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independent news

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FRIDAY — JUNE 29, 2012 — ISSUE NO. 513

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Paging and Wireless Messaging Home Page image Newsletter Archive image Carrier Directory image Recommended Products and Services
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Reference Papers Consulting Glossary of Terms Send an e-mail to Brad Dye

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Dear Friends of Wireless Messaging,

I usually tell everyone what the weather is like here in Southern Illinois, so this week I have added an automatic report from The Weather Channel . You should see it on your right. It was 106º (F.) yesterday and 105º is forecasted for today. I have never seen it so dry. Yesterday, while walking in my back yard, I noticed that the grass was making a crunching sound as I walked. Now that's dry!

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In the excerpts from the BloostonLaw Telecom Update newsletter, following below, there is a reminder about an FCC form that must be filed by paging companies before August first. I have highlighted it in red.

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Long Weekend

A so-called leap second' will be added to the world's atomic clocks as they undergo a rare adjustment to keep them in step with the slowing rotation of the earth.

To achieve the adjustment, on Saturday night atomic clocks will read 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before moving on to midnight Greenwich Mean Time.

Details follow in a news article below.

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Now on to more news and views.

Wayne County, Illinois Weather

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Wireless Messaging News
  • Location-Based Services
  • Emergency Radio Communications
  • Wireless Messaging
  • Critical Messaging
  • Telemetry
  • Paging
  • WiMAX
  • Wi-Fi
WIRELESS
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MESSAGING

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Wireless Messaging News
This is a weekly newsletter about Wireless Messaging. You are receiving this because I believe you have requested it. This is not a SPAM. If you have received this message in error, or you are no longer interested in these topics, please click here , then click on "send" and you will be promptly removed from the mailing list.

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iland This newsletter is brought to you by the generous support of our advertisers and the courtesy of iland Internet Solutions Corporation . For more information about the web-hosting services available from iland Internet Solutions Corporation, please click on their logo to the left.

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About Us

A new issue of The Wireless Messaging Newsletter is posted on the web each week. A notification goes out by e-mail to subscribers on most Fridays around noon central US time. The notification message has a link to the actual newsletter on the web. That way it doesn't fill up your incoming e-mail account.

There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. Readers are a very select group of wireless industry professionals, and include the senior managers of many of the world's major Paging and Wireless Messaging companies. There is an even mix of operations managers, marketing people, and engineers — so I try to include items of interest to all three groups. It's all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology. I regularly get readers' comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Messaging communities. You are welcome to contribute your ideas and opinions. Unless otherwise requested, all correspondence addressed to me is subject to publication in the newsletter and on my web site. I am very careful to protect the anonymity of those who request it.

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Editorial Policy

Editorial Opinion pieces present only the opinions of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of any of advertisers or supporters. This newsletter is independent of any trade association.

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Google Launches Nexus 7 Tablet Starting at $200

Google took a cue from Amazon's Kindle Fire announcing the Nexus 7 tablet optimized for content from Google Play including books, games, TV shows, movies, apps, and magazines.

By Ian Paul
PCWorld
Jun 27, 2012 1:50 pm

google

Google took a cue from Amazon's Kindle Fire announcing the Nexus 7 tablet optimized for content from Google Play including books, games, TV shows, movies, apps, and magazines. The new Asus-built Nexus tablet will be the first device to debut with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean , the newest version of Android launching in mid-July. The Galaxy Nexus 7 will cost $200 for an 8GB device and $250 for the 16GB version. The new tablet is available for pre-order now directly from Google and starts shipping around the Jelly Bean launch.

google The Specs

If you've been following the rumors surrounding the Nexus 7 then you already know most of the specs for Google's first Nexus tablet. The device features a 7-inch screen with 1280-by-800 resolution at 216 pixels per inch, 8GB or 16GB storage, 1 GB RAM, a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor along with Nvidia's usual 12-core GeForce GPU. The Nexus 7 also features 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, near-field communication, and a 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera. Google claims the Nexus 7 offers up to 9 hours of continual video playing and up to 300 hours standby time. The search giant's new tablet weighs about 0.75 pounds.

Nexus4Play

Similar to the Kindle Fire , Google is positioning the Nexus 7 as a gateway into all the content you can purchase or rent on Google Play. It's not clear if the Nexus 7 will be a “buying machine” the way some have described Amazon's Kindle Fire's seamless access to Amazon's digital storefront. But Google would certainly like you to believe that this is what the Nexus 7 is all about.

Google announced on Wednesday that Google Play is now offering movie and television episode purchases in addition to rentals. The company is also rolling out a new magazines platform that will include titles such as Esquire, Shape, and Popular Mechanics.

The Nexus 7 also features a widget with personalized recommendations for content you can purchase from Google Play. You can also customize the widget to show you only certain types of media such as games, movies, and books.

google To help encourage your Google Play habit, the Nexus 7 for a limited time will come with a $25 purchase credit for Google Play. The device will also be pre-loaded with content including Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, The Bourne Dominion by Eric van Lustbader (the ninth novel in the Bourne series), and a selection of magazines such as Conde Nast Traveler, Food Network and Popular Science.

