The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘ericsson’

Unlike most other smartphone platforms, Windows Mobile doesn’t come with a mapping application pre-installed by default. While this may very well change with the soon-to-be-announced Windows Mobile 7, it has thus far been up to the handset manufacturer to throw in a map app if they so choose.

Later this week, messaging/location technology providers TCS will announce that Sony Ericsson has chosen their turn-by-turn application, Gokivo, to be pre-loaded onto future Sony Ericsson-made Windows Mobile handsets.

The first Sony Ericsson handset to come with Gokivo out of the box will be the Aspen, which was just announced last week.

This is pretty big news for TCS; they just acquired the company behind Gokivo, Networks In Motion, back in December, and this is the first time any manufacturer has chosen to pre-install the app at the factory.

The flagship features, according to TCS:

• Local Search
• Traffic and Weather
• Location Sharing

While it’s great news for TCS, I have to wonder: with Nokia and Google’s recent moves toward making turn-by-turn navigation a standard feature on S60 and Android, how much longer will smartphone consumers be willing to cough up a subscription fee?

Here’s a good virtual parlor game. Pick any two or three Twitter users, and Twiangulate which friends or followers they have in common. Twiangulate is a site that shows the overlap between your social graph and any tow other people on Twitter. It shows the resulting names as a list or an interactive social map.

For instance, if you click on the image at right, you will see an enlarged version of a map I made to see who I follow in common with @fredwilson and @anildash. Fred Wilson follows 463 people, Anil follows 573, and I follow 315. Yet according to Twiangulate, we have 81 common “friends,” which perhaps says something about how insular the world of Web startups and social media can be. In contrast, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and I only have 15 common “friends.”

So who are some of the people Fred, Anil, and I all listen to on Twitter? Some of the common people we follow include Josh Kopelman, Chris Dixon, John Borthwick, Dennis Crowley, Doc Searls, Steve Case, Joshua Schachter, Danny Sullivan, Bradley Horowitz, Michael Arrington, and Jeff Jarvis.

Are we listening to the right people or do we suffer from groupthink? Who do you overlap with the most on Twitter?

ST-Ericsson , a 50/50 joint venture by STMicroelectronics and Ericsson, this morning announced its latest HSDPA platform built on the Linux OS.

Read the original here: 
ST-Ericsson’s new platform could spawn heaps of low-cost Android smartphones

ST-Ericsson, a 50/50 joint venture by STMicroelectronics and Ericsson, this morning announced its latest HSDPA platform built on the Linux OS. Dubbed U6715, the platform aims to aid handset manufacturers produce smartphones powered by Android – or other Linux-based operating systems – with a wholesale price of less than €100 ($138).

ST-Ericsson says it anticipates manufacturers to launch the first commercial products based on its U6715 chip platform in the first half of 2010.

The company claims the platform can support all the essentials of the smartphone experience, including navigation, web browsing, video streaming, email, WiFi, a five megapixel camera, a touch screen and more. A multimedia engine integrated into the hardware architecture of the U6715 frees most of the platform’s microprocessor subsystem to run applications.

At the same time, ST-Ericsson says the U6715 platform allows manufacturers to significantly drive down the cost of device production and thus make highly capable smartphones less of a niche play and more of a mass-market product.

The U6715 platform comes with an HSPA modem capable of delivering downlink speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, and the company also boasts about its power efficiency. Equipped with a 1000mA battery, smartphones based on the platform are said to be capable of playing music for up to 40 hours and provide a talk time of up to 7 hours on a 3G network on a single battery charge.

More details are available in this document (PDF).

Some people are suggesting that Google CEO Eric Schmidt may have just created a Facebook profile for himself, after signing up for Twitter in early December 2009 and right on the heels of Microsoft founder Bill Gates setting up an account on the wildly popular social networking service.

Evidently, we can’t be 100% sure that this is his real account at this point – unlike Twitter, there’s no ‘verified account’ stamp for Facebook profiles and the man has yet to confirm our friendship (I forgive him, since it’s the middle of the night in the United States).

The information that is viewable is mostly restricted to his Facebook friends, as it shows only a profile picture, his sex (Male!), a website (Google.com!) and his location (Mountain View, CA!).

Nevertheless, my esteemed colleague MG Siegler says the mutual friends they have on the social network are all Googlers, so it is likely Schmidt (unless of course the Google employees were tricked into befriending a faker).

Update: further proof that it is him – the person who created the profile linked the email address EricSchmidt1@yahoo.com to the account, and that happens to be Schmidt’s personal email address too. (thanks, Stephen!)

One thing is for sure: unlike on Twitter, Schmidt did not obtain a nice vanity URL for himself (facebook.com/ericschmidt has already been taken by someone else) and his profile picture paints a picture of a soft-spoken man in casual clothing rather than that of a bad-ass.

So do you think this is legit or not? And more importantly, are you going to try and befriend him so you can poke him all day?

(Thanks to @RomilPatel for the tip)

Here’s an interesting fact, if you really stretch the definition of the word “interesting.” Team CrunchGear often used the Novatel MiFi during CES to bring you all that great content. The concept is simple: it takes a 3G signal and then outputs that signal via Wi-Fi. You then connect to the Wi-Fi network.

See more here: 
Netgear & Ericsson team up, concoct MBRN3300 3G router

As any good Android-obsessed geek should know by now, Google’s made a tradition out of alphabetically naming their firmware builds after sweets. Android 1.5 was “Cupcake”, v1.6 was “Donut”, v2.0 is “Eclair”, while the next release will be lovingly dubbed “Froyo”.

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Android update after next likely to be codenamed “Gingerbread”

As he came into the window It was the sound of a Crescendo He came into her apartment He left this stupid Michael Jackson glove watch for freaking $149 (act now and get a stupid free glove) on the carpet She ran Underneath the Table He could see she was unable So she ran into The bedroom She was struck Down It was her doom. Ulli are you OK, are you OK Ulli

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The White Glove watch: The dumbest thing you’ll see all day

Review: Ceramic Speakers by Joey Roth Spider-Man 4 gets a director: Marc Webb, from (500) Days of Summer Water oven makes slow cookin’ that roast a breeze Clamshell home projector cheap, probably of poor quality Sony Ericsson Kurara accidentally announced early, now known as “Vivaz”

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Daily Crunch: Spider-Squid Edition

Do you ever find yourself firing caviar cannonballs from your yacht, thinking “Man.

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Xperia Pureness now available for those with too much money, not enough sense