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Archive for October, 2006

Cisco Telepresence

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 23rd, 2006

Cisco today unveiled a videoconferencing package called Cisco TelePresence Meeting. It’s designed to bring a new level of quality to videoconferencing, so that participants feel like they are actually sitting in the same room with people who may be half way around the world. The product is slated to be available in December.
Won’t be cheap, [...]

FiberNet for Calif Schools

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 23rd, 2006

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) today announced the connection of the rapidly-growing Coachella Valley area to its California Research & Education Network (CalREN) with a grant from The H.N. & Frances C. Berger Foundation. The CalREN backbone consists of 2,500 miles of CENIC-owned and managed fiber, plus last-mile fiber.
“Connecting Coachella [...]

CUWiN + Meraki Client

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 23rd, 2006

The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) has announced that their free, open-source community mesh software has been successfully ported to the Meraki Mini, the WiFi hardware/software package (about $50), developed at MIT.
The Meraki Mini hardware works well for apartment buildings where a direct WiFi backbone connection is difficult to make. Meraki Networks is an inexpensive [...]

Nortel’s Muni Push

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 23rd, 2006

Nortel is increasing investments in its Municipal Wireless Solutions. This includes opening a municipal wireless lab, launching new promotions for its Municipal Wireless Solution and accelerating collaboration with some of the industry’s leading applications vendors.
“Municipal wireless is one of the key strategic areas that will help drive Nortel’s business momentum and growth, and we plan [...]

Software Lens

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 23rd, 2006

Over the past ten years, cameras have almost completely transitioned from silver halide film to electronic sensors. But their other key component — the lens — has remained largely unchanged.
At the 6Sight Future of Imaging conference (program & speakers) hosted by Future Image, announced the publication of a report; “Reinventing the Lens: Software-enhanced [...]

Best Camera Phones

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 23rd, 2006

Infosynch rates five great camera phones; the swiveling Samsung SCH-A990, the Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman phone, the Nokia N80, Nokia N90 and the just-announced Nokia N75.

Samsung SCH-A990 ($350 - $400)
With its 3.2-megapixel camera and swiveling display, the 3G-enabled Samsung SCH-A990 takes some of the sharpest pictures we’ve seen from a U.S. [...]

Park City: Solar WiFi

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 19th, 2006

St. Louis Park is poised to become the first city in the nation to provide city-wide, solar-powered, WiFi.
The service, (FAQ) which could start as soon as next fall if approved as expected, would be powered by about 400 solar panels — each about the size of a stop sign — suspended 20 to [...]

New Orleans Haults Cloud

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 19th, 2006

The City of New Orleans will give up its free city-provided wireless Internet network once EarthLink finishes building out its initial wireless system, says The Times-Picayune.
The wireless network that is run by the city for citizens will be taken down to avoid overlap between the two systems, said Mark Kurt, the city’s [...]

Antennas In Space

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 19th, 2006

Well sure, there’s a certain odiferous quality surrounding the viability of Sanswire’s telecommunications blimps - but at least taxpayers aren’t pouring billions into a black hole like DARPA’s Integrated Sensor Is Structure (ISIS) initiative for space radar with (let us hope not) nuclear power packs.
And who knows, [...]

WiFi Phone Uploading

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 18th, 2006

ShoZu today announced that its media service for mobile phones has added support for select WiFi-equipped phones, enabling consumers who purchase the next-generation handsets to reduce the cost of sending and receiving photos, videos and other files from their mobile devices.
This summer ShoZu announced its free one-click image uploading service directly from camera phones to [...]