Wireless Tech Chat

The Maingear MX-L
The new MX-L is the ideal notebook for the professional on the go. Small, stylish and light, its the perfect companion to help you stay organized and connected on those long business trips or between home and the jobsite, wherever it is.

CPU Power.
The MX-L is the one of the first notebooks to ever use Intel mobile CPUs. The Intel Core 2 CPU delivers the power you need to perform demanding tasks like video editing, playing next-generation titles with your friends or multi-tasking several heavy applications without a hitch.

13.3″ LED Backlit Display.
Its razor-thin 13.3 inch display with LED backlit technology delivers unsuppressed color saturation and ultra-brightness that not only creates true-to-life images but also produces higher visibility over the traditional active matrix display you’ll find elsewhere. Also, with an LED screen it’s just on and off, there’s no warming up or waiting necessary, it’s ready when you are.

Fall Sensors.
The MAINGEAR MX-L comes equipped with fall sensors that park the hard drives head to a safe position so data isnt lost or the head is damaged in the case that you drop your notebook. We put in as much care into features we hope youll never have to rely on as much as we do the features that youll use on a daily basis.

Multimedia.
The Intel G45 Express Chipset, with the next-generation Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD (Intel GMA X4500HD), includes built-in support for full 1080p high-definition video playback, including Blu-ray disc movies. This powerful video engine provides you with a rich, new media experience to deliver smooth HD playback without the need for add-in video cards or decoders. Now catch that movie youve been meaning to watch since youre not going anywhere for a while on that flight.

High Speed Wireless Connectivity.
Disconnect your MX-L and maintain a stable, high-speed connection with next-generation Draft-N wireless technology.

Crazy Mobile Capacity.
Take up to 500GB of data with you on the go, whether its music, movies or projects you’re working on.

Upgradability.
MAINGEAR PCs are built to last. When your needs grow your PC grows with you. With plenty of space for additional storage and memory upgrades to platforms that support multi-GPU configurations for the highest quality images an d graphic processing. Visual computing at its finest.

Built-in Webcam.
The MX-L notebook’s 1.3 megapixel webcam lets you record high-quality video for just about anything from video blog posts to video messages to send to just about anyone.

Security.
Keep your private files locked down tight with the enhanced biometric security of a built-in fingerprint reader. This feature will prove most useful if you ever misplace your notebook or if it is stolen.

From Engadget: On the environmental tip, Mayor Bloomberg has announced that New York City will install 826,000 wireless water meters by 2011. Under the new system, readings will be sent to a network of rooftop receivers throughout the city every six hours, enabling the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to bill property owners every month with exact water usage — with the bill available online. Under the current system, water use iNew York City says a $68 million effort to modernize its water meters will help save money and water by flagging leaks fast.

The Department of Environmental Protection announced plans yesterday to install a wireless, automatic meter-reading system citywide.

The network will measure customers’ water use four times a day. Readings are now taken four times a year, meaning leaks sometimes linger undetected.

DEP says a leaking toilet can waste 250 gallons a day — about $640 a year.

The agency says the new system will spot spikes in water use and alert customers to check for leaks. It’s expected to take three years to install.

DEP says staff meter-readers will shift to other tasks. The agency also pays Consolidated Edison to read meters but expects to stop.

It is estimated and folks are billed every three months. The system will cost taxpayers $250 million, and installation (free for property owners) is already underway in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. When it is fully installed, New York will be the largest city in the world to use wireless water metering. According to the New York Times, it’s estimated that a 5 to 10 percent reduction in water use could save the city up to $90 million annually.

IPEVO’s Kaleido R7 wireless digital photo frame — which we first caught sight of at CES — is now officially available, for all those out there who were waiting expectantly. If you’ve already forgotten, the 7-inch frames (800 x 480 resolution) has 512MB of memory plus an SD card slot, and it’s just dying to sync up with your PC, Mac, or your cell phone to obtain your precious, precious memories for display.

Combining form and function, the Kaleido R7 features a raised ‘floating’ display mounted on a special bi-directional hinge with orientation sensors allowing the 7-inch screen to rotate and tilt for optimal viewing in landscape or portrait positions. The backlit, 800 x 480 resolution screen offers auto-rotation and smart-zoom / fill-in options, to enhance the viewing experience. Furthermore, the front-facing touchpad control base and included remote control provide for easy and convenient information and menu navigation.