Google Apps

The Nexus 7 is also the first device to come with Chrome as the default browser. It was not clear at the time of this writing if Chrome will be the default browser on all Jelly Bean devices or if this is a Nexus 7-specific feature. The Nexus 7 also comes with a new version of Google Currents , the search giant's Flipboard imitator , that includes a new Google Translate feature to switch any content into a different language.

One of the Google Maps features the company showed off on Wednesday was a new compass mode for Business Photos , a Street View-like feature that lets you look inside a business. In compass mode, Business Photos hooks into the Nexus 7's gyroscope so all you have to do to look around a business inside Google Maps is turn your device instead of tapping to navigate.

The Nexus 7 will also feature Google Now , a new feature built into the Google search service in Jelly Bean. Google Now is kind of like Apple's digital personal assistant Siri, but can provide you with a lot of information unprompted. If, for example, you have an upcoming appointment across town, Google Now can alert you to when you should leave for the appointment and provide the most optimum route to get there based on traffic or transit schedules. Google Now can also alert you automatically to scores for your favorite teams, flight tracking information and weather. Google has been talking about offering a Google Now-type service for years.

The Nexus 7 sounds like a great device, and given its low price, tight integration into the Google Play Store and impressive specs, this device could become the most successful Android tablet yet.

Source: PCWorld

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American Messaging

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Enjoy the long weekend, if only for second

leap second

Dave Glaze, one of the developers of the atomic clock, checks the device in 1993 in the small office where the clock is housed in the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology building in Boulder, Colo. (June 29, 2012)

Reuters
6:20 a.m. CDT, June 29, 2012

The world is about to get a well-earned long weekend but don't make big plans because it will only last an extra second.

A so-called leap second' will be added to the world's atomic clocks as they undergo a rare adjustment to keep them in step with the slowing rotation of the earth.

To achieve the adjustment, on Saturday night atomic clocks will read 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before moving on to midnight Greenwich Mean Time.

Super-accurate atomic clocks are the ultimate reference point by which the world sets its wrist watches.

But their precise regularity -- which is much more constant than the shifting movement of the earth around the sun that marks out our days and nights -- brings problems of its own.

If no adjustments were made, the clocks would move further ahead and after many years the sun would set at midday. Leap seconds perform a similar function to the extra day in each leap year which keeps the calendar in sync with the seasons.

The grandly named International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) based in Paris, is responsible for keeping track of the gap between atomic and planetary time and issuing international edicts on the addition of leap seconds.

"We want to have both times close together and it's not possible to adjust the earth's rotation," Daniel Gambis, head of the Earth Orientation Centre of the IERS, told Reuters.

Gambis said the turning of the earth and its movement around the sun are far from constant.

In recent years a leap second has been added every few years, slightly more infrequent than in the 1970s despite the long-term slowdown in the earth's rotation caused by tides, earthquakes and a host of other natural phenomena.

Adjustments to atomic clocks are more than a technical curiosity.

A collection of the highly-accurate devices are used to set Coordinated Universal Time which governs time standards on the world wide web, satellite navigation, banking computer networks and international air traffic systems.

There have been calls to abandon leap seconds but a meeting of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the U.N. agency responsible for international communications standards, failed to reach a consensus in January.

"They decided not to decide anything," says Gambis, adding that another attempt will be made in 2015.

Opponents of the leap second want a simpler system that avoids the costs and margin for error in making manual changes to thousands of computer networks. Supporters argue it needs to stay to preserve the precision of systems in areas like navigation.

Britain's Royal Astronomical Society says the leap second should be retained until there is a much broader debate on the change.

"This is something that affects not just the telecom industry," said RAS spokesman Robert Massey. "It would decouple time-keeping from the position of the sun in the sky and so a broad debate is needed."

Time standards are important in professional astronomy for pointing telescopes in the right direction but critical systems in other areas, not least defence, would also be affected by the change.

"To argue that it would be pain free is not quite true," Massey said.

A decision is not urgent. Some estimate that if the current arrangement stays, the world may eventually have to start adding two leap seconds a year. But that is not expected to happen for another hundreds years or so.

In the meantime, Massey plans to use his extra second wisely this weekend. "I'll enjoy it with an extra second in bed," he said.

Source: Chicago Tribune

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It's still here — the tried and true Motorola Alphamate 250. Now owned, supported, and available from Leavitt Communications. Call us for new or reconditioned units, parts, manuals, and repairs.

We also offer refurbished Alphamate 250’s, Alphamate IIs, the original Alphamate and new and refurbished pagers, pager repairs, pager parts and accessories. We are FULL SERVICE in Paging!

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ATLANTA BUSINESS NEWS
6:21 p.m. Thursday, June 28, 2012

Weather alerts coming soon to smartphone near you

By STEVE KARNOWSKI
The Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — Attorney Bob Burns already gets a lot of information from his smartphone, but he welcomes the prospect of getting a little more — free warnings about life-threatening weather from a sophisticated new government system.

bob burns
Bob Burns holds his smartphone Wednesday, June 27, 2012 in Minnetonka, Minn. Millions of smartphone users will soon begin receiving text messages about severe weather from a sophisticated government system that can send a blanket warning to mobile devices in the path of a dangerous storm.
(AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Beginning Thursday, the new Wireless Emergency Alerts system gives the National Weather Service a new way to warn Americans about menacing weather, even if they are nowhere near a television, radio or storm sirens. It sends blanket warnings to mobile devices in the path of a dangerous storm.

