mobile

New M2M radio specs could challenge mobile networks

13 April 2013 by Steve Blum
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Wide area of possibilities.

Two new low power standards for wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) communications have been released in the past couple of weeks. The Zigbee Alliance and the Weightless special interest group have published specifications for wide area networking standards that address the low power, low bit rate needs of many M2M applications. Both are initially targeting the smart grid sector, which is growing rapidly as electricity providers deploy tools to intelligently manage power distribution systems in real time.… More

Facebook is first brand into the mobile skin game

5 April 2013 by Steve Blum
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Sometimes innovation only needs to be skin deep.

Facebook Home is a new kind of threat to Android and a new kind of opportunity for mobile entrepreneurs. It’s middleware that’s downloaded onto select – for now – smartphones and acts as the top skin of the user interface. Instead, for example, of seeing the standard lock screen, users see their Facebook feed, constantly updated.

Android apps are still there, if you dig down. But if you just go with the flow all you see is what Facebook pushes to you.… More

FDA might tax and regulate mobile apps, but that's not the worst part

30 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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We’ll just do it the old fashioned way.

Medical applications are approved and regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An agency representative [recently told a congressional committee](https://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/news/2240180401/Congress-explores-potential-regulation-of-mobile-health-apps) that rules regarding mobile medical apps are coming later this year.
Over the course of a week, three separate committees heard a wide range of helpful advice on how best to regulate, or not, mobile medical applications and devices. Taxes were also an issue. The Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – puts a 2.3% tax on medical devices.… More

Blackberry skids through a quarterly profit

29 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Cash cows confront the fiscal cliff.

Blackberry surprised the financial community by reporting a profit of 22 cents a share for its fiscal quarter that ended earlier this month. Expectations were for a loss of about that size, not a gain.

It certainly is good news for Blackberry. It looks more like the result of tighter management than anything else, but there’s nothing wrong with that. So long as market success follows.

The big problem is in the subscriber numbers, which fell by about 3 million.… More

Another week, another Apple obit

21 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Actually, I’m waiting for the new Star Wars movie.

Traffic in major U.S. cities is snarled as lines of hopeful buyers camp out in front of AT&T stores and spill into the street, awaiting tomorrow’s launch of the Blackberry Z10. Okay, I haven’t actually seen it, but based on CEO Thorsten Heins’ declaration of victory over Apple, it must be happening. What else could explain his exuberance? He doesn’t seem like the sort to dabble in hallucinogens.… More

Friends, coders, countrymen, build me an app

17 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Fifty-two hours, five teams, five working apps.

Five Android app development teams faced off this weekend in the second annual Ideas of March competition at Cal State Monterey Bay. On Friday afternoon, young coders from around Monterey County formed teams and heard pitches from local businesses and community groups. They picked one and spent the next 52 hours building apps that fit the need.

This afternoon, they presented their work to a panel of judges, myself included.… More

Mobile carriers not convincing key California assemblyman

13 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Present company not included.

“I know a whole lotta dumb people with smart devices,” said Steven Bradford, a Los Angeles assemblyman and chair of the California assembly’s utilities and commerce committee. He’s a member of the California Broadband Council, which met today in Sacramento. The reason people have $500 smart phones, he said, is because telephone companies “practically give them away and lock them into a long term contract.”

Bradford takes issue with the way telephone companies are enthusiastically – and expensively – building out mobile networks in California and signing up customers, while at the same time letting wired service languish.… More

Globalstar's terrestrial WiFi will help satellite customers too

9 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Won’t have to party like it’s 1999 anymore.

Globalstar is the latest satellite operator to discover the possibility of boosting return on investment by using assigned frequencies on the ground (h/t to David Witkowski for the heads up).

Globalstar has slice of spectrum immediately adjacent to the 2.4 GHz unlicensed band that’s heavily used for WiFi. The thinking is that customers can do a quick software update to extend a WiFi device’s frequency range a bit and then use Globalstar’s channel to access the Internet via a pay wall.… More

CPUC's second field test building consistent picture of mobile broadband performance

6 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Spring up, Fall back.

More mobile broadband performance measurements are available and accessible to Californians, thanks to field testing done by the California Public Utilities Commission and mapping and analysis done by Jim Warner at U.C. Santa Cruz.

Warner, who is a network engineer for the University and chair of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group, took the data collected in the CPUC’s first and second rounds of mobile data field testing and fed it into Google maps.… More

Here's looking at you, Samsung

5 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Bogie knew how to do it.

You’ll soon be able to control your smart phone with just a glance. Samsung will introduce eye tracking capability in the latest version of its flagship Galaxy S-IV phone next week, according to rumors circulating today.

It’ll be bigger and faster too – a five inch screen and laptop class CPU power – but that’s nothing new.

New interfaces that just work, though, are much rarer and lead to revolutionary products.… More