AlphiMAX this week is introducing the new AlphiMAX Point-To-Point Estimator which makes it easy to check out the viability of wireless link paths BEFORE you install them. The free estimator works with point-to-point wireless gear from Alvarion, Motorola, Axxcelera, DragonWave, Ceragon, Trango and other vendors.
The new Beta version uses 3D maps which make it easy spot any obstructions. The link budget is automatically tied into weather data, so rain fade and other atmospheric conditions can also be factored in. The new version works in the 8GHz, 10GHz, 11GHz, 15GHz, 18GHz and 23GHz bands.
It’s a free program and should be available shortly. AlphiMAX desires to become a hub for a variety of vendors.
]]>The Android Market isn’t always an easy place to get around, explains LifeHacker. That’s why they rounded up their personal favorites for productivity, multimedia, internet life, and usefulness.
Like their iPhone Pack, Lifehacker’s Android Pack has over 30 short reviews and links to great applications.
You can skip to any of the sections from these links:
- Productivity
- Internet/Communication
- Location-Aware
- Utilities
- Media
- Photography
- Backup and Security
- Food, Shopping, and Entertainment
- Photography
ReadWriteWeb says Appolicious, the website known for its mobile application recommendations, has today launched a revamped Android-focused offering at AndroidApps.com, complete with an accompanying mobile application.
According to Gartner, Android has overtaken Research in Motion’s BlackBerry to become the top-selling mobile operating system in the United States.
Unfortunately, Motorola’s Android 2.2 Rollout is a Mess. Android 2.2 provides native Flash 10.1 support, but some sites don’t work with the plugin, including ABC.com and FOX.com.
]]>Eight senators called on the Obama administration to investigate whether national security would be compromised if the China-based Huawei Technologies sells gear to Sprint Nextel, which has contracts with domestic military and government agencies.
The letter (pdf) sent last week to top administration officials, drew sharp responses from both the Chinese government and Huawei. Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, issued a statement saying Huawei was a private company that simply wanted to do business in the United States.
Ericsson is the world’s largest maker of cellular gear, followed by Nokia Siemens which is roughly tied with Huawei for 2nd and 3rd place.
Sprint’s Clear plans to conduct TD-LTE tests in collaboration with Huawei Technologies, the same infrastructure provider which deployed the world’s first commercial LTE network in Europe, using the same 2.6 GHz spectrum band and flexible base station platform that Clearwire utilizes in the United States.
Huawei’ s SingleRAN@Broad solution enables CDMA operators to smoothly evolve to LTE. Clearwire will also be testing on Samsung’s LTE/WiMAX common base station platform which it currently uses for its mobile WiMAX deployments.
Motorola last month agreed to sell most of its network-equipment business to Nokia Siemens Networks for $1.2 billion.
The Nokia Siemens Flexi Multiradio base stations and its NetAct management system (pdf) would seem to compete with Motorola’s LTE gear. The fate of Motorola’s LTE/WiMAX line may be an open question as it gets absorbed by Nokia Siemens.
Sprint is the first carrier to offer government agencies a private, fully redundant native-IP network completely isolated from outside traffic (pdf).
The CIA’s Intellipedia, modeled after Wikipedia, has grown to a million-page magnum opus of espionage, handling some 100,000 user accounts and 5,000 page edits a day, according to the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
According to Wikipedia, the Secret version of Intellipedia is connected to SIPRNet, which predominantly serves Department of Defense and the Department of State personnel, many of whom do not use the Top Secret JWICS network on a day-to-day basis.
Meanwhile, ZTE’s focus on the US market is starting to pay off huge, reports Unstrung
The Chinese vendor reported operating revenues of US$4.52 billion, a 10.89 percent increase year-on-year. ZTE said 18 percent of its total revenue flow for the first half of the year came from the European and US markets, representing a year-on-year jump of 45 percent. In 2009 more than 80 percent of the company’s revenue came from Asia and Africa. Throughout 2009, however, ZTE had invested more than $1.5 billion in hardware and software for the US.
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It was a much awaited release. Following the successful Motorola Droid phone, finally here comes its successor – the Motorola DROID 2. And Verizon has just made it available for pre-order today under its various mobile data packages. But perhaps what makes the Droid 2 a much awaited Android device is the fact that it will be pre-loaded with the Android 2.2 Froyo OS.
Being a much talked about and overhyped smartphone, expect the Motorola DROID 2 to pack-in tons of great features that will surely give its rivals a run for their money. Let’s take a closer look at what the DROID 2 has to offer then.
