Archive | March, 2007

Your mobile as a remote control

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Your TiVo can now be controled by your mobile on the Verizon network on a limited set of phones :

TiVo Mobile scheduling is available for $1.99 monthly access on select Get It Now-enabled phones, including the Samsung SCH-a950, Chocolate by LG and LG VX8300.

I really believe that the mobile phone is due to become the 21st century swiss knife, letting you control all the things around you.

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MyStrands mobile – the M-Distrib legacy

This is the nicest application of the concept we developed during the M-Distrib project (a while ago now), it’s called the “Mystrands social player”. Key features are :

  • Browse and play your music by track, artist, album and playlist.
  • Get recommendations for great music.
  • Link to our extensive mobile web site for detailed information.
  • Find out who’s playing your music now. Find out what other music they’re listening to. Add them as a friend.
  • Discover new music through your friends.

Download here, check the video for a full tour !

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TV white space to transfer data ?

Tv
I’m not really sure how this is feasible and what it really implies in terms of infrastructure but the Washington post reports that :

A coalition of big technology companies wants to bring high-speed Internet access to consumers in a new way: over television airwaves. Key to the project is whether a device scheduled to be delivered to federal labs today lives up to its promise.

The coalition, which includes Microsoft and Google, wants regulators to allow idle TV channels, known as white space, to be used to beam the Internet into homes and offices. But the Federal Communications Commission first must be convinced that such traffic would not bleed outside its designated channels and interfere with existing broadcasts.

Wait and see … ;)

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WiFi or HSDPA or WiMAX or… ? I want them all !

I’m always amazed to see such articles from analysts writing a huge report in 2007 where the tagline is :

“Each technology comes with its own strengths and weaknesses,” said In-Stat analyst Daryl Schoolar. “In-Stat sees the technologies co-existing and competing.”

Come-on everybody knows that since a few years already ! I couldn’t get my WiFi card out of my
PC neither my 3g+ nor my bluetooth adapter… There are thousands of new kind of connected objects popping around and each one has its own set of constraints (data speed, QoS, consumption…) which quite inevitably lead to a limited set of complying wireless standards.
Choosing the right standard is tough and implementing it properly is very different from making a simple motherboard… remember that : wireless is tricky ;)
3 500$ to read that report … Man I should change my job ;)

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WHDI faster than UWB ?

Amimon-Hd-Chip
WHDI is a technology from Amimon (which was recently funded by Motorola) aimed at replacing HDMI cables providing a 3Gbps bandwith where UWB sticks (yet) to 480Mbps. They use the 5GHz band. Sanyo HD projector was the first spotted device to use the Amimon chipset.

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MA701 needed

Hi guys, if any of you happen to have an old Netgear MA701 Compact Flash (see picture below), I need one urgently for some obscure project … send me a mail ! alex (at) mobitrends.com ! This card has been discontinued but it has some specificities for those who develop on embedded linux systems ;)
Netgear Ma701

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Old IFE can be crashed – Virgin innovative IFE

If you often take the plane for long-distance trips, and you just missed the beginning of the movie you were willing to see, and do not feel like waiting 20 mins for next session, you can still try this trick to reset your plane’s IFE. Launch tetris, input with the remote control level “5″ then increment it by pressing “+” to 127 then another press on “+” will bring -128… and crash the whole plane’s IFE !
Brillant !
By the way, I never saw that live but this is certainly the most innovative IFE only on Virgin :

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Spyke available on pre-order

Seen yesterday at gizoo (UK version of Thinkgeek), it is available at only 199.95£ and shipping Sept. 4th 2007!

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WaveStorm is a Red Herring 100 nominee

Just happened to discover that today Red Herring announced that WaveStorm is on the list of the 200 companies nominated for Red Herring 100 Europe award and “leading the next wave of innovation”. Congratulations to the other nominees amongst which we can see Vpod.TV, RealEyes3D, Surfkitchen, Navx, Miyowa….

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Giant Phone by Sysopen Digia

Seen on servicesmobiles, Sysopen released a new Giant phone. This is really fun as I contacted Sysopen 1,5 year ago about a project of making high-quality in-store giant phones when I was CTO at Kamayo. I selected their application for Nokia Series 60 called “ImageExpo” but finally we could not finalize the deal as it was impossible to keep a 25fps between the PC controlling the giant phone’s display and the mobile which was connected through USB or Bluetooth. Indeed, bandwidth of both technologies are not enough for high-def video streaming.
I’d be curious to see if the techs form Sysopen solved that !

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