Saturday, January 30, 2010
AT and T eyes wireless in auto, tracking devices
Company expects to offer GPS devices that track items, people and pets
By Sinead Carew
updated 12:05 p.m. ET Jan. 6, 2010
LAS VEGAS - AT&T Inc wants to add wireless links to car entertainment systems and consumer devices to keep track of everything from parcels to wandering children, according to a top company executive.
Glenn Lurie, AT&T's head of emerging devices, has been working to expand the company's mobile service beyond phones, forging deals to add wireless services to almost 20 consumer devices, such as e-readers, mini-computers and digital photo frames.
Thanks to a host of forthcoming gadgets, the business could bring in as much as $1 billion in annual revenue over the next few years, Lurie told Reuters ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.The trick is to find ways to keep growing even as the vast majority of the U.S. population already own cell phones. That means more devices. In the next few years, Lurie said, there could be as many as three wirelessly connected devices for every person in the United States.
So far AT&T has deals with personal navigation device makers and several e-reader vendors, including Kindle supplier Amazon.com and bookseller Barnes & Noble. Lurie said he sees more business from the next generation of existing product categories this year.
The executive also expects 2010 to bring a host of new location-aware devices — ones that use global positioning systems (GPS) to track an item, a person or a pet. A wireless connection then informs the device owner of its location.
"There's going to be more and more there in terms of anything you want to track, whether it's a parcel or a container or a kid," Lurie said.
He noted that tracking devices, while affordable for businesses, were still expensive for most consumers but noted that prices would come down.
"This is probably a second half of 2010 thing," he said.
Lurie also expects to branch into automotive technologies this year by connecting systems such as entertainment services for back-seat passengers and car safety systems for drivers.
He also aims to connect health related devices including fitness-aids and dieting reminders.
Wireless tether designed to prevent lost phones
Device connects via Bluetooth, sets off an alarm if you walk away from it
 | A ZOMM that uses Bluetooth technology. |
Paul Sakuma / AP |
updated 11:38 a.m. ET Jan. 6, 2010
LAS VEGAS - Losing your cell phone can be exasperating and expensive. But what if your phone could call out to you, letting you know it was about to be left behind?
Zomm, a newly minted consumer electronics company from Tulsa, Oklahoma, believes this would cut down on disappearing handsets. At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, the company showed off a small device that does just that.
The company's device, also called Zomm, connects wirelessly with your phone via Bluetooth and sets off an alarm if you walk away from it
The Zomm, which is about the size of an Oreo cookie, also includes a personal alarm that users can activate and a button that will call emergency services with your phone. It acts as a speakerphone and alerts users of incoming calls as well.Big Government's Andrew Breitbart denies, then confirms, direct connection to James O'Keefe
The product includes a rechargeable battery that can last for three days per charge and is expected to be available this summer for $80.
Laurie Penix, co-founder and president of Zomm, came up with the idea for the gadget earlier this year after a friend's husband lost his third iPhone. She started the company with her husband, Henry Penix, who is also its CEO
Read Latest Cricket News Match Updates
iqbal Qasim, Pakistan`s chief selector, has said `major surgery` is required on the country`s
ODI outfit after they slumped to their fourth straight defeat in the five-match series against
Australia. The reverse against the world champions comes on the back of a one-day series loss
to New Zealand, and Pakistan have now been defeated in eight of their previous nine matches.
"No one can defend the team`s pathetic performance in Australia and obviously a major
surgery is the need of the time," Qasim told the Dawn. "But it is not appropriate to initiate the
process during a series; so let them get free from the tour."
Mobile digital TV for the small screen
Soon, over-the-air television just about anywhere you go
 | LG's first mobile digital TV, with an integrated DVD player (DP570MH), will be available later this year for $249. It comes with two sets of earphone jacks so that more than one passenger can watch TV or movies in the back seat of a car, or on a train. |
LG Electronics |
By Suzanne Choney
msnbc.com
updated 8:54 a.m. ET Jan. 5, 2010
Now that most of us have our digital big-screens TVs, it's time to go the other direction: Mobile digital TV means small is beautiful, and maybe more importantly, ready to go when and where you do.
