appliance that delivers only a part of what most smartphones can do.

But the two products could hardly be more different. Whereas REDFLY is a smartphone companion, Peek is a smartphone alternative featuring a slim design and a commitment to simplicity that borders on obsession. For example, Peek, like many modern smartphones, will attempt to guess your mail server information by your e-mail address. But if your e-mail address stumps it, there is no way to enter a server name or IP address manually. This omission is intentional, according to Peek, which didn't want consumers to have to find out technical settings. Instead, customers are directed to contact the company's support line where a customer service representative will set up the account for them.

The approach is in lockstep with the device's target market -- busy and less technical consumers, particularly young mothers, who find themselves increasingly dependent on e-mail and don't want the complexity of a smartphone or the high cost of running one on a 3G network. Peek provides an alternative to a growing movement within the cellular industry to force minimal data plans on advanced phones. And for consumers who find carrier stores less than inviting, Peek is sold at Target, and it works.

source : engadget.com

HTC Fuze

HTC's official Fuze page shows up... kinda

by Joshua Topolsky, posted Nov 7th 2008 at 9:57PM

If you had any lingering doubt that HTC's US, GSM version of the Touch Pro (AKA the Fuze) was headed to AT&T in the near future, you can probably take a deep breath. Thanks to an eagle-eyed tipster, we're now able to view HTC's official page for the device, although it looks like they may not be done with all the coding, as an image of the Tilt is still being used as a placeholder. There's no mention of release date, though we do learn that the device will sport AT&T's Cellular Video and Mobile Music services, and a "unique AT&T defined 5 row slide out / slide away QWERTY keyboard," which definitely means nothing at all. Hit the read link if you don't believe us, but for goodness' sake -- you should see someone about that paranoia.

source : endgaget.com

Virgin shows of 50Mbps cable modem

Virgin Media shows off stylish 50Mbps cable modem

by Darren Murph, posted Nov 8th 2008 at 6:40PM

This truly may be a world's first: a cable modem you don't feel incredibly pressured to relegate to the rear of your networking stash. Yes friends, that succulent device you see above is Virgin Media's shockingly stunning 50Mbps cable modem, which unsurprisingly relies on DOCSIS 3.0 technology in order to provide such 1337 speeds. It's still not as speedy as Ambit Broadband's channel bonding modem, nor can it hold a candle to whatever Sigbritt Löthberg had going on in Sweden, but 50Mbps isn't anything to sneeze at. No word on pricing just yet (don't worry, you'll pay it), but it should be available for UK-based speed freaks before the year's end.

source : endgaget.com

World wide smartphone growth

Smartphone Growth Metrics

Posted by Sam Churchill on November 5th, 2008

Virtually half the planet has a mobile phone. They’re getting faster and cheaper as smartphones go downmarket.

In the third quarter of 2008, smartphone market share for Nokia fell to 38.9 percent in the quarter from 51.4 percent a year before, says Market researcher Canalys. Apple’s market share jumped to 17.3 percent and RIM’s to 15.2 percent in the quarter.

ComScore says iPhone adoption increased 46% among people who made between $25,000 and $75,000 per year. That’s because a $200 phone can save money in lieu of multiple digital devices and services. The market among rich people who earn $100K/year, is only one third that rate.

Faster, cheaper, more powerful.

Apple has recorded more than 200 million downloads through its App Store, which opened in July 2008, reports RCR Wireless News. The Android Market — which opened this October — may have already delivered its 3 millionth download, according to the ad firm Medialets. The average user of the Android-based G1 phone has downloaded 14 applications, out of 200 now available on the Android Marketplace, a Google executive said Wednesday.

Once developers can charge for their software in the first quarter of next year, 70 percent of the revenue will then go to developers. Of the remaining 30 percent, a small portion will cover the cost of the transaction, such as credit-card transaction fees, and most of the rest will go to the mobile operator.

Momentum appears to be building around Android with Motorola announcing it will shift focus on the Android platform in addition to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. A WiMAX version is expected, too.

Symbian held 63% global market share in 2007, according to RCR News, with Linux 10% and Apple’s OS X on the iPhone garnering 3%. That was a year in which smartphones represented about 11% of total handsets shipped. This year, that picture shifts to Symbian with 53%, Linux/Android with 11% and Apple with 10%.

In the United States, however, the picture is quite different.

According to data from comScore/M:Metrics, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry leads with the largest installed base of users, followed by Windows Mobile, Palm and Apple, in Q3, 2007.

