FCC Free Broadband Vote on Dec 18th

First white spaces and now maybe AWS-3.  If you recall, we've dicsussed the importance of the coming vote on AWS-3 because of the mandate that the winner of the auction would be required to allocate part of the bandwidth to provide for a free national broadband access.

This has been the brainchild of the outgoing FCC chairman Kevin Martin.  It was first proposed back in 2006 and on December 18th, it may become reality if the outcome by the FCC is in our favor.  This has gotten Dave the mobile warrior very excited. So excited in fact, he had to send me a remind in the form of an USA Today article.

And we all should be excited.  Forget the fact that it's free broadband access.  It means millions of Americans who do not have or cannot afford) fast access to the Internet and the vast treasure of information will now be able to get onto the information superhighway that many of us have taken for granted.  Education, jobs, competitions.  Free flow of information to even more people.

Be sure to stay tuned for the results and the impacts.  I'll say this now.  The future impact should the FCC do the right thing will mean a great deal to the future generations.

I also want to say this issue has not made everyone happy, particular T-Mobile (read here for reasons why) and telecoms in general who are in the market for profit.  At the end of the day, it is about profit, not about subsidies.  I don't care for subsidies.  But it is about parity, and that is important.

Via USA Today

Related Onxo Links on this matter:

• AWS-3 Saga Continues
• M2Z wants bring you free broadband.
• Wireless access like healthcare debate.

Android Update December 2008

I've posted an update on my G1 experience.

I don't want to call it a review because, in the traditional sense, it's not a review.  It's more of a progress report since Android is still growing and being fine-tuned (after all, Google gave Android Marketplace a beta label and felt it wasn't ready to yet).

It's a bit of a mixed bag.  I highlighted some apps, talked about what I think are good about G1 and lamented the fact that some things that I thought should have been ready in Android but aren't.

Go ahead to On Android and let me know what you think.

First, We Find Out Obama Uses A Blackberry And Now...

The last couple of weeks in mobility was dedicated somewhat to the subject of President-elect Barack Obama having to give up his Blackberry due to security reasons.  Makes sense.

While the Jobsian cult was not to happy to learn that the next President of the United States uses a Blackberry but at least they can take comfort in the fact that once he enters the White House on January 20th, 2009, he'll have to give it up.  No iPhone but no Blackberry either.

But now this.  Apparently, someone saw him at a Chicago gym.  Cool, right?  We all know he works out.  We also know he likes music.  Who doesn't? so he must have a MP3 player, right?  President Bush has an iPod.

Well...Apple fans, read no further if you don't want your heart broken by the man you elected to be the next leader of the free world.  You will not like what he uses as his MP3 player.  Macenstein has the details.

Note:  Well, at least we know Obama uses a Macbook or Macbook Pro.

Nintendo And Sony Should Start innovating

There are those wo believe that the iPhone will give the DS and PSP a run for their money.  I'm not sure that will happen.  It's possible but they are going after different markets.  Until games for the two gaming giants start showing up on the iPhone with regularity, the iPhone is still considered to be a nitch player in the casual gaming market.  That's just my opinion.

However, I will admit the danger for the gaming giants still exists that the iPhone or the iPod Touch may move into  a turf traditionally dominated by Nintendo since the orginal Gameboy.

Where is the danger coming from exactly?  From within Nintendo and Sony.  Nintendo's innovation heart is pumping pretty hard as is evident by its bestselling Wii and its unique controllers.  Sony is just going with power in PS3.  But on the handheld front, neither companies has done much on the last couple of years outside of comestic changes.

Granted the DSi has added a few features that are notable.  I'm specially impressed with the dual cameras.  Outside of that, the other features are simply catchups.  Am I right?

I'm sure we'll see something pretty cool with DS 2 and PSP 2.  Those models are coming.  Personally, iPhone gaming has awaken the mobile gaming hunger in me that I didn't know was there.  DSi is pretty cool but the iPhone is good enough to temper that hunger until DS 2.

For others sticking with their PSP or DS (I don't see many others going with DSi outside of Japan...plus no one will be getting it outside of Japan for a while), let's hope neither Nintendo or Sony won't be too long in coming out with the next generation of innovative mobile gaming less they don't mind people getting comfortable with iPhone and iPod Touch gaming.