As he sat at a sidewalk cafe in downtown Minneapolis, working on both an iPhone and an iPad, Burns said he was open to getting the unsolicited messages.

"I spend enough time reading junk on my phone that's of no real benefit to me. I might as well read something useful," the Minnetonka man said. "It's putting technology to use for the public good."

Thursday was a quiet day for severe weather nationwide, so officials did not expect to send any immediate alerts, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at the national Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

But in the future, the system will be used to notify people about approaching tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards and other threats. When a warning is issued for a specific county, a text-like message of no more than 90 characters will pop up automatically on the screens of newer smartphones in that area — primarily Android and Windows Phone devices — causing them to sound a special tone and vibrate.

Users do not have to sign up for the service or pay for the message. And people who prefer not to get the warnings can opt out of the system.

"These alerts will make sure people are aware of any impending danger and provide them with the information needed so they can be safe until the threat is over," said Amy Storey, spokeswoman for CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group that helped set up the system.

The system does not yet work with all smartphones or in all areas. It is part of a broader alert network the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched in April that can also send public-safety warnings from the president and participating state and local governments. But the weather service estimates that more than 90 percent of the messages will be about storms.

The weather warnings will include tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, flash floods, extreme winds, blizzards and ice and dust storms. Designers were concerned about overloading users with too much information, so they deliberately limited the messages to warnings, not watches, and excluded severe thunderstorm warnings, weather service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan said.

Wireless carriers serving almost 97 percent of U.S. subscribers have agreed to participate, including the biggest nationwide companies — AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA. Each of the four offers at least some phones capable of receiving emergency alerts, with more on the way.

Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile say they offer the service nationwide. AT&T offers it only in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Ore., at the moment. Spokesman Michael Balmoris said the company will add additional markets over time but declined to say which ones or when.

Government officials don't have a good handle on exactly how many capable devices are already in use, but Damon Penn, assistant administrator for national continuity programs at FEMA, said the number is probably in the millions.

He said smartphone users should check with their carriers to find out whether service is available and if their device is able to use it. He said many people own phones equipped to get the new alerts but don't know it yet.

Sprint spokeswoman Crystal Davis said most Sprint smartphones now in use can receive the alerts thanks to recent automatic software upgrades. All new models will be equipped, as will all new tablet devices.

One unanswered question is when the legions of Apple iPhone users like Burns will be able to receive alerts.

Buchanan said iPhones are supposed to join the system in the fall, but she didn't know if that means only new iPhones, or if software upgrades will make older models capable, too. Representatives of Apple Inc., which is highly secretive about its product upgrades, did not respond to several messages seeking details.

FEMA's system carries three kinds of alerts: presidential alerts, which might deal with national security information such as terrorist attacks; imminent-threat alerts, which include weather warnings as well as public-safety messages from local authorities; and Amber Alerts issued by law enforcement agencies for kidnapped children.

Phone users can opt out of the imminent threat and Amber Alerts, usually just by changing their settings, but they can't opt out of presidential alerts.

Twenty-eight state or local emergency management agencies in about a dozen states are authorized to send imminent-threat alerts. Eighty-three others are in the process of getting certified.

Agencies have different ideas for the system. Minnesota is considering using it for chemical spills or nuclear accidents. In southern Florida's Miami-Dade County, it might convey hurricane evacuation information.

Curt Sommerhoff, Miami-Dade's director of emergency management, said the alerts will permit authorities to distribute urgent information to people in danger "whether you're a resident, employee or visitor."

The system doesn't use the satellite-based global positioning system to determine a phone's location. Participating carriers just send an alert out from every cell tower in the affected county. Capable smartphones pick it up.

So if a user from Minneapolis travels to Kansas City, Mo., that person would get local warnings for Kansas City, not their home city. That feature sets the system apart from weather apps that deliver information based on users' ZIP code but don't automatically update their locations when users travel.

Dan Smith, a photographer from Reston, Va., who was in Minneapolis for a convention, said he was worried that the messages could became intrusive.

"It's like email. It used to be you only got stuff you wanted. Now you get 20 junk messages for every good one," Smith said.

But Carbin said that in a typical year most smartphone users will probably receive relatively few weather alerts.

"Even in those areas of the country where there's a lot of severe weather, the frequency with which you would be alerted is pretty low," Carbin said.

Associated Press Writer Patrick Condon contributed to this report .

Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Thanks to Barry Kanne)

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Brad Dye, Ron Mercer, Allan Angus, and Vic Jackson are friends and colleagues who work both together and independently, on wireline and wireless communications projects. Click here for a summary of their qualifications and experience. They collaborate on consulting assignments, and share the work according to their individual expertise and their schedules.

