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| Verizon Wireless' open network earns praise |
28 November 2007 |
| Verizon Wireless' decision to open its network to outside mobile devices and applications has won praise from several groups, including past critics.Verizon Wireless officials announced Tuesday they would open up their network to any devices and software customers want to use by the second half of 2008. Any device that passes a minimal connectivity test will be allowed on the Verizon Wireless network, officials said.That announcement drew applause from a wide variety of groups. Public Knowledge, a consumer rights group that has pushed for open network regulations from the U.S. Congress or the Federal Communications Commission, said it was "cautiously optimistic" about Verizon's decision.Verizon's decision could lead to "a more open network in the wireless industry at large," said Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president. Wireless carriers have fought an FCC decision to require open access on a portion of spectrum in the 700MHz band to be auctioned starting in January, she noted."The Verizon announcement, however, is very limited," Sohn added. "If other carriers don't follow the same model, then consumers will still find their phones tied to a specific technology or wireless company. In order for an open network to become a reality, all carriers will have to participate."Verizon will still decide what phones can operate on its network, she said. Public Knowledge would prefer to have a third party decide what phones can operate on the Verizon network, she said.She also has continuing questions about prices. If Verizon continues to offer its preferred mobile phones at a discount, "then the adoption of the open model will be minimal, absent a rapid decline in cell phone prices," Sohn said. "We need to know whether the rates for Verizon service plans will vary for those with subsidized phones and for those customers with a phone bought elsewhere."Others were less guarded with their praise.Verizon's announcement, combined with the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, is a "significant" step toward the goal of more open wireless networks, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, said in a statement."As I noted when we adopted open network rules for our upcoming spectrum auction, wireless customers should be able to use the wireless device of their choice and download whatever software they want onto it," Martin added. "I continue to believe that more openness -- at the network, device, and application level -- helps foster innovation and enhances consumers' freedom and choice in purchasing wireless service. I am optimistic that Verizon Wireless's commitment along with the upcoming spectrum auction will ensure an exciting new era in wireless technology for the benefit of all consumers."Solveig Singleton, an adjunct senior fellow with Maryland think tank the Free State Foundation, said Verizon's voluntary decision makes more sense than open network regulations, such as net-neutrality rules pushed by Public Knowledge and other groups."Requiring openness or neutrality beyond the basics now supported by demand would needlessly make development far more costly and slow," she said. "A company that wants to invent a new type of phone with cutting-edge features already has a good bit to think about without having to worry about new phones and networks being simultaneously built by everyone else."Many proposed net-neutrality rules would require wireless and broadband providers to treat all network traffic equally, she said."Mandate 'open' and 'neutral' everywhere all the time for everything, and innovation will slow to a snail's pace and network traffic will jam," she added. "Competition between operators to offer innovative combinations of services at special prices would become almost impossible. In this fast-changing context, a regulatory command to treat all traffic all the same is just a bad idea."Also praising Verizon's decision were Funambol, a developer of open-source calendar and messaging tools for mobile phones, and the New America Foundation, a think tank that has pushed for open access rules on the 700MHz spectrumThe FCC and Google deserve credit for pushing the issue forward, said Michael Calabrese, director of New America's Wireless Future Program."This appears to be a move to head off market entry and new wireless competition from Google and other Internet companies that would result if the incumbent carriers were unwilling to meet minimal FCC consumer choice requirements," he said in an e-mail. |
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| AT&T to hike prices on dial-up |
26 November 2007 |
| AT&T will jack up its rates for dial-up Internet access by as much as 60 percent on Dec. 1, going well above the price of faster DSL in many cases.Customers who are now charged $9.99 per month will start paying $15.95, and the $15.95 customers will see their bills go up to $22.95, said company representative Dan Callahan; $22.95 is the flat rate for all new customers, up from $21.95. AT&T made the change to be competitive with other dial-up providers, Callahan said. The lower rates are left over from previous carriers that have been absorbed into AT&T, namely BellSouth, he said.AT&T offers basic DSL for as little as $10 per month for new customers, with some conditions. But the dial-up price hike is bad news for some AT&T customers in areas where DSL isn't available. One user complained about it on the forum BroadbandReports, saying he would have already signed up for DSL if he could have. "For a buck less, I could have service that is 15 times faster," wrote the customer, who used the screen name "GorbGuy."Traditional carriers and other service providers have been backing away from their dial-up offerings as more Internet users adopt broadband. With the market penetration of DSL and cable Internet service in the United States at 50 to 60 percent, nearing the percentage of people who have PCs, dial-up is becoming a niche market, said Ovum analyst Mark Seery. Carriers don't like serving that market because, like any large corporation, they're interested in doing one thing, he said."Any time something becomes not the biggest part of what you're doing, it becomes potentially subscale and inefficient," Seery said.In addition, they can't upsell customers to additional services such as video on demand until they're on broadband, he said. And their dial-up customers aren't a captive audience, because there are many competitive providers of the service, due to technical and legal factors, he added.DSL providers have already tried low introductory prices on DSL, such as AT&T's $10 offer, to entice their dial-up customers to switch."I think they think the people who remain on dial-up are not looking to move to broadband," Seery said. "Perhaps the only way to get them to move to broadband is to raise the prices."Competition is the good news for those who want to remain on dial-up. Juno, for example, offers a service for $9.95 per month for the first 12 months and $14.95 per month thereafter. Most dial-up providers include a variety of e-mail, storage, and security features. But even the major competitive ISPs are steering customers toward broadband. EarthLink, for example, offers dial-up at a $9.95 introductory rate and then $21.95 per month. Its broadband plans start as low as $12.95 per month. |
