Free Republic

How many Freepers know about this program? It gives a free mobile phone to low-income households and free 68 minutes of airtime per month. Tracphone has this website: Safelink WirelessI tried to find what legislation established this, but cannot.

If you own a T-Mobile/Microsoft Sidekick smartphone I don’t have to tell you this. But if you are among the millions who don’t: on October 1st literally every user of the Sidekick data service lost the private personal records – emails, notes, calendar entries, contacts, etc. — they had stored on the system. Initially, it was believed that information was now lost forever. The official statement from Microsoft/Danger (the latter being the company that builds the Sidekick) and T-Mobile is that the data “almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.”

Chinese cell phone companies have been cloning some of the top phones in the world the past few years, including the iPhone and the Nokia N95, trying to get people to buy their knockoffs for half the price. Now, Blockberry… err…Blackberry has joined that list and with U.S. President Barack Obama as the face of their advertising campaign. The slogan for the new Blockberry is: “Obama have Blackberry, I have blockberry”. The Chinese Blockberry 9500 runs windows Mobile 6.1, with a 460MHZ proccessor, and features a 3.2 inch touchscreen, WIFI and bluetooth connectivity,Sirf III GPS navigation and supports 3G and...

Twice a year, the organization representing the wireless industry puts out a bunch of facts and figures on how much we're using our phones in the U.S., and each time, I can't help but marvel at the results. The big number this time around, according to the CTIA: In the past six months alone, Americans sent an estimated 740 billion text messages, which comes out to about 4.1 billion messages each day. Put another way: That's 11.7 text messages a day for every man, woman, and child in the country. (Of course, the average American teen can fire off 11...

Don't like the idea of your neighbors rudely snooping on the wireless signal you slaved to pay for from the lazy comfort of their living room? It's not just about slowing down your connection; while they're downloading Mad Men via bittorrent, you could be on the hook for their actions. Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best. Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint. The idea is simple: Use a special paint on walls where you don't want wireless to pass through...

Electronics such as phones and laptops may start shedding their power cords within a year. Wireless electricity may soon make tangled power cords a thing of the past. That's the prediction of Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity, a company that's able to power light bulbs using wireless electricity that travels several feet from a power socket. WiTricity's version of wireless electricity -- which converts power into a magnetic field and sends it sailing through the air at a particular frequency -- still needs to be refined a bit, he said, but should be commercially available soon. Giler, whose company is...

Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. The attack gives hackers a way to read encrypted traffic sent between computers and certain types of routers that use the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption system. The attack was developed by Toshihiro Ohigashi of Hiroshima University and Masakatu Morii of Kobe University, who plan to discuss further details at a technical conference set for Sept. 25 in Hiroshima. Last November, security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken, but the Japanese researchers have taken the...

I don’t like carrying cell phones. When it came to buying a wireless phone, I was one of the last holdouts. My house is a bit remote and to this date it has absolutely no cell coverage. Back in 2001, almost everyone I knew already had a cell phone. Finally, I broke down and bought a top of the line Motorola. It was in the $300 plus price range with a two year contract. I even bought a serial port Outlook synchronization device to download contacts and calendar information. I did have fun learning to use all of the device’s...

TORONTO - Swedish telecom giant Ericsson won the auction for Nortel's wireless division, with a bid of US$1.13 billion, the Canadian-based company announced late Friday. Nortel will seek Canadian and U.S. court approvals of the proposed sale agreement at a joint hearing on July 28, 2009, the financially troubled company said in a statement.

Pardon the cliche, but it's one of the holiest of Holy Grails of technology: Wireless power. And while early lab experiments have been able to "beam" electricity a few feet to power a light bulb, the day when our laptops and cell phones can charge without having to plug them in to a wall socket still seems decades in the future. Nokia, however, has taken another baby step in that direction with the invention of a cell phone that recharges itself using a unique system: It harvests ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into usable power....

