Category: gadgets and technology

Sony Music wants to entertain you. Sony Electronics wants to equip you. The problem is that when it comes to digital media, their interests are diametrically opposed. [Daypop Top News Stories]

As a member of the Consumer Electronics Association, Sony joined the chorus of support for Napster against the legal onslaught from Sony and the other music giants seeking to shut it down. As a member of the RIAA, Sony railed against companies like Sony that manufacture CD burners. And it isn’t just through trade associations that Sony is acting out its schizophrenia. Sony shipped a Celine Dion CD with a copy-protection mechanism that kept it from being played on Sony PCs. Sony even joined the music industry’s suit against Launch Media, an Internet radio service that was part-owned by – you guessed it – Sony. Two other labels have since resolved their differences with Launch, but Sony Music continues the fight, even though Sony Electronics has been one of Launch’s biggest advertisers and Launch is now part of Yahoo!, with which Sony has formed a major online partnership. It’s as if hardware and entertainment have lashed two legs together and set off on a three-legged race, stumbling headlong into the future.

The possibilities of something like this could be world shifting…

Of course, pay phones represent an excellent solution. They can be upgraded with DSL technology. And they already are installed in high traffic public areas, like airports or hotel lobbies.

[Smart Mobs]

“In new technologies, adult services usually account for 80 percent of traffic. It has been so with video, the internet and DVD. It is natural to assume it will be the same with mobile internet,” Charles Prast told Reuters in an interview. Experience shows that the share of such content later falls to around 20 percent of the total, he said.

[PMN]

Yet another reason not to choose MS Smartphone as your platform of choice. I have not heard of any such issues with either Symbian or PalmOS.

The company plans to update its Smartphone 2002 operating system to fix flaws that make it possible to send rogue software programs to phones that use the OS.

[CNET News.com Communications]

Handheld-software maker Good Technology is gaining some ground on rival Research In Motion by winning RIM subscribers over to its service, a research note says.

[CNET News.com Personal Technology]

The highlight for me in this article:

The first Palm OS-based devices using GoodLink will be available in the first half as well, and Pocket PC-based devices with GoodLink will be available in the second half, Cook Fleming said.

I wonder when this is coming exactly. This is the first I have heard of a Good based Palm… could be killer, but I hope it syncs with my Mac!

This sounds like a fantastic success! I just hope other airlines get in on this. The only negative is that we will have to wait until sometime in 2004 for Lufthansa, who knows when or if other airlines will go for it.

Read Seattle Post-Intelligencer aerospace reporter James Wallace’s review, filed yesterday while on the Lufthansa 747 that was the first commercial jetliner to use Boeing’s “Connexion” WiFi service.

LinkDiscuss (via IP)

[Boing Boing]

Lots of TVs and lots of PCs. Isn’t it time this all worked together? Seamlessly? One of the reasons that consumers are not converging on this stuff is that it’s just too hard. I used to think the PC industry was the most buzzword and jargon filled industry. The truth is the PC industry is a minor leaguer compared to consumer electronics. Poor consumer walks into the store… “HDTV, 480p, 1080i, progressive or interlaced with that HDTV?”. None of it, of course, is designed to work with the PC. This will happen but in the interim it’s going to get ugly.

[Michael Gartenberg]

Just how successful is the South Korean wireless industry you ask? Consider this: South Korean operators launched their CDMA2000 1X services way back in the fourth quarter of 2001. This is a standard that many experts consider to be a 3G technology because of its speeds of 144kbits/second. Some will argue that it is not a true 3G technology, but judging by the data intensive services Koreans are utilizing on the network, it is as close as anyone has come to 3G. In the 8 months following the launch of 1X, the Koreans had created a user base of more than 12 million subscribers (some say the number is 16 million today), according to Ovum, a wireless consultancy based in London. That’s more than a third of the 31 million mobile subscribers in the entire country, which by the way, represents a market penetration of more than 65 percent of the total population.

The Koreans have shown a remarkable knack for transitioning customers onto newer phones and faster services. In Japan, where NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA network – a real 3G network capable of 384 kbits/second and streaming video – has only been able to entice a tiny fraction of its customer base onto the new service. According to Strand Consulting, an independent consultancy based in Copenhagen, only 4 out of every 1000 mobile users in Japan are using a FOMA terminal. Compare that to 400 out of every 1000 in South Korea owning a 1X terminal, and you start to see the disparity.

“Everyone is talking about Japan and DoCoMo and i-mode, and that is a classic case of the emperor has no clothes,” says John Strand, president of Strand Consulting. “i-mode’s biggest success was in getting the international marketing around it, but what makes Korea so interesting is that they have been up and running with 1x for one and a half years. People are paying more for the advanced devices, generating more revenue, and using more airtime. Korea is the land of milk and honey.”

[The Feature.com]

Good stuff for the future…

Avaya, Proxim and Motorola are codeveloping a mobile device that roams between cell phone networks and public or private Wi-Fi wireless hot spots, company executives said Tuesday. [News.com}

As you can see, this baby was designed for the iPod.

A new transmitter that’ll let you listen to your iPod on any FM radio. The iTrip is powered by the iPod itself and comes out this Spring.
Read

[Gizmodo]

While other carriers in the US are all talking the talk about adding Push to Talk to their service, Nextel has gone ahead and expanded their regional coverage. The service will now allow traveling parties to Direct Connect each other while in new markets as well as use Direct Connect to speak with anyone else in the region. By Q3 of this year the feature will work Nationwide and will be light years ahead of what anyone else is will be remotely capable of offering.

The “call setup time” refers to how long it initially takes to connect to a network. Mullins says that the iDEN-based Nextel system has a call setup time of less than one second. By contrast, CDMA networks have a wake-up period of around four seconds: The handset has to request a session and be assigned a resource in the network before packet transmission can begin.

CDMA carriers working with Qualcomm’s BREW technology have a long way to go before the delay is remotely tolerable enough to make this service close to usable.

My choice for satellite TV anytime would probably be DirecTV over Dish, but this box certainly ups the ante for consideration. TiVO certainly has their work cut out for them and hopefully time to answer this as I don’t recall seeing any specs yet on their pending HD PVR box.

The DishPVR 921 satellite TV receiver is a Personal Video Recording product with the ability to record both standard and high definition programming. DISH Network features five nationwide HDTV channels: CBS-HD, HBO-HD, SHOWTIME-HD, Discovery HD, DISH-On-Demand pay-per-view HD movies and a 24-hour HDTV demonstration channel. Using a massive 250 gigabyte hard drive, the DishPVR 921 is capable of recording up to 40 hours of high-definition programming, up to 250 hours standard definition programming, or any combination of the two. Other capabilities include the ability to record two programs at the same time while watching a third pre-recorded program, and picture-in-picture capabilities on any TV. More details including price and availability will be announced later this year.

The first Wi-Fi network cards in the Secure Digital Input Output (SD) format will ship soon, and some will contain Flash Memory in addition to wireless connectivity.

[802.11 Planet]

PalmInfocenter also covers this one

Handspring is reportedly making overtures to Research In Motion that would allow it to place RIM’s Blackberry e-mail software on its Treo communicators.

[internetnews.com: Top News]

Damn Straight!

Consumers have a right to share music, videos, and other digital content that they have purchased between their computing devices, and a commercial model needs to be developed that allows them to do so, Intel CEO Craig Barrett said at the Consumer Electronics Show here Thursday.

[InfoWorld]