You may wind up watching it on a 7-inch dedicated screen, like the one LG Electronics will exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. Or, you might do your viewing on a netbook, like the 10.1-inch screen Mini 10 netbook with a built-in mobile DTV receiver that Dell demonstrates Tuesday at CES, which should be available by the holiday season.
There's also a nifty device known as Tivit, already used in Japan and the size of a deck cards, that is as a wireless TV receiver for smartphones with Wi-Fi, such as the iPhone (as well as the iPod Touch) and certain models of BlackBerrys. It will cost around $120, and is due out this spring.Other ways of getting mobile DTV will include USB mobile DTV laptop receivers, or dongles, that plug into laptop computers, much like dongles for wireless mice or flash drives. They should be available this spring, as well, with prices ranging from $90 to $125.
A place in the car
Cars, too, are another place where mobile DTV may find a home, with DVD players already having a back seat presence.
"The automotive industry is extremely interested in this service, because it’s easy for them to add a receiver chip to the screens, and if consumers can get this basic level of service for free, that makes it really easy for manufacturers to implement," said Anne Schell, executive director of the Open Mobile Video Coalition.
Free? Yes. Local TV stations plan to deliver live, digital broadcasts. Will for-pay and on-demand TV be added? Probably, but not at first. The coalition represents owners and operators of more than 800 television stations around the country. During the first quarter of this year, 70 stations plan to be on the air, with more to come.
"While one of the great opportunities is to give consumers the shows they get now, we’re building the standard of the signal in such a way that we can have a return path to be able to allow for targeted advertising, where everybody involved in the ecosystem can really take part in broadcasting in a more innovative way," said Dave Lougee, president of Gannett’s broadcasting division, which has 22 TV stations around the country.
The cost of providing mobile DTV is "relatively small," Lougee said, more of an add-on to the investments that were already made with the nation's transition to digital television last June.
Another avenue for viewers
Within waning broadcast ratings, as more consumers turn to their laptops to watch TV shows on the Web, mobile DTV offers an additional audience for broadcasters who believe consumers will see it as yet one more avenue to watch TV on their own terms.
"Obviously, we have an expectation today that if we’re reading anything that's text-based — an e-mail or a book — we can do that now wherever we are. I think the consumer is going to have the same expectation around their favorite television programming," Lougee said.
Among the cities where mobile DTV initially will be available: Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Dallas.
"I think 2010 will be the year when things really get going, in terms of what the broadcasters are looking to offer," said Michelle Abraham, In-Stat principal analyst who covers mobile television.
For Dell, netbooks with mobile DTV "is a natural progression," as it already offers netbooks with TV tuners, said James Clardy, Dell's technology strategist for mobile consumer products. The company also offers netbooks with TV in Japan, Brazil and China, with receivers that meet those country's technical standards.
"We’re quite happy with the robustness of the mobile DTV signal in the United States, and believe it will catch up to the point that our other global customers are enjoying already. Dell is very committed to mobile TV as a peripheral product."
The mobile DTV receiver in Dell's netbook will be built into the LCD panel, and there will be a small external antenna to use as well.
During CES, several broadcasters will demonstrate mobile DTV, including the News Corp., Sinclair Broadcast Group, Discovery Communication and NBC Universal. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
The capital investment by broadcasters to provide mobile DTV is not onerous, Schell said; they basically need to add what is known as a Mobile DTV exciter, as well as signal encoding equipment, onto already existing transmission systems.
LG Electronics, a co-developer of the Mobile DTV standard, has made the first battery-operated mobile DTV in the United States, the combo TV and DVD player.
Urdu Column – Hamid Mir – Foreign Intervention – Ghair-mulki Madakhlat
Hamid Mir
Daily Jang
September 07, 2009
Hamid Mir is a senior journalist, critic, television anchor and editor. He is a terrorism expert and security analyst who regularly participates in international conferences. He is also known for his columns in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, and English newspapers and hosts a popular political talk show on Geo TV with the name of Capital Talk. He was banned from TV by the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf in 2007. He was again banned by the Zardari-led PPP government in June 2008. He is a popular but very controversial journalist in Pakistan.
