Wireless Networking

For the uninitiated, "Bluetooth" is a funny word for an awkward device you stick in your ear. The moniker has thus become a non-assuming general descriptor for hands-free calling. That's about to change. Bluetooth has grown into a disruptive wave that's beginning to crest over the top of more than o...

The face of computing may be undergoing a massive change, and tablet PCs appear to be at the heart of it. "There's a fundamental shift in the computing industry, which is moving to being cloud-based and mobile," Maribel Lopez, founder and principal analyst at Lopez Research, told TechNewsWorld. With...

TV viewers may soon be able to watch videos without interruption over wireless networks as they move from their television sets to their PCs to their handheld devices, with the signing of an agreement Monday between the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, the WiFi Alliance and semiconductor developer SiBeam....

Last week was one hell of a week. We had the formal launch of the Core Wars between Intel and AMD, and a little product called the "iPad" entered the market. My biggest concern, thanks to the Lifeboat Foundation, was the Hadron Collider and whether I'd even wake up today. (Since you are reading this...

T-Mobile on Wednesday said that it would offer the United States' fastest 3G wireless network by upgrading its existing 3G service to High-Speed Packet Access Plus 3.5G technology. By the end of the year, T-Mobile expects to have HSPA+ deployed in more than 100 metropolitan areas reaching 185 millio...

Sprint announced Tuesday that it will begin selling the world's first 4G Android phone, the HTC EVO, this summer. This will run on Sprint's WiMax 4G network, which the carrier is rolling out to more cities nationwide. WiMax, which stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, will be a...

Verizon will have the first handset running on its Long-Term Evolution 4G network by the middle of next year -- about six months ahead of schedule -- according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The development of LTE means faster cellular data transfers than the 3G networks now in widespread u...

EXPERT ADVICE

VoFi Is Coming – Are You Ready?

In case you missed it, seven long years of wrangling have come to an end: 802.11n has now been officially ratified by the IEEE. Super-fast WiFi is here. The 802.11n standard ushers in increased network throughput and range that will change wireless access, services and applications. With this final ...

Harried by shrinking sales and the increasing popularity of Android smartphones, Nokia on Thursday announced that it is now offering a new version of its Ovi Maps mobile navigation app for free. The offering makes detailed maps available for more than 180 countries; it also has turn-by-turn voice na...

Twitter, Pandora Internet radio and other popular smartphone apps are hitting the road, thanks to Ford Motor Company's Thursday announcement of forthcoming dashboard technologies that will soon be available in a wider, more affordable range of its cars. Ford CEO Alan Mulally, along with other compan...

One year after first showing the world its Pre smartphone, Palm on Thursday announced a new generation of the device at the Consumer Electronics Show. It also unveiled an upgrade to its Pixi, a smaller smartphone that relies on the same webOS software as the Pre. These, the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, w...

AT&T and T-Mobile both announced on Tuesday that they have upgraded their 3G networks with technology enabling faster speeds. Specifically, the carriers have both deployed HSPA 7.2 technology at their cell sites across the United States. That technology will improve consistency in accessing da...

EXPERT ADVICE

Throw Less Spectrum at It

"Throw more money at it." That's an old suggestion for trying to solve problems big and small, but it's a solution that rarely works, because it doesn't address the root cause of the problem in question. Despite knowing that it's bad advice, the FCC has recently come up with a corollary to it: Throw...

Hackers have once again demonstrated that the GSM standard, the most widely used mobile phone standard in the world, can be hacked. The GSM Association has acknowledged the technology's flaw, but it said the weakness is not a serious threat and that hackers have not been able to create a practical a...

A new study from the University of Utah provides more fuel for the conviction that sending and receiving text messages while driving affects concentration and reaction times. However, more potential digital distractions lie down the road -- as shown by another Monday announcement: Ford Motor said it...

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