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2 Eagle Midband Link Transmitters, 125W
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Preferred Wireless

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Analyst Blog

Sprint's LTE to Debut in Mid-July

By: Zacks Equity Research
June 28, 2012

The third-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., Sprint Nextel Corp., plans to launch its high-speed 4G LTE services on July 15. Initially, the services will be deployed in five markets - Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio.

This move will boost Sprint’s competitive position related to LTE deployments. Currently, the company is about a year and a half way behind the wireless giant Verizon Communications Inc. and 10 months behind the second wireless carrier AT&T Inc. in deploying LTE networks.

Sprint expects to complete the nationwide deployment by the end of 2013. The LTE coverage is expected to extend to more than 250 million customers with 22,000 cell sites by 2013.

The 4G LTE evolution signals a shift from the company’s current WiMax network, a wireless broadband technology offered in collaboration with Clearwire Corporation. The development is a part of Sprint’s network upgrade plan, Network Vision, which aims to combine various 3G and 4G technologies into one seamless network.

As part of the Network Vision plan, the company is concentrating on the core Sprint platform, which includes CDMA, WiMAX, LTE and other network technologies. The company started terminating the Nextel platform, which refers to the iDEN business. Sprint intends to decommission 30,000 cell sites to 38,000 from the existing 68,000, of which 9,600 cell sites will be shut down by the end of the third quarter and the remaining in the next year.

The Network Vision plan would lead to the efficient use of capital, reduction of cell sites, the elimination of dual networks, backhaul efficiencies, reduced churn, lower roaming charges and energy cost savings. Hence, the network restructuring is expected to generate $10 billion to $11 billion in savings over seven years (2011-2017). The company expects the Network Vision deployment to be over by the end of 2013.

No doubt, this investment will dilute Sprint’s free cash flow for the next two years. However, liquidity is expected to improve once LTE is fully deployed.

Moreover, the company will have to pay for subsidizing the Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Sprint has promised to buy about 30.5 million iPhones from Apple over the next four years and pay $500 to subsidize the product. The iPhone will nevertheless help Sprint to gain new customers while retaining the old ones. This will lead to increased subscriber growth, reduced churn and higher average revenue per user.

We are maintaining our long-term Neutral recommendation on Sprint. For the short term (1–3 months), the stock retains a Zacks #2 (Buy) Rank.

Source: Zacks.com

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Technology News

Next generation WiFi hotspot technology starts commercial trials

June 27, 2012 // Nick Flaherty

wi-fi Major operators in Europe are set to carry out advanced tests of a new WiFi standard for easy access hot spots using newly standardized equipment after successful trials using prototype kit over the last six months.

Many of the world’s largest operators and vendors have signed up to test Next Generation Hotspots (NGH) which use the Wi-Fi Passpoint standard approved this week. This allows users to log in without user names and passwords, relying on SIM card and serial number data instead. European operators in the trials include BT, BskyB’s The Cloud, Deutsche Telekom, Everything Everywhere, Orange, Portugal Telecom TMN, Swisscom, Talk Talk, TeliaSonera and Telefónica. Equipment suppliers include Ericsson and Comfone AG as well as Intel, Cisco, HP and Juniper.

The trials will test operator-to-operator billing procedures to ensure that they are compensated when carrying each other’s subscribers and test features that allow users to change their hotspot subscription package or set up a connection. The trials will also test a variety of authentication methods, including SIM-based, for the growing number of smartphones, as well as non-SIM based, for tablets, laptops and legacy phones which cannot support SIM authentication. The methods to be tested are EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA.

“Growing mobile data usage is driving a surge of operator interest in public Wi-Fi. Key to this is the development of a new generation of hotspots. Not only do they remove the need for cumbersome log-in procedures, they also support operator roaming agreements giving users broadband access wherever they are. By employing simple connectivity, open standards and global operator relationships, public Wi-Fi now has the same crucial ingredients that made cellular technologies such a massive success. Many of the world’s largest operators are now set to put the first standards-based hotspot equipment through its paces in the most extensive trials ever conducted later this year,” said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance.

The WBA expects the first commercial NGH deployments to take place in early next year.

www.wballiance.com

Source: EE Times

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Sony Puts Spotlight on Its New Smartphone

sony smartphone

A scene from an ad for Sony’s Xperia Ion smartphone, the company’s first Sony-branded smartphone in the United States.

By TANZINA VEGA
Published: June 24, 2012
The New York Times

LIKE many cellphone vendors, Sony is marketing its latest phone with an emphasis on everything but its original purpose: talking.

Instead the company is using the American introduction of its Xperia Ion to highlight the entertainment experiences a person can have using the device, like playing video games and watching movies.

Since Sony is also an entertainment company, the Xperia Ion ad campaign is an opportunity to highlight Sony-owned content like the coming Spider-Man movie, music by the group Matt and Kim, and PlayStation video games. The device, a 4G LTE Android phone, will be available through AT&T and will cost $99.99.

“This is not just about launching a device,” said Peter Farmer, the vice president for marketing for Sony Mobile in North America. “It’s about establishing credibility and visibility for Sony in the smartphone space.”

Devoted gamers may remember the February announcement of the ad campaign for the PlayStation Vita, a hand-held game console. The campaign for the Xperia Ion is similar to the Vita’s because it also focuses on the ability to experience content on the go.

