VR World » Wireless

Consumers Want In-Vehicle Wireless Broadband

Darleen Hartley — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 18:39:22 +0000

The results are in: consumers want their car to be a wireless hotspot.

That’s according to a new survey by market research group Compass Intelligence.

Compass Intelligence received responses from 1,320 vehicle and smartphone owners to create a profile of what drivers wanted. Surprisingly, having entertainment DVD systems in the car was of little interest. Younger and younger children are becoming more and more computer savvy. Most have their own or access to their parent’s tablets or phones for diversion while riding around town or across the country.

Social media feeds didn’t rank as a top requirement either. Text messaging and email from within the car has lost favor. Traffic laws and the push to warn against accidents caused while texting may have had an impact.

The connected car was a big item at CES 2014.

What did get high points from end users were maintenance and predictive analytics, i.e., how is my car performing, is it safe.

Keith Robinson, Sr. Strategist at Compass Intelligence said: “This is an untapped opportunity for companies that participate in the in-vehicle wireless broadband market.”

The statistics read like this: 66% of those responding to the survey said they want a system that detects when parts are malfunctioning before a complete breakdown. Half of the people want their system to tell them when preventative maintenance is due. Drivers who are on the road frequently want to get real-time traffic updates – 60% of respondents want to know where the traffic jams or accidents are so they can take alternative routes.

Much of what is driving opinions is a view of insurance rates. The survey found that people are willing to pay for a service that provides usage-based information that affects insurance rates in an effort to reduce their premiums.

Broken down by generation, baby boomers rated these services as of high importance. Millennials are the most likely individuals to buy vehicles that are equipped with in-car wireless broadband solutions.

The connected vehicle survey of consumers was part of the Mobility & Wireless Research Track at Compass Intelligence. The company is a market analytics and consulting firm, specializing in strategy acceleration and insights for the high-tech and telecom industries. It supplies end-user behavior and purchasing pattern data to vendors hoping to get a jump on future trends. You can order the entire report or others for a fee.

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San Diego Carriers Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile Tied in Performance

Anshel Sag — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 03:38:27 +0000

According to Roometrics’ latest data for the second half of 2014, if you are a customer of AT&T (NYSE: T), T-Mobile (NYSE: TMUS) or Verizon (NYSE: VZ) you are going to get about exactly the same experience. However, if you go with Sprint (NYSE: S), you will suffer some performance or coverage issues. That means, when you compare AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile you can do so knowing that your experience will essentially be around the same in San Diego and that you can buy based on value rather than ‘marketing’ from the carriers.

Traditionally, Verizon and AT&T are the most expensive, with T-Mobile coming in much cheaper, so if you are considering a new phone, you should probably look at T-Mobile before renewing your contract with AT&T and Verizon. Especially if you consider the fact that T-Mobile’s phone selection is just as good as or better than both Verizon and AT&T, even though AT&T does have a lot of exclusives. AT&T’s exclusives, however, can easily be purchased outright and get an unlock code and then you can activate it on T-Mobile. And if you’re happy with your phone and your contract is up on AT&T, you can very likely switch to T-Mobile without any issues and probably save $20-$30 a month, minimum and regain unlimited data, which AT&T doesn’t have.

Unfortunately for Sprint, they seriously lagged in reliability and data performance, which are the two major factors of why their score is so much lower than the rest of the carriers. Even though, if you looked at the scores of all four San Diego carriers you would realize that there really isn’t that much of a difference, even if you add Sprint. But, if you look at the observed data speeds from some of the carriers, there are some significant differences. Perhaps Rootmetrics’ Rootscore needs to re-weight certain factors like download speed more heavily over call quality, etc.

Rootmetrics measures their ‘coverage’ as a factor of reliability and speed, with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile tying for reliability and Verizon and AT&T coming in as tied for speed, even though the difference between the three scores is 0.4 out of 100, or less than 1%. It makes you wonder why this wouldn’t be considered a three-way tie. Especially when you look at the differences in speeds.

According to Rootmetrics’ testing AT&T’s median download speed increased from 12.1 to 14.3 Mbps since the march testing. Sprint’s median download speed decreased from 7.5 Mbps to 5.2 Mbps and their upload suffered a drop from 3.2 to 1.1 Mbps, a very poor showing. T-Mobile’s median download speed also decreased from 17.3 Mbps to 15.3 Mbps, but still came in higher than AT&T’s. Curiously enough, Rootmetrics had Verizon win the Data RootScore award for the second consecutive time with the fastest median download speed of 18.4 Mbps while T-Mobile recorded the fastest median upload speed of 15.1 Mbps. This is where it gets interesting. If T-Mobile has the fastest upload speeds and the second fastest download speeds, why would they be ranked below AT&T in the Rootmetrics Speed Index? We will reach out to Rootmetrics to understand exactly what this means for San Diego carriers because it simply doesn’t make sense at AT&T would have a higher score than T-Mobile if T-Mobile actually has faster speeds for both upload and download.

Here are some of their scores, including data performance which varies from their ‘speed index’ every so slightly and somehow puts AT&T above T-Mobile even though T-Mobile has faster speeds according to their own tests. Either way, call performance is essentially the same and so is text performance even though T-Mobile and Verizon slightly edge out AT&T and Sprint.

What we can conclude from all of this, even with a few slight irregularities is that T-Mobile is still the best value in San Diego and Sprint is still the slowest in almost every measurement.