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| HP fails to spark market |
21 November 2007 |
| Though Hewlett-Packard kicked off the week reporting a quarterly profit, concern about the U.S. economy kept markets in turmoil before the Thanksgiving holiday Thursday, dragging down shares of technology bellwethers like Microsoft, AMD, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index.Though HP's quarterly report capped a generally strong earnings season for IT vendors, investors are nervously braced for news of sales in the fourth quarter. Rising oil prices and continuing problems in the housing market are fueling worries that economic conditions will dampen both consumer and business IT spending.Just before Thanksgiving, the Mortgage Bankers Association said that mortgage application volume fell by almost 3.6 percent last week. The Nasdaq Composite closed at 2562, down 24.66 points on Wednesday, before the holiday break.While economic fears caused the Nasdaq to slump in the third quarter, IT vendors ended up posting strong sales, sending IT share prices back up during October.HP's financial report, released Monday, showed that strong sales of OpenView and Mercury IT management and middleware software helped fuel net earnings of $2.3 billion, compared to net income of $1.9 billion one year earlier. Earnings beat estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Financial, who forecast net income of $2.184 billion.What's more, HP's forecast for revenue for the current quarter and fiscal year also surpassed analyst forecasts. The upbeat report on business products and bullish earnings outlook gave HP shares only a temporary boost. HP shares rose by $0.12 Tuesday to close at $49.56, but then slipped back Wednesday, along with most other tech shares, to close at $48.88.High-flying Google, whose dominance in the Internet advertising market continues to attract IT investors, was one of the few bellwethers to avoid a decline before the break, closing Wednesday at $660.52, up by $11.98.But economic jitters affected companies, including Microsoft, which closed at $34.23 Wednesday, down by $0.35, and AMD, which lost $0.45 to close at $10.83. The share price declines come even though AMD said it expects a strong fourth quarter and as analysts see strengths on both the business and consumer sides for Microsoft."In an environment where IT spending questions persist for 2008, Microsoft may be a solid defensive holding given its consumer exposure and strong product cycle," according to a research note from Citigroup Global Markets Equity Research.As IT investors brace for the first revenue reports for the fourth quarter, the traditional holiday buying season kicking off after Thanksgiving will be closely watched. |
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| Jajah provides shortcut numbers for long-distance calls |
19 November 2007 |
| Internet telephony service provider Jajah introduced a service Monday that bypasses some operators' high long-distance and international charges by providing subscribers with a unique local number for each of their contacts that they can dial from fixed-line or mobile phones.Jajah will also extend some of the "free" calls plans it offers users of its PC-based VOIP service to subscribers of the new service, a spokesman for the company said Monday.However, the so-called free calls will only be free to customers who are not charged by their regular telephone provider for carrying local calls. While that may be the case in the U.S., European telephone subscribers pay for most of their local calls from fixed lines -- while calls from mobiles are typically charged at the same rate whether the call is local or long distance.For other calls, customers will pay their local operator for the local call, and pay Jajah a surcharge for the long-distance or international component.Jajah is one of many Internet telephony service providers that offer telephony at basement prices in an increasingly commoditized market. The company has been offering a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service that originates and terminates calls on fixed-line and mobile phones. Subscribers, however, had to go to Jajah’s Web portal and enter their user name and password to set up each call.The new service, called Jajah Direct, allows users to make VoIP calls from their standard fixed-line and mobile phones, without requiring a PC and Internet connection each time they make a call.Jajah Direct is one of several technologies Jajah plans to introduce to extend its services to people who may not be able to afford a PC or Internet connection. Another technology under development is the use of SMS (short message service) on a mobile phone to initiate a call on the Jajah service, Trevor Healy, CEO of Jajah said in a telephone interview in September.Users of Jajah Direct will dial a local Jajah access number in their city, and then dial the number they want to call. Jajah connects the user directly using VoIP. After the call, the caller will receive a unique local number for the contact, which can be stored for direct dialing.Each user will get an unique local number for the particular contact, said the spokesman. When the user dials the unique local number, the Jajah server compares this number with the data available in the server database to generate the number that the person wants to call, the spokesman said. The unique local number can only be used within a particular city.Jajah will initially offer the local number facility in ten cities in the U.S., including New York, San Francisco and Boston, another ten cities in Europe, including London, Berlin and Rome, and in Tel Aviv. The company plans to add more local numbers in the next few weeks, the spokesman said. The service is available to 122 countries. |
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| What to Do When Goliaths Roar? |
17 November 2007 |
| By presenting holiday sale prices in a single database, the Internet has made it easy to compare prices — too easy, at least in the eyes of many retailers. |
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| Broadband internet access now available in our Adelaide hotel |
12 November 2007 |
| Broadband Internet access is now available at Rydges South Park at affordable prices.