IPEVO’s marketing executive Caroline introduces me to an LCD picture frame that does more than just show great photos, the IPEVO’s Kaleido R7

The Kaleido R7 comes as a 7-inch, 800 x 480 LCD display, with 512MB internal memory as well as an SD card slot. This glossy looking networked picture frame comes in both wired ($169?) and wifi ($199) versions, auto-senses landscape/portrait modes, and grabs online content through RSS feeds, including photos from Flickr and Picasa. Best of all, it runs a bunch of Internet widgets which elegantly displays all kinds of information, from weather to blogs. There’s even an Eyestage iPhone app for syncing and controlling the picture frame.

For the hardcore geeks out there, you could use the Kaleido R7 as an “ambient display”, to keep track of things that matter to you without clogging up your regular computer display.

Now this is wireless! Good for him for thinking ‘outside the box’

A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.

Rob Spence, 36, who lost an eye in an accident as a teen-ager, said his so-called Project Eyeborg is to have the camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board.

“Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero … fighting for justice against surveillance,” Spence said.

“In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don’t care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy.”

Spence, in Brussels to appear at a media conference, said no part of the camera would be connected to his nerves or brain.

He does not intend to create a reality TV show and the camera will be switched off when not needed, he said.

“I don’t want to go into a locker room. I don’t want to show the world me going to the bathroom either … I’m not a life-caster and I don’t plan to be one,” he said.

From the EyeBorg Blog:

Take a one eyed film maker, an unemployed engineer, and a vision for something that’s never been done before and you have yourself the EyeBorg Project. Rob Spence and Kosta Grammatis are trying to make history by embedding a video camera and a transmitter in a prosthetic eye. That eye is going in Robs eye socket, and will record the world from a perspective that’s never been seen before.

ASU’s Flexibile Display Center and military partners have developed the very first display with a flexible touchscreen. Mainly designed for military applications, the screen is made out of glass strong enough to withstand the battlefield.

Instead of using solid glass for the touchscreen, the device incorporates special material from DuPont Tijin Films in order for the paper-thin display to bend or roll up without damaging the gadget. The device also uses technology from E-ink Corp, allowing users to write, store and erase their own content on the displays; eventually, they will also be available in full color. Although it sounds pretty cool, don’t get your hopes up: The Flexible Display Center estimates that this flexible touchscreen display won’t be available for another 18 months.

Now, in a major effort to revolutionize on-field command and information exchange, the Army has teamed up with ASU to establish the Flexible Display Center (FDC).

“The FDC brings together academia, industry and government to develop what, in essence, will be revolutionary information portals – devices that are small, lightweight, rugged and consume very little power,” says ASU President Michael Crow. “But they will be very powerful in that they will hold the key to successful military operations: real-time information.”

Increasing the pace
Crow adds that the center will accelerate research, development and manufacture of flexible display technologies, which will boost commercialization of flexible displays. As an early adopter, the Army will use the technology developed in the center to accelerate the pace of its transformation, which cannot be achieved with existing glass-based displays. In addition, the Army’s investment will lead to low-volume manufacturing that meets its needs while ensuring the technologies become the industry’s commercial standard.

“Flexible displays are the next revolution in information technology that will enable lighter-weight, lower-power, more-rugged systems for portable and vehicle applications,” says Brig. Gen. Roger Nadeau, commanding general of the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command.

From Bob Sullivan: Here are two data points that don’t jibe: The average cell phone user pays $63 each month for their service, yet nearly half of cell users spend less than 200 minutes a month yakking on those phones.

POWER USERS
People who use the Web, e-mail, broadband Internet access for laptops and other fancy cell phone services don’t have a prepaid option to fall back on. But that doesn’t mean savings aren’t available. The key, as with all transactions, is knowing your bargaining position. That means always knowing your contract end date and exactly what your early termination fee might be, since it’s probably shrinking as time goes by. If you’re paying $120 per month for phone service, a $100 early termination fee shouldn’t scare you away from shopping around.

Sprint started a price war for power users last year, offering its $99 Everything Unlimited Plan. No matter how often you use your phone or what you use it for, that plan should act as a reference point. If you’re paying more than $100 per month, you should investigate other options.

Most carriers offer similar plans, but read the fine print. Everything doesn’t always mean everything. At some carriers, all-you-can-call packages charge extra for text messages, for example.

There are other devils in the details. Carriers are still charging handset upgrade fees when consumers renew contracts ($18 to $36) and activation fees when consumers sign up ($35). These fees should be included in the price of the phone, but they are rarely made clear by salespeople. Scan your bill for at least two months after signing a new contract to find this fee, then complain about it. Many consumers who do talk their way into refunds.

