We’re pretty comfortable with the idea of open source software running on computers and mobile phone — heck, even guitars — but cars? That one we’re still warming up to, but this concept vehicle from EDAG definitely helps. As its name implies, the Light Car – Open Source lets developers modify and / or improve upon the auto’s technologies —
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Researchers at Germany’s Ilmenau University of Technology are developing flying quadcopter robots that can be used to form a self-assembling ad-hoc wireless network in the event of disaster. Built with off-the-shelf parts (including VIA’s Pico-ITX hardware and a GPS unit) the robots are designed to provide both mobile phone and WiFi access — and they can do it far more
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I am sitting in Dallas at a meeting discussing LTE and HSPA technical standards, and I thought I’d share some of the compelling statistics tied to the use of mobile broadband and the need for fat mobile pipes. How fat? HSPA offers speeds of up to 42 Mbps downlink and LTE has theoretical speeds of up to 150 Mbps down.
Chris
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Here at BGR, we’ve learned several truths over the years: What happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas, you really shouldn’t eat yellow snow and most importantly, there is no such thing as a phone with a big enough battery. Discounting those first two for the time being, we’re long-time Proporta portable battery users as having that extra
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This week, the mobile computing world revolves around the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Among some of the highlights today were the announcement of the second Android phone, as well as Yahoo’s new mobile initiative, and the announcement of a partnership between Nokia and Skype that will bring Skype’s VOIP client to Nokia’s high-end N97 phone.
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Yahoo Mobile
Yahoo today announced a
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At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, MySpace just made some major announcements. They’ve announced plans to develop mobile applications for the Nokia S60 as well as the much-anticipated Palm Pre. However, for most of us, the bigger news is the relaunch of the MySpace Mobile web site which will occur this week. Yet even with the updated branding and
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Skype is (finally) teaming up with mobile handset maker Nokia to get its VoIP and IM software program pre-installed on some of Nokia’s devices, as announced at the Mobile World Congress and reported by MobileCrunch. The eBay-owned company had 405 million registered users in total at the end of last year, and Nokia is still the largest handset maker in
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Right around this time last year, Texas Instruments was busy showing off its OMAP 3 platform, which enabled 720p playback from a mobile phone. At this year’s MWC, we’ve got a real live handset recording 720p, and TI upping the ante once more with a chip that handles 1080p. For those still with us after being blasted with resolutions, the
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This past weekend, Mobile CDN made a fairly significant move in the mobile world when it streamed footage of the NBA All-Star game live over mobile phones. Why? Mobile CDN launched the first live streaming application approved by Apple and that works over any wireless network Edge, 3G and WiFi phones. Until now, Apple hasn’t officially allowed iPhones to access
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We love pico projectors, we love phones — so the combo pack known as the Samsung Show stopped us in our tracks when we first spied it at CES. Well, Texas Instruments, makers of the DLP projector chip that runs the Show, if you will, have just announced the second generation DLP chip which is — you guessed it
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iSkoot, the startup that specializes in creating software for the billions of mobile phones that aren’t smartphones, has released its new Kalaida Platform, allowing users to access their social networks, RSS feeds, and Email from their basic cell phones. The platform is the same one that powers iSkoot’s recently-released Notifier application available on AT&T’s Media Mall, but will be
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Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
In October of 2006, I wrote a Switched On column entitled “Rebooting Retail in Redmond” in which I noted how much Microsoft’s consumer business had changed since the days of the original microsoftSF store in Sony’s Metreon. This was a world before Windows XP, before Zune, before rich touch interfaces on
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We’ve been waiting to get our grubby mitts on the LG Arena KM900 and try out the S-Class 3D UI for ourselves, and well — it’s a nice featurephone interface, but it’s not exactly revolutionary. The widget interface is nice, and we’re into the picture-based contacts screen, but the icon-based home screen just feels cluttered, especially when viewed in the
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Texas Instruments is expected to this week release details of its next-generation application processor, the OMAP 4 family of chips, which has made my love for Nvidia’s APX25000 processor grow cold. I’m faithless when a chipmaker shows me the prospect of 1080p video playback, 10 times the web surfing speed, a 20 megapixel camera and 130 hours of audio playback
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While HTC’s press didn’t deliver on our Android dreams — or electric sheep — it did land us the new Touch Diamond2. First off, this set is a stunner, build quality and feel in your hand is really a quality affair. The material choices in both metal and plastics used here are really first rate — we gush because we’re
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At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Apple’s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move as the rumors about the Finnish mobile juggernaut’s mobile applications store already spread last week; they were late confirmed to Reuters by industry
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Adobe wants everyone to know that its fully-featured Flash Player, not the dinky lite version, will be available on many mobile phones . . . in 2010. So hang tight until then. The phones that will support Flash 10 include the Palm Pre, Nokia S60 models, Android phones, and Windows Mobile (but we already knew about those last
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