RIM topped them all in North America, selling 5.6 million units in the 2nd quarter with a 126% expansion. Windows Mobile grew at a respectable 20% — far outpacing Symbian’s 0.7% growth. Linux posted a disappointing performance, sliding 16% and ranking fourth behind Windows Mobile.

The iPhone 3G could turn those figures upside down.

Apple sold 6.9 million iPhones in the third quarter of 2008, compared with 6.1 million BlackBerries sold over the same period. The company has sold roughly 200 million iPhone applications from its online AppStore in its three-plus months of existence. Unlike Google and Symbian, Apple and RIM are not open.

Samsung Electronics surpassed Motorola in the third quarter to became the largest mobile phone vendor in the United States, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. Samsung and LG Electronics control 22.4 percent and 20.5 percent respectively while Motorola, the top vendor in the U.S. since 2004, saw market share falling to 21.1 percent from 32.7 percent a year before.

The North American market is among the fastest-growing, with an increase of 78.7 per cent year over year in the 2nd quarter. The region also accounted for almost 25 per cent of the global smartphone sales to end users.

Worldwide smartphone sales totaled 32.2 million units in the second quarter, according to Gartner, up 15.7% from the same period last year.

By 2012, Strategy Analytics projects that smartphones will comprise 30% of all handsets shipped, or about 452 million out of 1.5 billion handsets. By then Symbian will still hold 39% of the smartphone OS market, with Linux/Android at 22% and Apple at 18%.

Nobody can predict the future. But smartphones will get faster, cheaper and better. End users and developers stand to benefit.

source : dailywireless.org

AT&T Acquires Wayport

AT&T Acquires Wayport

Posted by Sam Churchill on November 6th, 2008

AT&T announced today that it has agreed to acquire Wayport, a leading provider of managed Wi-Fi services in the United States. The $275 million cash deal will sharply expand the number of hotspots where customers can get Internet access. Wayport currently provides back-office management for AT&T’s Wi-Fi Hot Spots, so the acquisition brings management of Wi-Fi infrastructure completely under AT&T management.

AT&T’s Wi-Fi footprint will expand to nearly 20,000 domestic hotspots and the company’s global Wi-Fi presence to more than 80,000 locations. Wayport hotspots are in key locations, including select Wyndham, Marriott Vacation Club and Four Seasons hotels; HealthSouth and Sun Healthcare locations; plus McDonald’s restaurants.

Wayport is a neutral host, enabling wireless carriers, ILECs, ISPs, device manufacturers and aggregators like Boingo to offer their own branded Wi-Fi experience. Founded in 1996, Wayport began providing Internet connectivity to the wider community by creating hot spots in approximately 10,000 McDonald’s restaurants throughout the United States.

AT&T says their marketing leadership and enterprise sales force will complement Wayport’s expertise in enabling and managing applications over an integrated network. Wayport will also extend AT&T’s reach in the hospitality, health care, education and retail sectors.

According to AT&T, a broader and deeper AT&T Wi-Fi network means more free connectivity for millions of AT&T customers, including select AT&T smartphone customers, AT&T LaptopConnect customers and AT&T High Speed Internet (including U-verse) subscribers. It may have more to do with keeping iPhone users happy, and from clogging up the rest of their 3G network.

The combined company will be able to deliver a more cost-effective and streamlined solution for enterprises with both the back-office infrastructure and end-user content application managed by one company, says the company.

• AT&T will provide a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking converged and managed network capabilities – on one network – with global reach, while also bringing ready access to the nation’s largest Wi-Fi, wireless and leading global IP network.
• Enterprise customers will be able to better utilize private-side applications – effectively managing costs and increasing productivity levels – including inventory management, remote employee learning, point-of-sale applications and remote security monitoring.
• A unified solution will drive new business partnerships, leveraging AT&T’s unique, innovative services and applications available to enterprise customers.
• Enterprise customers will benefit from new, revenue-generating opportunities with AT&T’s ability to bring customized, location-based messaging and advertising to more touch points – via a streamlined Wi-Fi solution – reaching more end-users.

The transaction is expected to close as early as the fourth quarter of 2008.

Boingo Wireless has an agreement to access Wayport’s entire North American network of Wi-Fi hotspots, including over 9,000 WiFi-enabled McDonald’s US restaurants. Boingo combines over 100,000 locations from more than 150 leading Wi-Fi operators, like Wayport that serves Starbucks and McDonalds, into one worldwide network.