The use of company-issued mobile phones could trigger new federal income taxes on millions of Americans as a "fringe benefit," spurring efforts by the wireless industry and others to kill the idea. The Internal Revenue Service proposed that employers assign 25% of an employee's annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit. Under that scenario, a worker in the 28% tax bracket, whose wireless device costs the company $1,500 a year, could see $105 in additional federal income tax.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is backing a federal bill that would impose a five-year ban on wireless communications and cellular telephone tax increases. The Mobile Wireless Tax Fairness Act of 2009 would put in place a moratorium on federal, state and local tax increases on wireless services and infrastructure. McCain and other sponsors contend it would help consumers and that governments have unfairly targeted wireless communications with levies and taxes. The measure has a number of backers in the U.S. Senate from both political parties. The average tax rate for goods and services is 7.07 percent, but federal, state...

LG Korea Announces Their First Wireless Full HD LCD TV Behold LG's LH 80 Series LCD TVs (available in 42”, 47” and 55”) released this morning and available for purchase in Korea featuring LG's first Full HD wireless technology. As you may have already guessed, the LCD panel shows video wirelessly thanks to a newly developed “Media Box” that also includes the LCD TV tuner, HDMI HUB… and a USB port to access JPEG and DIVX video stored on a USB HDD or thumb key. If you happen to live in Korea and are interested in the 55” model, expect...

Mobile banking services typically allow users to make payments, check balances, transfer money between accounts and generate statements of recent transactions on their handsetsTechnology companies like Sybase and VeriSign are looking to tap robust growth in the nascent U.S.mobile banking market as text message use rises and banks aggressively explore ways to save. Mobile banking services typically allow users to make payments, check balances, transfer money between accounts and generate statements of recent transactions on their handsets. In the deepening recession, mobile banking is seen as a cost saver for banks, as customers who use mobile banking make fewer calls...

I've used 2 different wireless cards (Linksys and Encore) on my desktop they randomly disconnect...

The House Democrats' $825 billion legislation released on Thursday was supposedly intended to "stimulate" the economy. Backers claimed that speedy approval was vital because the nation is in "a crisis not seen since the Great Depression" and "the economy is shutting down." That's the rhetoric. But in reality, Democrats are using the 258-page legislation to sneak Net neutrality rules in through the back door. The so-called stimulus package hands out billions of dollars in grants for broadband and wireless development, primarily in what are called "unserved" and "underserved" areas. The U.S. Department of Commerce is charged with writing checks-with-many-zeros-on-them to...

I used to have Verizon Wireless years ago, but literally had to fight them every month because my bill was always wrong. The would always fight me with some idiot who could not do simple math … just like this. (Go to link to listen to audio)

For all the annoyance of being crammed into an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet with a bunch of strangers, air travel has offered one benefit: the ability to tell bosses and colleagues, "I'll be on a flight, so you won't be able to reach me." So much for that excuse. Wireless Internet service is starting to spread among airlines in the United States — Delta and American have installed it on more than a dozen planes each, and several other carriers are planning to test it. For the airlines, always desperate for new sources of revenue, offering the service —...

As President Obama's motorcade rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, federal authorities deployed a closely held law enforcement tool: equipment that can jam cellphones and other wireless devices to foil remote-controlled bombs, sources said. It is an increasingly common technology, with federal agencies expanding its use as state and local agencies are pushing for permission to do the same. Police and others say it could stop terrorists from coordinating during an attack, prevent suspects from erasing evidence on wireless devices, simplify arrests and keep inmates from using contraband phones. But jamming remains strictly illegal for state and local agencies....

Turn off that Wi-Fi network — it's disturbing our chakras. That's what many residents of Glastonbury, a lovely medieval town turned New Age hub in southwestern England, are demanding the local government do. Ever since the town's free municipal wireless broadband network went online in May, people have been complaining of, as an online petition puts it, "headaches, dizziness, nausea, severe tiredness, brain fog, disorientation and loss of appetite, loss of balance, inability to concentrate, loss of creativity" — all ailments an examining physician would find it difficult to prove or disprove.

I have a problem and I can't find any good answers online. I have a nice new LCD TV that I just got for our kitchen. Unfortunately, there is no cable jack in our kitchen and we have been told by our cable company that they can't put one in. I have an appointment with Best Buy's Geek Squad, who told me they can usually get one in even when the cable company can't. But I'm not certain they can do it. In the meantime I have this awesome HDTV but I get terrible reception as I am using old...

