Samsung announced Monday that it has made a breakthrough in developing technology for a fifth-generation mobile network. It has found a way to use higher frequency millimeter-wave Ka bands, allowing massive amounts of data to be transmitted at faster speeds. Samsung has developed the world's first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the Ka bands, it claimed. Many mobile smartphone users are still making the transition from 3G to 4G, but it will likely take several years to bring 5G networks online.[More...]
China has been having a good go at Apple lately, having slammed the company in March for substandard post-sale service and quickly following that up with charges of copyright infringement. The latest accusation: tax evasion. Oh, and pornography. Apple's online stores in China reportedly are not paying proper import taxes for software sold to Chinese customers.[More...]
Willie Sutton once said that he robbed banks because that's where the money was. If Sutton were living today, he might have made the career move to hacker. That would allow him to do what he liked to do best -- steal money -- on a global scale, which is what a ring of bank robbing hackers have been doing. Eight of the alleged cybercrooks were arrested in the U.S. last week.[More...]
I've been focused on and off on turnarounds since I covered IBM's from the inside out in the 1990s, so I don't know how I missed this, but EMC2's turnaround was clearly a success, and its unique resulting organizational structure is incredibly subtle. The company is actually far more similar in breadth to HP than most folks realize, largely because they mix up EMC and EMC2.[More...]
As more airlines begin to offer WiFi, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is proposing to increase the bandwidth available for inflight wireless broadband. The FCC is essentially basing its proposal on Qualcomm's submission to the government from July 2011. This raises the question of whether the FCC is perhaps too closely tied to one company in this area.[More...]
Amazon is rumored to be developing two high-end smartphones, as well as an audio-streaming device, broadening its range of branded hardware products well beyond its current Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets and its expected -- though as yet unconfirmed -- TV set-top box. The big surprise in the latest rumor is that one of the smartphones might actually support 3D video.[More...]
In what is believed to be one of the biggest robberies ever executed, cyberthieves stole nearly $50 million from a pair of Middle Eastern banks. Far from bullying their way into vaults, members of this crime ring reportedly hacked into credit card processing firms and withdrew money from ATMs in 27 different countries.[More...]
Peruse any big consumer electronics box-store aisles, and you can't help but notice a new style of peripherals hugging the displays. App-driven devices are appearing on store shelves that let homeowners manage and monitor home systems like thermostats and security using a smartphone or a tablet. There are sensors, styluses and add-ons. Later this year, we'll likely see a plethora of smartwatches.[More...]
Time, Inc., together with Google, the U.S. Geological Survey and Carnegie Mellon University's Create Lab, on Thursday launched a website featuring timelapse animations depicting changes in Earth's surface from 1984 to 2012. The animations are based on satellite images collected as part of the Landsat program, conducted jointly by the USGS and NASA since 1972.[More...]
The war for gamers is heating up with BlueStacks' introduction of GamePop, a system that will allow users to play thousands of mobile gaming apps on a TV screen. The GamePop custom console and game controller are being offered free through the end of May to subscribers who sign up for the $6.99 per month service. Gamers can preorder the system now, with the console expected to ship in the winter.[More...]
Ren Zhengfei, the founder and CEO of Huawei Technologies, spoke to the media for the first time on Thursday. Ren, formerly a member of the Chinese military, has been the focal point of Western skepticism toward Huawei -- which resulted in the company being barred from a broadband project in Australia, as well as being labeled as untrustworthy in a U.S. House Intelligence report.[More...]
Content aggregation site Klout has expanded its partnership with Microsoft to provide Bing users with access to answers from Klout experts. The site, which pulls data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Blogger and other sources, rates an individual's influence, based on a 100-point scale. Klout seeks out those who have real clout -- that is, who are influential about certain topics.[More...]
There are ways to stop spam, but what do you do about bogus email -- that is, email that appears legitimate but isn't? Fake emails are sent by criminals in order to get your money, or to take advantage of your computer's processing power and Internet connection to launch Web-clogging Denial of Service attacks on other networks.[More...]
Nokia has created a video that shows off the PureView camera in its upcoming Lumia 928 handset and more importantly show how it compares to two of its rivals. The video highlights how the new Lumia 928's 8.7 megapixel camera fares better in low light, and how the optical image stabilization can handle fast movements.[More...]
YouTube viewers curious about what other users are watching across the country can now find out, thanks to a new feature from the streaming video site that displays data about what is being shared and viewed throughout the U.S. The new YouTube Trends Map, which made its debut this week, is an interactive graphic map of the country that displays which videos are the most popular.[More...]