DROID 2 features a 3.7 touch screen 480×854 WVGA display that supports up to 16M colors and has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It is equipped with a 5MP camera with auto-focus, touch-to-focus, face detection, panoramic modes and other great camera features. This camera also captures DVD-D1 videos and has its own dedicated camera key.
Going further inside the DROID 2, you’d have an Android phone running on T1 OMAP 1GHz processor with its own dedicated GPU, an 8GB internal memory, 8GB pre-installed microSD card, Android 2.2 OS with Motorola Application Platform, aGPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and speakerphone.
The DROID 2 is also loaded with various Verizon-specific features including 3G Mobile Hotspot support for up to 5 devices, Visual Voice Mail, VZ Navigator, Skype Mobile, V Cast Media Manager, VZW backup assistant and of course a plethora of Google apps and third-party Android apps.
The Motorola DROID 2 is available for pre-order now from Verizon Wireless. It will set you back for $199.99 if you opt to get it with Verizon Contract that will run for 2 years.
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So right after announcing its latest BlackBerry handset, the Torch 9800 last week, RIM is also releasing another sort of new smartphone. Dubbed, BlackBerry Curve 3G, this new BlackBerry device seems like an updated version of BlackBerry Curve 8520. But then obviously, this one is different because of its 3G capability. Plus of course a slew of other great features that BlackBerry fans would surely love.
The BlackBerry Curve 3G is a nicely design smartphone reminiscent of other BlackBerry smartphones particularly the Curve 8520. It features a full-QWERTY keyboard which has been a trademark of most BlackBerry classic smartphone. An optical trackpad is also include to bring fluid navigation of menus and options. This BlackBerry phone also comes equipped with a built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, dedicated media keys, a 2MP camera that can record videos as well, and microSD/SDHC slot that can accomodate up to 32GB of storage.
The BlackBerry Curve 3G fully supports fast internet browsing through 3G networks and of course comes pre-loaded with BlackBerry’s proprietary BBM app. The phone also supports social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Other specs and features of the BlackBerry Curve 3G include – 4.5 hours/5.5 hours GSM/UMTS talk time and 19 days GSM and 14.5 days UMTS standby time. The phone comes with a TFT LCD screen with 320×240 pixel color display.
The BlackBerry Curve 3G runs BlackBerry OS 5 and is ready for BlackBerry . It is expected to ship in the coming months.
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Alright BlackBerry fans, finally RIM officially unveils its latest and perhaps greatest BlackBerry phone yet – the touchscreen and slider phone BlackBerry 9800. Featuring the latest BlackBerry 6 OS, BlackBerry 9800 boasts of a new touchscreen experience with easy-to-use keyboard and rich webkit browser. It also supports AT&T and also offers location features.
Could RIM shrug off threats posed by both Apple and the Android OS with this smartphone? Can the touchscreen and slide-out keyboard lure smartphone users into abandoning the features and functionality of the iPhone 4 or other Android phones? Only time can tell. And if only the BlackBerry 9800 would live up to the hype surrounding its launch.
So, what does the BlackBerry 9800 has to offer to the smartphone market? Let’s take a look at the following specs and features of the BlackBerry 9800:
- 3.2-inch 360×480 capacitive touch screen display (no AMOLED or RETINA display here folks)
- full QWERTY backlit slide-out keyboard
- optical trackpad
- 624 MHZ processor with 512 MB flash memory
- 4GB built-in memory storage plus support for microSD/SDHD card
- 5MP camera with flash, auto focus, image stabilization, scene modes, geo-tagging and zoom
- video recording at 640×480 resolution
- GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G
- BlackBerry Destop Software 6
- WiFi Music Sync
- 5.8 hours talk time on 3G, 30 hours of audio playback, 6 hours of video playback
The KA-SAT satellite, developed by Eutelsat, is expected to launch this November and may help close the digital divide in the UK with broadband access in rural areas. Soon afterward, the U.S. will get its own version, ViaSat-1.
“This will be the most powerful satellite in space,” said Guillaume Benoit, project manager at KA-SAT, at an event in Toulouse Thursday. “It offers 35 times more throughput than traditional KU-band satellites, and can fulfil a crucial role in meeting the broadband needs of some 30 million underserved EU citizens.”
Eutelsat’s KASAT (pdf), launching in the third quarter of 2010, will use the Ka band and offer 10 Mbps, using over 80 spotbeams. Eutelsat will locate KA-SAT at 13 degrees East where it will join three large HOT BIRD Kuband broadcasting satellites that form the world’s leading video neighbourhood.
