2008 August 05 | tech gadget update

Aug 05 2008

Analysts sort of suggest iPhone for enterprise then go play golf

Posted by: admin in Life Gadgets

Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney wrote a report entitled “iPhone 2.0 Is Ready for the Enterprise, but Caveats Apply” and essentially stated: Enterprises should approach expanded use of the iPhone slowly and with close examination That’s right, IT shops: don’t go jumping into the iPhone pool like a bunch of drunk frat boys in Cabo. “Close examination,” like […]

Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney wrote a report entitled “iPhone 2.0 Is Ready for the Enterprise, but Caveats Apply” and essentially said:

Enterprises should approach expanded use of the iPhone slowly and with close examination

That’s right, IT shops: don’t go jumping into the iPhone pool like a bunch of drunk frat boys in Cabo. “Close examination,” like periodic prostate exams, is important to your general well being but don’t let Ken Dulaney spoil your fun. You can “approach” the iPhone “slowly” and rock out in due time.

On the whole, Dulaney is right: it’s hard to advocate the iPhone as a business platform. His reasonings, including musings on battery life and encryption systems and the use of iTunes which could “inject unwanted content into the enterprise.”

However, no one has any expectation that Apple is ready for a huge enterprise install base. I also wonder how much of the “custom software” corporations actually install. For email and voice, two of the most obvious applications, most enterprises can support just about any handset. Adding on support for the iPhone in that scenario is trivial. I guess Gartner makes their money by stating the obvious to the oblivious.

Via [crunchgear]

Aug 05 2008

Everything you need to know about the HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro for Sp

Posted by: admin in Mobile Gadget

With the HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro finally on their way to the says for both Sprint and T-Mobile, its gettin’ tough to keep track of which carrier-specific model will have what. Which will have an accelerometer? Which packs more ram? Who the hell is Victor?

Fortunately, PhoneArena’s gone and done all the digging you need. It’s all summed up nicely on the graphs above (Touch Diamond on left, Touch Pro on right) - sure looks like Verizon’s getting the short end of the stick.

Aug 05 2008

Moto announces more reasons to ROK

Posted by: admin in Mobile Gadget

Motorola has expanded its ROKR line, introducing three new music-centric handsets including the candybar EM30, the EM28 clamshell and the EM25 slider with FM radio sharing capabilities.

Steve Lalla, corporate vice president of Mass Market Products, said:

â€œFollowing the path of our award-winning ROKR E8, the newest additions to our ROKR family make listening to and discovering new music accessible and affordable for everyone. From uncovering new music with friends through our FMShare feature to enjoying surround-sound quality audio, these new ROKR phones deliver the music you want whenever, wherever and however you want to hear it.â€

The EM30, features Motorolaâ€™s ModeShift technology for fast music mode to phone mode switcheroos; red keys illuminate the keypad in music mode and the keypad goes blue in phone mode. The EM30 also includes high-fidelity audio, fast MP3 downloads, FM radio with Radio Data System technology, 3.5mm stereo headset jack and Windows Media Player 11 compatability.

The EM28â€™s touch-sensitive, music-player keys appear only when theyâ€™re needed, and the front screen shows the name of the artist and song without opening the phone. Hot features include: A 3D sound effect, audio equalizer with 11 pre-set music genres and bass boost.

The EM25 comes with a built-in FM radio, dedicated music key, controls to play, pause, forward and rewind songs, FMShare a function that allows users to share a favorite station with friends by sending it in a text message and SONGID technology to identify a song while out and about.

The ROKR EM30 is expected to launch first in Taiwan then in other markets throughout the quarter, while ROKR EM28 and ROKR EM25 will be available later this quarter around the globe. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Aug 05 2008

Live NASCAR on MediaFLO

Posted by: admin in Mobile Gadget

ESPN and Qualcommâ€™s mobile TV unit MediaFLO USA have concurred to bring a series of live NASCAR events to a mobile phone near you. From August 5th to the 31th, subscribers to AT&Tâ€™s Mobile Television with FLO service and Verizon Wirelessâ€™s V CAST Mobile TV service will be able to catch live NASCAR coverage on ESPNâ€™s mobile channel.

