Mobility & Wireless

Australia will be among the first 22 countries alongside the US, UK, Germany and Japan, to receive the new iPhone from Friday, July 11.

WiMAX, a new broadband wireless access technology, is expected to gather strong momentum in the Asia Pacific region with WiMAX services revenues estimated to grow from US$58 million in 2007 to $5.46 billion by 2012, according to the latest report by Springboard Research, an IT research company. This translates to a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 148 percent for the period.

Nvidia has uncovered a problem with some older graphics chips that shipped in "significant quantities" of laptop PCs, the company said Wednesday.

Apple's launch of its new iPhone 3G will produce a flurry of spam and scams, a security company warned Thursday.

Telstra (ASX:TLS) today unveiled a new service that will allow its customers to find the location of mobile phone users in near-real time.

When it comes to laptops, ultrathin is in -- particularly since the launch of Apple's MacBook Air earlier this year. As might be expected, though, the Air isn't the only game in town -- skinny laptops are available from a variety of other vendors.

The Internet offers a wealth of excellent tools, information, and entertainment--and it asks very little from us in return. So don't get upset when a poorly designed online tool or site gets on your nerves; instead, use Greasemonkey, a free Firefox add-on that harnesses the power of JavaScript to right usability wrongs and improve the functionality of specific Web sites and of the Internet at large.

The BlackBerry from Research In Motion is the most popular line of mobile phones in part because they tend to be easier to type on than most other phones. We e-mail addicts love them.

Look around at people talking on their mobile phones and, almost without exception, they are chatting on familiar-looking small rectangular boxes with glowing screens. However, this cookie-cutter approach to mobile phones will change dramatically in the next few years as phone designers get more daring and more personal.

Taiwan's MSI (Micro-Star International) announced its competitor for the new low-cost laptop market, the MSI Wind, early this month at Computex, and we got a chance to try it out at MSI's offices in Taipei last week.

The University of Western Sydney (UWS) has today gone live with a managed Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for its 5000 users.

Horizon Lines has turned to radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track containers seamlessly from a Seattle distribution centre over the sea and land to their final destination in Alaska.

Increasing speeds and falling prices are adding to the appeal of 3G Evolution Data Optimized wireless data services, which deliver broadband speeds to mobile devices.

Wireless LANs have grown in the workplace -- in size, number of installations and technology maturity -- to the point that many IT managers now expect to expand the uses of their networks in a new round of investments within the next year or two.

Back in 2000, the Zipcar crew set out to establish a new class of transportation: cars that drivers could sign up to share for a fee. It was an ambitious goal, and one it seems to have accomplished.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse shared the company's WiMAX plans last week at CTIA Wireless. The plan to build a fourth-generation wireless network is a risky one, but Hesse explained to Denise Dubie why it's a smart strategy for Sprint.

The LiMo Foundation was formed on January 2007 as a consortium of mobile industry companies joining together to create for handsets an open and standardized software platform based on Linux. Their goal is to deliver an open handset format that will become more widely accepted and used over closed, proprietary platforms. The foundation's major founders include Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone. These companies and other members share leadership and decision making.

WeFi is hoping to do for Wi-Fi connectivity what Facebook has done for social networking.

From the start, Henry Malmgren was determined to get to the South Pole. After graduating from Texas Tech University in 1998 with a degree in MIS he applied for a job in the Antarctic every year before NSF contractor Raytheon finally hired him as a network engineer in 2001. Since then he has alternated between the Denver headquarters and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, spending two summers and two winters there before finally working his way up to IT manager. Staying over is a commitment: Once the winter starts, there's no way to get in and out of the base until summer begins eight to nine months later. "I thought I would just do this for a single season, but somehow it always seemed too easy to keep coming back," he says.

Shortly after the iPhone launched earlier this year, the head of microprocessor maker ARM said the new handset will stimulate growth in the smartphone market because the hype around the product would pique people's interest. Since then, the iPhone, and the smartphone market overall, have taken off.

I've used iPhones and I have an iPod Touch. I love the interface, and I dig the device. Initially, I had to resist the urge to just buy an iPhone and deal with these problems, but I didn't, opting to get a Nokia N95 instead. A year has passed, and I've realized that I definitely made the right choice -- the limitations of the original iPhone (and the iPhone 2.0) are simply too numerous. Perhaps I've been spoiled by my N95 (and truth be told, I'll be getting an N96 in the next few months), but no matter how you slice it, I've decided that the iPhone just isn't my cup of tea. Here's why:

Taiwan's High Tech Computer (HTC) revealed its new Touch Diamond handset early last month to rave initial reviews, and it beat Apple to announcing a 3G (third-generation telephony) handset.

The global battle to control the smarts in your smartphone escalated this week when some of the combatants redeployed their forces in two big moves.

Microsoft has welcomed the transformation of the Symbian mobile-phone platform into an open source project, because the software giant contends the change will create a host of new problems for the Symbian community.

In the 1984 cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer , author William Gibson describes a future in which people can acquire knowledge by buying special chips called "microsofts" that plug into a surgically installed jack behind the ear. Once you plug in the chip, your brain can access its database and - voila! Knowledge!

The MacBook Air is Apple's first foray into a crowded ultraportable market that has seen its share of very light, very capable products from companies including Sony, Lenovo, and Fujitsu, among others. Here's a fast look at how they stack up.

In 2004 we tested several wireless LAN protocol analyzers and found two distinct characteristics: Those dedicated and built from the ground up for WLANs, and those that were modest add-ons to what were then labeled classic protocol analyzer products.

The BlackBerry 8800 smart phone is a departure from previous BlackBerries. It is both more mainstream and more refined. But it also suffers from some missing features that diminish the attractiveness of this otherwise elegant device.

Nokia's N800 Internet Tablet is one of those devices that's fascinating and unique enough to make a mobile geek's heart go pitter-patter with excitement but may not fit the needs of a lot of people.

Samsung's BlackJack, available from Cingular Wireless, is the latest of a recent glut of smart phones costing around US$200. Others include Nokia's E62, Research In Motion's BlackBerry Pearl and the LG enV. This particular device is quite attractive. In fact, one of its most attractive features leads to an unusual question: Can a mobile device be too small?