And they better be very very innovative.  They should know that their fans are smart and will see through marketing fogs.

A couple of things I do want to see though.

• I want to see innovation in multi-player gaming.  
• Virtual worlds created just for mobile gamers.  
• Wireless accessibility to the Internet and social networks.  
• App stores that are easy to access like on the iPhone.  
• Multi-sensory input and that's where the camera can come into play.
  
• Take what the iPhone and iPod has done with multi-touch to another level.  
• Video-conferencing during game play.

What would you like Nintendo and Sony to do with their next gen mobile gaming systems?

Note:  What I don't want to see is DS2 or PSP2 added with lame simple telephony.  

Nokia Drops New Devices For Holiday Seasons

A bit late.  Very late.  Nokia's N97 is looking like a winner, if an expensive winner.  And from the preliminary specs, we are looking at potential (dare I say?) Blackberry-and-Danger killer.   Haha, you thought I was going to talk about that other mobile device.



32GB of internal storage with additional memory slot.  Dude, this is one bad-ass mobile device.  And to top it off, 5MP camera, touchscreen (probably not multi-touch).  Going for about $700 in the Euro zone, it'll be available on the first half of 2009.  It's not something the iPhone, Android, Blackberry fans need worry about this certainly gives Symbian/Nokia fanboys something to cheer about finally.

Source:  Electronista

Note:  iPhone still the top.  Mobility is about simplicity and nothing beats the iPhone at this time.  However, Nokia's new device certainly come close to being the killer on paper.  We'll have to see how it really plays out.

Impact:  For mobile warriors of all favors, it is great to see Nokia in the game and strong.  Innovation, competition, and possibly lower price entries for sophisticated devices on 2009.  I love it.

Mobile Tip: Extending Laptop Battery from Mac OS X Tips

Alright, so the tip came from a Mac and Apple centric site but the underlying technology for laptop batteries is about the same for everyone.

We've done mobile battery tips on Onxo in the past and now, this site has given us one with clear explanations and how we can extend battery life.  You have no idea how much I baby my batteries.  From my Powerbook to the MacWind to my iPhone and G1.  Oh, and the XO too.

I've done a few battery and energy posts in the past and most of the time, it comes down the fact that batteries are not self-sustaining.  What do I mean by that?  It means after a few hundred cycles, your battery start to loose its original capacity.  There simply is no way to bring it back up to where it once was.    Retaining 80-90% of a battery's original charge after 300 or so cycles as most batteries are capable of doing these days is still quite good but I simply don't like to lose those minutes.  It just bugs me.

So, the best thing is to do what you can take care of your batteries, be it mobile devices like your iPhone or laptop.  Take a look at this worthy article.  A lot of the settings they talk about are for the OS X but there are similar functions on Windows too.

Via Mac OS X Tips

Mobility - Black Friday

On Black Friday, I woke up at 3am and go to Best Buy to rendezvous with a friend who knew what to do as far as shopping on the first official shopping day of the Holiday Seasons.  Instead, it was a crack team of my friend, his fiance, and little cousins who had scoped out the place (I should say places because they had other places to hit after that).

Me?  Totally unprepared.  Not even coffee.  Luckily, they gave me a peanut butter and cranberry sandwich.  But they were ready.  Ads.  Primary objectives.  Secondary targets.  In military and strategic sense, they ran a very tight and discipleined op.

But seeing what I saw that early morning, my friend's little special shopping operations team was nowhere nearly as sophisticated as some of the other ones.  What I was saw a bunch of mobile warriors with phones and laptops continually staying in touch with their "other team members" at Office Depot, Circuity, and God knows where else.  They looked up sites for pricing updates and latest deals.

I had my G1 and I dropped it twice.  Man, I have to say, it was incredible what mobile technology has enabled folks to do.  I wondered how the people with laptops were able to get online.  I'm guess through a wireless modem but there was also a Starbucks that sat in the middle of the mobile actions so it's also possible people were using ATT or T-Mobile's Wi-Fi hotspots.

Anyway, I'm impressed by how mobile devices were brought into these shopping missions.  I didn't get anything because, well, there was nothing I really need (however, lots that I want).  Maybe if I see a better deal the week of Christmas, I might consider something nice and small for meself.