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Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI : The Start Of A HTPC

VR World Staff — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 00:58:44 +0000

When considering a new HTPC build a lot should be taken into account, and a big part of that should be the motherboard, If size is to be kept to a minimum then the obvious choice for a motherboard is a Mini-ITX form factor board. If it should be power efficient then the AMD APU lineup is a good starting place since it has decent GPU and CPU power. Choosing something that fits both of those criteria will mean that a A88X Mini-ITX board is likely on the list. This Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI will fit the bill nicely since it has a lot of features that a user will want when building a HTPC and not a lot of unnecessary fluff filling up the already cramped board.

The HTPC is a great option for those who have a lot of media that they have accumulated over the years and want to watch on a tv or home cinema. There are plenty of large HTPC builds that users can do with a simple ATX sized board and a big case. But for those looking for something a bit smaller that will look great next to the tv or in the home cinema the Mini-ITX solutions are often the best. They will be compact builds and many of the HTPC cases for them look great and will blend right in with current components that users may have or will be getting.

Overview

Gigabyte is a well known and trusted brand and its boards are many peoples first choice when it comes to picking a new motherboard. They have a couple different choices of A88X Mini-ITX boards. The only current AMD chipset Mini-ITX boards that you can find on sites like Newegg are the A88X boards. So they made sure that people have a few choices in that small segment, which is great for selecting a board that will suit your needs. This board sits at the top of the lineup and it comes packaged with a dual band 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 add-in card. This means that the board is up to date with the speediest Wi-Fi standard available, and will be able to operate at speeds of up to 867Mbps.

The board offers a few features to enhance this board. The board has Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable 4 Plus, meaning that the board is built with good quality components that should stand up to stress that may come from certain setups. The board also uses all solid capacitors and Low RDS(on) MOSFETs which will work at higher temperatures and have longer lifespans. This board also features DualBIOS which means that users will have a second BIOS to fall back on if the first one has issues, such as a failed BIOS flash. Humidity Protection, Power Failure Protection, and Electrostatic Protection are all in the board as well. Also on the board is ESD protection for USB and LAN, as well as one fuse per USB 3.0 porst.

AMD Eyefinity technology is available for those who choose to use this as a small desktop build with multiple monitors. This board also has two HDMI ports instead of having multiple different options. With using a qualified AMD APU and GPU that have Dual Graphics technology the board will use both the discrete GPU and the APU to deliver better graphics performance. 4K Ultra HD support is there right out of the box as well via HDMI ports.

Specifications:

Model: GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN-WIFI
CPUs: FM2+ / FM2 Athlon/A- Series
Chipset: AMD A88X (Bolton D4)
Memory: 2×240pin Dual Channel DDR3 2133/1866/1600/1333
Maximum Memory Supported: 64GB
Expansion Slot: PCI Express 3.0 x16
Mini Card Slots: 1 x mini-PCI Express slot for the wireless module
SATA: 4 x SATA 6Gb/s
SATA RAID: 0/1/5/10/JBOD
Audio: Realtek ALC892 / 7.1 Channels
LAN: Realtek 10/100/1000Mbps
Wireless: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with Bluetooth 4.0, 3.0+HS, 2.1+EDR

Rear Panel Ports

1x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
1 x DVI-D
2 x HDMI
2 x USB 3.0
4 x USB 2.0
1 x Optical
5x Audio Ports

Internal I/O Connectors

2 x USB 3.0 + 2 x USB 2.0
1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
1 x 4-pin ATX 12V power connector
1 x APU fan header
1 x system fan header
1 x front panel header
1 x front panel audio header
1 x S/PDIF Out header
1 x Clear CMOS jumper
1 x chassis intrusion header

Physical Spec

Mini ITX
6.7″ x 6.7″
Power Pin: 24 Pin

Features

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 4 Plus Technology
IR Digital 4+2 phase APU power design
GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS
Support for @BIOS
Support for Q-Flash
Support for Xpress Install
Support for EasyTune
Support for Smart Recovery 2
Support for ON/OFF Charge
Support for Wi-Fi Share
Support for Cloud Station

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Keyssa's Kiss Connectivity Looks to Kill Connectors

Anshel Sag — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 02:22:06 +0000

Keyssa, a company that has been in stealth mode for the past few years has finally come out with their new revolutionary technology that utilizes EHF 60 GHz wireless connectivity to transmit a whole host of connectivity standards without using any cables or connectors. The Kiss Connectivity, as Keyssa is calling it, is essentially a very short range wireless connectivity standard designed to allow someone to touch two devices together and to transfer data across them as if there were a connector or a cable between them.

This is not designed to replace wireless standards like Wi-Fi, WiGig, Bluetooth, or NFC, but rather operate in parallel with those standards in order to deliver a connector-less device. However, this technology does operate at the same 60 GHz frequency as WiGig also known as 802.11ad and is capable of transmitting signals at or around the same speeds as WiGig’s theoretical maximum speeds. Keyssa states that Kiss Connectivity’s maximum throughput is 6 Gbit/s while WiGig’s is 7 Gbit/s but Keyssa has been very clear that they do not consider themselves another wireless protocol since they are designed to simply replace a connector.