The television commercial, which will make its debut on Monday on cable stations like TNT, USA and TBS, is called “One Block.” The spot features a young man walking home as he passes by a Matt and Kim concert and a scene from the Spider-Man movie, then is tackled by a soldier from a war-themed video game. In the Vita commercial, a young man has similar encounters with virtual characters as he makes his way around a city.

The effort is also a series of firsts for Sony. It’s the first time Sony Mobile Communications, the company’s mobile phone division, has introduced a phone in the United States since it broke ties with the Ericsson brand. The Xperia Ion is also the first 4G phone for Sony, and it is the company’s first Sony-branded smartphone in the United States.

Phones with 4G technology, a more advanced form of wireless technology, are rapidly gaining popularity, according to data released by Nielsen, with consumers younger than 34 most likely to have already bought a 4G phone.

“Specifically we are talking to people who crave entertainment experiences,” said Thomas Murphy, a creative director at McCann Erickson, the agency that worked on the campaign.

Sony said the campaign is estimated to have cost in the “mid-eight figure” range.

Ross Rubin, the executive director and principal analyst at NPD Connected Intelligence, a division of the NPD group, said the company’s strategy made sense. “The availability of faster wireless networks that are more capable of delivering rich video content marks an opportunity for Sony to re-energize its smartphone efforts under its own brand.”

Differentiating this product from the Vita is also important to Sony, Mr. Rubin said. “Sony recognizes that not everybody is going to get a Vita,” he said. “In order to extend their franchise in gaming, they need to extend beyond their own hardware.” To that end, the company recently announced it would allow users of phones made by HTC, one of its competitors, to play games from the PlayStation suite.

Sony is not a top player in the American smartphone universe. It faces fierce competition not just from Apple but from other manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, LG and HTC that have also introduced versions of their own 4G phones with marketing campaigns focused on Web browsing, mobile applications, video and the ability to share content easily.

To establish Sony in the crowded market, the campaign includes extensive media sponsorships and product placement opportunities. “We want to create an emotional bond with consumers through those entertainment lifestyle outlets,” Mr. Farmer, the Sony Mobile executive, said.

In one partnership, with the magazine US Weekly, the musician Gavin DeGraw will use an Xperia Ion to keep a video diary that readers will be able to view by scanning QR codes in the publication.

Sponsorships include the ESPN All-Access event in Chicago in September, where athletes will use the Xperia Ion to send messages from a social media center. At the Los Angeles premiere for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” hosts from the entertainment Web site PopSugar will use the device to take photos and send Twitter messages from the red carpet.

The digital ad buy includes 40 home-page “takeovers” — instances in which only Sony’s advertising will appear on a page — on Web sites like Mashable, Esquire, TMZ, ESPN, Pandora and MLB.com. Theater ads include a crowd-sourced digital game called Brickbreaker that viewers will see before the 30-second “One Block” spot is shown.

Sony focused its out-of-home advertising in New York and Atlanta. It includes bus shelters, traditional and digital billboards, interactive kiosks, taxi tops and the Sony digital billboard in Times Square.

Print ads feature the product against bold-colored backgrounds and use words ending in “ion,” like “connection” and “high-definition,” a play on the “Ion” in the product name. Ads will run in publications like Rolling Stone, Maxim and Wired.

Source: The New York Times

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WiPath Communications

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Intelligent Solutions for Paging & Wireless Data

WiPath manufactures a wide range of highly unique and innovative hardware and software solutions in paging and mobile data for:

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Contact
Postal
Address:
WiPath Communications LLC
4845 Dumbbarton Court
Cumming, GA 30040
Street
Address:
4845 Dumbbarton Court
Cumming, GA 30040
Web site: www.wipath.com left arrow CLICK
E-mail: info@wipath.com left arrow CLICK
Phone: 770-844-6218
Fax: 770-844-6574
WiPath Communications

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Hark Technologies

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  • Single channel up to eight zones
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  • Programmable timeouts and batch sizes
  • Supports 2-tone, 5/6-tone, POCSAG 512/1200/2400, GOLAY
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  • PURC or direct connect
  • Pictured version mounts in 5.25" drive bay
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  • Available as a daughter board for our embedded Internet Paging Terminal (IPT)

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  • Frequency agile - only one receiver to stock
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  • Please see our web site for other products including Internet Messaging Gateways, Unified Messaging Servers, test equipment, and Paging Terminals.
Contact
Hark Technologies
717 Old Trolley Rd Ste 6 #163
Summerville, SC 29485
Tel: 843-821-6888
Fax: 843-821-6894
E-mail: sales@harktech.com left arrow CLICK
Web: http://www.harktech.com left arrow CLICK

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of Hark Technologies.

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Hark Technologies

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TECHNICAL SECTION

 

Three-Minute Tech: Thunderbolt

By Loyd Case
Tuesday — June 26, 2012 8:00 AM

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For about a year, Macs have been shipping with a fancy new port on the side called Thunderbolt. We're just on the cusp of seeing this new port on Windows-based PCs, too. What exactly is Thunderbolt, and should you make sure your next computer has it?