Preachers on the pulpit, Guns N' Roses and others who fear their wireless microphones would be disrupted by widespread public access to certain unused airwaves were drowned out by high-tech titans Google and Microsoft in a federal ruling yesterday. The Federal Communications Commission approved a plan that would allow those airwaves, called white spaces, to be used by gadgets such as cellphones and laptops connected to the Internet once that spectrum becomes available after the national transition from analog to digital television in February. Opponents of the plan, including preachers and entertainers, say such devices could interfere with broadcast channels...

The other big battle on Nov. 4 is over wireless airwaves, and it pits tech stalwarts against TV stations, evangelical preachers—even Dolly Parton ### Besides the Presidential election, there's another big political battle brewing in Washington on Nov. 4. This one is over the airwaves that are used to deliver communications signals to consumers across the country, and like the race for the White House, this contest has created a big divide. The same day that the country is picking its next President, the Federal Communication Commission will decide whether to make available a large swath of airwaves for wireless...

For years, it's been one of those speculative staple questions of consumer-media research: If you could only keep one thing out of a list that included your phone, your TV or your computer and internet connection, what would it be? But with the recession looming, it's no longer such an academic question. Agencies, media, telecoms and other marketers are pondering the implications of an impending shakeout where, after years of piling on one subscription fee after another, consumers take a harder look at what they really need. Their decisions in what look to be lean years ahead could play a...

Nip and tuck. That’s what most political polls describe the race between Barrack Obama and John McCain. Might as well throw the polls in the trash. Turns out that standard political polls exclude cell-phone only voters-those young, tech savvy, largely Democratic (but not always) voters-who no longer bother to install a landline in their homes or apartments. If that is the case, we know every little about true public opinion and this presidential election is probably not close at all.

Let’s say you’re an average 20 billion dollar company, with a sparse webpage and a search box. And since you’re swimming in money and ideas, you like dreaming up different ways to revolutionize the Internet. For instance, maybe one day you got tired of typing “Mapquest”, so you invented a new method to combine satellite and plane images into a seamless pyramid of tiles, and then leveraged your computing power to make them zoomable in real-time on a web page. Then, you threw in some roads and driving directions, hey real-time traffic too, and oh, since you were in the...

About freeing the airwaves One of America's most valuable natural resources is our "white spaces" -- the radio airwaves, or spectrum, that have long carried analog TV signals. Three-fourths of the white spaces are completely unused today, and -- especially once TV is broadcast in digital only starting in 2009 -- could be used to kick-start a revolution in wireless technology, including universal wireless online access and numerous new products and services that can't even be imagined today. This fall, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will decide whether to make this spectrum available for anyone to use. At Google, we...

Despite ongoing government and industry efforts to improve safety, maintenance of mobile-phone and other communications towers continues to be the most hazardous work around. And because of the relatively small number of employees in the business compared to other industry sectors, tower climbing — which suffered five fatalities during a 12-day span this spring and seven deaths overall this year so far — may also be the most overlooked, deadly job in the country. The recent spike in tower fall fatalities follows a reprieve in deaths between early December and April. It was a very bad year in 2006, when...

The top U.S. communications regulator on Thursday postponed consideration of a plan to auction a piece of wireless airwaves to buyers willing to provide free broadband Internet service without pornography. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said he would delay an expected vote on his proposal to auction an unused piece of 25 megahertz wireless spectrum, with the condition that the winning bidder offer free Internet access and filter out obscene content on part of those airwaves, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had scheduled the commission to take up the proposal at its next meeting on June 12. Martin said...

SUN CITY CENTER - The first lightning bolt cracked in the dark clouds a few hundred yards above John Jacob's head as he worked atop a 200-foot cellular phone tower in south Hillsborough County. With wind swirling and sheets of rain pouring over him, Jacobs kept bolting together thin steel beams while long, white cellular transmitters for AT&T, T-Mobile and Metro PCS buzzed around his head, relaying calls, text messages and Blackberry e-mails in a six-mile zone along Interstate 75. Then a second lighting bolt crashed closer, then a third even closer. That persuaded the 14-year tower veteran to tie...