Broadband Internet access is available in all our guest rooms and all our conference rooms.
Prices are from
1 hour access over 7 days - $12.95
4 hours acce... |
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| Refurbished MacBook Pro, 17-inch, 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Macbookpro, Price: £500) |
01 January 0001 |
| Quality products great prices Stringent refurbishment process prior to sale Covered by Apple s One-Year Limited Warranty AppleCare Protection Plan can be purchased Supplies are limited. Model Refurbished MacBook Pro Processor 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Memory 2gb (two So-Dimms) 667MHz Ddr2 Sdram (Pc2-5300) Display 17-inch (diagonal) 1680 x 1050 resolution Tft widescreen Pci Express Graphics Ati Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB of Gddr3 Sdram and dual-link Dvi Video Built-in isight Camera Dvi Vga (Dvi to Vga adapter included) Audio Combined optical digital input audio line in combined optical digital output headphone out stereo speakers microphone Hard disk drive 160GB Serial Ata 5400 rpm Slot-loading optical drive 8x SuperDrive (Dvd Rw Cd-Rw) Ethernet Built-in 10 100 1000BASE-T (Gigabit) Wireless Built-in 54-Mbps AirPort Extreme (802.11g) built-in Bluetooth 2.0 Edr Modem Apple Usb Modem (sold separately) Input Apple Remote full-size illuminated keyboard with ambient light sensor Scrolling Trackpad Expansion One FireWire 400 one FireWire 800 three Usb 2.0 ports and ExpressCard 34 slot Weight 6.8 pounds Footprint 15.4 x 10.4 inches Thickness 1.0 inch (2.59 cm) Video accessories Dvi to Vga adapter included (other adapters sold separately) Hardware accessories 85W MagSafe Power Adapter Ac wall plug power cord lithium-polymer battery More. Intel Core 2 Duo processor Powered by the latest generation of Intel s mobile processors plus a larger L2 cache the new MacBook Pro is up to 39 faster than the previous MacBook Pro generation. Built-in isight Camera Setting up a video conference is easy and fast with the included ichat Av and built-in isight. Host a face-to-face dialogue with up to three other colleagues no cords or cameras to carry around. MagSafe Power Adapter Mobile users will love the new MagSafe Power Adapter featuring a magnetic Dc plug that both ensures a tight connection and enables a clean break from the power port when there is undue tension. It prevents the MacBook Pro from being pulled off of a desk when the cord is accidentally tripped over and it protects the power cord from wear and tear. Front Row Apple Remote Present your photos videos and even Keynote presentations to an audience and control the display from up to 30 feet away. And the macbook are in stunning condition and by far the cheapest on the internet by far.We have only limited stock. 07776119688 |
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| Tech finishes strong month |
01 November 2007 |
| Jitters about the U.S.economy pushed markets broadly down on the first trading day of November, but faith in the IT sector, especially in tech stalwarts such as Google and Microsoft, appears to remain relatively high in the wake of a strong earnings season.The Dow plunged Thursday, closing at 13567.87, down by 362.14 points or 2.6 percent. This put the brakes on the Nasdaq, which is weighted heavily with IT companies. The Nasdaq closed at 2794.83, down by 64.29 points or 2.25 percent.Nevertheless, the Nasdaq is still higher than it was during the volatile months of the second quarter. Amid strong earnings reports from IT vendors, the Nasdaq gained 5.8 percent in October to close the month at its highest point since January 2001.Worry about the soft housing market and its effect on the economy continues to overshadow business in a variety of sectors. Falling housing prices and mortgage defaults have led to concerns that an ensuing credit crunch will dampen both consumer and business spending, even affecting IT vendors.Though the Federal Reserve Board cut rates, it also indicated Wednesday that rising oil prices might bring a halt to rate cuts for the near future, or even lead to rate hikes. That statement, and a Commerce Department report that said consumers cut back spending in September sparked investors to dump shares across an array of businesses.Tech sector standouts are holding their own however. Google shares broke $700 Wednesday and stayed above that mark Thursday amid speculation that it will soon announce, with a carrier, some sort of plan to bundle Web application services with mobile devices. Investors are excited because it would mark a major breakthrough in Google's efforts to expand from its core, PC-based Internet search advertising business.Most speculation revolves around reports that Google is in talks with Verizon and Sprint