Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Hopefully you all read the first post on President-Elect Obama, technology and the future (if not, it is here) in which I started addressing what Obama’s election means for the world of tech.  Having looked at how Obama will work for an open Internet, I will now delve into Obama’s plans for a connected democracy and infrastructure.

The first thing that Obama has promised to do is to create a more transparent government, a policy that has probably been prompted by the manner in which the Bush administration has been very secretive.  He will attempt to do this by “creating a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens” through the use of technology.  Presumably, this will be done by extensive use of the Internet, as well as other technology such as mobile phones, as shown in the selection of Joe Biden as his second man. 

Continued after the break.

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Tough times call for tough actions.  It seems in light of all the economic bad news, lower income folks are ditching gadgets to have just one: the iPhone 3G.  Who needs two iPods?  Who needs a netbook?  Who needs a home phone line?

Indeed, one could argue the iPhone is just a tethering application away from ditching your home line, your broadband connection, your cable or satellite company, heck—even books are not able to escape all the niches Apple’s wonder child can get its hands on.  My thinking here is tethering would allow you to use your laptop/desktop via the iPhones 3G connection, so you can ditch the $25 per month + for broadband.

See how many folks continue to flock to the iPhone, ditching other gadgets.

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To coincide with the official launch of Sprint’s 4G mobile broadband service called XOHM (its WiMAX network), four top PC brands have introduced new notebook products which support XOHM.  For those not in the loop, WiMAX is faster than what you usually get from a mobile phone 3G network. 

If you are seriously considering getting a new notebook that fully supports the XOHM WiMAX network, we have a rundown of the new notebooks from Acer, Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba after the break.

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People are using 3G broadband and any other method that gives them the privilege of utilizing the Internet while traveling.  News regarding WiMAX have been popping up sporadically for the past few months.  Now there’s another update on a WiMAX product: The Motorola X24 and it’s meant for your car. 

Motorola X24 WiMAX is a device intended to be installed in your vehicle and it does more than just provide you with Internet access.  What makes this device special is its additional telemetry feature that allows things like measurement and reporting of information remotely and directly to the driver possible. 

See what else the X24 can do after the break.

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The state of Florida had fined Comcast a mere $150,000 in a settlement with the Attorney General after customers complained about having their service cut off for consuming too much bandwidth. The problem was Comcast refused to tell their customers just how much was too much.  $100,000 of the fine will fund future consumer investigations and $50,000 will go toward the cost of the AG’s investigation of Comcast.

The day before the settlement was announced, Comcast announced that starting October 1st a data cap of 250GB would be put in place for residential customers. They insisted that the cap was more than generous, and compared to the recent 5GB caps put in place by mobile broadband providers such as Sprint, it certainly is. Comcast said to go over the cap a customer would have to send 50 million emails, download over 62,000 songs, or upload 25,000 high resolution photos.

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Sections: Web

Whether it is just curiosity (we had DSL at the last place, let’s try cable broadband) or America is bandwidth hungry, cable ISPs are gobbling up customers much faster than DSL, according to Q2 records announced by Pew.  In fact, Comcast says 2/3rds of its new customers are coming from DSL.

So what is it?  Bigger bundling discounts from cable operators?  Are the DSL defectors finding faster speeds and more than happy to pay extra to get it?  Alley Insider suggests it is all about speed.  But is the layperson that hip to know how fast downloads should be?

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It seems like its been forever since we have posted anything Vonage related aside from patent disputes and personal changes that we almost forgot they were still around.

This latest news however seems to be positive, Vonage and Covad Communications have announced a partnership that will allow Vonage to offer a DSL service. The new offering from Vonage will be a re-branded version of Covad’s DSL service and it will simply be called Vonage Broadband. The service is expected to be available by the end of this year and will offer download speeds of up to either 3.0 or 6.0 Mbps for home or small business customers, no mention of just how much this will set you back.

Read [PR Newswire]

• Major players support Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX mobile broadband network
• Trade all your gadgets for an iPhone?  These folks did.
• Obama, technology and the future - Part Two

Plug your PC into a wall electrical outlet, and that’s all your need to surf the web at high speeds. Tell the cable and DSL service providers where they can stuff their plugs, while you ride the wave of yet another next-generation technology at cheaper prices.

Well…not yet.

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the concept of broadband over power line (BPL), which the Federal Communications Commission has been touting since 2003 as possible pricing competition for cable and DSL providers. It’s only a pilot program in a handful of cities, but the FCC commissioned studies on the technology and wanted an accelerated rollout of the program. Now you can scratch one of those cities off the list, while the FCC studies themselves are being attacked by amateur radio operators.

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The net neutrality battle has returned to Capitol Hill.  The Senate held a hearing on Tuesday called “The Future of the Internet” and during it Democratic politicians argued for the passage of a law that would prevent ISP’s from creating a fast lane for certain Internet content. Not surprisingly the cable industry, Republicans, and even the FCC opposed them.  FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said there was no need for any new rules as politicians discussed whether his agency has enough power to take action against ISPs who create unreasonable interference in user’s Internet use.

“To whatever degree people were alleging that this was a solution in search of a problem, it has found its problem,“ said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). “We have an obligation to try and guarantee that the same freedom and the same creativity that was able to bring us to where we are today continues, going forward.“

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Sections: Communications, Web, Websites

Comcast has introduced a faster internet service, dubbed the “Extreme High-Speed Internet” and boasting of a 50mbps download speed. This is more than six times faster that the current consumer speed and 10 times faster that Qwest’s DSL Internet Service. Comcast is initially testing the new internet service in the Twin Cities of Minnesota but also aims to roll out the service in other cities across the nation later this year and to have it rolled out to all its network by 2010.

So, what do users get from 50mbps download speed? Tons of good stuff that any online video fanatic would love. For one, users can download 4GB of movie in less than 10 minutes. An hour of continuous connection to the Internet would enable users to download 6 full movies to their machines. Game players would also have a heyday with this internet service. Of course, good stuff like this always comes for a price and in the case of the “Extreme High-Speed Internet”, it’s a whooping $150 per month. This cost is more than double the price of Comcast’s current fastest service. But good news for those who are not willing to spend that much money for a faster connection, Comcast also plans to upgrade both the upload and download speeds of its current plans.

Via [Crunch Gear] Read [Star Tribune]

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Sections: Web, Downloads