Archive for August 11th, 2008
Is iPhone’s 3G Connection a Disappointment?
How is 3G Working On Your IPhone It is brisk baby Marginally better than 2G iPhone No iPhone 4 Me Now that I’ve been using the new iPhone 3G for nearly a month, its capabilities and deficiencies are becoming clearer. The newer design makes it sleeker, easier to grip and a joy to look at. And the GPS chip has made the device infinitely useful, though it doesn’t appear that the developer community has started to leverage the technology very effective...
You Can Surf From China. But Should You?
In Beijing, Internet access will soon be in high demand: Half a million people are expected to visit the city of 17 million for the Olympics, and most of them will want web-based access to personal and corporate sites. This may well be the largest international remote access event ever. Much of the attention has been around whether visitors can surf the Internet. But some people are wondering whether they should. Is it safe to surf from China? “With Software-as-a-Service applications, more us...
SingTel Buys Growth
Let’s pretend for a moment that you operate a wireless phone company for a relatively small country that’s packed with mobile phones. Sure, you’ll focus on increasing data revenue, but if you’re smart, you’ll buy into growing operators in other countries, too. That’s how SingTel, the carrier whose home market has about 4.6 million people (and 5.6 million mobile phones), does it. The company added 182,000 new customers in Singapore in the second quarter of th...
iPhone Now Using GIPS to Support VoIP
On Friday I was apprised of a newsworthy item that crossed the wires this morning, and I’m just getting a chance to post about it now. This item involves GIPS and Apple, and the main idea is that their market leading VoiceEngine Mobile application is now being used in the iPhone. GIPS has made its name as the standard-setter for voice codecs and this news is a great validation for what their technology can do for mobility. I’ve long felt that cell phones were one of the biggest cons...
It’s Showtime for Tiered Broadband
The two-month grace period is ending for Time Warner Cable customers in Beaumont, Texas, who are part of the ISPs tiered broadband trials. A spokesman for Time Warner Cable declined to comment but confirmed that residents would soon see bills reflecting the $1 per gigabyte overage charge for those who have consumed more than the 5 GB allowed under the $29.95 plan all the way up to the 40 GB allowed under the $54.90 plan. Now they’ll have to pay them. Last month, Karl over at DSL Reports a...
More Proof that the Internet Will Save Wireless Carriers
A report out from Chetan Sharma Consulting proves that data is the big story when it comes to wireless operators in the United States. Driven by flat-rate plans, increasing 3G coverage and the iPhone, data spending reached $8.2 billion for the second quarter of 2008, or about 21 percent of the total wireless services revenue. The boost in wireless services increased average revenue per user by 5 percent to $0.50, offsetting a $0.05 decline in voice ARPU. Verizon, which leads U.S. wireless opera...
Sometimes YOU Have to be Remarkable
remarkable (r-mr’k-bl) pronunciation adj. 1. Worthy of notice. 2. Attracting notice as being unusual or extraordinary. - - - There are times in your life when YOU need to make yourself remarkable if you want to be remarkable. This isnt something that just happens to you, without you making an effort. (Remarkable people will understand this.) If you dont do what it takes to stand out, you just wont. Sometimes the difference between your success and failure is based on how remar...
Death of the Cashier
If you’re tired of waiting in line while the cashier takes his/her sweet time ringing through the person in front of you, here’s some good news: self-service check-out technology appears to be thriving. While I’m not an enthusiastic shopper, I noticed over the weekend that two big chains - Canadian Tire and Loblaws - have both installed self-service kiosks where consumers can scan and then pay for their purchases. The technology is far from perfect but it’s pretty impres...
iPhone App Downloads Are Up. What About Their Usage?
>The iPhone App Store is red hot: in its first month, more than 60 million software programs were downloaded and generated about $1 million a day in sales. That information comes from Steve Jobs in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. In his interview, Jobs says the developers took home $21 million in the first month, of which $9 million went to the top 10 developers. One of the biggest selling app: Sega Corp’s $9.99 Super Monkeyball game that sold more than 300,000 copies in 20 ...
Will Collaboration Pit Cisco Against Microsoft, Google?
Cisco Systems (CSCO) reported its fiscal fourth-quarter 2008 financials last week, but while the San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant beat Wall Street estimates, thanks to the hurdle posed by the law of large numbers, it forecast more modest growth going forward. “The market is clearly in transition, and we will use this time as an opportunity to expand our share of customer spend and to aggressively move into market adjacencies,” CEO John Chambers said in statement. The question...
Tough Times Ahead For U.S. Phone Companies?
The second quarter 2008 financial reports are in –- and the tea leaves aren’t showing a sunny future for phone companies. While their financials today look bearable, economic and demographic trends are acting as gale-force headwinds for the future. Here are some of the major issues they’re facing: A slowing economy means people are choosing wireless phones over landlines, resulting in increased access line losses. That in turn is reducing the number of people the phone companie...
One Online Storage Startup Backs Up Profits
Last week in my analysis of online storage sector, How to standout in the sea of storage startups, I pointed out that many startups were having a tough time convincing folks to upgrade from free to paying services. That post got many reactions, including a comment from Raghu Kulkarni, founder and CEO of Pro Softnet, a Woodland Hills Calif.-based company. His company runs two online storage services, IDrive and IBackup. While IDrive is a more consumer-focused backup service, while IBackup cater...
Vatata: Chinese P2P TV Coming to Set-Top Boxes
Chinese P2P solutions provider Vatata, whose similarly named P2P streaming platform Vakaka we wrote about last year, has developed a set-top box solution to bring a Joost-like P2P TV experience to the living room. It provides access to both the company’s own P2P network for live streaming video as well as public P2P networks and protocols such as Emule, Gnutella and BitTorrent for media downloads. Continue Reading. ...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.