Anti-Americanism Rises in Pakistan Over U.S. Motives
By Saeed Shah
McClatchy Newspapers
September 07, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For weeks now, the Pakistani media have portrayed America, its military and defense contractors in the darkest of lights, all part of an apparent campaign of anti-American vilification that is sweeping the country and, according to some, is putting American lives at risk.
Pakistanis are reacting to what many here see as an “imperial” American presence, echoing Iraq and Afghanistan, with Washington dictating to the Pakistani military and the government. Polls show that Pakistanis regard the U.S., formally a close ally and the country’s biggest donor, as a hostile power.
U.S. officials have either denied the allegations or moved to blunt the criticism, but suspicions remain and relations between the two countries are getting more strained.
The lively Pakistani media has been filled with stories of under-cover American agents operating in the country, tales of a huge contingent of U.S. Marines planned to be stationed at the embassy, and reports of Blackwater private security personnel running amuck. Armed Americans have supposedly harassed and terrified residents and police officers in Islamabad and Peshawar, according to local press reports.
Much of the hysteria was based on a near $1 billion plan, revealed by McClatchy in May and confirmed by U.S. officials, to massively increase the size of the American embassy in Islamabad, which brought home to Pakistanis that the United States plans an extensive and long-term presence in the country.
The American mission in Islamabad was forced to put on three briefings for Pakistani journalists in August trying to dampen the highly charged stories, which could undermine US-Pakistani relations just as Washington is preparing to finalize a tripling of civilian aid to Islamabad, to $1.5 billion a year. Over this last weekend, an embassy spokesman had to deny suddenly renewed stories that the U.S. was behind the mysterious death of former military dictator General Zia ul Haq back in 1988.
Pakistan is a key priority for the United States because of its nuclear weapons and its potential usefulness in taking on al Qaida within its borders and ending the safe haven for the Afghan Taliban.
“I think this recent brouhaha over the embassy expansion has been difficult to beat back,” said Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador, in an interview Thursday. “I can’t really understand what’s behind this because what we’re doing is actually quite straightforward. We’ve tried to explain it carefully to the press, but it just seems to be taken over by conspiracy theories.“
Briefing Pakistani journalists last month, Patterson told them that there were only nine Marines stationed to guard the embassy in Islamabad and that, even after the expansion, their number would be no more than 15 to 20. Press reports had put the figure at 350 to 1,000 Marines. She also stated categorically “Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan”. But the stories refused to go away.
Patterson said she wrote last week to the owner of Pakistan’s biggest media group, Jang, to protest about the content of two talk shows on its Geo TV channel, hosted by star anchors Hamid Mir and Kamran Khan, and a newspaper column of influential analyst Shireen Mazari in The News, a daily, complaining that they were “wildly incorrect” and had compromised the security of Americans.
There are 250 American citizens posted at the Islamabad mission on longer-term contracts, plus another 200 on shorter assignments, the embassy said. The present embassy compound can accommodate only a fraction of them. According to independent estimates, there are some 200 private houses for U.S. officials, on regular streets located throughout upscale districts of Islamabad.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Today`s Weather And Currency Rates
Skype to offer HD video calls on some new TVs
Plus, Skype PC users will soon be able to make 720p high-def video calls
By Rachel Metz
updated 6:33 p.m. ET Jan. 5, 2010
LAS VEGAS - Skype's voice and video calling technology will be embedded in upcoming high-definition televisions with Internet capabilities.
Skype said Tuesday that its Internet phone service will be included in Panasonic's 2010 VIERA CAST-enabled HD TVs and LG's new LCD and plasma HD TVs with NetCast Entertainment Access. The televisions are expected to be available in the middle of the year.
LG and Panasonic will sell webcams that support the 720p high-definition format and are meant for making video calls with the televisions.
Skype, which eBay Inc. sold to an investor group in November, offers free voice and video calls to other Skype users, and charges for calls to cell or landline phones.
Skype also said that consumers who use Skype on their personal computers will soon be able to make 720p high-definition video calls.