In fact, Kiss Connectivity is capable of transmitting and passing through standards like USB 3.0, DisplayPort, SATA and even PCIe. Keyssa claims that Kiss Connectivity is incredibly secure because it is point to point and as such is not as open to devices outside of the close proximity that Kiss Connectivity requires. Kiss Connectivity is wireless, technology even though you could theoretically use it by touching, they have designed it to require 1cm of proximity for security purposes. What will be interesting is to see how well this technology works in practice and how it will be implemented in devices. After all, Qi wireless charging requires essentially direct contact and if there is any misalignment you could have problems. And judging by the fact that the Kiss Connectivity is touted as a very small solution, there are going to be some problems with alignment. Especially when you consider that Kiss Connectivity, like most radio technologies, cannot go through a metal case which means that you either have to have a plastic body or find a hole in your metal casing to transmit Kiss Connectivity.

Another interesting tidbit about the company is that if you look at the majority of their leadership team and a lot of the advisers, there are a lot of former Silicon Image employees. This is relevant because Silicon Image is one of the companies behind HDMI and MHL, two very prominent but proprietary technologies that require licensing in order to be used. There is no denying that the group of people that Keyssa has assembled are experienced and capable individuals and probably a very strong team. However, it must be acknowledged that Kiss Connectivity is still a proprietary technology and does not necessarily mean that you can get rid of a power connector on your device unless you go with something like Qi or Rezence and if you’re going to put a power connector on your device in the future it will very likely be a USB Type-C connector which also carries data and video. It remains to be seen if anyone is willing to build a fully wireless device, but there’s no doubt that Keyssa’s Kiss Connectivity is the technology that can enable that.

They’re also backed by Intel Capital and Samsung, which lends a bit more legitimacy to their technology even though both Samsung and Intel are already showing WiGig technologies for similar applications (not direct touch point to point). While Samsung and Intel aren’t necessarily showing the exact same technology, they are still harnessing 60 GHz to transfer large amounts of data, be it video or simply files. The end result, however, is the same.

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Qualcomm Misses Analyst Expectations, Weakens Outlook

Anshel Sag — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 21:26:31 +0000

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) reported their earnings for their fiscal fourth quarter of 2014, calendar Q3 2014 as well as the whole fiscal year of 2014 which ends in the calendar third quarter of every year. Qualcomm reported profits of $1.89 billion on $6.69 billion in revenue which boils down to an EPS of $1.11. Qualcomm’s revenues were up 3% year over year and down 2% from the last quarter, which worries some investors. Additionally, Qualcomm’s profit was up 26% year over year, but down 15% from the previous quarter.

However, Qualcomm’s quarterly figures missed on both revenue and non-GAAP EPS based on analysts’ expectations. Analysts had a consensus prediction of $1.31 EPS, which Qualcomm missed by $0.05 and they had a revenue target of $7.03 billion, and Qualcomm missed on that as well by $330 million.

Qualcomm also reported their results for the whole fiscal 2014 year, which showed the company as reporting $26.49 billion in revenue and a non-GAAP EPS of $5.27 while shippin 861 million MSM chips globally, an absolutely crazy number of SoCs. And if you take into account that

The primary problems that Qualcomm has right now is that they have a very strong position in the mobile market and are the leading SoC and baseband vendor for almost all of the leading smartphone vendors. In many regions, this has made Qualcomm very profitable and helped them grow to the $26 billion a year company that they are. They also managed to generate $8 billion in profit over the course of the last year, which is up from $6.8 billion in the previous fiscal year, a pretty significant improvement by any measure.

However, Qualcomm’s situation in China appears to be worsening rather than improving. They have plenty of products and IP that Chinese OEMs wish to utilize in their products, but are having a hard time getting them to properly license those technologies and pay for/accurately report how many Qualcomm licensed devices they are shipping and for how much. Additionally, Qualcomm is being probed by the Chinese government for the very reason that they are not Chinese and they are very present in the Chinese market. This very likely has to do with the fact that many large western companies have been probed in China recently and is a mere political move by the Chinese government to get more foreign technological investment.

Qualcomm’s outlook for the fiscal year of 2015 is what really drove Qualcomm’s stock downward today on yesterday’s news, with the company expecting revenues of $26.8 billion to $28.8 billion and an EPS of $5.05 to $5.35 which is below the consensus estimates of $28.9B and $5.58. The stock fell a whopping 8.5% today in regular trading after losing 6% in after hours trading yesterday and continues to lose ground into after hours trading, slipping an additional 2%. At the time of publication, Qualcomm’s stock is at $69.19 which is significantly lower than the $77 it was trading at before earnings were announced yesterday. As we learned in the case of Samsung, and now Qualcomm, nobody is invincible.

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Amazon Announces Amazon Echo

Anshel Sag — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:38:13 +0000

In preparation for the holiday season, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has launched a new Amazon branded hardware product called Amazon Echo. Amazon Echo is a wireless Bluetooth speaker that also happens to be voice-activated and allows for almost entirely hands-free operation. The Amazon Echo is aiming to be a mixture between a persistent Bluetooth speaker and a home-hub where the whole family can use it to do a whole host of things.

The interesting part is that Amazon Echo does not merely operate as just a speaker like most wireless bluetooth speakers, Amazon is trying to make it the hub of the home with the voice activated commands and searches. With Amazon Echo, you can ask it questions or play back media from your devices but you can also, obviously, add things to your Amazon cart. After all, it wouldn’t be an Amazon product if you didn’t have a way to buy things on Amazon with it.

