Technology Info

Until recently, the development of mobile-friendly websites has been regarded as nothing more than an irrelevant black art. That has since changed, thanks to more web-capable phones making their way into the mainstream (such as, of course, the iPhone). But the landslide of new and improved mobile sites has opened the doors to a sort of standard-free chaos, where almost anything (that works) goes and security is a second thought. The Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) group hopes to change that, however, by launching a new initiative that focuses on mobile development without sacrificing important principles like security.

The project will be called BONDI and will be supported by a number of OMTP members: 3 Group, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telenor, Telefónica, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone. The group plans to “harmonize the various open and proprietary ongoing initiatives and this cooperative work will minimise the potential for technology fragmentation,” and will provide a secure web services interface for developers to use when creating mobile sites. “The new handset software will be engineered in such a way as to prevent fraudulent and malicious activity through unauthorized access to functions or sensitive personal information,” says OMTP. (link)

While we’ve been watching the development of pico-projectors with interest, Chinese company Cking has gone ahead and built what may be the first production phone with a projector built in.

From the photos of the phone at the Tianjin Mobile Phone exhibition you can see it’s a chunky candybar with the pico-projector beneath a lens on the top end. Apparently it’s a 640 x 480 resolution projector with manual focus, a picture size up to 30-inches and the battery can give it about two hours of projection time. The LED light source must generate a fair whack of heat, since the phone is punched full of holes at the projector end, presumably so that it doesn’t collapse into a molten heap of parts. (link)

Another day, another class-action wireless consumer lawsuit. This one is big, though, naming six mobile-phone carriers and a top mobile virtual network operator as defendants in a complaint filed in Mississippi federal court.

“This action seeks recovery for actual and compensatory damages sustained by plaintiffs and others similarly situated. At this time, plaintiffs are specifically seeking recovery against the defendants for unauthorized charges, wrongful collections and unjust enrichment,” the stated the 12-page suit filed by attorneys with the Graves Law Offices P.L.L.C. in Jackson, Miss.

The allegations, among other things, focus on charges for unsolicited text messages received by subscribers “without offering its customers the opportunity to avoid such charges by opting out of text messaging and refusing to disable its customers’ text messaging service.” (link)

Logitech today quietly rounded out its Pure-Fi speaker line with the Pure-Fi Mobile. The system is targeted chiefly at cellphone users and relies on its Bluetooth 2.0 to provide stereo audio pulled from any device that supports A2DP, including recent Macs and Windows PCs as well as most music-capable cellphones. Any cellphone with basic Bluetooth audio, including the iPhone, can also use the Pure-Fi as an ad hoc speakerphone thanks to a built-in microphone that cancels out unwanted noise.

As implied by its name, the new Logitech speaker set is portable and relies on rechargeable batteries that net about 12 hours of continuous stereo audio at a time. When tethered, the Pure-Fi Mobile can either take its power through a wall outlet or a USB connection. Logitech puts an aux-in jack on the speaker system to feed audio in from nearly any portable wired device. (link)

For nearly three in 10 households, don’t even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.

The federal figures, released Wednesday, showed that reliance on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.

The number of wireless-only households grew by 2 percent since the first half of last year. Underscoring the rapid growth, in early 2004 just 5 percent had only cell phones.

Households with cell phones who rarely if ever use their landlines grew by 1 percent since the first half of last year.

Such families often either have their landline hooked exclusively to a computer or rely so heavily on their cells that they ignore landline calls because they are probably from telephone solicitors, said Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an author of the report. (Yahoo)

Intel Corporation today introduced five new Intel® Atom™ processors and Intel Centrino® Atom™ processor technology for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and embedded computing solutions.

The technology package includes the Intel® Atom™ processor (formerly codenamed “Silverthorne”) plus a single-chip with integrated graphics called the Intel® System Controller Hub that enables PC-like capabilities, an uncompromised Internet experience and long battery life in smaller devices that can fit in your pocket. Manufacturers around the world are planning to ship Intel-based MIDs beginning this summer.

MIDs are truly mobile devices that enable the best Internet experience in pocketable devices. MIDs will allow consumers to communicate, entertain, access information and be productive on-the-go, and are expected to represent a new class of next-generation, Internet-based portable video players, navigation devices, converged tablets and other consumer products. (link)

Security officials are issuing USB flash drives to workers in the state of Washington’s Division of Child Support as part of a new security procedure established to eliminate the use of nonapproved thumb drives by workers collecting and transporting confidential data.

The state has so far distributed 150 of 200 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Enterprise thumb drives to unit supervisors in the division who manage collections teams in 10 field offices, said officials (see also “Review: 7 secure USB drives”).

Brian Main, the division’s data security officer, said the new drives promise to help officials keep better track of mobile data by integrating them with Web-based management software that can centrally monitor, configure and prevent unauthorized access to the miniature storage devices.

“We do periodic risk analysis of our systems, and one of the things that came up is the use of thumb drives — they were everywhere,” said Main. “We had a hard time telling which were privately owned and which were owned by the state.” He also said that officials had difficulty keeping track of what data was stored on the workers’ thumb drives. (link)

Check out the latest entrant in the UMPC race, the MSI Wind, which we missed at CeBIT earlier last week. Toting a 10-inch display, Intel Shelton’08 platform, with variable processor speeds from 1.0GHz - 1.6GHz; 2.5-inch HDD or SSD, 1GB RAM, a reported 7-hour battery life and running either Linux or Windows operating systems, it seems MSI’s offering holds a lot of promise. (link)

New legislation has a chance at doing away with US wireless carriers’ practices of phone subsidies, long-term contracts, and steep termination fees. With provisions that would require clearer language from carriers and non-subsidized handsets and plans, even Apple could be forced to open up the iPhone to other networks.

The iPhone is at the center of yet another squabble over US mobile phone consumers’ rights. After “permanently inoperable” firmware updates, a class action targeting mobile phone locking practices, and even an unlocking exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),

Only a draft called “Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act of 2008″ (PDF link) for now, the bill is sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and actually has some broad intentions: “To require the Federal Communications Commission to promulgate new consumer protection regulations for wireless service subscribers, to restrict State and local regulation of public providers of advanced communications capability and service, to increase spectrum efficiency by Federal agencies, and for other purposes.” (link)

“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations told the Financial Times during this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Should other companies follow in Apple’s footsteps by making web access commonplace on their mobile handsets, Gundotra believes the number of mobile searches could outpace fixed internet search “within the next several years.”

That of course means big increases in incremental advertising revenues for the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant. Though Google’s primary revenue driver remains online advertising, the company has never separated out its mobile revenues from those of traditional computer-based browsers.

Gundotra, however, told the Times that the mobile segment was growing “above expectations”, both in terms of usage and revenues. (link)