Four or five years ago, ZigBee had a burst of publicity. Why has it gone quiet since then? ZigBee promised to integrate wireless sensors - light switches, burglar alarms and just about everything else - into mesh networks, using economical low-power, low-speed connections. Using links defined by IEEE 802.15.4, it promised networked devices with a battery life of five or ten years, that could be installed and left to run. But what's happened? We've yet to see any ZigBee installations, and we keep hearing of competitors, including proprietary technology like Z-Wave's Zensys, new systems that use IP over 802.15.4, and...

That poor woman down the street Apparently it's perfectly okay for the CHRC to hijack its neighbour's computer systemI should begin with a correction. Last week, I was at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing for the case of Warman vs. Lemire. Richard Warman is the Canadian Human Rights Commission's plaintiff on every single complaint filed since 2002, and Marc Lemire is a supposed white supremacist on trial for the "hate messages" at his Freedom Site — or, at any rate, the handful of "hate messages" on his Freedom Site that weren't posted by undercover CHRC operatives whiling away an...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Long seen as a laggard when it comes to new wireless phones, Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday unveiled what could be the strongest challenger yet to the popular Apple iPhone. The new Samsung Instinct, available from Sprint in June, looks somewhat like an iPhone and is supposed to function in a similar way. It's a touchscreen device with a virtual keyboard, capable of surfing the Web, taking photos and playing music and video. The device also includes a version of "visual voicemail" that first became available in the iPhone. That groundbreaking feature allows users to pick voicemails...

Former presidential candidates John Edwards and Fred Thompson will deliver keynote addresses on the final day of CTIA WIRELESS 2008®, Thursday, April 3 at 9:30 a.m. at the Las Vegas Hilton, Barron Room. CTIA WIRELESS 2008 takes place April 1 – 3 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. John Edwards was a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President. Edwards served as U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1999-2005 and was John Kerry’s vice presidential running mate in 2004. Fred Thompson was a candidate for the 2008 Republican nomination for President. He served as U.S. Senator from Tennessee from...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Less than a week after losing in the latest U.S. spectrum auction, Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) has started pitching its plan to use TV "white space" - unlicensed and unused airwaves - to provide wireless Internet. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission released by Google on Monday, the Internet search giant pressed the government to open up the white space for unlicensed use in hopes of enabling more widespread, affordable Internet access over the airwaves. "As Google has pointed out previously, the vast majority of viable spectrum in this country simply goes unused, or...

PHILADELPHIA — It was hailed as Internet for the masses when Philadelphia officials announced plans in 2005 to erect the largest municipal Wi-Fi grid in the country, stretching wireless access over 135 square miles with the hope of bringing free or low-cost service to all residents, especially the poor. Municipal officials in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and 10 other major cities, as well as dozens of smaller towns, quickly said they would match Philadelphia’s plans. But the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. The conclusion that such ventures would not be...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 18, 2008 STATEMENT BY FCC CHAIRMAN KEVIN J. MARTIN Washington, D.C. –FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin today announced the close of Auction 73 (the 700 MHz auction). The auction began on January 24, 2008, and closed today after 261 rounds of bidding. The FCC auction raised a record $19.592 billion and helped advance new open platform policies. Auction 73 Raised More Money Than Any Auction has Ever Raised The $19.592 billion in revenue raised in the 700 MHz auction is significantly more than raised in any past FCC auction. In comparison, the 2006 Advanced Wireless...

Google (GOOG) may have never wanted to build a nationwide wireless network after all. As a Federal Communications Commission auction for wireless airspace draws to an end, Wall Street analysts and industry experts said they believe Google has dropped out of the running. Last fall, not long after Apple introduced its iPhone, rumors swirled that Google intended to compete both with Apple and the major cell phone carriers. Speculation held that Google planned to develop its own cell phone or cell phone network and would need wireless airspace on which it would operate. Instead, it appears Google intends to develop...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The first round of the much-anticipated Federal Communications Commission auction of communications airwaves drew $2.4 billion in prospective bids before closing at midday Thursday, according to the agency. Nearly half the money, some $1.04 billion, was bid by one participant seeking a national license for a swath of 22 megahertz of radio spectrum. The bidding for a second national license of 10 megahertz topped out at $472 million in the first round. Both these bids are believed to be the minimum bid allowed in the first round for these chunks of spectrum. The information was...