Eutelsat’s “Tooway” broadband, recently launched in the UK, offers up to 2Mbit/s, via an existing satellite. It’s currently available using Ka-band capacity on Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD™ 6 satellite. KASAT is similar to ViaSat, and will offer the entire UK up to 10Mbit/s broadband.
Tooway, the firm that will offer the service to resellers, expects a basic packages for emailing, browsing and some uploading, will retail at around €30 (£25), with higher level packages for business users and firms. Tooway is also hoping to enter into partnerships with train and boat companies that could use the ubiquitous nature of a certain spot beam to provide broadband on the move.
Meanwhile, in the United States, WildBlue currently delivers satellite internet access to nearly 400,000 customers. It is accessible to virtually every home and small business in the contiguous U.S., including the estimated 20-25 million homes and small offices that are not wired for terrestrial (DSL or cable modem) service. Wildblue was acquired by ViaSat last year.
ViaSat-1 is expected to have more capacity than the combination of all other satellites in operation over the United States, providing 2-10 Mbps download speeds at retail prices competitive with terrestrial services, says the company. ViaSat-1 is scheduled for launch in the first half of 2011.
Some $6.39 billion in the stimulus bill will be targeted for broadband and administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service.
Northern Sky Research, a research firm, believes new satellite technology will revolutionize the market. High Throughput Satellites (HTS) and the upcoming O3b program, which brings backhaul to remote cellular towers, will dramatically cut bandwidth costs in targeted service areas. In total, NSR projects that satellite backhaul equipment and services will grow from an estimated $316.6 million in revenues in 2009 to $583.4 million by 2019, yielding total revenues of close to $4.8 billion over an 11-year period.
In other satellite news, Intelsat’s Galaxy 15 satellite experienced an anomaly on 5 April 2010 and became an out of control “Zombie satellite”, running wild on the geosynchrounous track. The G-15 satellite, originally located at 133° West Longitude, primarily provided transmission capacity for cable programmers in North America.
The out-of-control Galaxy 15 will pass near three more orbiting platforms before it loses power in late August or early September, putting an end to the zombie satellite’s menacing tour of the geostationary arc, says Spaceflight Now. Since navigating around AMC 11 without incident, it approached a cluster of four Intelsat-owned satellites. The wayward craft passed by Galaxy 13 with no problems earlier this month and will approach Galaxy 14 today.
The story from Intelsat is that a solar flare in April left Galaxy 15′s C-band antennas still turned on, but the satellite without ground control. The satellite continues blaring powerful communications signals that could interfere with operational satellites. Intelsat’s Galaxy 18 and Galaxy 23 satellites will be in the crosshairs of Galaxy 15 in August as the stray craft continues its march east.
Traffic on the satellite was transitioned to Intelsat’s Galaxy 12 satellite, which is the designated in-orbit spare for the North American region.
Orbital’s bottom line was hit with $2.5 million in unexpected costs from the Galaxy 15 mishap, and the company expects to spend another $1 million on the issue in the next three months, according to Garrett Pierce, vice chairman and chief financial officer.
Related DailyWireless Space and Satellite News includes; Broadband Satellites: Looking Up, WiMAX and/or Satellite, HughesNet’s Spaceway 3 Now Available, Hughes Launches Switchboard in the Sky, HughesNet & Broadband Corporation, Spot Beam Sats Multiply, Clearwire & SatTV Do a Deal, Sprint Beams Up with MSV, TerreStar: I-HSPA for Satphones, Satphones: Merger Ahead?, Inmarsat + SkyTerra = Spectrum Sharing, Mobile Satellite on the Move, TerreStar Gets a Slot, Satellite Repeaters – Grounded In Reality?, WildBlue Partners with DirecTV & Echostar, John Malone in Space, TerreStar Gets a Slot, BSkyB + Google, SkyNet Satellite Hacked?, Lockheed CEO: Space is Broken, MSS: AWS Alternative?, WildBlue: AT&T’s DeathStar?
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Acer and Expansys has officially announced the availability of the Acer Stream this coming August 9. A high-end multimedia smartphone, the Acer Stream is a nice mobile device both in and out. Inside the smartphone are powerful features that optimized the phone for movie playback, music listening and web browsing. Outside is a well design form factor made from highly resistant materials
Feature-wise, the Acer Stream is in full steam with advanced features topbilled by a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display boasting of 1.67 million bright color. Completing its superb display feature is an incredible contrast of 2000:1 that allows the phone to display clear images even in light condition.