Thunderbolt is fast

Thunderbolt is a method for transferring data between devices, much like USB or FireWire. The key difference is that it’s much faster. For example, the current USB 3.0 standard maxes out at 5gbps (gigabits per second). Thunderbolt gives you up to two channels that each transfer data at 10gbps.

Thunderbolt was co-developed by Intel and Apple. It was originally meant to be an optical interface, connecting devices via fiber optic cable. Improvements in signaling technology over copper wires allowed the Thunderbolt to be implemented purely on copper wire, which helps make it less expensive to build into PCs and also gives it the ability to supply power to externally attached hardware.

DisplayPort + PCIe

At its core, Thunderbolt actually melds two different standards: DisplayPort and PCI Express. DisplayPort is the latest standard for connecting monitors to PCs and Macs, and is slated to replace the aging DVI standard. PCI Express is a point-to-point I/O standard designed to move data at high speeds. PCIe, as it’s often referred to, can move data bi-directionally—both sending and receiving data at the same time.

thunderbolt

Thunderbolt multiplexes both DisplayPort and PCI Express signals into a single stream, then splits the correct stream out at the destination. [Source: Intel]

This combination has some key benefits. First, existing connectors can be used. Thunderbolt uses the mini-DisplayPort connector originally developed by Apple and now available across a variety of systems and peripherals. Second, devices can be daisy-chained. You can have one Thunderbolt cable going from your computer to an external hard drive, and then another cable going from that hard drive to a monitor, for example. The one exception are older monitors that support only the DisplayPort 1.1 spec, rather than the more current DisplayPort 1.2. Those displays must be attached only at the end of the chain. Daisy-chaining devices reduces cable clutter, and minimizes the need for add-on hubs to increase connections.

Today’s systems use a discrete Thunderbolt controller chip to handle the needed multiplexing (combining) of the DisplayPort and PCIe signals into a single data stream. Current Thunderbolt cables are active cables which are “smart”; they have controller chips embedded in the connectors to help manage traffic.

thunderbolt

Current implementations use discrete Thunderbolt controller chips directly connected to PCI Express and DisplayPort on the system side. [Source: Intel]

Thunderbolt's future

Thunderbolt interfaces originally appeared on Apple’s MacBook and iMac line of computers, but Windows-based systems with Thunderbolt built in are just starting to appear. Thunderbolt and USB will continue to coexist, as they serve slightly different needs. Thunderbolt can deliver the high data rates needed for displays or large storage systems, while USB is better suited for small peripheral connections, like keyboards and mice.

While today’s Thunderbolt standard uses copper wire, Intel is still working on developing Thunderbolt over optical cable. That could result in even higher data speeds. Perhaps more useful, cables could be much longer, allowing more flexible placement of storage systems or large, multi-monitor video walls with minimal cabling needs.

Do you need to make sure your next computer has a Thunderbolt port? Thunderbolt is still in its infancy, but new peripherals—particularly storage hardware—are arriving at a rapid clip. Users who need a lot of high speed storage, like video editors and photographers—will want Thunderbolt. It's not as useful for everyday mobile storage, even though it's faster than USB 3.0, because smaller devices tend to be somewhat slow unless those small external drives house a fast SSD.

Until we see widespread adoption of DisplayPort 1.2 in monitors, Thunderbolt won't be as useful on the PC side as it is on the Mac side. Monitors with DisplayPort 1.2 will start to arrive by the end of summer, 2012.

Source: Tech Hive

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CRITICAL RESPONSE SYSTEMS

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Selected portions of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, a newsletter from the Law Offices of Blooston, Mordkofsky, Dickens, Duffy & Prendergast, LLP are reproduced in this section with the firm's permission.

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Supreme Court Says FCC Did Not Give Proper Notice Of Indecency Standard

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the FCC’s indecency standard was too vague in FCC V. Fox Television Stations, et al. The Court said that because the FCC had failed to provide Fox or ABC with “fair notice,” the Commission’s standard that “fleeting expletives and momentary nudity could be found actionably indecent” was too vague and could not be enforced against the broadcasts at issue.

Two of the broadcasts concern isolated utterances of obscene words during live broadcasts aired by Fox. The third occurred during an episode of a television show broadcast by respondent ABC Television Network, when the nude buttocks of an adult female character were shown for approximately seven seconds and the side of her breast for a moment. After these incidents, but before the Commission issued Notices of Apparent Liability to Fox and ABC, the Commission issued its Golden Globes Order, declaring for the first time that fleeting expletives could be actionable. It then concluded that the Fox and ABC broadcasts violated this new standard. It found the Fox broadcasts indecent, but declined to propose forfeitures.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed, finding the Commission's decision to modify its indecency enforcement regime to regulate fleeting expletives arbitrary and capricious. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded for the 2nd Circuit to address respondents' First Amendment challenges.

On remand, the Second Circuit found the policy unconstitutionally vague and invalidated it in its entirety. In the ABC case, the Commission found the display actionably indecent, and imposed a $27,500 forfeiture on each of the 45 ABC-affiliated stations that aired the episode. The 2nd Circuit vacated the order in light of its Fox decision.