And in order to hear you clearly from anywhere in the room and to accurately understand what you’ve said to Amazon Echo, the company has put a 7 microphone array on the Amazon Echo in order to maximize sensitivity and noise cancelling. They call this feature their far-field voice recognition, but the reality is that it is really designed to do some serious noise cancelling and through that you can virtually pickup any voice in the room no matter how bad the noise. Additionally, it uses hot words to wake the device so that it only activates when you want it too, much like Google Now. In fact, this really appears to be yet another product of Amazon’s that is squarely a direct competitor to something that Google is already doing and the company doesn’t seem ashamed or scared of it either.

The best part of the Amazon Echo for Prime users is that if you sign up for an invite right now, you can actually get $99 off the price of the Amazon Echo, which is actually the price of Amazon Prime itself, making buying Amazon Prime and one of these a no-brainer. If you’re thinking about buying the Amazon Echo and don’t already have Amazon Prime, just sign up for Amazon Prime and then buy the Amazon Echo, you will have effectively gotten Amazon Prime for free. One of the most pressing questions, however, is what search engine is Amazon using and whether they’ve developed their own search/knowledge engine and whether they plan to compete with Google in that field as well. After all, voice is now becoming one of the primary methods of search after simple text entry.

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Turn Your Phone Into a DSLR Remote With ShutterBOT

Anshel Sag — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 22:49:57 +0000

Typically, if you want to use your DSLR with a remote, you have to go out and buy some wireless remote that operates over RF or some other wireless communication protocol. There have been ways in the past to use attachments to your camera in conjunction with apps to remotely control your camera, but those all cost money. A new app called ShutterBOT DSLR Remote finally allows you to wirelessly take your smartphone and control your DSLR with it, without paying a penny. This free Android app allows you to once and for all control your DSLR with a smartphone app.

The great thing about having a DSLR Android camera app is that you have less equipment to carry around and you can take better long exposure photos without worrying about camera shake. The app itself supports a multitude of cameras and smartphones, but currently does not support the LG G2 even though it does have an IR blaster. The key for this free wireless camera app to work is that your phone has to have an IR blaster built into it, something that Apple’s phones simply don’t have. Thankfully, all three of the major Android smartphones launched this year, Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and LG G3 all have IR blasters built in for TV purposes but can also double as camera controllers.

The app itself is very simple and very well designed, and has three ways of taking a photo. First, you can simply take a picture by pressing the on-screen button, second you can choose to have a timer and third you can choose to use voice activated shutter, which is also how the developer is able to monetize the app. This is the only in-app purchase that the developer is currently making available, but there’s a good chance that new features may also come in the form of in-app purchases. Perhaps something like an intervalometer or some other features that cameras might lack internally.

As of right now, the app supports the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Tab 3 & Tab 4, S4 & S5, HTC One and One M8, and LG G3. No word on Galaxy Note 4 support yet, but that may already be functional. The app states that it supports Canon, Fuji, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, and Sony, so we’ll be testing this out for ourselves shortly. The developer states that this app is designed to replace the manufacturers’ own IR remotes, specifically Canon’s RC-1, RC-5, RC-6, Nikon’s ML-L3, and Olympus RM-1. Considering that this app is free and a Nikon ML-L3 goes for $18 on B&H Photo, this app is almost a no-brainer for any photographer looking to use a remote in their photos.

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Qualcomm to Acquire CSR

Sam Reynolds — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 07:03:22 +0000

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) has agreed to buy chip maker CSR (LON:CSR) for $2.5 billion, beating other semiconductor rivals to takeover the company which specializes in Bluetooth and digital signal processing (DSP) chips.

CSR, also known by its full name Cambridge Silicon Radio, has had a number of high-profile wins for its silicon including the Beats headset.

Qualcomm said that the acquisition would help strengthen its offerings in the burgeoning Internet of Things space as well as automotive infotainment.

“The addition of CSR’s technology leadership in Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart and audio processing will strengthen Qualcomm’s position in providing critical solutions that drive the rapid growth of the Internet of Everything, including business areas such as portable audio, automotive and wearable devices,” said Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm in a statement.

CSR was also being courted by Qualcomm rival Microchip Technology (NASDAQ: MCHP), but eventually rejected the offer as the price was not enough.

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Samsung Announces 60 Ghz 802.11ad WiGig Solution

Anshel Sag — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 19:23:49 +0000

The world of wireless communications is generally dominated by a few companies, with some of them being hardware suppliers and others being chip suppliers.

Qualcomm, Broadcom and Marvell are some of the leading chip suppliers of wireless technologies for both the home and smartphones while Samsung, Cisco, Apple and Dell provide much of the hardware for consumers and enterprise. Recently, Qualcomm acquired a company called Wilocity which has been producing 60 GHz (as opposed to 5 or 2.4 GHz) frequency Wi-Fi systems. This 60 GHz technology is known as WiGig and is part of the Wi-Fi standard with the 802.11ad name. If you look up 802.11ad, in fact, you will see that 60 GHz Wi-Fi is marketed as WiGig (there is a WiGig alliance) which Samsung is even a part of and the alliance has existed since 2009.

