WiMAX News & Opinion

Apple is adding a super little gadget to its line of products. (I realize I could go far with puns given the name of this product, but I won't since it will cause too many eye rolls)

New to the family of, well, mice, Apple introduced the wireless "Mighty Mouse" (now you get the subject line, don't you?), the latest installment to its multi-button mouse, except this one has cut the cord for added flexibility and usability.

Said David Moody, Apple's VP of Worldwide Mac Product Marketing: "“A Bluetooth-enabled Mac desktop with an Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mighty Mouse is the ideal cable-free setup at home or in the office, and the wireless Mighty Mouse is the perfect travel companion for the MacBook user on the go.”

The wireless Mighty Mouse is available immediately through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $69 . The wireless Mighty Mouse connects to the latest Macs with built-in Bluetooth wireless technology, and requires Mac OS X “Tiger” version 10.4.6 or later to customize buttons for one-click access to Spotlight, Dashboard and Exposé or to launch applications.

I do believe I need to purchase one for my PowerBook G4. Continue Reading...

Received some interesting "breaking news" in my inbox just now. The notice I received reports that AOL is censoring emails linking to and mentioning www.DearAOL.com, the coalition against the pay-to-send proposal which will make it harder for would-be "spammers" to send email.

Read this:

AOL is blocking delivery to AOL customers of all emails that include a link to www.DearAOL.com.  Today, after this was discovered, over 150 people who signed a petition to AOL tried sending messages to their AOL-using friends, and received a bounceback message informing them that their email "failed permanently." 

“This proves the DearAOL.com Coalition’s point entirely: Left to their own devices, AOL will always put its own self interest ahead of the public interest in a free and open Internet,” said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press, a national, nonpartisan organization working on media reform and Internet policy issues. “AOL wants us to believe they won’t hurt free email when their pay-to-send system is up and running. But if AOL is willing to censor the flow of information now to silence their critics, how could anyone trust that they will preserve the free and open internet down the road? Their days of saying ‘trust us’ are over – their credibility is gone.”

While AOL may imply that censoring www.DearAOL.com is part of some anti-spam effort, their own customers are witnessing how faulty AOL’s spam measures would be if that was the case. Continue Reading...

It's been a while since I last made a Mac post, so while I'm here, let's see what's up in my Mac corner of the world.

I recently purchased dot mac accounts for myself and my fiance (he uses a PC, but I don't make fun of him too much for it) since he wants to work on a simple, personal Web site and I just wanted it because, well, I own a G4 and therefore I should have a dot mac account for that reason alone.

I haven't really had the time to play around with some of the advanced features one receives when putting some cash out for that .mac extension (I know, I paid for it and I've been lax in using it....way to go!) but I just saw some really cool things I could be doing if I happen to, you know, actually hop online and have some fun.

iWeb, a program in the new iLife suite is a simple, easy to use Web publishing tool that comes complete with blogging templates and other really nifty tools. And while I'm pretty savvy when it comes to HTML and CSS, the drag drop photo option is way easy for my not-so-savvy fiance. He's started his own little blog and site and with iWeb, he was able to create a page in a matter of minutes.

While it was a bit of cash to shell out for the family pack, I am pretty fond of a lot of the other features that come with it. Continue Reading...

You might recall that I recently purchased an Apple iSight camera -- that nifty tube-looking gadget that connects with Apple computers running on Mac OS X 10.3 or later -- to use with iChat AV. The plug-and-play contraption has worked pretty seamlessly up until this week when, in an effort to connect with my brother out in Los Angeles (also running on iChat AV with the Apple iSight), I came across some issues.

I was a bit surprised, as I had successfully implemented a Web chat with a friend in MA (which, by the way, is very cool -- I hadn't seen this friend in a long time and it was nice to see his smiling face on my new PowerBook G4). When trying to initiate a Web chat with my brother, neither of us could accept nor start a conference. He received an error that said I wasn't available or hadn't responded. Continue Reading...

You're a fan of him because he pioneered the Mac revolution. You love your iMac/PowerBook/G5/G4/iPod. And what the hey....Steve Jobs is a cool guy, no?

For every fan, there is always something. Oh admit it -- you knew how to be a Madonna-be in the early 80's and you certainly knew how to rock that hair, a la Flock of Seagulls. Continue Reading...

I think I can finally put a check next to "weirdest advertisements known to date."

While we're familiar with billboards, television commercials, print ads -- even ads on vehicles, no medium of advertising has ever caught my attention quite like this one.

Globat.com recently bought the rights to a man's head which shall be tattooed with their logo as of today, February 28, 2006.

Believe it or not, this was all made possible thanks to an eBay auction.

Here's a snippet from the release:

Mark Greenlaw, a father to three children and resident of Biddeford, Maine, came up with the idea to help support his growing family in early January. The auction was quickly seen by tens of thousands of people and attracted media interest with radio show appearances and newspaper mentions across the country before it came to the attention of Globat.com.

I guess it's not such a bad thing to be a permanent walking, talking advertisement for a company, because let's face it -- it's not like the company can pull their ad, you know? So when this is all over, what will happen to the fresk ink on Mr. Greenlaw's head? I guess he can always grow some hair back over it. Continue Reading...