Live races include the NASCAR Nationwide Series and six Sprint Cup Series races including the Centurion Boats at the Glen on Aug. 10, the 3M Performance 400 on Aug. 17, the Sharpie 500 on Aug. 23 and the Pepsi 500 on Aug. 31.

Jonathan Barzilay, senior vice president of programming and advertising at MediaFLO, said:

“Together with ESPN, we’re thrilled to give NASCAR fans the opportunity to watch all the excitement of the racetrack live on their mobile phones. NASCAR fans won’t miss a lap of the action.”

Currently only AT&T and Verizon Wireless offer MediaFLO USA mobile Television services in the U.S.

Aug 05 2008

HTC about to sell its millionth Touch Diamond

Posted by: admin in Mobile Gadget

HTC says it’ll sell over a million Touch Diamonds by the middle of this month…iPhone, who?

Although Apple sold a million iPhone 3Gs in just 3 days, HTC says its still gonna celebrate. Launched in June, the Touch Diamond is HTC’s latest touch-based smartphone, and an HTC representative told PC World that the Touch Diamond is HTC’s fastest selling handset ever. So far the Windows Mobile-based 3G handset is available from over 50 operators in 30 countries but has not yet launched in the U.S. or Japan.

Along with celebrating its one millionth, HTC said it hopes to double its pleasure by the end of the year, shipping 2 million Touch Diamonds in the next five months.

Aug 05 2008

Leaked photos of the Moto VE240, eh

Posted by: admin in Mobile Gadget

Photos have appeared of Motorola’s latest entry-level handset the VE240, rumors are its slated for release from no contract carriers MetroPCS and Cricket. Based on the photos (thanks Phonearena), we’re guessing the VE240 is a low-end, music-centered, candybar style handset. No news on the release date yet. But we’re guessing this isn’t part of the company’s anticipated “impressive” new handsets portfolio.

Aug 05 2008

AT&T to try cloud computing

Posted by: admin in Life Gadgets

AT&T is offering AT&T Synaptic Hosting, a cloud-computing service involving networking, storage, and utility computing for large contracts. They’ll offer multiple data centers around the world and, like Amazon’s S3, you can offload processing and data onto the cloud for improved performance. The service is aimed at businesses who may see spikes in their traffic […]

AT&T is offering AT&T Synaptic Hosting, a cloud-computing service involving networking, storage, and utility computing for huge contracts. They’ll offer multiple data centers around the world and, like Amazon’s S3, you can offload processing and data onto the cloud for improved performance.

The service is aimed at businesses who might see spikes in their traffic and must offload some of the processing to the external services. Read on for the release.

AT&T Launches Global ‘Next-Generation’ Utility Computing Service
Aug 5 08:00 AM US/Eastern

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AT&T COMPUTING PLATFORM, Global IP network delivers ‘Pay-for-use’ service abilities to businesses

DALLAS, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) today announced the global launch of AT&T Synaptic Hosting(SM), its next-generation utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for businesses.

As part of AT&T’s $1 billion planned global network investment in 2008, the new utility computing service combines technology acquired from USinternetworking (USi) with five “super IDCs” (Internet data centers) in the United States, Europe and Asia. AT&T has a total of 38 IDCs in its global World wide web Protocol (IP) network.

The super IDCs will be located in Piscataway, N.J.; San Diego; Annapolis, Md.; Singapore and Amsterdam and will act as regional gateways to the AT&T network “cloud.” They will support large-scale computing and applications on demand via virtualized servers and deliver services across AT&T’s IDC hosting infrastructure. Over time, additional IDCs will be added to the regional network infrastructure to deliver “enterprise-class” cloud capabilities to companies in the U.S. and abroad.

A core feature of AT&T Synaptic Hosting is its next-generation utility computing platform. This enables the service to deliver a complete hosting solution with features that use the AT&T network to manage applications, compute resources on servers and store data. AT&T Synaptic Hosting also provides designated account support all backed by a single end-to-end, service-level agreement that is one-of-a-kind within the industry.

With this offer, companies will achieve greater flexibility, improved performance and cost savings. The computing platform enabling Synaptic Hosting will be extended to deliver similar benefits to other services in AT&T’s portfolio, including unified communication, content distribution, dynamic backup and restore, on-demand retrieval of high-resolution images such as X-rays and CT scans and many other subscription-based software services.