WiGig is an interesting technology because it allows for much higher bandwidth (in the Gigabits per second) over shorter areas. So, you can put your phone down on a desk and WiGig will enable you to wirelessly stream/connect your phone to your monitor and keyboard so that you can dock it wirelessly. In fact, Wilocity has already partnered with Cisco to introduce WiGig into their enterprise products and with Dell to integrate WiGig into their laptops. WiGig is also on its way to consumer product adoption as Qualcomm, who acquired Wilocity, has already announced that their Snapdragon 810 processor will have WiGig built in. And if anything, there’s a very high chance that Samsung’s mobile products next year will be using a Snapdragon 810 with Qualcomm/Wilocity’s WiGig 802.11 Wi-Fi technology.

Today’s announcement is about the fact that Samsung has developed their own 802.11ad solution and are pushing it as such, they claim to have made vast improvements to wireless communications through their implementation. The WiGig 60 GHz WiGig standard has been finalized since 2012 and was initiated in 2009 and has not changed wildly since, which makes Samsung’s announcement seem a bit overblown. Samsung has not really announced anything about WiGig or any development of WiGig publicly until today, years after WiGig had been introduced so they actually seem a bit behind the curve. It will be interesting to see which Samsung products will have WiGig and whether they’ve developed their own chipset or are simply utilizing one from Qualcomm or someone else.

Also, in terms of WiGig the problem with 802.11ad is that it is very susceptible to interference from dense objects like couches and people. So, this technology is primarily used for ‘line-of-sight’ data transfers and wireless connectivity. But it does significantly reduce the amount of interference between different wireless access points as 802.11ad will rarely leave the bounds of the room it is installed in.

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AT&T Might Owe You a Refund for Cramming

Anshel Sag — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 18:24:15 +0000

Remember when we reported that T-Mobile was reportedly fined by the FTC for ‘Cramming’? Cramming is/was an industry practice that revolves around trying to charge customers for services that either don’t exist or services that they simply never authorized. They sneakily will put these charges in people’s bills and most people never notice the increased charges or understand what they’re for.

Well, today, AT&T has settled with the FTC and FCC for doing the exact same thing, to the tune of $105 million, $80 million of which will have to go back to consumers in the forms of refunds. $20 million will be paid out to 50 states and $5 million will be paid to the FCC in the form of fines for violating FCC rules. The FTC will be handling the refunds for AT&T customers that were ‘crammed’ and when you consider that AT&T has 100 million customers, $80 million doesn’t actually sound like that much anymore. In fact, if you were to assume they’ve crammed on average every customer at least once, that’s less than $1 per customer in terms of refund and we all know that AT&T doesn’t cram people for a single dollar.

If you were a customer of AT&T any time between now and January 1st, 2009 (which probably was negotiated by AT&T as a start date) then you might be eligible for a refund from AT&T’s fund for this cramming behavior. AT&T claims that they ended such behavior in December of 2013, very likely after the FTC or FCC sent them a very nice letter informing them that they’d been found out and that consumers had complained. Cramming is a dirty practice and should have been punished more heavily than a $105 million fine. We still don’t know the outcome of T-Mobile’s cramming case, but John Legere lashed out at the FCC and FTC and claimed that these were the big carriers going after T-Mobile, which kind of makes his whole argument invalid since AT&T is one of the two ‘big carriers’.

To claim your refund, just head over to the FTC AT&T Refund page and file your claim by May 1st, 2015.

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Thoughts on Logitech’s Anywhere MX Mouse

Darleen Hartley — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 23:19:45 +0000

What makes this mouse unique is that it has what Logitech calls Darkfield Laser Tracking. This feature enables it to track on glass. How often someone mouses on their windshield is uncertain, however.
The mouse is advertised to work anywhere, on anything, and with anything. Anywhere MX works with old and new systems from Windows XP through Vista – if anyone is still using this failed operating system – to Windows 7, 8 and RT. Mac compatibility wasn’t overlooked in the design either. The Unifying receiver connects up to 6 compatible devices.

Logitech offers several wireless Unifying mouse choices from $29.99 to the top Performance MX at $99.99. They have eight Unifying keyboards in various configurations including solar powered, touch, and illuminated.

Anywhere MX mouse moves smoothly on this rubber-based cat – uh mouse – pad.

The mouse glides across my cat-n-mouse pad and the scroll wheel moves like silk rolling the image quickly and smoothly. Here, the documentation is helpful. The wheel works as a toggle, pressing it down changes the scrolling from a smooth rolling action to a slower, jerky page up/down movement. If you have good coordination, you can press the wheel left or right within the web page to scroll the screen in those directions. It is not necessary to position the cursor on the horizontal scroll bar to do so.

The left click button is solid and effective for selecting items from a list and positioning the cursor within a document. Right click immediately displays the appropriate menu listing. Navigating forward and back between web pages is controlled by buttons beneath your thumb if you run the mouse right handed. The buttons are slightly stiff, but you can apply appropriate pressure without interference from buttons on the opposite side of the mouse since there are none.

Symbols beside the scroll wheel and on the side buttons indicate directional movement.

A little green light on top of the mouse comes on when you set the Darkfield slider at the bottom of the mouse to On. There is also a button above the Darkfield label which led me to think they functioned in tandem. However, the identifier in the documentation indicates the Middle button’s function varies by application.

The back-to-back, single page of documentation provides mostly graphic images rather than text. For example, Item 1 points to what are described as left and right buttons. Item 7 indicates back and forward buttons. It obviously is assumed the user has mouse experience and knows what these left/right, back/forward buttons do. Yes, there are still people out there who are computer novices and could use a little more guidance. I suppose it could be argued that they shouldn’t buy a computer until they’ve attended a few classes, but who does?