Now the Supreme Court holds that “[b]ecause the Commission failed to give Fox or ABC fair notice prior to the broadcasts in question that fleeting expletives and momentary nudity could be found actionably indecent, the Commission's standards as applied to these broadcasts were vague.

The Court said that the fundamental principle that laws regulating persons or entities must give fair notice of what conduct is required or proscribed is essential to the protections provided by the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which requires the invalidation of impermissibly vague laws. A conviction or punishment fails to comply with due process if the statute or regulation under which it is obtained "fails to provide a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is prohibited, or is so standardless that it authorizes or encourages seriously discriminatory enforcement."

“The void for vagueness doctrine addresses at least two connected but discrete due process concerns: Regulated parties should know what is required of them so they may act accordingly; and precision and guidance are necessary so that those enforcing the law do not act in an arbitrary or discriminatory way. When speech is involved, rigorous adherence to those requirements is necessary to ensure that ambiguity does not chill protected speech,” the Court said.

It added that “[t]hese concerns are implicated here, where the broadcasters claim that the lengthy procedural history of their cases shows that they did not have fair notice of what was forbidden. Under the 2001 Guidelines in force when the broadcasts occurred, a key consideration was ‘whether the material dwell[ed] on or repeat[ed] at length’ the offending description or depiction, but in the 2004 Golden Globes Order, issued after the broadcasts, the Commission changed course and held that fleeting expletives could be a statutory violation. It then applied this new principle to these cases. Its lack of notice to Fox and ABC of its changed interpretation failed to give them ‘fair notice of what is prohibited.’"

The Court’s opinion leaves the Commission free to modify its current indecency policy in light of its determination of the public interest and applicable legal requirements. And it leaves the courts free to review the current policy or any modified policy in light of its content and application.

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HOUSE PANEL APPROVES $323 MILLION BUDGET FOR FCC: The House Appropriations Committee has approved the fiscal year 2013 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill. The legislation provides annual funding for the Treasury Department, the Executive Office of the President, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, the Small Business Administration, the General Services Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and several other independent agencies. The bill includes a total of $21.15 billion in funding for these agencies, which is $376 million below last year’s level and $2 billion below the President’s request. The bill is $3 billion, or nearly 13%, below fiscal year 2010 – the last year of Democrat control of Congress. When adjusted for inflation, the legislation is virtually equal to the 2008 funding level. The bill includes an appropriation of $322,852,000 for the FCC. Several amendments were added to the bill, including an amendment encouraging the FCC to work with private entities seeking to deploy certain broadband services while heeding concerns regarding potential interference with GPS devices; encouraging the FCC to review conflicting federal and state regulations on telephone service rates; and allowing funding for the FCC to implement the new “Political File" reporting rule, but requiring the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study on the issue.

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AUGUST 1: FCC FORM 502, NUMBER UTILIZATION AND FORECAST REPORT: Any wireless or wireline carrier ( including paging companies ) that have received number blocks—including 100, 1,000, or 10,000 number blocks—from the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA), a Pooling Administrator, or from another carrier, must file Form 502 by August 1. Carriers porting numbers for the purpose of transferring an established customer’s service to another service provider must also report, but the carrier receiving numbers through porting does not. Resold services should also be treated like ported numbers, meaning the carrier transferring the resold service to another carrier is required to report those numbers but the carrier receiving such numbers should not report them. New this year is that reporting carriers are required to include their FCC Registration Number (FRN). Reporting carriers file utilization and forecast reports semiannually on or before February 1 for the preceding six-month reporting period ending December 31, and on or before August 1 for the preceding six-month reporting period ending June 30.

Source: BloostonLaw Telecom Update Vol. 15, No. 25 June 27, 2012

 

This newsletter is not intended to provide legal advice. Those interested in more information should contact the firm. For additional information, contact Hal Mordkofsky at 202-828-5520 or halmor@bloostonlaw.com

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UNTIL NEXT WEEK

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With best regards,
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Newsletter Editor

73 DE K9IQY

Wireless Messaging News
Brad Dye, Editor
P.O. Box 266
Fairfield, IL 62837 USA

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Skype: braddye
Twitter: @BradDye1
Telephone: 618-599-7869

E–mail: brad@braddye.com
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MESSAGING

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THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

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Instead of Eating Tomatoes this year I am “Eating Crow.”

tomato I guess this is what I get for bragging about my tomato garden.

Woe is me.

My first tomato of the year has “Blossom-End Rot.”


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The following is from The Ohio State University Extension FactSheet:

Blossom-end rot is a serious disorder of tomato, pepper, and eggplant. Growers often are distressed to notice that a dry sunken decay has developed on the blossom end (opposite the stem) of many fruit, especially the first fruit of the season. This non-parasitic disorder can be very damaging, with losses of 50% or more in some years.

Symptoms

On tomato and eggplant, blossom-end rot usually begins as a small water-soaked area at the blossom end of the fruit. This may appear while the fruit is green or during ripening. As the lesion develops, it enlarges, becomes sunken and turns black and leathery. In severe cases, it may completely cover the lower half of the fruit, becoming flat or concave. Secondary pathogens commonly invade the lesion, often resulting in complete destruction of the infected fruit. On peppers, the affected area appears tan, and is sometimes mistaken for sunscald, which is white. Secondary molds often colonize the affected area, resulting in a dark brown or black appearance. Blossom end rot also occurs on the sides of the pepper fruit near the blossom end.