From Gizmodo: Remember when those two satellites collided the other day? Seems that they’ll be the space junk gift that keeps on giving, as their 800-km debris orbiting field could hamper all future space launches.

“Future launches will have to be adjusted with regard to the fact that the debris [from the collision] has spread over an 800-km area and will gather at a common orbit in 5-6 years,” said Alexander Stepanov, director of the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg.

According to NASA this massive cloud of human failure joins the 19,000 other objects that currently pollute the low and high orbit space around the planet. As we reported last week, the Hubble Space Telescope is already in danger.

How in the world (out of this world?) are the world’s nations going to cleanup this mess? They can’t even clean up the messes on Terrestrial Earth, let alone Solar Earth.

Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov said Tuesday’s smashup of a derelict Russian military satellite and a working U.S. Iridium commercial satellite occurred in the busiest part of near-Earth space — some 500 miles (800 kilometers) above Earth.

Solovyov said debris from the collision could stay in orbit for up to 10,000 years, and even tiny fragments threaten spacecraft because both travel at such a high orbiting speed.

Oberg said the limited accuracy of tracking data and computer calculations makes it impossible to predict collisions, only their probability. He said most satellites also have little fuel to escape what most likely would be a false alarm.

James Oberg, a NASA veteran who is now space consultant, described the crash over northern Siberia as “catastrophic event.” “The collision offers a literally heaven-sent opportunity for the Obama administration to take forceful, visible and long-overdo measures to address a long-ignored issue of ’space debris,’” Oberg said.

From JK on the Run: A few Palm Pre news bits hit this week. Instead of offering them up in slices, here’s the whole pie. There’s definitely some attractive features that have me leaning towards the Pre when my AT&T contract is up in June.

* Palm’s Application Store won’t be the only game in town for the Pre. You’ll be able to “side load” third party software via USB or over the air. Here I thought there wouldn’t be any desktop software for the Pre; Sounds like it’s not total Synergy after all.
* Pre can be used as a modem and USB drive. Sprint officially says so on the updated Pre product page. If anyone would know, I’d say it would Sprint. Both wireless tethering over Bluetooth 2.1 and wired tethering with USB 2.0 are options. Native USB mass storage should be automatic on every smartphone these days.
* WebOS isn’t that small. The product page indicates that the 8GB phone will only have 7.4GB available to the user. I’m sure that not all of the 600MB is the operating system, but I’m curious how big software updates are going to be. Perhaps Palm will follow in Nokia’s footsteps and one-up Apple by implementing incremental over-the-air updates. If Nokia can manage it with the N80x Internet Tablets and some N-series devices, I think Palm can make it happen. That would give more meaning to the name “WebOS” too.

7.4GB will actually be available from the 8GB included, possibly implying the size of the OS is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 megs or so (though it’s still unclear what the relationship between the 8GB of storage and RAM will be, and whether or not the Pre will use Program Memory RAM/Storage ROM/Mass Storage like Windows Mobile or have a simpler RAM/Storage setup like other phones).

Also, MMS is CONFIRMED. So is Phone-as-modem via bluetooth or USB tethering.

Researchers from Monash University in Australia are working on microbot motors designed to swim through the human bloodstream.

Talk about cool! This wireless surgical bot will swim your bloodstream!

Dubbed the “Proteus” after the miniature submarine that traveled through the body in the 1966 sci-fi flick, Fantastic Voyage, the tiny piezoelectric motor is just 250 micrometers or a quarter of a millimetre wide - that’s around 2.5 times the width of a human hair.

The motor could be injected into the bloodstream to make current methods of minimally invasive surgery such as keyhole surgery safer and more effective.

Despite the obvious advantages of minimally invasive procedures over cut and sew methods, there is still room for minimizing risk according to research team leader Professor James Friend.

“Serious damage during minimally invasive surgery is however not always avoidable and surgeons are often limited by the width of a catheter tube for example, which in serious cases, can fatally puncture narrow arteries,” Professor Friend said.

The micro-motor would carry tiny cameras and sensor equipment and could access parts of the body, like a stroke-damaged artery in the brain, that are beyond the reach of catheters.

To achieve its swimming motion, the vibrating motor is attached to a spiral tail that spins at up to 1295 rpm and acts as a kind of propeller to drive the device forward in a motion similar to that used by bacterial flagella.

Although my tablet isn’t powerful for Windows 7, this is looking more like the perfect OS for those lower powered computers. And it’s from Microsoft?