The Anywhere MX package includes two AA batteries, however documentation which is written in four languages – English, French, Spanish and Portuguese – claims it runs on either one or two batteries.

Get the picture? Can’t get more concise than this.

Step 2 of the documentation has a great graphic that indicates you can slide the Darkfield button On or Off, but oddly, it doesn’t explain what the Darkfield function is. Don’t throw the box away. That’s where you’ll find the explanation which as I mentioned earlier says you can use the mouse on glass.

The graphic in Step 3 indicates where the USB is inserted into a laptop and contains the most information of any step. It tips Mac OS X users that if the Keyboard Setup Assistant appears they need to close the window.
Step 4 directs you to the Logitech website to download the most recent software and review other configurations and features. Finally they ask you to go to the “ithink” website to tell them, well, what you think.

If the mouse is not working, a very brief Troubleshooting paragraph asks: Is the mouse turned on? Yes, the fundamental first “duh” question asked by every support department. Maybe the problem is related to the USB port, maybe the battery is in upside down or the mouse is too near a metallic object. Other than those tips, you must go to their support website for help. Phone numbers for the US, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Latin America and Mexico are listed. We can only assume they are direct lines to the support department and not the corporate president.

I’ve always been happy with mice from Logitech, but the assumptions evident in the documentation only makes one wonder what other assumptions might have gone into its design and operation. We all know what ASS-U-ME stands for.

The Important Information, read CYA, insert is more comprehensive and in smaller print than the quick start instruction page. It warns of potential carpal tunnel damage from repetitive mousing, although it doesn’t mention the disability by name. Keep the mouse away from water and heat. Now isn’t this one piece of information they could assume the user would already be aware of?
Radiation is mentioned as a concern – BTW, did they ever decide if cell phones caused brain cancer or not? Misuse of or using the wrong batteries can be harmful to you and/or the device. You are warned to keep the batteries [and fireworks] out of the reach of children. Just how dumbed down has the general public become?

Oh, did I mention they warned of possible interference with your TV or radio? A couple paragraphs regarding compliance with FCC and International Standards for laser products rounds out the Important Information insert.

This mouse comes with a 3 year limited hardware warranty. That could be a good thing because several user comments around the web since 2009 indicated they needed to replace the Anywhere mouse or fix its left click button. The mouse received 3.5 out of 5 stars and 70 percent said they’d recommend the device. I haven’t had their latest version long enough to vouch for the viability of the model I received, but so far so good.

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RoboBee Could Save Mankind from Starvation

Darleen Hartley — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 04:13:51 +0000

Harvard University researchers are busy improving RoboBee, a substitute robotic method of pollination, because honey bees aren’t doing the job they used to. Bees that have always pollinated plants are disappearing. Without pollination, crops will also disappear leaving our dinner plates empty.

Many food producing plants depend on bees flitting from blossom to blossom collecting and depositing pollen which causes the plant to fruit. Without this transfer, there would be fewer crops to harvest. One third of what we eat, including apples, pumpkins, carrots, sunflowers, blueberries, avocados, and almonds need bees to survive.

Pesticides, disease and parasites have all been blamed for the bee’s demise, but scientists have had little luck determining exactly why the bees are dying. In the interim, creative people have sought alternative methods of doing the bee’s work, from hand pollinating to creating robotic insects to do the dusting.

People try to accomplish what bees have historically done – dusting each blossom with pollen.

In Sichuan China, thousands of villagers climb into their fruit trees to pollinate blossoms by hand using brushes made from chicken feathers dipped into pollen. Each individual blossom must be kissed by the pollen laden brush. This tedious task may be combined with computerized RoboBees if the researchers’ project itself comes to fruition.

RoboBee Schematic

Since last year, improvements have been made to the RoboBee first introduced by a team lead by Robert Wood at Harvard University working in the field of micro-aerial vehicles. The latest version of the robotic insect can carry more weight than previously. Before, it had been impossible to pack everything onto such a small structure and keep it lightweight enough to fly. The robot, hardly larger than a US quarter, must navigate between the leaves and branches of plants to locate and inseminate their blossoms.

Team member Kevin Ma explained that the RoboBee has to carry flight muscles, sensors, and a battery while weighing less than a gram. Ma and his colleagues intend for it to be completely autonomous so that it operates without tethers or a pilot. Contrary to a real honey bee, RoboBee’s only task would be to disseminate pollen. It would not be creating honey in the hive.

Making a robotic insect with such stringent requirements is slow work. It requires creating smart sensors that mimic a bee’s eyes and antennae, designing hardware and software to control and monitor flight so that the robot will be able to sense objects and companion devices while making simple decisions to find and service each waiting blossom.

Ma predicted that it will take 10-15 more years of research and government funding to make the artificial bee functional. The National Science Foundation helped subsidize the project with a $10 million grant. The research team still needs to make it perform tasks successfully, increase its battery life, improve its flying speed, and address issues of wireless communication.