When I'm at a hotel that offers wireless access, I often must sign in and provide some sort of access code. It appears, furthermore, that this sign on process is required for ANY internet access at all, not just web access. For example, in the hotel example, if I just start my computer, and try to send or receive Outlook Express e-mail, it will fail. Then I realize that I must start my web browser and take care of signing on. After that, both web access and e-mail access is fine. How is this signon process handled? It looks like...

"Plain Old Telephone Service" is pretty much a Relic of the Past and with it the analog phone modem but a little something dies with the analog phone modem and that is independent point to point network systems -- such as Fido Net, and the myriad of dial-up BBS systems that flourished in the 1980s is the change Good or Bad as is so often the case with change it is a little bit of both the new graphic internet interface has a lot of glitter, that's for sure, but it doesn't have any better information handling capability than the...

Network security firm Sophos recently published a study on what it terms WiFi "piggybacking," or logging on to someone's open 802.11b/g/n network without their knowledge or permission. According to the company's study, which was carried out on behalf of The Times, 54 percent of the respondents have gone WiFi freeloading, or as Sophos put it, "admitted breaking the law [in the UK]." Amazingly, accessing an unsecured, wide-open WiFi network without permission is illegal in some places, and not just in the UK. An Illinois man was arrested and fined $250 in 2006 for using an open network without permission, while...

I am trying to hook a phone line into my DirecTV TIVO box. I have no phone plug in that room or the two adjoining rooms. I don't want to run a wire open from the back rooms to the TIVO box.Is there such a thing as a wireless phone plug. Anyone recommend a fix?

In the year ahead, a long-heralded revolution in wireless communications will finally come to pass. It may throw handset makers and service providers into turmoil, but over time it should be great for consumers. Fast, wireless data will become more widely available, the choice of data devices and mobile handsets will expand, and service just might get cheaper. The biggest driver of change is an event slated for February, 2009. It is, of all things, the shutdown of analog television broadcasting. The conversion to digital TV will free up space now occupied by UHF channels 52 to 69. A chunk...

Security firm cracks encryption for Microsoft's wireless keyboards Dreamlab Technologies AG says it has found a way to sniff the data traffic between Microsoft's wireless keyboards and their base stations, which communicate with each other on the 27 MHz band. In the method they discovered, unauthorized parties are reportedly able to record and decrypt all keystrokes from such keyboards. The decoding was demonstrated using data traffic from the Wireless Optical Desktop 1000 and 2000. The security firm says that other keyboards that Microsoft sells, such as the Wireless Optical Desktop 3000 and 4000, encrypt and transmit data using the...

Preliminary results from the January–June 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that more than one out of every eight American homes (13.6%) had only wireless telephones during the first half of 2007.

Hey all!I have a real quick question that someone should answer in about 5 posts. My mom bought a Toshiba lap top. We have wireless cable internet. The lap top automatically connects to the wireless network but the internet will not come up!I do a diagnostic and the laptop shows my wireless network but there is evidently an issue with the IP address. As in the lap top doesn’t have the IP address. Do I have to restart the wireless network? Please help me! Thanks.PS-Not to start a war, but this kind of thing is why I'm switching to MAC...

LONDON — For all of those that thought Europe was the hotbed of wireless IC design EDA company Synopsys Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) has some evidence that my force a change of mind. About 38 percent of Indian designers are working on designs targeting wireless and mobile applications compared with just about 22 percent in Europe. And Israel, Taiwan and Singapore all come in with a higher focus than Europe. Over the course of 2006 and 2007 Synopsys found 2000 respondents around the world to indicate whether the application for their design was wireless or mobile within consumer, communication and...

I've been trying to make Skype calls from the university where I study, via a wireless connection. The network has a proxy server and is WEP-encrypted, and I've configured my browser to use it, and can access web pages just fine. When I try to make a Skype call via wireless, I get a message "out of Skype credit." that's nonsense, because I have Skype unlimited. I checked some web pages and talked with some people, and they said Skype over wireless poses some security issues regarding file transfer. Can anyone give me details? They also said that if I...

Not sure where this goes but has this happened to you. I have Dish Network and Tivo on a wireless network at the house so they update and download configurations and channel lineups I receive all the time. Last night while going to watch the debate, I tried to get Fox News (205). It had been removed from the channels I received for years. I had to go in an manually re-add the channel to watch Fox.