Nextel and Motorola Mobility Launch New Ferrari Model: the Motorola i897 Ferrari Black
All in black, the handset offers the elegance and prestige of the Italian marquee brand
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News on Asus PadFone
Looks like this year is going to be very good indeed for the new Asus PadFone, official news says that it will be unveiled at MWC 2012 February 27th. This could possibly be the device of the year if Tegra 3 and Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 chip are really on board. Things will be a…
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AT&T: On the Couch
During AT&T’s quarterly earnings call, CEO Randall Stevenson blasted the FCC over its leadership in making additional spectrum available to carriers, reports ReadWriteWeb.
Stevenson said that because of AT&T’s spectrum crunch it will be forced to raise prices and take additional actions against the highest data users.
Stevenson’s remarks come as AT&T announced that it sold 9.4 million smartphones including 7.6 million iPhones in the the fourth quarter of 2011.
AT&T is complaining about lack of spectrum. Who do they have to blame for that?
Verizon and Sprint acquired spectrum. AT&T didn’t.
AT&T wanted to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion. It smacked of hubris. If AT&T wanted spectrum they could have bought it for one-tenth the cost – as Verizon did with cable’s AWS spectrum. The $3.6 billion Verizon/Cable deal valued the spectrum at $0.69 per MHz-POP (the number of people covered by each megahertz).
In psychoanalytic terms, Stevenson’s remarks resemble a phenomena known as transference. The facade is falling.
AT&T has to buy 2.1 GHz MSS spectrum from Dish Networks or buy 2.6 GHz from Sprint. There is no other option.
If AT&T goes with Dish:
- AT&T would have to pay top dollar. Dish says they’re not after a quick buck, they want a hedge against satellite tv. Dish, no doubt, is getting offers from T-Mobile and tech companies like Google.
- AT&T may have problems getting LTE-based iPhones to work on the odd, 2.1 MSS frequency and it will take them 2-3 years to build the network.
- AT&T would have to spend $5B to construct 2.1 MSS infrastructure – and Dish doesn’t even have FCC approval (yet) for terrestrial ATC. T-Mobile might use their current AWS infrastructure. Way cheaper.
If AT&T goes with Sprint:
- They could purchase 40 MHz from Sprint/Clearwire and offer wholesale partnerships with media companies.
- They might offer TD-LTE iPhones, first as a Virtual Operator.
- They would have to spend many billions building out their own dense 2.6 GHz network (and backhaul).
Clearwire and Sprint will offer TD-LTE devices and services this year. Huawei’s E589 personal hotspot uses TD-LTE and supports up to 10 Wi-Fi devices at once with compatibility for FD-LTE, UMTS and GSM. China Mobile’s TD-LTE iPhone will likely work on Clearwire’s network and the cross-compatibility would lower costs.
AT&T could also keep their powder dry and wait until unused television spectrum opens up. But can they afford to wait? Probably not.
AT&T blew it. They’re only human. The iPhone can’t solve their problems.
See Dailywireless: Verizon Buying Nationwide AWS Spectrum from Cable, Verizon-Cable Deal: Too Cozy?, Cross Marketing of Verizon & Cable Begins, iBooks: Cellular’s Big Bang?
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Verizon Offering DROID Incredible 2 For $10
Verizon is cutting the DROID Incredible 2 price by a lot. Now you can purchased the device for less than $10. The Incredible 2 is available for only $9.99 with a two years commitment.
Although, the Incredible 2 might be now as compatible as Samsung Galaxy Nexus in term of many things but we have to admit that the device is pretty sick. It features a 4″ display, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, an 8 megapixel camera around the back and is powered by a 1.0 GHz single-core processor. You can get all of this for only $9.99, what a deal!
[via androidcommunity]
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Onavo Closes $10m Series B Round
Financing secured from Horizons Ventures, Motorola Mobility Ventures and existing investors Magma Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital
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News on RedSn0w
The RedSn0w jailbreak tool has been updated to version 0.9.10b5, that promises to fix iBooks DRM problems. This fix that has been integrated into RedSn0w, developed by PlanetBeing apparently sorts out the issues of the jailbreak detection by iBooks, that in some cases causes images not to display in the proper manner. Please do let…
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Google Crisis Response Mapping
Today Google launched a new Google Crisis Response capability on Google Maps. Google Public Alerts is designed to bring you relevant emergency alerts when and where you’re searching for them.