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Qualcomm Buys Wilocity, Adds WiGig to Snapdragon 810

Anshel Sag — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 22:37:57 +0000

WiGig is a technology that has been developed by Wilocity with the help of various industry partners, including Cisco, Marvell and Qualcomm. We’ve been following the company for years and have been able to see their technology develop little by little into a truly mobile technology. They’ve moved from a proof of concept all the way to integrating their technology into laptops and smartphones. From our experience, their laptop technology is far more mature than their mobile technology, however they have made significant strides in terms of improving the technology’s performance and usability. They already have their WiGig technology working in some of Dell’s laptops and as a result they’ve got plenty of ideas for using WiGig for docking laptops wirelessly to displays and storage.

The technology itself is a 60 GHz wireless technology which is capable of delivering in excess of 1 Gbps in bandwidth wirelessly as long as it is within the line of sight of the receiver. However, due to the fact that 60 GHz is still a radio technology it doesn’t necessarily have to exactly be line of sight. Its just that 60 GHz does not penetrate walls necessarily well, which isn’t a bad thing nowdays in a world where we actually have so many 2.4 and 5 GHz signals that they’re interfering with each other and affecting performance. WiGig’s primary applications are within the same room, meaning that you can wirelessly connect your phone to your TV without needing to be connected to the Wi-Fi network and having to cover the entire house with a wireless signal for that purpose alone, or sharing that bandwidth with other devices on the network.

This technology will become part of Qualcomm’s technology portfolio and will actually be interesting to see how many of Wilocity’s current partners who are also Qualcomm’s competitors will receive the technology. The reality is that we’ll likely see WiGig become part of Qualcomm’s product stack but they may also still encourage others to utilize their 802.11ad application in order to help the technology grow since its introduction a few years ago. Qualcomm was actually one of the first adopters of WiGig, so they clearly have been happy with the progress of the technology since their inclusion in 2012.

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Broadcom's Modem Exit Gives 2nd Chance to Others

Anshel Sag — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 03:44:53 +0000

Early last week, Broadcom announced that they would be looking to offload their cellular modem division or simply shutter operations. This announcement came as a surprise to many because the company had only recently acquired Rensas Mobile’s modem division (acquired from Nokia). This was done after Renesas Mobile was talking about shutting down the division entirely due to being unable to compete with the likes of Qualcomm and Infineon. Broadcom ‘saved’ Renesas Mobile’s modem division (mostly based in Finland) back in September of 2013, which completed in October of that same year with a final purchase price of $164 million.

Now, Broadcom already had fairly significant wireless modem patents for 2G and 3G technologies, but was severely weak in the 4G and beyond areas. As a result, they lost a lot of design wins and have struggled to integrate Renesas Mobile’s technologies into their own product stack. When we met with them at Mobile World Congress, a lot of the Cat 6 LTE demos equipment that they were showing still had Renesas Mobile stickers on it. But clearly, Broadcom and Renesas Mobile’s modem division were starting to meld together. That is why it seems far too soon to already be looking to offload the entire division, without even really trying.

In our conversations with Broadcom’s cellular modem division, they clearly seemed focused on delivering an affordable mainstream option with 3G and 4G technologies. However, delivering these technologies to the mainstream is incredibly competitive and very low margin, which is why investors applauded the management’s decision last week. Since the announcement, Broadcom’s stock is up nearly 20% or over $6.

What does this all mean? Well, it means that some companies that are looking to strengthen their modem offerings likely have a nice little package to pickup themselves. After all, right now there aren’t many modem companies left, let alone ones that can be acquired neatly without buying the rest of the company. Back in Q3 of 2013, there were only a few major cellular modem chip suppliers with Strategy Analytics estimating that Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, Spreadtrum, and Broadcom represented the top 5 market share spots. Qualcomm maintained its dominance with 66 percent revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 12 percent revenue share and Intel with 7 percent revenue share. Interestingly enough, the report continued to state that Broadcom was one of the few companies that had the potential to compete with Qualcomm on the mainstream LTE market (because of their acquisition) if they executed correctly and that 2014 would be an important year. However, that all appears to now be irrelevant since the company has effectively given up.

What this does mean, however, is that Intel, Mediatek or Nvidia could potentially step in and buy out Broadcom’s cellular baseband division to give themselves a more competitive spot in the market. Nvidia has struggled quite a bit with their acquisition of Icera, which hasn’t quite panned out well for them with their only significant modem design win being in the Microsoft Surface. They have struggled to get any design wins with the Tegra 4i, their first integrated modem product, and also struggled to get major smartphone design wins with their Tegra 4 SoC (without a cellular modem). Others say that Nvidia may just throw in the towel like Broadcom, but the truth is that there’s a good place for Nvidia if they can compete with Mediatek and Qualcomm, even just a little bit. I believe Nvidia is more steadfast than that, plus it is important for their automotive division to have cellular modem IP in order to be able to sell a whole solution to their customers.

Other potential suitors for Broadcom’s cellular modem division include Samsung, who was reportedly one of the parties interested in the Renesas Mobile acquisition back in 2013, but got beat out by Broadcom. Samsung already has their own applications processors and I’m sure would love to come out from under the grip of Qualcomm, if they could. Samsung already has their own applications processors and have experimented with their own cellular modems in the past, but have done little since then but mix Qualcomm and Intel cellular modems. The same goes for Apple, who currently are an almost exclusive Qualcomm cellular modem buyer, but are rumored to be looking at their own cellular modem technologies as well.

