Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In - New York Times
the next step is electronic boarding passes, which essentially turn the hand-held devices and mobile phones of travelers into their boarding passes.
At least half a dozen airlines in the United States currently allow customers to check in using their mobile devices, including American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest and Alaska.
But so far, Continental is the only carrier in the United States to begin testing the electronic passes, allowing those travelers to pass through security and board the plane without handling a piece of paper. Their boarding pass is an image of an encrypted bar code displayed on the phone’s screen, which can be scanned by gate agents and security personnel.
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They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know. - New York Times
It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.
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Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK) - New York Times
Innovation, of course, has always spurred broad societal changes. As telephones became ubiquitous in the last century, users — adults and teenagers alike — found a form of privacy and easy communication unknown to Alexander Graham Bell or his daughters.
The automobile ultimately shuttled in an era when teenagers could go on dates far from watchful chaperones. And the computer, along with the Internet, has given even very young children virtual lives distinctly separate from those of their parents and siblings.
Business analysts and other researchers expect the popularity of the cellphone — along with the mobility and intimacy it affords — to further exploit and accelerate these trends. By 2010, 81 percent of Americans ages…
The Grameen village phone ladies are slowly going out of business but Davos discussion still refers on the same model.
Many Are Already at Work on Fulfilling Gatess Vision - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog
Last week Mr. Gates called on the executives of the largest corporations to add social entrepreneurship to their agenda, a leopard-spot-altering exercise at best. However, in challenging his compatriots, one of the experiments he overlooked was Mr. Yunus’s stunning success at Grameen Phone in Bangladesh, an effort he has pioneered during the past decade in partnership with Telenor, a Norwegian wireless carrier.
Intended as an experiment to extend wireless communications networks to the world’s poorest people, the program has become a remarkable success on multiple levels. Not only did it…
With global agreement reached on clearing the 700 MHz band of analog broadcasting so it can be used for wireless broadband, the equipment will start coming to market soon. Unless the regional spectrum regulators clear the band in time, it will not be possible to reap the benefits.
After Global Agreement, Companies May Bid Higher at Wireless Auction in U.S. - New York Times
Because the conference elicited a global consensus, that confidence should extend worldwide. The conference said that countries could use the 700-megahertz slice for wireless broadband services like cellphones, mobile TV and WiMax, although at each country’s time of choosing.
The conclusions of the conference, which operates under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, carry the weight of an international…
It appears that early warning and evacuation were effective in coastal Bangladesh. With so much attention focused on tsunamis, it is important not to neglect this very real hazard.
PS: Now with reports coming in that deaths will exceed 1000, judgment on the efficacy of warning and evacuation will have to be reserved. While one death is one too many, we must remember that 300000-500000 died in the 1970 Bhola cyclone which hit, the coast on November 12th. The fact that casualties will be be counted in the 1000s and not 100,000s is progress. More needs to be done, underlining the importance of the continuing work to improve early warning and preparedness.
Powerful Cyclone Kills 242 in Bangladesh - New York Times
A cyclone that…
Miguel Helft
October 11, 2007, New York Times
For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google have been working in secret on a mobile-phone project.
As word of their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists before a speech by Steve Jobs.
But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s.
Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile internet, a small market today but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile-phone makers to offer phones based on its software,…
Tags: ad systems, advertising services, Android, Andy Rubin, Arun Sarin, AT&T, Boston, Britain, Celunite, Dan Olschwang, DoubleClick, Doug Smith, Envisioneering Group, Eric Schmidt, Federal Communications Commission, Google, IDC, JumpTap, Karsten Weide, large group, last carrier, Linux, Mahesh Veerina, Medio Systems, Microsoft, Miguel Helft, mobile advertising, mobile communications, mobile Internet, mobile internet portals, mobile phones, mobile search, mobile software, mobile versions, mobile-phone operators, mobile-phone platform applications, mobile-phone software, New York Times, online advertising, online success, operating system, operating systems, phone software platform, Rich Miner, Richard Doherty, Scott Cleland, search engine, search engines, software applications, start-up, Steve Jobs, technology*, telecommunications, United States, United States Senate, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Group, web browser, wireless carriers, wireless industry, wireless market, wireless spectrum.
