willith writes "Apple has placed three iPhone commercials on their Web site today, and each ends with a tag: 'Coming June 29.' This puts to rest the question of when the thing will hit the streets, but there are still worries about allocation — AppleInsider is reporting that the supplies at Cingular/AT&T stores may be relatively tight." And some fanatic sites are already parsing the ads for such enigmas as the "mystery app."

The 700 MHz spectrum could give birth to the much-anticipated third pipe, but phone and cable lobbyists are currently pressuring the FCC to sell companies like AT&T and Verizon our airwaves — in a flawed auction process — so they can hoard this valuable spectrum and stifle competitive alternatives to their networks. Google and other would-be providers are not taking it lying down. They want the FCC to mandate that whoever wins the auction be required to sell access to those airwaves, at wholesale prices, to anyone wanting to provide broadband Internet service. They also want anonymous auctions to prevent the giant incumbents from manipulating the results against small players (as they have done in the past).

An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to recent rumors, it's not Palm's first Linux smartphone, and no, it's not a competitor to Nokia's Linux-based N800 Internet Tablet. Rather, Palm today unveiled the Foleo, which it's calling a 'new class' of mobile device. The device is designed to expand the email, Internet, and productivity application capabilities of mobile phones such as the Palm Treo, by adding a full-size keyboard and a larger screen. Company founder Jeff Hawkins predicts that the Foleo will be more successful than Palm's original Palm Pilot, which he designed, and more successful than its current Treo smartphones. He touts its simplicity: 'Press a button, it's on. Press it again, it's off. There are no other modes.'"

Kage-Yojimbo writes with a link to the site Strategy Page. There, they're reporting on a military adaptation of civilian wi-fi equipment to use in boarding operations on the high seas. Modifications to normal off-the-shelf gear can result in a range of over 700 meters, allowing information to be passed through on-shore internet connections. "The main reason for all this was to speed up the transmission of passport photos and other personal data back to the ship, so that it could be run through databases to check for terrorists or criminals. This wi-fi hack cut several hours off the time required to check documents. The Expanded Maritime Interception Operations (EIMO) wireless system was developed last year, to provide several kilometers of range to the original wi-fi gear (which has been in use for over three years). Each pair of wi-fi units costs about $1400 to construct, using common parts to add more powerful antennae to standard 802.11g wi-fi equipment."

lisah writes "While the One Laptop Per Child project pulled itself together and shipped its first Beta machines, Intel was busy developing its own version, the Classmate PC. Inevitable comparisons will be made between the two (especially since OLPC's chairman Nicholas Negroponte called Intel's move "predatory"), so Linux.com's Tina Gasperson and her kids took a Classmate PC for a test run to see how it does in the real world. The upshot? Good battery life, easy to use, and great with ketchup. 'The Classmate is so adorably cozy it make you want to snuggle up on a comfy couch or lean back on some pillows on the floor while you surf. Good thing wireless is built right in. Too bad the typical Linux foibles apply. The first snag was having to log in as root to check the system configuration because the Classmate wouldn't log on to the network. Something tells me most elementary and high school teachers with nothing but Windows experience aren't going to get that.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

aalobode sends us to an article up at BusinessWeek about Intel's design for a new, ultra-thin laptop — almost as thin as a Razr — designed as a fashion accessory. Intel hopes to get the high end of the laptop market growing faster, and so they are particularly targeting female consumers with the new model. It's unlikely that all of the advanced features in this prototype will make it into products, and if they did the resulting laptops would command a daunting price. One feature we can hope makes the cut is built-in cellular Internet access. From the article: "The result, code-named Intel mobile Metro notebook, is less than 0.7 inches thick — about one-quarter of an inch thicker than Motorola's iconic cell phone, making it the world's thinnest notebook. And at 2.25 pounds, it's also one of the lightest small-sized portable computers. Other features include always-on Internet connectivity via various wireless technologies."