We've all been wondering what's been going to happen with the RIM/NTP case. Rich Tehrani even came up with 8 things to do in the event there is a BlackBerry outage.

Perhaps we can all come up with a few more ideas, as we have a little more time before anything drastic will happen.

According to this AP story, the judge has ended the hearing with no decision made.

Time to inhale once more and wait.....

The same problem happened last year. Hallmark.com crashed several times, leaving lovers stranded without their last minute eGreeting to make up for the lack of flowers (or candy, or jewelry....)

According to this article, American Greetings and Blue Mountain were also experiencing technical difficulties due to the overwhelming demand for eCards.

My advice? Go to mac.com and get your sweetie an iCard. You don't need a .mac account and they're absolutely free. They're not animated or created with Flash, but the photos are gorgeous and you can write whatever it is your little heart desires. Continue Reading...

My big brother and co-Mac user is moving to California in less than a week. We're pretty close as far as siblings go, so in an effort to keep the distance not-so-distant, I took a trip to the Apple store last night and purchased two iSight cameras.

iSight works soley with iChat AV (the equivalent of AIM for Mac) and since I just recently purchased a brand new PowerBook G4 complete with the latest iChat, I thought, why not try these out? I'm all for utilizing the latest technology so I can stay in touch with my family despite the miles that are between us.

Reading about the iSight has me very excited to get this thing up and running. It has a dual-element microphone that suppresses ambient noise, it connects to your Mac with a simple FireWire connection and it's tiny -- only 2.3 ounces. Continue Reading...

A blog on another blog ---

Here, WetMachine gives a little insight to the WiFi tax rumors that have been looming the wireless space.

There will be no WiFi tax.

The gist of it here, folks is that you have to understand all the jargon to get what these proposals are really saying. I, myself am no legal/proposal expert, so chances are I would have gotten my little hands on it and would have most likely misinterpreted myself.

My favorite line?

"This is why people are having such a hard time figuring out how it would be collected, since IT WOULDN'T BE COLLECTED."

Thank you, WetMachine for the clarification!

Rich Tehrani sent me a WiMAX press release eariler today, so I thought I would share the news. Sesquans announced the "world's first" WiMAX Forum certified base station and subscriber station reference designs. Sequans is the first silicon provider to offer a complete end-to-end certified chipset solution.

Full release is below:

SEQUANS Communications, a fabless semiconductor company and leading supplier of WiMAX silicon and software for broadband wireless access, today announced that the company’s Subscriber Station and Base Station reference designs, based respectively on its SQN1010 and SQN2010 SoC’s, and S-Cube software solution, have achieved certification by the WiMAX Forum.

Sequans’ SQN2010-RD base station reference design was certified by the WiMAX Forum last month and now Sequans’ subscriber station reference design, the SQN1010-RD, has also received the Forum’s seal of approval. Continue Reading...

Fellow Channels Editor, Mae Kowalke sent me an interesting AP feature regarding the iPod headphones...

According to the story, a Louisiana man is suing Apple, claiming that the player can cause hearing loss.

A few things sort of made me chuckle when I read this interesting piece. First of all, John Kiel Patterson (the one who is suing Apple) "does not know if the device has damaged his hearing, said his attorney, Steve W. Berman, of Seattle. But that's beside the point of the lawsuit, which takes issue with the potential the iPod has to cause irreparable hearing loss, Berman said."

So he doesn't know if the iPod has, in fact, caused said hearing loss? Need I say any more here?

Secondly, I doubt there are many people in this free world who don't understand the possible side-effects of using headphones/headsets/ear buds, etc....

Haven't our mothers yelled at us enough to turn down the volume of our Walkmans because we might go deaf? Haven't there been enough warnings since the advent of headphones that have told us listening to devices at high decibles would serve as a detriment to our pretty little ears?

Please.

Mae also mentioned that she had read a report that warning lables have lost their efficacy because there are too many out there. Continue Reading...

That's right. My Web browsing caused me to stumble on some interesting news. The news floating around Rumorville is that Microsoft might release their competition to the iPod. What? Where? When?

I can't tell you. Continue Reading...

No. Once again, this is not a drug post, but yet another reference to 'WiFi on Steroids'.

Somehow, I feel this is not new news - WiMAX is growing quickly. If you've scanned the WiMAX news, you'd be hard pressed for an argument otherwise. But I'm no analyst. Continue Reading...

Apple is really pushing it with the iPods, what with new models being introduced quicker than butter rolling off a hot biscuit. First nano, now video?

This iPod lover is a bit late in the game getting a blog entry up about it, but I was at Columbia Presbyterian in Manhattan all day yesterday, so in the confines of the waiting room, I missed the news. It wasn't until last night while driving home and listening to the AM radio did I find out about the new video iPod.

The gentleman discussing his take on this new gadget said he was sure that this new iPod wouldn't really do well in the consumer market. I am not sure I agree because when you think about it, this iPod is still the same price as the others (starting at $299) and it has a newer feature. Continue Reading...