Nextel, following a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Verizon itself kicked off the week with a strong third quarter earnings report, announcing Monday that it added 1.6 million wireless customers and 229,000 new FIOS fiber-based broadband customers during the period.Verizon's net income of $4.2 billion was up 19 percent from a year ago. Verizon shares rose Tuesday by $0.39 to close at $45.99, though shares drifted back down during the week.There is a sea change occurring in the telecom business, as former phone companies outpace cable companies in the race to add customers for new broadband and Internet services."Suddenly telephone companies like Verizon and AT&T are doing very well as cable television companies are struggling with their sagging stock price," said independent telecom analyst Jeff Kagan in an e-mail report. "The marketplace is getting to the point where customers will have a choice between either their telephone company or their cable television company for the same bundle of services."The fight for customers among the former phone companies is fierce, however. Sprint Nextel shares, for example, lost $0.52 to close at $16.58 Thursday after it said subscriber losses took a toll on third-quarter earnings, which amounted to $64 million compared to $279 million a year earlier.In the networking arena, Alcatel-Lucent Wednesday said it plans further layoffs as post-merger results continue to disappoint. The company said Wednesday that revenue for the third quarter was $6.28 billion, a decline of 11.4 percent compared to the combined revenue that the two companies made a year earlier.Nevertheless, company plans to shuffle execs and curb costs seemed to please investors, and shares rose $0.30 to close Wednesday at $9.69.Alcatel shares fell back down Thursday as the market declined broadly, but IT was not as badly hit as other sectors.Coming off a great earnings report last week, Microsoft shares, for example, continue to gain. Company shares rose $0.25 Thursday to close at $37.06. Last week, the company reported its best calendar third quarter since 1999. Net income hit $4.29 billion, a 23 percent jump compared to one year earlier. |
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| VS 2008 Compatibility with Older VS 2005 Add-in Packages |
28 November 2007 |
| I've helped a few people over the last week who have run into issues with VS 2008 where it would immediately crash when the IDE was launched, or upon creating new projects (usually failing with a "Visual Studio has encountered an unexpected error" dialog). After debugging the issues, it turned out that they were caused by an older VS 2005 add-in that people had installed on their machines that wasn't compatible with VS 2008. In each of these specific cases it was an older version of the VisualSVN source control utility (note: Version 1.3.1 of VisualSVN works fine with VS 2008 - but older versions have problems). By default when you install VS 2008 on a machine that has VS 2005 on it, setup will use your existing settings to configure VS 2008, and will import your current VS 2005 preferences and add-in packages. If you see any crashes or issues (especially upon first launching the IDE) it could be that they are caused by one of your older add-in packages having some compatibility issue with VS 2008. If you run into a situation like this, one option to try is to launch VS 2008 in "safemode". This will launch the IDE with add-in packages disabled, and provides you with a good way to determine whether it might be an add-in causing the problem. You can launch VS 2008 in safemode by passing the /safemode switch to the VS 2008 devenv process from the command-line: If you discover that the problem you encountered is related to an add-in, you can use the Tools->Add-In Manager menu option to disable the add-in within the IDE. As a general best practice, I'd recommend that you always keep close track of the add-ins you have installed with Visual Studio, and make sure to periodically check for updates of them (especially when upgrading to VS 2008). If you do ever report an issue with VS - please also make sure to detail the add-in packages you have installed, as this can help a lot in our investigations. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. Ilya Ryzhenkov from JetBrains recently published a blog post that details the plans to update the popular ReSharper add-in for VS 2008. You can read it here. |
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| Suppliers regaining control of travel content online |
28 November 2007 |
| ABTA Travel Convention special report: PwC's Malcolm Preston says web-based intermediaries are no longer offering the best deals |
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