Cause

Blossom-end rot is not caused by a parasitic organism but is a physiologic disorder associated with a low concentration of calcium in the fruit. Calcium is required in relatively large concentrations for normal cell growth. When a rapidly growing fruit is deprived of necessary calcium, the tissues break down, leaving the characteristic dry, sunken lesion at the blossom end. Blossom-end rot is induced when demand for calcium exceeds supply. This may result from low calcium levels or high amounts of competitive cations in the soil, drought stress, or excessive soil moisture fluctuations which reduce uptake and movement of calcium into the plant, or rapid, vegetative growth due to excessive nitrogen fertilization.

Source: Ohio State University

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Flavor Is Price Of Scarlet Hue Of Tomatoes, Study Finds

tomatoes

A gene mutation that makes a tomato uniformly red also stifles genes that contribute to its taste, researchers say.

By GINA KOLATA
Published: June 28, 2012

Plant geneticists say they have discovered an answer to a near-universal question: Why are tomatoes usually so tasteless?

Yes, they are often picked green and shipped long distances. Often they are refrigerated, which destroys their flavor and texture. But now researchers have discovered a genetic reason that diminishes a tomato’s flavor even if the fruit is picked ripe and coddled.

The unexpected culprit is a gene mutation that occurred by chance and that was discovered by tomato breeders. It was deliberately bred into almost all tomatoes because it conferred an advantage: It made them a uniform luscious scarlet when ripe.

Now, in a paper published in the journal Science, researchers report that the very gene that was inactivated by that mutation plays an important role in producing the sugar and aromas that are the essence of a fragrant, flavorful tomato. And these findings provide a road map for plant breeders to make better-tasting, evenly red tomatoes.

The discovery “is one piece of the puzzle about why the modern tomato stinks,” said Harry Klee, a tomato researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not involved in the research. “That mutation has been introduced into almost all modern tomatoes. Now we can say that in trying to make the fruit prettier, they reduced some of the important compounds that are linked to flavor.”

The mutation’s effect was a real surprise, said James J. Giovannoni of the United States Department of Agriculture Research Service, an author of the paper. He called the wide adoption of tomatoes that ripen uniformly “a story of unintended consequences.”

Breeders stumbled upon the variety about 70 years ago and saw commercial potential. Consumers like tomatoes that are red all over, but ripe tomatoes normally had a ring of green, yellow or white at the stem end. Producers of tomatoes used in tomato sauce or ketchup also benefited. Growers harvest this crop all at once, Dr. Giovannoni said, and “with the uniform ripening gene, it is easier to determine when the tomatoes are ripe.”

Then, about 10 years ago, Ann Powell, a plant biochemist at the University of California, Davis, happened on a puzzle that led to the new discovery.

Dr. Powell, a lead author of the Science paper, was studying weed genes. Her colleagues had put those genes into tomato plants, which are, she said, the lab rats of the plant world. To Dr. Powell’s surprise, tomatoes with the genes turned the dark green of a sweet pepper before they ripened, rather than the insipid pale green of most tomatoes today.

“That got me thinking,” Dr. Powell said. “Why do fruits bother being green in the first place?” The green is from chloroplasts, self-contained energy factories in plant cells, where photosynthesis takes place. The end result is sugar, which plants use for food. And, Dr. Powell said, the prevailing wisdom said sugar travels from a plant’s leaves to its fruit. So chloroplasts in tomato fruit seemed inconsequential.

Still, she said, the thought of dark green tomatoes “kind of bugged me.” Why weren't the leaves dark green, too?

About a year ago, she and her colleagues, including Dr. Giovannoni, decided to investigate. The weed genes, they found, replaced a disabled gene in a tomato’s fruit but not in its leaves. With the weed genes, the tomatoes turned dark green.

The reason the tomatoes had been light green was that they had the uniform ripening mutation, which set up a sort of chain reaction. The mutation not only made tomatoes turn uniformly green and then red, but also disabled genes involved in ripening. Among them are genes that allow the fruit to make some of its own sugar instead of getting it only from leaves. Others increase the amount of carotenoids , which give tomatoes a full red color and, it is thought, are involved in flavor.

To test their discovery, the researchers used genetic engineering to turn on the disabled genes while leaving the uniform ripening trait alone. The fruit was evenly dark green and then red and had 20 percent more sugar and 20 to 30 percent more carotenoids when ripe.

But were the genetically engineered tomatoes more flavorful? Because Department of Agriculture regulations forbid the consumption of experimental produce, no one tasted them.

And, Dr. Giovannoni says, do not look for those genetically engineered tomatoes at the grocery store. Producers would not dare to make such a tomato for fear that consumers would reject it.

But, Dr. Powell said, there is a way around the issue. Heirloom tomatoes and many wild species do not have the uniform ripening mutation. “The idea is to get the vegetable seed industry interested,” Dr. Powell said.

Source: The New York Times

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