Nichole writes "Sam Peterson II was charged with unauthorized use of computer access for using a coffee shop's free WiFi. He is facing a 5 year felony charge and a $10,000 fine but apparently got off lucky and received only a $400 fine and 40 hours of community service because he was a first time offender. 'it seems few in the village of Sparta, Mich., were aware that using an unsecured Wi-Fi connection without the owner's permission--a practice known as piggybacking--was a felony. Each day around lunch time, Sam Peterson would drive to the Union Street Cafe, park his car and--without actually entering the coffee shop--check his e-mail and surf the Net. His ritual raised the suspicions of Police Chief Andrew Milanowski, who approached him and asked what he was doing. Peterson, probably not realizing that his actions constituted a crime, freely admitted what he was doing ... [the officer] didn't immediately cite or arrest Peterson, mostly because he wasn't certain a crime had been committed.'"

imamac writes "According to an AP story, municipal Wi-Fi is going nowhere fast. A think tank research director quipped, 'They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally overpromised and completely undelivered.' Subscriptions to the services are much lower than expected and lawmakers are concerned that millions of dollars will have gone to waste that could have been better spent on roads or crime-fighting. Satisfaction with the quality of service has also been low, which give some insight into the low adoption rate. Is municipal Wi-Fi just a bad idea, has it been poorly implemented, or is the technology just not there to support such an endeavor?"

An anonymous reader writes "Sunday night in the UK, the BBC broadcast an alarmist Panorama news programme that suggested wireless networking might be damaging our health. Their evidence? Well, they admitted there wasn't any, but they made liberal use of the word 'radiation', along with scary graphics of pulsating wifi base stations. They rounded-up a handful of worried scientists, but ignored the majority of those who believe wifi is perfectly harmless. Some quotes from the BBC News website companion piece: 'The radiation Wi-Fi emits is similar to that from mobile phone masts ... children's skulls are thinner and still forming and tests have shown they absorb more radiation than adults'. What's the science here? Can skulls really 'absorb' EM radiation? The wifi signal is in the same part of the EM spectrum as cellphones but it's not 'similar' to mobile phone masts, is it? Isn't a phone mast several hundred/thousand times stronger? Wasn't safety considered when they drew up the 802.11 specs?"

PetManimal writes "Computerworld reviews the Palm Treo 755p, the last Palm device with the Palm OS, and concludes that the OS is going out not with a bang but with a whimper. The article says there are some useful improvements (better integration with Exchange and IM, limited speech recognition, etc.) but 'nothing that will make you sit back and say "wow."' Palm already has at least one device with Windows Mobile (the 700w) and soon will make a big push to Linux devices, maybe by the end of the year. But the Palm OS, which was top dog for a while back in the 1990s, and is still used by many people who own Palm Pilots or Treos, is going to quickly fade, it seems."

theodp writes "Last month, Washington high school junior Sofia Rubenstein used 6,807 text messages, which, at a rate of 15 cents apiece for most of them, pushed her family's Verizon Wireless bill over $1,100. She and other teens are finding themselves in hot water after their families get blindsided with huge phone bills thanks to hefty a la carte text messaging charges." Use of SMS in the US doubled from 2005 to 2006.

MojoKid writes "AMD disclosed a few details today regarding their upcoming mobile platform technologies, codenamed 'Griffin' and 'Puma'. According to AMD, Griffin will be manufactured at 65nm and it will feature a new mobile optimized on-die Northbridge with a power optimized DDR2 memory controller, HyperTransport 3 connectivity, and larger L2 caches than current designs. The new memory controller should also extend battery life thanks to new power saving features, that allow the controller to operate on a separate power plane and at a lower voltage than the execution cores."