If you click through to “more info” on an alert, you’ll find a page showing more details about the alert, with the full description from the alert publisher with a link to their site and other useful information.
According to Google, with today’s launch of Public Alerts on Google Maps, relevant weather, public safety, and earthquake alerts from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) will be accessible when you search on Google Maps. Google Public Alerts also provides a link to more information and gives instructions to interested organizations who want to make their emergency data available through this tool.
Google partnered with the World Bank to make crowd-sourced Google Map Maker data available to first responders in disaster scenarios. Google Map Maker enables crowd-sourcing the editing and maintenance of Google’s world map. The user-generated data includes locations of hospitals, schools, settlements, water sources and minor roads.
The Google Elections hub and their toolkit features a Google Map of Primary Results. The Election map shows the number of votes cast in various counties.
In 2008, the company introduced Google Flu Trends, which analyzes search data to show where the flu is spreading and last year, rolled out Google Dengue Trends, which performs a similar service related to Dengue Fever.
The CNN iReport Map is a Google Map showing the location of user contributed stories. Stories can also be searched by ‘most viewed’, ‘most commented’ and ‘most shared’.
GeoLogTag 4.0, for iOS devices ($4.99), can continuously track the user’s location and adds geotagging of iPad and Google+ photos. Another new option is to import a GPX track via Mail, Dropbox or any other file management app. GPX track is an open interchange format can be used to describe waypoints, tracks, and routes.
One of the handier Google Maps Mashups that can be used everyday is Housing Maps, which maps housing posted on Craigs List to Google Maps. You mouse over a push pin for more info, or click to go to the source on Craig’s List. Housing ads always include an address or link to Google Maps, so mapping housing is fairly easy.
Geo-Wiki utilizes embedded geo-tagged coordinates for any text or picture. On Wikipedia geotagged information in articles and images, can use the template {{coord}}. Real-time geotagging relays automatically geotagged media such as photos or video to be published and shared immediately.
GeoLoki lets you discover unique content based on your location. You can get everything from transit times to wikipedia articles delivered to your phone as you go around town. It’s available as a free app on the App Store and Android Market.
GeoLoki co-founder Amber Case explains, “There are many apps out there that have location-based Wikipedia data, some examples are Wikineer (built on Yahoo’s FireEagle), Geopedia and an iOS app from SimpleGeo.
The problem with each of these apps is that you can only see the location-based content on a map, and you have to have the app open to see the information. You can’t just walk around and get interesting information pushed to you.
In other news, the Transportation Security Administration bought an emergency mass-notification system for its 50,000 personnel, the same one used for the U.S. Coast Guard, the AtHoc IWSAlerts software-based alert system.
It delivers emergency alerts over multiple channels, including the public switched telephone network, mobile, e-mail, SMS text messages and fax to recipients in dispersed geographical areas.
The AWS 2.0 system has been used for emergency alerting, staff recall, personnel accountability and response to disasters, including storms, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, earthquakes in American Samoa and Haiti, and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
In related Google Maps news, the second 45° imagery update of 2012 includes new imagery for 17 U.S. and 7 international locations in Google Maps.
Poynter has tips for journalists on how to create interactive maps and tell stories with spreadsheet data.
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AT&T Launched Pantech Burst
A&T has launched the Pantech Burst on Sunday January 22, 2012. The device packed with AT&T’s 4G LTE connection. Priced at $49.99 with 2-Year contract or $399.99 without it.
The Burst features a 4″ Super AMOLED display. Also it offered a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor. As for the camera, you can expect a 5-Megapixels camera on the back.
[via Phonedog]
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Motorola Mobility and Evans Cycles Bring MOTOACTV™ to UK Cyclists
The all in one GPS touch screen cycling computer and smart MP3 Player now available in Evans Cycles stores throughout the UK
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News on Kurio Tablet
With the ever-rising popularity of tablet devices, buyers seem more than happy to stump up the cost of an outright purchase or even sign up to a 24-month contract. With this new technology entering more and more of our homes, the chances of the younger generation having access to these slates, could cause concern to…
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