For its connectivity features, the Acer Stream offers fast 3G connectivity at around 7.2mbps download speed. It also features Bluetooth and WiFi n.
Specs-wise, the Acer Steam features Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM which are both perfect for running Android 2.1 OS.
The Acer Steam allows you to record 720 HD videos and have it played back with Dolby Mobile quality sound, powerful bass and crystal clear clarity.
Other features of the Acer Steam include – a 5MP camera, integrated GPS, geotagging, HDMI port, and micro-SD card support. The Steam has three types of predictive keyboards, a smart dialer and redesigned contacts list.
With all those features, the Acer Stream will let you quickly start favorite apps in one touch, easily switch apps with the History panel, customize your phone and enjoy smooth animation and fine graphics.
The Acer Steam retails for £399 at Expansys.
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The first time I saw the Samsung Galaxy S on display at one of the phone shops, I couldn’t believe that I was actually holding a Samsung smartphone. But the Samsung brand gave it away. Indeed I was holding a Samsung phone – displaying a home screen with app icons similar to the iPhone or an Android phone. Was I impressed? – Certainly.
The Samsung Galaxy S was recently launched globally. And I wouldn’t be surprise why it is getting the news coverage that it certainly deserves. It is a full-featured, technically advanced smartphone featuring a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen. If phones with AMOLED screen blew your mind away, wait till you see the Samsung Galaxy S’ Super AMOLED screen.
Aside from this, the Samsung Galaxy S runs on a 1GHz app processor. This simply means that app switching is a breeze and running these apps are as smooth as silk.
The Samsung Galaxy S is a super multimedia machine on the go capable of displaying HD video on its high-resolution screen.
While I was playing around with the Samsung Galaxy S, I couldn’t help but noticed it striking resemblance to the iPod Touch. Both devices have curvy edges and the silver undertones in front. Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S looks classic and the slightly smaller than the Xperia X10. However, the Xperia X10 has a more glossy appearance.
The Samsung Galaxy S runs Android 2.1, which is a good thing. Hopefully, update to Froyo 2.2 will be rolled out later this year. With Android running, you’d have 7 home screen all in all to fill with Android apps. It also runs Samsung’s TouchWiz UI interface on top of Android.
Among its major features include:
- instant access to weather, news, stocks, and scheduler
- inter-device connectivity via DNLA technology
- can be used as a digital photo frame, table clock, calendar and music station
- Swype text input
And now for the Samsung Galaxy S’ specs:
- Android 2.1 OS
- 5MP camera with autofocus
- support for various media formats such as MP4, WMV, MP3 and more
- A-GPS
- Augmented Reality with Layar Reality Browser
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
- 2.5G (GSM/GPRS/EDGE)
- 3G (HSDPA 7.2mbps, HSUPA 5.76mbps)
Want a mobile phone that will not make you feel guilty about damaging the environment knowing the fact that mobile phone manufacturing and using a mobile phone actually hurts the environment? You have to check out the new Samsung Intensity II mobile phone which will be available from Verizon Wireless in the coming weeks.
Partly made of recycled plastic, the Samsung Intensity II boasts of a horizontal slide-out QWERTY keyboard, one-touch access to social networking sites, a 1.3MP infrared camera with night vision and a music player. Adding to the phone’s environment-friendly feature is the fact that its design includes an exteriror battery cover which is made from 35% post-consumer materials and recycled plastic which were actually extracted from water bottles and other polycarbonate materials. The phone also comes with an integrated eco-calculator that you can use to calculate your carbon footprints that tracks your car fuel mileage, efficiency and amount of carbon dioxide emitted to the air.
Additionally, the Samsung Intensity II is packaging is also made from recycled paper and all the markings on the package printed with soy ink. The package size was also made unintentionally smaller. And its charger alerts you when the battery is full during charging.
Key specs and technical features of the Samsung Intensity II include – a 2.2-inch QVGA screen, 1.3MP infrared camera with night vision, series and divided shot modes, voice commands, advanced speech recognition, bluetooth, microSD card slot. The phone also comes with a built-in music player, one-touch contact list access, full suite of messaging options, social beat apps and VZ Navigator.
For your mutimedia needs, the Samsung Intensity II gives you easy access to downloadable games, ringtones, wallpapers, location-based services, as well as personal organizer and tools with calendar, calculator with currency converter, stop watch and more.
The Samsung Intensity II will be available from Verizon Wireless for $49.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement.
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