Recently in Wireless Category

Greg Galitzine has an interesting interview with Carl Ford (formerly with VON) about the future of wireless, including 4G and the pending 4GWE (4G Wireless Evolution) event co-located with ITEXPO. Carl discusses gadgets, smart phones, the Amazon Kindle, and more as the future growth factors in an saturated wireless phone market. He also discusses the challenges of 3G, femtocells, and more.
Go check it out:
http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=657

Another interesting video is Carl Ford and Greg Galitzine discussing how TMCnet is able to have such a visible presence on the web via TMCnet's plethora of technology news coverage. They also cover 4G and Carl has an inside track on what is on the carrier's minds since he has excellent sources and friends in the carrier space. Carl also discusses the future of a "single" converged wireless device or whether we will continue to have multiple devices - each suited to a better capability obviously (email, web, etc.)

Definitely worth a look:
http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=658

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas ...? Is that the same for Reno?

Following in the footsteps of Time Warner Cable, Frontier Communications and several UK Internet service providers, AT&T has unveiled a tiered broadband service in Nevada.

According to a Friday filing with the Federal Communication Commission, AT&T executives met with the legal adviser to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to discuss "usage-based pricing" as a form of network management.

AT&T has hinted that this was coming for the last few months. From the filing:
In particular, AT&T plans to initiate a broadband Internet access usage trial in Reno, Nev., beginning in November. Consistent with AT&T's belief that consumers should have clear information about the capabilities of their broadband Internet access services and any meaningful limitations on those service, AT&T will be providing written notice to customers involved in the trial explaining that their broadband service will be subject to a certain monthly usage tier for the total amount of data they may send and receive, as well as a per gigabyte charge in the event they exceed the usage tier. 

I thought the Internet was meant to be free ...?

Get more at GigaOM.

VoxOx is a new unified communications client launched by San Diego based startup TelCentris. Think of it as Skype on steroids since it not only support VoIP, IM, and video conferencing, but it also supports social media, such as Facebook, SMS, fax, e-mail, and content sharing all in one unified desktop application.

VoxOx creates a "meta address book" of contacts from all of a user's disparate communications networks into a single user interface, accessible from any device. To ramp up they are providing a free phone number, along with two initial hours of free talk time. TelCentris' CEO Bryan Hertz is making their API open source in hopes of duplication what Skype has done with Skype Extras and their developer community.

Features include:

• Full inbound/outbound calling capabilities
• Voicemail and interactive voice response "personal assistant"
• Two-way texting
• Call forwarding and "one-number-follow-me service"
• Inbound faxing and fax-to-e-mail
• Landline replacement option
• Interconnects users to major instant messaging networks (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Google Talk and others), allowing members from different IMs to chat and video conference with each other from one service
• Integrates with all major social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others
• Enables flexibility for integrating existing and future applications via its open standards platform

It currently supports Windows and Mac, with Linux support coming soon.

One interesting feature is Call-Back, which is similar to Jajah and a feature lacking in Skype. feature is what sets  Call-Back allows you to initiate a call-back via the Web or via SMS. Under the Web callback tab, you enter the phone number for are located as well as the number you are trying to call and VoxOx will call you from a local number.

Skype has a lot of momentum, and there have been a lot of "pretenders" to the Skype throne. However, VoxOx has a lot of "eye candy" with an iPhone skin which might attract users. It also has an interesting feature-set and the 120 free minutes might entice users to check it out.

To download VoxOx, head here.

According to Andy Abramson's post published 20 minutes ago, Carl Ford and Scott Kargman, who were big parts of the VON brain trust has joined forces with TMC. As Andy also commented - Hath hell frozen over?

This is like Mirror! Mirror! where Captain Kirk and Spock meet their opposites. Or even worse the episode called The Alternative Factor where two enemies both named Lazarus who Spock concludes is Lazarus and an "anti-Lazarus", possibly from a parallel "antimatter" dimension. Should Lazarus and his anti-self manage to destroy each other, it could spell doom for both universes.

Fortunately, the joining of former VON employees with TMC has not destroyed the VoIP universe!

Andy said:

What I'm hearing is that long time VON business brain-trust, Scott Kargman, and VON Conference impresario, Carl Ford have teamed up with TMC's Rich Tehrani to produce the 4G Wireless Evolution Website and a conference in Miami next February.

I was aware of what was going on between the VON heavyweights and TMC but kept it hush. I saw both Carl and Scott in TMC's main conference room a couple times over the past couple of weeks meeting with my fellow co-workers Rich Tehrani, Dave Rodriguez, and others. I was told about the negotiations but didn't sit in on the meeting since I was busy testing some VoIP products, including the new snom 820 phone.