Partisans Coming (Back) Out of the Closet to Spew Typical Drive-By Rhetoric: Thoughtfulness Takes a Backseat to Smug
Scott Brown is the New Coakley: Catch the Wave
Those users must have a high-speed Internet connection, one of several soon-to-be-released webcams, a computer with a 1.8 GHz dual-core processor and Skype 4.2 Beta for Windows, the company said. Skype did not indicate if and when Mac support would be available.
Skype said upcoming webcams from faceVision and In Store Solutions, which are slated to be released in February and March, respectively, will support the video calls
Can Pakistan resist Pax Americana? Declaring America A Hostile State
When it is said to them: “Make not mischief on the Earth,” they say: “Why, we only want to make peace!” Holy Qur’an 2:11
By Atif F. Qureshi
Editorial Team, PKKH
September 01, 2009
Wherever the Americans go, their policies spread poison. Under the pretext of ‘freedom and democracy’ US policy-makers trample over weaker nations, placing and replacing puppet rulers on a whim and propagandizing against all aspirations for true independence. (Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrown is a must book to read in this context).
With total control of global media, and their weapons of mass distraction, they are able to crush resistance at the very root – before it even forms in the mind. Just as Noam Chomsky said: “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged”.
Yet in spite of the ‘fasad-fil-ardh’ (chaos on earth) that America has unleashed around the world, we still see an unseemly obsession with all things American. Suffering from a mass psychosis akin to Stockholm-syndrome, even nations traumatized and brutalized by America see only America as possible salvation. Clearly, American propagandists have done their work well.
Not in Pakistan. In what can only be described as a clear and hopeful sign that this nation is awakening, recent polls have revealed that the Pakistani public categorically denounces American policies. A recently conducted poll by a leading Pakistani blog PKKH revealed that 89% of over 1,000 participants were of the opinion that the United States should be declared as a hostile state.
This only reinforces another scientifically conducted poll (shared on Haqeeqat.Org on August 10th) conducted by the Al-Jazeera network- in association with Gallup Pakistan; an affiliate of the Gallup International polling group, and more than 2,600 people took part- that found that over 70% of Pakistanis held America to be the greatest threat to the sovereignty and independence of Pakistan – even greater than arch-rival and eternal enemy India.
So great is this a problem for the Americans that when their Generals in the region are quizzed by journalists, they are more likely to be asked about the ‘battle for hearts and minds’ rather than actual battles. But in spite of the feigned concern in Washington, the widespread anti-Americanism is not too great a concern for US policymakers. After all, as far as the US is concerned, only Pakistan’s puppet leaders need be pro-US – the rest of Pakistan can go to hell. But in this lies the problem for the US. As the farcical reality of Pakistan’s democracy is becoming increasingly clear to the public at large, they are turning their ire not just on their puppet leaders, but on their foreign puppet-masters. And this does not bode well for US’s future plans for the region.
This anti-US mood in Pakistan is nothing new. It is a mode of thought that is familiar to most Pakistanis – and with good reason. US-Pak relations have always been fractious – not based on mutual trust and respect but on mutual suspicion and necessity. Every Pakistani, from street sweeper to industrialist, knows of the infamous incident in the early 1990’s when the US failed to deliver to Pakistan dozens of F16 fighter jets that Pakistan had already paid for – and not content with humiliating a proud nation enough, in a final salvo, they instead delivered of all things – wheat. The Pakistani public were not impressed to say the least.
But that is old hat. More recently, America has committed a litany of errors that can only lead an objective person to conclude that not only does the US not have Pakistan’s interest to heart, but they are only interested in marginalizing and destabilizing Pakistan through any means possible. The Pakistani people are not blind. They see the chicanery clearly:
The ’surge’ in American troops in Afghanistan accompanied a ’surge’ in terrorism in Pakistan. While the Afghan Taliban never threatened Pakistani sovereignty, since 2001 thousands of innocents have been killed in a wave of suicide bombings in Pakistan that ‘coincidently’, only began after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001.
The deliberate spread of the Afghan occupation into Pakistan and the treatment of both nations as a single theatre or ‘battlefield’ called AfPak. The notion that both nations are to be treated the same even though one is war-torn and primitive while the other has a sophisticated civic society is laughable, but the idea that American forces can strike into Pakistan with impunity is enough to make the average Pakistani’s blood boil.