According to a Gartner report on infrastructure utility (IU) services, “Although the IU is 5 percent of the data center outsourcing market, it represents a fairly sizable market of almost $5 billion in end-user spending.”(1)

“Today’s announcement is yet another example of AT&T’s commitment to deliver next-generation services and solutions to companies worldwide,” said Ron Spears, group president, AT&T Global Business Services. “The AT&T global network, combined with our powerful computing platform, is driving the convergence of networking and hosting services in ways that are allowing companies to deliver end-user applications whenever and wherever they are needed — while paying only for the capacity actually used.

“In today’s business environment, this kind of flexibility and cost benefit is urgently needed by companies that need their Web sites and end-user applications to perform flawlessly.”

The official Web site of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) is powered by AT&T Synaptic Hosting. Teamusa.org is the USOC’s new feature-rich Web site that connects fans of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams with America’s athletes on their journey to the Olympic Games. The site features stories on U.S. Olympians and Paralympians and Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, athlete blogs and social networking tools.

“Fans of the 2008 Olympic Games anticipate to go online searching for a variety of content about the Olympic Games and athletes,” stated Damani Short, chief information officer at the USOC. “We expect rapidly increasing traffic up to and during the Beijing Olympic Games, tapering off in the months following the events. AT&T Synaptic Hosting is ideal for handling the fluctuating on the internet demand associated with the Olympic Games.”

AT&T Synaptic Hosting’s utility computing features are an best solution for companies whose business needs are seasonal or unpredictable, or where end-user traffic spikes are a given. For example, the service grants on the web retailers gearing up for holiday sales, employers with annual open enrollment for employee benefits and game publishers running on the internet games to manage their own applications — or let AT&T manage them — while paying only for the information technology (IT) capacity needed on a day-to-day basis.

In addition to utility computing features, AT&T Synaptic Hosting offers the following: * A broad selection of dynamic storage and security features that enterprises have come to rely on to protect their data and assets. * The ability to use AT&T’s BusinessDirect(R) customer portal to easily manage capacity, complete maintenance and monitor network service and performance of their virtual IT environment. * Personalized support from teams of designated hosting and application specialists who are experienced in the business and technical needs of the clients. * Application monitoring and reporting capabilities that work with most client software available in the industry this day. * One end-to-end service level agreement that covers the customer’s entire environment.

“Companies are looking to service providers to help them build and manage scalable next-generation infrastructure environments for their business- critical applications,” said Melanie Posey, research director at the analyst firm IDC. “Given the increasingly dynamic nature of end-user requirements, businesses need flexible delivery platforms for their applications.

“This trend is driving the need for network cloud-based, on-demand abilities such as utility computing. The challenge for service providers is to productize these capabilities in a way that enable businesses to easily tailor the solutions to serve their specific needs. Synaptic Hosting is one example of how managed services can be offered in a modular fashion, enabling efficient scalability and on-demand delivery.”

More information on AT&T Synaptic Hosting is available at http://www.att.com/hosting. (1) Source: Gartner, Inc., IT Infrastructure Utility Services Reach 5% of Data Center Outsourcing Revenue, July 17, 2008, Number G00159515

Via [crunchgear]

Aug 05 2008

Matching your handset to your handbag

Posted by: admin in Mobile Gadget

More from ABI Research, following Dior’s recently introduced line of mobile phones, the firm predicts more high-end fashion houses are looking to mobile phones as the latest design frontier. ABI says mobile phones “take on a powerful symbolism” for brands as “personal items used frequently in public,” and representations of a user’s “social status and personality.”

ABI predicts revenues from luxury branded handsets will exceed $11 billion next year, increasing to more than $43 billion in 2013.

Research director Kevin Burden said,

“For luxury goods producers, mobile phones are a logical addition to their basic product portfolios of jewelry, watches, and other fashion accessories. From the perspective of handset manufacturers, a luxury mobile phone does not simply mean a new handset model, it represents a meaningful strategic approach to increased brand equity.”

Given the competitive environment in the handset market, ABI states that mobile phone manufacturers are recognizing the power luxury designers have long understood, the power of branding.

For more on the report, see ABI Research.