New from BenQ-Siemens, a concept mobile phone

It is titled the “Black Box,” this handset has no keypad, it uses a touchscreen for all functions. The user interface seems as if it can be accessed via the icons, going from phone to camera to calculator modes just by touching the screen in the right place. This phone should be universally interesting to anyone, regardless of language.

We may never see the phone in product, as this is a concept phone, but the idea is very interesting.

Mobile ESPN pulls the plug

Mobile ESPN, Launched in the Fall of 2005 on a number of US mobile carriers and then in February 2006 as an MVNO, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator – those business entities that look and feel like a mobile phone company, but really rebrand or reuse mobile network infrastructure from someone else, like Sprint Nextel, VerizonWireless or Cingular.

Now, however, they are announcing that they will close up shop. Advertised to be “the first national U.S. wireless phone service specifically targeted to sports fans” Mobile ESPN was bringing personalized sports programming from ESPN, along with ring tones, sports news, info, statistics, photos, logos and streaming video to its customers.

By the end of the year, customers will have some options about what to do and where to go to seek service. On their website, the indicate that “As of December 31, 2006, Mobile ESPN will cease its wireless service provider operations and work to deliver our content and experience through another nationwide carrier.”

Almost at the same time as ESPN is pulling the plug, another MVNO launched, Red Pocket Mobile, marketing to Chinese Americans and offering low cost international service on calls to Asia. Unique selling points? Calls to US or China, Singapore, and Taiwan are the same price and an iConnectHome service would allow people in Asia to dial a local number there and reach the subscriber here in the US, i.e. no international long distance.

Intel Announcement - Quad Core CPUs

I wrote about Intel's announcement, yesterday, on the Quad-Core CPUs.

Electrical Efficiency Needed

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 25 — Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard that it says will save billions of kilowatt-hours of energy annually...

FINALLY, since a full rack of blades from someone like Dell will cost you 20,000 watts of electricity in order to run the darn thing. Not to mention that while no special room a/c is required, i.e. it will operate at normal room temperature, there is also a significant thermal demand upon the total IT space, which may cause further a/c requirements and the power associated with that.


The article points out a couple of industry initiatives, but that fact that the heavyweight is coming in with their opionion, well this should bode well for future improvements, and thus less energy consumption.

InterVideo makes move to mobile devices

This is great news! iVideoToGo will allow consumers to copy video content from DVDs, etc., to iPod and Sony PSP devices.

Note: they will support DVD-Videos, AVI, MPEG, WMV, MOV, MP4, DivX®, ASF, DVR-MS, 3GP and others--more than any other program of its kind allows just about any player on any other device to also work with thie video content.

Brilliant!

IMS: the relation of SOA and IMS to each other

I made this post on a Light Reading message board regarding "non standard applications" in IMS and related HSS and even SOA functions.

What is a non-standard app, anyway?

feel free to read the entire thread on Re: SOA- IMS relation