Boingo has two basic rates; WiFi connections for laptops cost $21.95 month while connections to handheld devices cost only $7.95/month. Additional charges may apply at some premium international locations. Boingo Mobile is currently available for devices running Windows Mobile 6.0, Windows Msobile 5.0, Symbian S60 3rd Edition, and Linux.

source : dailywireless.org

Sprint Cellcasting

Sprint Cellcasting NFL, Looses 3rd Quarter

Posted by Sam Churchill on November 7th, 2008

Yesterday, a National Football League game — the Cleveland Browns vs. the Denver Broncos — was broadcast on Sprint mobile phones as part of an exclusive partnership with Sprint, a deal that’s valued about $500 million over five years, reports the WSJ.

Over the next seven weeks, Sprint will phone-cast the eight games that are televised solely on the NFL Network, the league’s cable channel. For the past three seasons, the NFL has struggled to persuade major cable operators to include its channel in their basic programming packages.

“Live compelling content is a game changer in the mobile industry,” said Steve Gaffney, Sprint’s director of sports sponsorships.

For the NFL, the Sprint phone-casts are part of a series of experiments with digital media aimed at determining how fans will consume football in the future. NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., conducted similar experiments this summer, showing highlights and a handful of events from the Beijing Olympics on mobile phones.

For Mobile Television, Sprint has eschewed Qualcomm’s MediaFlo, a 700 MHz broadcast channel dedicated to cell phones on UHF Channel 56, used by Verizon and AT&T. Instead, Sprint uses their EVDO data network with MobiTV delivering content over their EVDO data network.

NextWave Wireless plans to give WiMAX operators the ability to deliver mobile TV and digital audio over their networks. Their MXtv technology is compatible with the 802.16e standard. NextWave also has a joint development agreement with Huawei to integrate MXtv into their WiMAX products.

In other news, Sprint Nextel reported a third-quarter loss of $326 million and a double-digit drop in revenue today. This compares with earnings of $64 million, or 2 cents a share, last year. Revenue for the quarter was $8.8 billion, down from $10 billion last year.

Sprint Nextel’s wireless business reported a 13 percent decline in revenue to $7.5 billion as its subscriber base fell by 1.3 million. That included 1.1 million valuable “postpaid” customers who have contracts. That was worse than in the second quarter, when Sprint Nextel lost 901,000 subscribers, including 776,000 postpaid customers.

source : dailywireless.org

BMW iDrive upgrade

BMW iDrive Gets Makeover

Posted by Sam Churchill on November 7th, 2008

Seven years on from the launch of the original BMW iDrive, which has been fitted into more than two million cars, BMW has introduced the second generation of iDrive.

The development process of the second generation iDrive, which started back in 2002, involved the use of mobile driving simulators, cockpit models and two concept cars equipped with prototypes of the new system variants. An evaluation program with a total of 500 representative test persons was conducted at four different locations in Europe, America and Asia.

The new generation of BMW iDrive comes with no less than eight ‘favourite’ buttons on the centre console, enabling the user to save radio stations, telephone numbers and navigation destinations, as well as all menu items subsequently available for direct retrieval via iDrive.

The second generation of BMW’s control system also comes with four direct selection keys on the Controller for the menu options used most frequently, enabling the driver to spontaneously switch between CD, radio, telephone and navigation functions quickly and efficiently, making the entire system very easy to learn and memorise.

This great-grandson of iDrive made its debut in revised 2009 3 Series and 1 Series models this month as a roughly $2,000 option (depending on the model). It will be standard in 7 Series models starting in the spring.

The iDrive could (and still can) control everything from the temperature settings and the speed of the air-conditioning fan to the radio, navigation system and cellphone. The trouble was that it was frustratingly complex.

This marks the third version of iDrive. The first, in 2002, had eight general functions that you selected by first sliding the controller in one of the eight compass directions. Version 2, circa 2004, reworked the functions to just four (communication, navigation, entertainment, and climate control). This third variant adds the function buttons, much like programmable PC function keys

NPR had a field day testing the Voice Command on the BMWi 7 Series (ram). It needed a little work.

PC World says the day of the in-car satnav may be over, with GPS smartphones like the Apple iPhone 3G outsripping their sales. Global shipments of satnavs or PNDs (Portable Navigation Devices) were down 6 per cent in Q3 2008 in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa - falling behind shipments of smartphones with built-in GPS, which soared from 4.7 million last quarter to 10.4 million in Q3 although North America and Asia Pacific still seeing good volume growth.