Rich also got me involved with testing a cool HD streaming over coax product. More on that soon.

Ya know, I saw the demise of VON in 2006 coming when I poked fun at Jeff Pulver changing the focus from Voice on the Net (VON) to Video on the Net (VON 2.0?). My only question now is should I expect to see Jeff Pulver in TMC's conference room? Then hell will have truly frozen over!

For more on the deal, read Andy's post.

In the on again, off again department ...

AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and free Wi-Fi is even hotter. Which is why free AT&T Wi-Fi access is now available for Apple iPhone at thousands of hotspots nationwide, including Starbucks.

Now you can can relax and access music, email and web browsing services with your favorite brew in hand from the comfort of your nearest location. (That's if AT&T has a good signal in your area.)

AT&T provided a number of early hints that the service would be coming and sent a message to iPhone users announcing the plan. (And who paid for those bits of data?)

You can locate these free Wi-Fi hot spots through AT&T's little online tool at www.att.com/attwifi or can locate a Starbucks instead.

For more, check out the always delightul MacRumors.com.

The WowWee Rovio is a cool Wi-Fi enabled robotic webcam. I like to call Rovio a remote-controlled VoIP webcam sentry robot.

The Rovio is pretty futuristic looking. It looks like it belongs on some sci-fi TV show or movie. Reminds me of some vehicle I saw on Terminator 2. The Rovio can move in any direction and can be controlled remotely. Simply view and interact with Rovio's environment through its streaming video and audio from its built in camera using a browser. You can even control the Rovio from an iPhone and the Nintendo DS.

iSkoot announced that its mobile application, iSkoot for Skype, is launching in the Android Market, Google's new mobile application store. iSkoot for Skype is the first VoIP solution available in Google's Android Market and of course making it the first VoIP app for the Google Android phone.

I should point out that iSkoot for Skype isn't VoIP over the data 3G connection. It actually uses the GSM voice connection for the voice and uses the 3G data stream for chat, presence, etc. So you'll be using your bucket of voice minutes when making/receiving Skype calls.

It's available immediately for download in Google's Android Market, iSkoot for Skype also runs on nearly all major mobile platforms, including J2ME, S60v3, UIQ, Palm, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.

Apple's rivals are making moves to match the runaway success of its iPhone platform with their own versions of its store for applications and games from outside developers.

Research in Motion (RIM) has announced that it would launch an "application storefront" in March next year. 

TIme to fill up that screen with lots of icons! 

Google is also revamping its Android Market and adding new applications this week to coincide with availability of the first phone built on the new operating system, the HTC G1.

Both are trailing Apple's App Store, which launched on July 10 for the second-generation iPhone. 

The increasing sophistication of smartphones and the growth in size of their screen interfaces is turning them into PC-like platforms. Following the Apple example, handset makers are exploring how consumers can be drawn to phones by the number and variety of applications available on them.

RIM said that developers could set their own prices for applications but, at 20%, it is taking a smaller piece from them than the 30% Apple bites off. 

More from The Financial Times.

A rapidly growing phenomenon in the telecommunications world is the growth of "cord cutters," people who give up their hardwired landline phones and use only cell phones.

Now one of the leading proponents of that shift, Sprint Nextel, hopes to do for the Internet what it's doing for telephones.

At a recent ceremony in Baltimore, officials from Sprint Nextel celebrated the official launch of the company's XOHM WiMAX service by literally cutting a cord -- they sliced through some Cat-5 wire with pruning shears to mark the end of the wired Internet.

4G has rapidly gone from a mobility vision to service reality with the launch of XOHM service in Baltimore, the company said.

Although XOHM, Sprint's 4G business unit, has aggressive plans for nationwide WiMAX, the actual implementation may take some time. 

Approximately 70 percent of the city has coverage, with 180 base stations operating and the target at end of build out is 300.

Long-term, XOHM hopes to roll out enough of its national network to make WiMAX available to as many as 140 million people by the end of 2010. 

More at NewsFactor Network.

In the what's old is new again category ...

IMOVIO has launched a smaller alternative to a subnotebook -- much smaller. The new iKIT is about the size of a PDA from 10 years ago, but has a QWERTY keyboard and connects to the Internet at 3G speeds via your cell phone or Wi-Fi.

(Ah the Newton ... Anybody still using that little gadget goodie from Apple?) 

The $175 Linux-based system has a built-in Webcam as well as a range of applications, such as Web browsing, e-mail and IM.

It can connect to the Internet using a standard Wi-Fi connection, or it can use your cell phone's mobile broadband connection via Bluetooth. 

Now are those chicklet keys easy on our big fingers? 

Get more at Computerworld.