Any of the above companies could be a potential suitor for Broadcom’s wireless division, and if a company like AMD wasn’t already so cash strapped, it could be a potential boon to their wireless business if they wanted to gain some momentum. However, they are simply too thinly spread and couldn’t afford to buy Broadcom’s entire cellular division like a Samsung, Nvidia or Apple could.

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Sprint and T-Mobile Tentatively Agree to $32 Billion Deal

Anshel Sag — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 08:34:20 +0000

Once again, the T-Mobile and Sprint deal continues to move forward now that we have an actual purchase price. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the general terms of the deal between Sprint and T-Mobile have been worked out and that the two companies have agreed to a $32 billion sale of T-Mobile, which actually seems a bit low when you consider that T-Mobile’s current market cap is $27 billion and they are getting a mere 20% premium over their current price.

This deal has gotten a lot of regulatory flak before it ever happened and will likely continue to as the two companies try to push the deal through. While few exact details are known, there is a very high likelihood that we could see the Sprint brandname go away in favor of T-Mobile’s and Sprint’s Dan Hesse replaced by T-Mobile’s John Legere. Speaking of Legere, he’s been probably one of the most outspoken CEOs in carrier history. And Sprint hasn’t been left out of his continuous Twitter bashings including this one that might come back to bite him…

Remember when people actually liked @sprint? Yeah, me either. #SprintLikeHell

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 6, 2014

The real truth of the matter is that T-Mobile’s CEO has said some pretty nasty things about Sprint, yet the company continues to move forward with the acquisition of T-Mobile by Sprint. There’s a very good chance that Sprint will take on the T-Mobile name and Legere as CEO, but it still doesn’t change the fact that most of Legere’s criticisms are accurate and while sometimes over the top, warranted.

This also does not address the biggest problem this merger will likely face, which is the regulatory approval from the FCC, DoJ and FTC. If any of those three government agencies doesn’t approve the deal, it simply won’t happen. Sprint’s parent company, Softbank, believes that it is a necessary and justified purchase after they paid $20.1 billion for Sprint. While this deal for $32 billion is vastly larger in scale, Softbank is buying a very capable competitor and one that is stealing their competitors. Furthermore, T-Mobile has a marketcap of $27 billion, which makes the $32 billion offer a 20% premium on the current market cap. The problem with this is that T-Mobile is in a much better position than Sprint right now and they’re poised to replace Sprint as #3 carrier in the US very soon. Especially when you look at the fact that T-Mobile has already surpassed Sprint as the #3 smartphone buyer in the US.

Also, let’s remember that T-Mobile’s previous attempted merger with AT&T didn’t get regulatory approval and that offer was for significantly more money ($39 billion) and when T-Mobile was a significantly weaker competitor. It just seems a bit odd that T-Mobile is now going for less money than they did when AT&T made them an offer even when they’re vastly bigger and more competitive than back then. It just doesn’t seem like this deal is big enough or good enough for T-Mobile to just walk away from essentially walking all over their competitors unless this was their plan all along… which I don’t think it was. T-Mobile’s strategy is sustainable, contrary to what everyone else in the industry (that’s for the merger) would lead you to believe. T-Mobile does not need Sprint to succeed, because they are ultimately a very broken dead weight on any potential merger.

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European Union Seeks to End Mobile Patent Wars

Anshel Sag — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 18:17:36 +0000

The European Commission, a part of the European Union, has been handing out warnings to various smartphone manufacturers letting them know that their frivolous lawsuits and patent attacks are not going to be welcome by the European Commission. In two separate statements, the European Commission has reprimanded Motorola Mobility and worked with Samsung (after reprimanding them) in regards to anti-trust behavior pertaining to injunctions on their competitors they have sought based on essential patents. Interestingly enough, both of these cases pertain to 3G and GSM patents that Motorola and Samsung had brought against Apple and requested that there be injunctions against Apple’s products being imported into those countries based on those ‘infringements’. This is without a doubt a win for Apple, even though they themselves are the responsible party for the start of all these patent wars among all of the smartphone manufacturers.

Sure, there was a time when Qualcomm and Nokia had patent wars with each other, but that was a very long standing battle that didn’t really bring anyone else into the industry and well pre-dated all of these ludicrous battles between Microsoft, Google, Apple, Samsung, Motorola, HTC and many others.

The European Commission has reached an agreement with Samsung that they will not seek injunctions in Europe on the basis that its standard essential patents for mobile devices against licensees who sign up for a specified licensing framework. According to the EU agreement, under such a framework, any dispute over what are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms for the standard essential patents in question will be determined by a court, or if both agree, an arbitrator. These commitments will create a “safe harbor” for all potential licensees of relevant Samsung standard essential patents. Any licensees that agree to such a framework agreement will essentially be immune to any sort of standard essential patent litigation in Europe and such a model is likely to be applied to Motorola as well, in order to prevent any sort of anti-competitive behavior.

What is most amusing is that in the frequently asked questions, the European Commission answers a lot of questions about these two cases, but doesn’t address the fact that both of these companies have partaken in anti-competitive behavior solely because they were sued in the US and other places by Apple. Perhaps, then, it would explain the reason why the European Commission chose not to fine either company for their behavior, which is rare on the European Commission’s part because they have fined people for having done much less. If anything, it may just serve as a nice warning to Samsung and Motorola, and setting an example for others not to try to do the same thing. I just wish the European Commission would at least openly admit that the core of this patent war started with Steve Jobs and his desire to crush Android.

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