Monks Are Silenced, and for Now, Internet Is, Too - New York Times
It was about as simple and uncomplicated as shooting demonstrators in the streets. Embarrassed by smuggled video and photographs that showed their people rising up against them, the generals who run Myanmar simply switched off the Internet.
Until Friday television screens and newspapers abroad were flooded with scenes of tens of thousands of red-robed monks in the streets and of chaos and violence as the junta stamped out the biggest popular uprising there in two decades.
But then the images, text messages and postings stopped, shut down by generals who belatedly grasped the power of the Internet to jeopardize their crackdown.
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It has long been a staple of telecom law that telcos could not decide what went through the tube. According to the article below, this principle does not apply to text messages. One academic apologist goes as far as claiming that competition will look after the problem. He misses the point that under present arrangements there is only one way to reach a mobile user with a text message, though his/her operator (an equivalent condition does not exist in the Internet). Until that changes, the common-carrier principle must applied, be it for text or voice.
Verizon Rejects Messages of Abortion Rights Group - New York Times
Text messaging is a growing political tool in the United States and a dominant one abroad, and such sign-up programs…
It is unlikely that the thin-client vision can be realized in the developing world in the short term unless connectivity and power supplies get a lot better, fast. However, the basic concept may become operationalized through the mobile.
For Networks, Thin Is In - New York Times
A decade ago, the network computer — also called the thin-client computer — was promoted as a replacement for personal computers and desktop software. Thin clients have no hard drives to store desktop applications, like Microsoft’s Word or Excel, permanently. The leading supporters of the inexpensive, terminal-style machines were Microsoft’s archrivals at Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
The market never took off in the 1990s. But the vision of a decade ago now seems within reach. Years of progress in hardware, software…
Tags: desktop applications, desktop software, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Neoware, network computer, New York Times, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, thin computing, thin-client computing, thin-client maker, USD.
The growing importance of mobiles is illustrated by the fact that 14% of American households do not have fixed phones; while only 12.3% have no mobiles. This trend which started in Finland has now spread to the bastion of the PSTN where for decades local calls from the fixed phone were free (both incoming and outgoing) compared with having to pay for both on mobile. Competition and bundles of “free” minutes seems to have done the trick.
Cellphone-Only Homes Hit a Milestone - New York Times
From September 2006 to April 2007, the percentage of Americans in cellphone-only households for the first time overtook the percentage in landline-only households, according to Mediamark Research, a firm that has been tracking such data since the mid-1980s. The milestone is…
Now Motorola is said to be doing badly because the Razr ceased to be fashionable after I bought one!
But seriously, if people are upgrading phones in less than 24 months on average, the second-hand market must be huge. Is this the answer to solving the affordability barrier at the Bottom of the Pyramid?
Cellphone Envy Lays Motorola Low - New York Times
Motorola’s fortunes have plunged along with the price of its Razr. Its profits have collapsed, and it announced plans last month to lay off 3,500 workers. Since last October, its stock has dropped 30 percent, attracting the attention of the billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn, who bought 40 million shares last week on a bet that he could push the company to do better.
At…
North Korea is part of Asia. LIRNEasia should at least think about this strange country as it goes about its work. The connectivity of North Korea is described below:
The Internet Black Hole That Is North Korea - New York Times
“This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are hard-wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned outright in 2004. In May, the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York ranked North Korea No. 1 — over also-rans like Burma, Syria and Uzbekistan — on its list of the “10 Most Censored Countries.”That would seem to leave the question of Internet access in North Korea moot.
At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human…
Tags: Asia, Burma, cellular telephone, Internet access, Internet Black Hole That Is North Korea, New York, New York Times, North Korea, satellite photograph, Syria, Uzbekistan.
Iraq is an Asian country. While LIRNEasia is unable at this time to work in Iraq, our hearts are with the people of Iraq as they use ICTs to cope with the crazy murderousness of their world.
A excerpt from today’s New York Times story:
“Your call cannot be completed,” it says, “because the subscriber has been bombed or kidnapped.”
Cellphones have long been considered status symbols in developing countries, Iraq included. But in an environment where hanging out is potentially life threatening, cellphones are also a window into dreams and terrors, the macabre local sense of humor and Iraqis’ resilience amid the swells of violence.
The business here is booming. According to figures published last month by the State Department, there are now 7.1 million cellphone subscribers in…
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