An anonymous reader writes "A paper was recently published about Shift at the Computer Human Interaction Conference earlier this month. The authors (Daniel Vogel, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto and Patrick Baudisch, a research scientist at Microsoft Research) developed the technology to solve several problems with mobile-phone touch screens. Most such screens are designed to be operated with a stylus; when touched with a finger the UI doesn't work so well. They also created a short video with a demonstration of how Shift works. Shift builds on an existing technology known as Offset Cursor, which displays a cursor just above the spot a user touches on the screen. That allows a user to place their finger below the item they wish to choose so that they can see the item, rather than hiding it with their finger."

eldavojohn writes "While other companies are marrying the obvious functionalities to cell phones (calendar, MP3 player, GPS, etc.), Microsoft is aiming for it to be your next computer. Microsoft Research chief Craig Mundie said that, "Microsoft has a research project called 'Fone+' that would allow the phone to work with a TV as a secondary display, and one that could allow video stored on the device to be played back on the television.""

PetManimal writes "Mike Elgan has had it with useless lights on gadgets and computers. He singles out the Palm Treo and the Dell XPS gaming laptops as being particularly bad with the use of unnecessary lights, and also cites the plethora of LEDs on desktop PCs and peripherals. 'My PC and other computing equipment make my office look like a jet cockpit. I have two LCD monitors, each of which has two indicator lights that flash even when the PC is turned off. The attached sound control has a light on it. My keyboard has multiple lights. The power cord has lights, the printer has lights, and the power button is illuminated. My cable modem and Linksys router flash like crazy all the time. Together, these useless lights create a visual cacophony of blinking, multicolored lights that make me feel like I'm taking part in a NASA stress test for astronaut candidates.' Elgan calls on manufacturers to respect his 'Gadget Bill of Lights' to restrict the use of nag lights and allow users to turn them off. He also says the industry should pay more attention to industrial design when creating new products."

netbuzz writes "The state of Washington yesterday became the first in the nation to ban text-messaging while driving. The law could use sharper teeth, but it's a natural and necessary progression of the movement to clamp down on those who find the need to constantly communicate more important than the safety of their fellow travelers."

Serpentegena writes "A joint research project by scientists at Harvard University and BBn Technologies may have spawned a new breed of Metronet. The wireless network, code-named CitySense, which will consist of 100 streetlamp-mounted nodes by 2011, will draw power off the Cambridge, Mass. public grid and be used at first for weather and pollution monitoring. The intention is to also allow 'academic researchers worldwide [...] to submit their own research programs to run on the network.' Sounds remarkably similar to the beginning of the ARPANET, except the network hosts will be running Linux."

Adroit Ape asks: "The FCC is scheduled to begin auctioning the radio spectrum salvaged from analog television by February 28, 2008. Public interest groups are calling for auction rules that give new entrants a fair shot at the spectrum, which includes 60Mhz in the 700Mhz band. Are we likely to see groundbreaking innovation in wireless broadband? Who do you foresee to be the major players in the auction and subsequent technologies?"

Placid writes "The BBC has up an article detailing the 'Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded' project which was announced by Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu's CTO, on the Ubuntu developers mailing list. Zimmerman stated that 'These devices place new demands on open-source software and require innovative graphical interfaces, improved power management and better responsiveness.' According to the article, Intel will have their finger in the pie too, as they've recently announced a prototype device running Ubuntu. Part of the project's goal is to maximise the power saving abilities of a planned low-energy chip codenamed Silverthorn. The chip will be just one-seventh the size of normal chips, and consume only 10% of the power of existing processor. What does this mean for projects such as OpenMoko? Healthy competition, or the beginning of the end?"

netbuzz writes "A case of corporate bullying, or good network citizenship? Sprint Nextel has let slip the dogs of law on the FCC and 41 non-profits, most of them school systems, in an effort to get the FCC to stop granting these organizations special dispensation when they fail to renew their wireless spectrum licenses. These licenses were granted as part of the Educational Broadband Service. The school systems, many of them rural, argue that they don't have the staff or the resources to keep on top of the paperwork and shouldn't be punished for such bureaucratic lapses. (Some generate revenue by leasing unused portions of the spectrum to carriers such as Sprint Nextel.) The schools' argument may sound a bit like 'the dog ate my homework' to some, and Sprint Nextel makes a fairly compelling case that a greater good would be served if the FCC would stop enabling such tardiness."