The iPhone for the past 2 years has enjoyed preeminent spot as the top smartphone on the market. But since its release a little more than 2 years ago, competitors have increasingly been upping the ante and churning out more impressive devices. First came the Storm from RIM, which by all accounts did nothing to threaten the iPhone's standing. Next came the Palm Pre, which despite a ton of hype and generally decent reviews hasn't posed much of a threat to Apple either. But the recently released Motorola Droid now out on the market, it seems that Apple has finally met i Read more
The Federal Aviation Administration today said it would streamline the environmental review part of permit applications for the launch and/or reentry of reusable suborbital rockets to help bolster a fledgling commercial space market. Read more
Text message this morning from CNN: Unemployment hit 10.2% in October. Microsoft announced earlier this week another 800 employee layoffs to the 5,000 previously announced employee layoffs. If you look at Microsoft's financials you see why, a 14% revenue and 18% net income drop for the last reported quarter, on top of disappointing prior quarters. Read more
In the past few weeks several organizations have asked me about these "funny" packets they see leaving their networks destined for the Internet. These packets turned out to be IPv6 packets encapsulated within an IPv4 header (IP protocol 41). IPv6 packets that are encapsulated in IPv4 packets may be created unintentionally or they may be malicious activity that is trying to avoid detection. To understand this potential security issue you need tools to help you inspect this type of traffic. Read more
Too little is known about what potential foes have placed into space and how much space debris is threatening to damage American orbiters. And the US needs to deploy more space sensors, satellites and satellite protection and quickly: "We are decades behind where we should be, in my view." Read more
Ultra-high bandwidth lasers in manned or unmanned aircraft could soon be blasting military voice, video and data across the skies and to the ground if a hybrid optical laser system currently undergoing test pans out. Read more
The iPhone may soon be getting stiffer competition from upcoming products like the Motorola Droid, but one area where Apple's commanding lead seems untouchable is its mobile app store. Apple today announced in a press release that developers have now created over 100,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Phill Schiller stated in the press release: Read more
A few days ago, word spread that the latest (at the time) developer build of Snow Leopard all but killed support for the Intel Atom processor. The atom processor, of course, is often found in the netbooks that happen to be popular amongst those seeking to create hackintosh machines. When news began to trickle down throughout the Apple blogosphere, it seemed that Apple was finally taking some concrete steps to thwart an arguably growing and thriving hackintosh community. Read more
If you want to be a CEO but not have any of the real responsibilities of one, you could try to play a new online game being offered by Cisco. The company this week posted myPlanNet, a computer game that lets anyone be a broadband executive making network deployment decisions. Read more
The Federal Communications Commission and the US Department of Transportation are teaming up to develop what they called high-tech solutions to the growing problem of distracted or inattentive drivers. Read more
The Blackberry Bold is getting good attention but the mobile SmartPhone world has become a two horse race between the Apple iPhone and the Motorola/Google Droid. Even with the new Blackberry Storm 2 model, the Storm missed its window to be a serious contender against the iPhone (despite all my ill advised pro-Storm predictions). Read more
It seems my last post was timely regarding network access during and through a pandemic. Gartner Group came out the next day with their list of concerns, which were quite similar to mine. They also mentioned a strategy which I had talked about with my colleague but forgot to include in my post -- the use of WAN optimization technologies as a hedge against Internet congestion. My thought there was “well, that sounds great, but how much would that cost??” Read more
Researchers have built an artificial intelligence-based wearable computer with digital eyes that could help future robots or astronauts "see' and discover signs of life in the desert-like conditions found on
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There are few products on the VoIP marketplace that aim to solve a major problem: Completing the difficult transition from TDM (or legacy) telephony to Voice Over IP. After spending a few months with the Portico TVA from Citel, I'm convinced that the TVA is one of those essential products.
With the continued economic uncertainty, companies and organizations need cost effective methods to continue their transition from TDM to VoIP. Now, with the Portico TVA, organizations can utilize their existing digital handsets to connect to SIP-based soft switches or IP centrex systems.
NASA said it will this week award $1.65 million in prize money to a pair of aerospace companies that successfully simulated landing a spacecraft on the moon and lifting off again. Read more
The Department of Energy today said it would give $5.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support the X Prize Foundation's competition to build mass-production-capable cars that can get at least 100 MPG. Read more
What do you get when you combine the smarts of a computer scientist and a doctor of sleep medicine? A cool, less invasive way to figure out if patients have sleep apnea, a common problem that causes a snoring a person to momentarily stop breathing while sleeping. Read more
NASA began the long process of redefining some of its missions today as it added four new committees to the external advisory group that helps guide the space agency's directions. Read more
Now that Microsoft's first Apple-like store is open in Scottsdale Arizona, Microsoft has finally entered the world of direct consumer retail sales. Since I don't live in that part of the country I have to rely on the reports from others, and so far the feedback is that the store is a lot like Apple's, has a little less cool-vibe to it, and shows off some of the price differences between hardware running Windows compared to Apple hardware (no surprise there). Read more
Well, maybe the fourth time will be the charm. This time the Federal Trade Commission said it delayed the enforcement of its Red Flags identity protection rules until June 1, 2010 at the request of Congressional members.
At the request of Members of Congress, the Federal Trade Commission is delaying enforcement of the "Red Flags" Rule until June 1, 2010, for financial institutions and creditors subject to enforcement by the FTC. Read more
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