By now you’ve undoubtedly read and heard about EarthLink’s announcement of a major restructuring which will include the elimination of 900 jobs–about half of its total workforce–and the shuttering of four regional offices. CEO Rolla Huff said that although the company will expect to lose up to $109 million this year, it will not abandon it’s pursuit of the muni WiFi marketplace.

Despite the difficulties, Earthlink says it remains committed to building the wireless networks in Philadelphia, Anaheim, and other cities it has already won the bids for, but other projects in Houston, Chicago, and possibly San Francisco are likely to fall by the wayside.

In addition, Huff said that the company will work on developing a new business model for muni WiFi, which will likely involve local governments assuming more of the financial risk as well as committing to becoming anchor tenants for the networks.

For a long time EarthLink was essentially the “Big Man on Campus” when it came to muni WiFi, and their recent actions certainly will not put a good light on the concept of citywide wireless networks. It remains to be seen if the company can pick up the shattered pieces and start anew, or this really is the beginning of the end, both for them as well as muni WiFi. There is an opportunity for other providers to zoom in and provide wireless services, but they’re going to have to do it in a way that will have to be financially and technologically prudent. Time will tell if this will come to fruition.

[Via InformationWeek]

Ocean City, New Jersey is one of my favorite vacation spots. It is one of the jewels of the state’s beach resorts, and is a major tourist attraction. It also is a rapidly growing community with more full-time residents moving in, so more municipal services are going to be needed and wanted as time goes by.

With that in mind, the city council recently issued a RFP for the development and deployment of a citywide wireless network. Plans call for a basic free service with enhanced fee-paid service tiers.

This could be a nice little coup for a muni WiFi provider because the city anticipates that the vendor could realize a profit potential of roughly $13 million over the first five years of network operation, and that could grow higher as the city continues to evolve into a year-round residence community.

The city is also going out about the right away with very specific and defnitive wants listed in their RFP. For example, they spell out theirrequirements for basic outdoor wireless service, guaranteed indoor wireless service, and government and public safety wireless service.

[Via MuniWireless.com]

The on-again, off-again wireless network proposed for Sacramento, CA is now back on again after the city council approved a plan this week to cover most of the city by the fall of 2009.

Plans call for free connections from locations covering 95 perecent of the city to an advertiser-supported network that will be built and managed by Sacramento Metro Connect. The city will buy service from the group and will allow equipment to be installed on city-owned infrastructure. In addition, enhanced service will be available for monthly fees ranging from $15 to $50 a month, depending on speed.

This project has had its share of ups and downs–last year, MobilePro Corp., which had the bid to build the network, pulled out because they did not want to build a free network, and the city had to basically start from scratch.

It remains to be seen if free municipal wireless networks will survive, but we’ll have a better idea in the near future.

[Via Sacramento Bee]

All eyes will soon be on Philadelphia in the near future as the city and EarthLink have announced they will be moving forward with their plans to connect the entire city to a wireless network.

Recently, a 15-square-mile pilot project was installed in a section of the city and according to city and EarthLink officials, all went well which prompted them to make the commitment to move ahead and build the network to cover the entire 135 square miles that make up Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has been in the citywide wireless network spotlight for a few years now, and it finally seems that all of the planning, talk, debate, and whatever else will finally be put aside and the real action will soon began. There’s no guarantee that this will be a slam-dunk win-win for everyone, but the concept of big-city wireless networking is about to face its biggest test, and it’s up to the city of Philadelphia and EarthLink to prove that the idea works.

Of course, there will be bumps and bruises along the way–in the pilot project, system availability was at about 74 percent, so there’s definitely room for improvement here. However, let’s understand that Philadlephia is a large city and that there is a lot of wrok that needs to be done in order to make the system work at a high level, so a level of flexibility is necessary in this instance.

In any case, the build-out of Philadelphia’s citywide wireless network is about to take place, and the entire muni WiFi world will be watching.

[Via Philly.com]

Claiming it to be the first of its kind in the nation, Boston’s police commissioner has announced a new text messaging system that will allow for the sending of anonymous tips to the police.

According to Commissioner Edward F. Davis, a tipster would dial CRIME (27463) and enter the word “tip”. The tipster then gets a message from the tipline to call 911, and then another message that asks for details on the incident (date, time, place, etc.). The tipster is also prompted to describe the type of incident by typing in a letter choice–A for violent crime, B for drugs, C for gang activity, or D for other.

The department stresses that all text messages are anonymous. Although the system is geared toward convincing younger people to send in information if they see something that would require a police response, anyone can (and is encouraged) to use it.

Other cities, including New York and Los Angeles, are experimenting with a similar system, but Boston is the first to actually put one in place.

[Via Boston.com]