Posted by Joe

For video gamers it’s Christmas right now. E3 is taking place this week (June 15-17). To help get you prepared for the show, Wired has a video gallery of 10 Trailers for E3’s hottest games. Trailers include new Rock Band and Call of Duty games as well as Call of Duty: Black Ops.

It’ll be interesting to see what and if ACTIVISION says anything about Black Ops, being developed by Treyarch. ACTIVISION, of course, had the lengthy battle with Infinity Ward, which developed the popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games.

Besides the new games, it looks like motion control and 3D will be the big news coming out of the conference. Microsoft will have its Kinect system, which recognizes body movement, and Sony will showcase its PlayStation Move. The Move is supposed to be an upgraded version of the Nintendo Wii’s motion sensor controllers.

Unfortunately a lot of the E3 product announcements — Kinnect, Move, Call of Duty — won’t be in stores until November, so don’t get too excited.

Posted by Bill

With seemingly every every tech and news media outlet or blog sitting in rapt attention at the feet of Steve Jobs on June 7 as he unveiled the latest iPhone and mobile OS at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, it was noteworthy who wasn’t there.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, tech news blog Gizmodo.com wasn’t invited to the iPhone-fest in the wake of its legal dispute with Apple and Silicon Valley law enforcement over how it obtained – and later reported on in detail – a prototype of the new iPhone a month before its release. Gizmodo had sent several staffers to previous WWDC dates, liveblogging every pearl of information to fall from the lips of Apple’s CEO, so the lack of an invitation to Monday’s event was more than coincidental.

Apple clearly appears to be engaging in prior restraint against Gizmodo, which as any journalism student – and First Amendment attorney — will tell you is an act designed to have a chilling effect on the media that cover the company. That is, it was done to keep other media under control and scared of potential repercussions should they contemplate future reporting or other activity that Apple considers beyond the pale.

Yeah, Apple’s a private business and can do what it likes with its private events. But barring a media outlet this way is not a good thing. What’s next, barring media that decide to write negative reviews of Apple products?

It is, as they say, a slippery slope.

Posted by Bill

Amid all the hubbub at this week’s Cable Show 2010 regarding 3D TV, the future of broadband regulation and the rise of over-the-top content, it’s good to see some cable aficionados catching on to a smaller, potentially unsung development in the industry: The recycling of old brand names.

Responding to Light Reading Cable’s report covering the unveiling of the “SelecTV” brand cable will use to promote interactive TV services – supplanting the useful but unwieldy tech descriptor, Enhanced Binary TV Interchange Format (EBIF) – one sharp-eyed commenter noted that the TV business has used the name before, more than 30 years ago, for a pioneering if short-lived pay TV service specializing in movies.  A quick Google search also would show that SelecTV currently is the brand of a digital satellite pay TV service in Australia, but it’s probably best not to bring that up at the Cable Show.

Anyway, cable’s recycling of SelecTV immediately generated questions about other brands that might get resurrected for next-generation programming services or equipment. LR’s Jeff Baumgartner immediately called for the return of Admiral television sets and noted that gear-maker Thomson earlier this year changed its corporate name to that of its venerable Technicolor subsidiary. I, however, am about to begin pestering Motorola to bring back Quasar. OK, so the company no longer makes TV sets…but a guy can dream.

Posted by Michael

As the cable industry gathers in Los Angeles for the annual Cable Show, some clouds of uncertainty about the regulatory future of cable broadband services may greet attendees.

Six days before the event’s start, the Federal Communications Commission released its “third way” approach for broadband, suggesting Internet access should be regulated in the same manner as phone service. The FCC approach also proposes broadband service providers treat all Web traffic equally and not block or hinder consumer access to any Web content.

Cable interests inside D.C. expressed unease with the FCC’s proposition. Kyle McSlarrow, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, organizers of the annual Cable Show, said the proposal to “reclassify broadband services is disappointing.”  He added that the association “firmly believes that the case for new regulation of the Internet has not been made.”

The FCC’s push has supporters, however. The Open Internet Coalition, which includes online heavyweights Amazon.com, Google and Ebay, stated in a letter sent to the FCC that the regulatory approach will “preserve a level playing field for all participants.”

While some in the cable industry may view the prospects of new broadband regulation as dismal news, others think it may not be so bad for the industry.  Analysts at Stifel Nicolaus said the regulatory impact on cable “is less apocalyptic than some have warned.”

Also, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will have an opportunity to explain his position when he addresses the Cable Show on Thursday, May 13.

Posted by Bill

Last week’s CTIA Wireless 2010 show provided solid evidence that mobile operators believe there’s a market for one type of device to help improve crappy in-building mobile network coverage.

That device is the femtocell, a mini-cellular base station that plugs into your existing home or office broadband connection. It not only provides a signal that improves in-building wireless coverage, but also boosts available wireless network data capacity and speeds by – this is the important part – offloading smartphone data traffic to that landline broadband connection instead of to the mobile network.