Nokia is already the third largest provider of mobile navigation solutions across all platforms in EMEA, behind TomTom and only narrowly behind Garmin.

The Dash Express is leaving the GPS navigation device business. It was notable for its seamless Internet connectivity (via GSM cellular and Wi-Fi networks) that supported real-time searches, live traffic reports from other Dash users, and easy data entry via the Web. But it cost $400, and the Internet services cost $10 to $13 a month (depending on whether you prepaid for a year or not).

Nokia may incorporate the social aspects of The Dash to monitor traffic. Working with General Motors, BMW, and CalTrans, they are conducting a large-scale experiment to test how cell phones can monitor and predict traffic. The California Center for Innovative Transportation is working with Nokia and special traffic-monitoring software developed by Nokia. The phone sents data about each car’s speed and position back to the company’s research facility.

source : dailywireless.org

AT&T Buying Centennial Communications

AT&T Buying Centennial Communications

Posted by Sam Churchill on November 8th, 2008

In its second wireless deal in two days (after buy WiFi company Wayport), AT&T announced Friday evening that it would buy Centennial Communications, a regional wireless phone company, for $944 million in cash, a price that is more than double Centennial’s stock market value. It will also expand its wireless network in Puerto Rico and other regions of the United States, reports Reuters.

Centennial has 1.1 million wireless subscribers, of which about 40 percent are in Puerto Rico, where it has a market penetration of about 11 percent. It also has about 596,700 access lines for business customers in Puerto Rico.

“The transaction will enhance AT&T’s wireless coverage for customers in largely rural areas of the Midwest and Southeast United States and in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” AT&T said in a statement.

AT&T has nearly 75 million wireless subscribers and aims to obtain approval for the deal from Centennial shareholders and regulators by the second quarter of 2009.

Analysts have said that rural phone companies need to consolidate to cut costs, as more consumers cancel home phones to go completely wireless or switch to all-in-one phone, television and Internet packages offered by cable companies or national phone companies.

Verizon Communications is buying rural wireless service provider Alltel for $28.1 billion, which will help it overtake AT&T as the largest U.S. wireless service provider. Meanwhile, CenturyTel announced a deal last month to buy rival rural phone company Embarq for $5.8 billion in stock.

“The big continue to get bigger,” Nelson said. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult for the smaller carriers to compete against the large national carriers.”

An AT&T spokesman said there was some overlap in their markets, primarily in the southeastern United States and Puerto Rico, but there was “robust competition” in these areas. In the Midwest, he said Centennial’s network primarily covered rural areas and complemented AT&T’s network.

“I don’t think it’s the last of AT&T’s acquisitions. Nor Verizon’s,” said Comack. “They’re going to use their mass to do tuck-in acquisitions like this.”

Top 20 USA Phone Companies Source: Wikipedia #1 AT&T Mobility 74.91M subs (09/08) Will be 2nd largest after VZ mergers #2 Verizon Wireless 70.8M subs (09/08) Acquiring Alltel & Unicel #3 Sprint Nextel 51.91M subs (06/08) Excludes Xohm #4 T-Mobile USA 32.11M subs (09/08) Owned by Deutsche Telekom #5 Alltel 13.6M subs (09/08) being acquired by Verizon Wireless #6 TracFone Wireless 10.45M (09/08) largest virtual operator, uses other celcos #7 U.S. Cellular 6.18M subs (09/08) #8 Virgin Mobile 5M subs (06/08) MVNO, currently acquiring Helio #9 MetroPCS 4.85M subs (09/08) #10 Cricket 3.42M subs (09/08) Includes Jump Mobile #11 Unicel .79M subs (09/08) being integrated into Verizon #12 Qwest Wireless .77M (09/08) Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) #13 Cellular South .7M subs (09/08) #14 Centennial Wireless .66M subs (09/08) Being bought by ATT #15 Cincinnati Bell .57M subs (09/08) #16 nTelos .43M subs (09/08) #17 SouthernLINC .28M subs (09/08) #18 Movida Wireless .27M (09/08) #19 Helio .17M subs (09/08) being acquired by Virgin Mobile USA #20 Alaska Communications .15M (09/08)

In other news, MetroPCS Communications and Leap Wireless will offer free roaming onto each other’s networks, reports RCR Wireless News.

Leap’s markets (Cricket) will be free to MetroPCS customers signed up for the carrier’s $45- and $50-per-month service plans, and can be added to other plans for $5 per month, with similar offers by MetroPCS.

source : dailywireless.org