Wave after wave of callous and imprecise drone attacks. These achieve practically nothing while only murdering innocent civilians and riling up the Pakistani public who despair at their feckless government for being complicit in continual violations of the nations sovereignty and dignity.
Since 2001 the US has turned a blind eye towards Indian Intelligence operations from inside Afghanistan designed to destabilize Pakistan. According to a report published in September 2008 by Brig (R) Asif Haroon Raja, India has 14 consulates in Afghanistan from which RAW is operating. In Wakhan, Badakshan province, RAW is operating a madarssah, where clerics from India are brainwashing local Afghans, Uzbeks and Tajiks. Their students are then infiltrated into Pakistan where they readily carry out suicide missions and other operations. This blatant infiltration into Afghanistan by the Indian intelligence apparatus has provided safe haven from which Indian agents attack and destabilize Pakistan’s tribal areas and NWFP. In another recent report from Foreign Affairs magazine, by Christine Fair of RAND Corporation gives us the inside: “Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar, Afghanistan (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar–across from Bajaur (Pakistan’s Tribal Area where Pakistan Army had to carry out a major operation to eliminate TTP militants).
The continual barking by American officials for Pakistan to “DO MORE!” in spite of the fact that no nation has done or sacrificed more to combat terrorism in its own self-interest. The number of soldiers martyred, treasure spent and tears of widows and orphans shed is testimony to the truth that those who claim that Pakistan is half-hearted in this effort are liars.
The CIA-sponsored democratic farce whereby American engineered its puppets to seize the reigns in Pakistan’s recent elections. For those who still deny that the Pakistani elections were engineered, think for a moment how is it possible that the most corrupt and despised man in Pakistan’s entire history, Asif Zardari would become the president of Pakistan if the elections were truly and fairly democratic?
Even though our ‘popularly elected’ politicians are in the pocket of the Americans, they remain frustrated that certain institutions in Pakistan remain out of their reach. The black propaganda targeting Pakistan’s patriotic armed forces, intelligence services and nuclear weapons arsenal reveals their obvious intent. Well-aware that these are the only institutions that truly have Pakistan’s interests to heart, the public do not appreciate the Am-Brit campaign to malign them.
The so-called Indo-US civilian nuclear deal that makes a blatant mockery of the non-proliferation accords, rewarding Indian intransigence and arrogance at the expense of Pakistan’s national security.
The exposure of blatant double-standards is evident as America turns on the weapons tap for India, whom it wishes to turn into its 21st century ’slave soldier’ in order to counter China, while Pakistani officials are left dangling and must debase and humiliate themselves in order to ensure the delivery of a trifling number of F-16’s and helicopters to fight the same enemies that America is sponsoring.
The shielding, protection and nurturing of anti-Pakistan insurgent groups on Pakistani soil by the CIA. The so-called ‘Baluchistan Liberation Army’ (Read: Finding Clarity in the Baluchistan Conundrum, by Talha Mujaddidi ) and ‘Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’ are only a few of many. All these groups base their insidious operations from inside Afghanistan – which is occupied by the US.
In spite of their indirect control over our media, America will never win the ‘battle of hearts and minds’ in Pakistan. Even though the rise of the so-called ‘free media’ in Pakistan has brought to the fore a variety rentashills and rentagobs, self proclaimed pseudo-intellectuals who solemnly insist that Pakistan cannot resist Pax Americana (Pox Americana would be more appropriate), the people are not so gullible as to believe it. They see the example of Iran and Venezuala, which although not ideal states by any means, at least demonstrate that those who resist American hegemony can still survive and even prosper.
Where there are pockets of resistance, this only demonstrates the existence of an honourable people who are not prepared to compromise on their dignity. The recent polling is cause for great hope. It proves what was never in doubt – the Pakistani population will not stand for these US violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty and national interest for much longer.
We know that we fear Allah more than we fear America, but the nation must now realise another profound truth – salvation does not lie in continued cooperation and debasement in front of America, but only in faith in Allah and is His Messenger (SAW). It is time for this nation to throw off its shackles and re-declare its independence.
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