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Posted by Bill

It seems not that long ago, the annual International CTIA Wireless show was the pinnacle for wireless news. For some reason, it doesn’t feel that way now. Seriously, you know when one of the big announcements is expected to be Sprint’s launch of its “Supersonic” 4G/WiMax phone, the breaking news from CTIA could be more incremental than monumental.

Now don’t get me wrong. CTIA still is a must-attend event for anyone working with just about any element of the mobile ecosystem, from base stations to backhaul. Wireless Week says attendance at this year’s show in Las Vegas could be up a whopping 26 percent from 2009, a potentially huge rebound. The big service providers will be announcing handset deals and the big vendors no doubt will be revealing customer wins of their own while swapping competitive bon mots about 3G coverage and LTE rollout plans.

Much of the crowd also will be buzzing about the wireless elements of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and spending time at the concurrent Tower Technology Summit, where even a couple of cable TV industry players will be talking about solutions for mobile’s backhaul capacity crunch.

But these days, most of the big news about wireless tends to be spread out over the course of the year at a variety of events (CES, Mobile World Congress, 4G World, even CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment) or controlled by a different entity, such as Apple with its iPad – which likely will be talked about at CTIA but doesn’t hit the market until two weeks after the show.

Maybe that’s a good thing; a sign that times are good enough in the mobile business and all of its elements that members can afford to keep wireless buzz-worthy at a number of venues, instead of putting their critical publicity mass behind CTIA ever year.

Posted by Lisa

I am at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona this week and have my geek-head in the mobile industry. Everyone is talking about the “fourth screen.” Just as the vision of three video screens becomes a reality, TV’s fourth screen enters the picture cleverly called the “media phone”.  The media phone is a new category of broadband device that combines the power of the PC with the performance of a telephone. The result is an always-on multimedia broadband device designed for accessing online news and weather, viewing videos, and a host of other applications.  The first three screens — PC, TV, and silver screen – lack the mobility that is expected to change the way we work, play, access information and entertain ourselves.

Imagine having an always-ready device that provides access to the latest news, weather, traffic and movie listings. It can tell you when someone is at your front door, play your favorite YouTube videos and look up a new recipe for dinner. So it is always put to good use while you are busy elsewhere, you can use it as a digital photo frame accessing photos from a hard drive or online photo sharing sites such as Snapfish, or Picasa.

According to In-Stat, consumer media phones will generate between $4-8 billion in annual revenue by 2013. The U.S. media phone market took some baby steps in 2009, such as the launch and later termination of Verizon’s “Hub” device, and Europe should come on board this year.

Our predictions for the media phone: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Rachel

Are you tired of giving the same old roses, chocolates and greeting card on February 14? Why not spice up your Valentine’s Day with something techie!

On a budget? Here are some lovely options for your tech-savvy partner.

Is your significant other a blogger, but has the words “Blogger” or “Wordpress” in his or her domain name?  Take them to the next level by purchasing a custom domain name through a domain registration site like Misk.com. Once this is purchased, don’t leave your partner with the heartache of setting up the blog. Take the time to get it ready for them to sit down and write. Added bonus… set up a glass of wine next to the computer (just don’t spill it).

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Posted by Lisa

On the eve of Mobile World Congress 2010, it’s ironic that one of the biggest current stories about the booming wireless business focuses on a threat to its well-being: How can service providers handle the surge in data traffic resulting from the public’s embrace of advanced mobile applications and services?

The formal Jan. 27 unveiling of Apple’s iPad generated widespread news coverage and discussion about the possible impact the device could have in areas ranging from book, magazine and newspaper publishing to video gaming and over-the-top TV programming. Given that AT&T initially will sell a 3G-enabled iPad model, media coverage also naturally herded back to the meme about AT&T’s iPhone-related issues: The AT&T mobile network – and the O2 UK network – have been swamped in spots by the data demands of the small percentage of subscribers using the iPhone.  What will happen when millions of new iPad users jump on board and start demanding even greater bandwidth on the cellular network?

The questions won’t be ignored at MWC, but the focus on ensuring networks are robust enough to handle the new generation of wireless data demands is a bit muted. There are two hour-long sessions Wednesday on the MWC agenda titled “Network Breaking Point!” but the rest of the schedule appears light on network viability and heavy on applications, mobile entertainment, mobile lifestyles, advanced handsets and all of the other things that actually are creating network challenges.

Yes, MWC isn’t a wireless tech-oriented venue, per se. But let’s watch to see how closely an industry that’s selling innovative products almost as fast as it can develop them is also paying attention to the everyday customer experience of people who buy those products. AT&T has found out the hard way that thinking ahead of the curve in this respect could help prevent some pain.