Innovators Shine At CTIA Wireless Conference 29
CWmike writes "The CTIA Wireless conference this week brought in larger crowds and more vendors than last year's event, but that probably isn't saying much, considering the recession had begun to hit hard in early 2009, Matt Hamblen reports from Vegas. The uptick pleased vendors exhibiting at the event, especially some of the smaller, lesser-known companies that sometimes offer the most interesting products, even if they never go gangbusters with the public. Matt highlights top innovative firms and products from the show, including W PhoneWatch (yes, a GSM phone watch for $199; see video), AT&T's Zero Charger (ends 'vampire draw'), Connectify (turns your laptop into a hotspot), and Line2, a Wi-Fi calling app for iPhones and iPod Touches (look out cellular voice service revenues)."
Android made quite a strong showing at the conference as well.
Line2 will be pulled I'm sure. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, Apple has been less then consistant with the app store so far. So perhaps this one is OK while the last ones where "bad".
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Was there anything as brilliant as the company that advertised their cell phone was unbreakable, and a reporter broke the screen in 20 seconds with the CEO standing next to him. That was hilarious.
You practically saw the value of the company drop to zero, given how the CEO looked at the end of the interview.
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From the article it sounds like the app is basically a wifi only VOIP app. There are LOTS of those in the app store, and there always have been. Apple has apparently even decided to allow VOIP over 3G now, and some apps that do that, in the store.
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They might kill it for the interface all right. That was a stupid move, copying Apple's interface exactly.
Hotspot? (Score:2)
Connectify (turns your laptop into a hotspot)
I thought it was /. that turned my laptop into a hotspot ... oh wait, not /., p0rn.
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The watch (Score:1)
"Zero charger" defies the laws of physics? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only way I know of cor the so-called "vampire draw" to be "100% eliminated" is through a mechanical switch. Any circuit that detects the presence of a device on the other end must necessarily draw power from somewhere, and the device sure isn't going to provide it over USB. That's a violation of the spec. AFAIK, the USB device doesn't output any signal on the wire until interrogated by the host.
And even if you got past that somehow, you would still have some sort of trickle power available to power the power-switching circuit itself.
So basically the only way I can imagine this working is if they did something like putting a microswitch inside the USB connector, which is fine as long as you remember to unplug the cable at night, but that's hardly any different than unplugging the charger. You're just moving the problem a little farther down.
Am I missing something, or are these claims exaggerated somewhat?
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Actually that's hugely different. Instead of having to take the secondary action of unplugging the charger after unplugging the phone, detaching the phone cuts the charger out completely. One action, instead of two.
If this is what they're doing, it's pr
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If this is what they're doing, it's pretty smart.
And should have been made common place well over a decade ago.
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Only if the phone has a built-in USB connector. For most phones, you have to unplug the phone from the cable and the cable from the brick, which is not significantly different from unplugging the phone from the cable and the brick from the wall.
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I can't find a site that actually details how it works, etc. It's certainly entirely possible for a charger that is already active (power is flowing through it) to shut itself off, mechanically (a relais will do) once current draw drops below a particular level - this would make it shut itself off when the device is fully powered as well (presuming it's not using the charging power source as its main power supply while connected).
The problem is - once it -is- shut off, you can't just connect a device again
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Perhaps they use a wooden or stake or silver bullets or something. Or maybe they use garlic. I know! It must be solar-powered!
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They could store some power while it's charging things and use that to turn it off. Say a big capacitor - which is holding the output at +5, with the +5 shutting things down by biasing the gate of a FET or IGBT. Nothing but leakage currents (which can be too small to measure) until the charge finally leaks away and it turns on long enough to reestablish it.
Or it can charge its own internal battery when it's charging something else and shut down its draw for months at a time. (Of course this takes the "va
Re:"Zero charger" defies the laws of physics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, things have to actually conserve energy in order to get people to feel good about saving energy with them? When did this happen?
When some nerds accepted the global warming and/or other green rhetoric - but still were nerds enough to demand more than just claims for the remediation schemes.
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I assumed that the device detected not only the absence of a phone, but also its reattachment. A latch circuit occurred to pretty much all of us; the idea of the consumer manually tripping it didn't. I suppose pushing a button to start is slightly better than pushing a button to start and stop (a mechanical switch), though not a lot, and certainly not a lot when you consider how much less efficient it is. It doesn't really solve the problem. Well, it does, but only if you don't care how much more curren
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One other problem. You would have to use a 110VAC mechanical switch to drive an additional transformer-based power circuit to provide the initial control voltage. You can't use a low-voltage switch because then you would have a power supply generating that low voltage constantly, so you would have so-called "vampire draw". A 110VAC switch is large, expensive, and failure-prone, a mechanical relay doubly so.
The electronics industry moved away from mechanical switches for very good reasons.
Hello, Line2Phone. Skype calling, Vonage holding (Score:2)
Seriously, Skype already offers WiFi calls for a lot less, and works well. I used it recently overseas via free hotel WiFi and it worked great. It's a lot cheaper if you don't want a Skype in number. Vonage has a plan as well but costs a lot more. Both are Wifi only, unless you have a jailbroken iPhone. The question is will Apple allow VOIP via 3G; if so I think the current crop of VOIP apps will quickly add that feature, making Line2Talk yet another me too app without the name recognition of the bigge