Still not sure what 4G really means? A new bill put before Congress today intends to push wireless providers to dish all the dirty details about their data networks.
If passed, the Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act would effectively force providers to quantify the speeds behind current marketing terms like 4G. Championed by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the bill also calls for disclosure of network reliability, minimum speeds, and even network conditions that might adversely affect reliability. Under the Act, the FCC would be responsible for offering curious consumers side-by-side comparisons of the top 10 region’s 4G providers.
“Consumers deserve to know exactly what they’re getting for their money when they sign-up for a 4G data plan,” said Eshoo in statement announcing the bill. “We need to enhance transparency and ensure consumers are fully informed before they commit to a long-term service contract.”
For many, the confusion stems from the 4G’s naming scheme and the marketing attached. To wit, T-Mobile advertises that it has the nation’s largest 4G network, but in reality the company’s HSPA+ network is a 3.5G network that happens to perform just as fast as some 4G networks. Effectively, this bill would cut through marketing jargon like this to deliver what most consumers are looking for — actual facts and throughput speeds.
Though the bill will likely fall into the crosshairs of the telecom lobby, there’s still a pretty good chance it’ll gain traction with consumers. As wireless providers continue to signal the death of unlimited data, the industry can only expect more scrutiny from consumers.
Filed under: Business and Technology, mobile, VentureBeat
The television is getting more interactive, at least for Comcast subscribers.
The cable company on Tuesday announced partnerships with Facebook, Intel and others to bring social media integration and application support to its content service, Xfinity TV.
“This new experience transforms the way consumers watch television with a new guide and user interface that makes the TV screen more interactive, personal and social,” Comcast stated in an official release.
Comcast’s current user interface is in dire need of an upgrade and pales in comparison to competitors, such as AT&T’s Uverse cable service.
Also in need of an update is the current crop of underpowered set-top boxes the company provides to its subscribers to access content, which are mostly manufactured by Motorola. Per the partnership announcement, Comcast will use an Intel-based set-top box, manufactured by Pace, to power both the new apps and the added integration with Facebook’s network.
The company did not mention anything about remote controls, which are known for having a plethora of useless and unnecessary buttons.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will give a live demo of the new service at the cable industry trade event The Cable Show Thursday, which will be available via live stream at 10 a.m. EST (7 a.m. PST) on Comcast’s website.
It is unknown at this time if the new service, which is already being tested in Augusta, Georgia, will integrate with Comcast’s recently announced plans to add Skype integration to its HDTV service, which the company announced Monday.
Filed under: Business and Technology, media, News, social, Social Media, VentureBeat
In an era where more and more workers are telecommuting for part of the week, if not entirely, the importance of physical proximity is often overlooked. In this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture, given at Stanford University, Ori Brafman, author of “Click: The Magic of Instant Connections,” reveals how distance affects the building of relationships, both personal and professional. Besides data points from studies, he also hosts an interactive demonstration of the effects of proximity – and the benefits they can have.
For some developers, Apple’s keynote today was more of a kick in the crotch than a bear hug.
And yet, like someone trapped in a dysfunctional relationship, they’ll keep coming back for more. That’s because even though it may run roughshod over a few developers from time to time, Apple still has a lot of what they need.
Traditionally a lovefest for OS X and iOS programmers, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is when the company unveils new software features, lays out details of various application programming interfaces, and invites programmers to peek under the hood at the operating systems.
Many of the new features shown at the WWDC keynote Monday looked very much like ideas first seen in iOS apps from independent developers. For instance, mobile Safari’s new “Reader” feature reformats web pages cleanly and without formatting, much like Arc Labs’ Readability app. Its “Read Later” feature works a lot like Marco Arment’s Instapaper.
As soon as the news broke, Arment posted an eloquently pithy tweet on how he felt about the news:
Other developers may have felt the same way. The new iOS 5 will let people take photos using the phone’s volume-up button as a shutter button, a feature that first appeared in TapTapTap’s CameraPlus app. (Ironically, Apple forced TapTapTap to remove the feature.) To-do apps like Remember the Milk will be threatened by the new Reminders feature. GroupMe’s messaging might be made obsolete by iMessage. For a longer list, see the New York Times story on which apps are threatened by Apple’s upgrades.
Similar tactics won Microsoft opprobrium in the 1990s, when the company incorporated features into Windows that had previously only been available through Windows software created by Microsoft developers. It contributed greatly to the impression that Microsoft was a ruthless company that would even stab its closest allies in the back, if that’s what it took to make its OS more competitive.
Yet few developers, even those most directly affected by the OS upgrades, are likely to defect. Apple enumerated the reasons why they won’t at the beginning of its presentation on iOS:
200 million iOS devices sold
25 million iPads sold in 14 months
15 billion songs sold in iTunes
130 million books sold in iBooks
425,000 apps, including 90,000 iPad-specific apps, in the App Store
14 billion app downloads from the App Store (in less than 3 years)
225 million accounts in iTunes (all customers for which Apple has credit cards on file so they can purchase apps or content with a single click)
In other words: Where else are you going to get easy access to 225 million potential customers’ credit cards, without breaking the law?
Even Arment softened his stance later in the day, after reflecting on the news. He spelled out the ways that Instapaper can still compete with Safari, by offering a better service, more social network integration, and other features not built in to iOS.
The most critical data point may have been this one: Apple senior vice president Scott Forstall said, “Apple has paid out more than $2.5 billion to developers for apps in the App Store.”
$2.5 billion. That’s a huge pool of potential revenue for developers to tap into, and it’s why more than 5,000 of them are here in San Francisco, letting Apple show them the goods — even if it kicks them in the face once or twice while it does it.
[This post by Rachel Youens of mobile app consultancy and developer Mutual Mobile, was originally published at mutualmobile.com and is republished here with permission.]
Once upon a time, a phone was just a phone. Then it became our camera, radio, and even TV. Recently, with the announcement of its Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile commerce program, Google made it our wallet. But that’s only the start of how NFC will affect our lives.
Google Wallet makes paying for everything from a T-shirt to a soda as easy as waving your phone. The initial list of partners including Macy’s, Subway, Citibank and Mastercard are a good indicator of just how excited mainstream businesses are about this technology and just how quickly it’s going to spread through consumers.
NFC is more than just an avenue for mobile payment. The secure technology spans industries from health to marketing, and the rise of the NFC enabled smartphone (predicted to make up 50% of the market by 2014) has the potential to have a disruptive effect on some of the most important trends and technologies of today.
Checking In
One of the early promises of Location Based Social Networking (LBSN) apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla was a new form of loyalty program; one where instead of punching a hole or sliding a card, loyalty would be measured by mobile check-ins. But as long as the inaccuracy of GPS allows users to stand across the street or even a block away and check in at an establishment, businesses aren’t able to trust LBSN as a valid loyalty system. As a result, fewer than 4% of internet consumers have actually adopted LBSN services.
NFC effectively solves the validity issue by placing a hotspot inside businesses that consumers simply have to wave their phones near to check in. In the past year, Google Places began putting NFC-enabled markers on the doors of businesses in several cities — Mutual Mobile’s Austin office is among these establishments – and Google has also already stated that they will integrate a loyalty system into Google Wallet.
Gamification
Just as social media has crept its way into every industry – from Yammer in the enterprise, to Schoology in education – gamification has the potential to do the same. Apps like Bobber and Miso have shown that badges and points work as motivators for finance and entertainment, and NFC is set to push gamification into the real world.
Although not known for its gaming and social abilities, Google has made a big investment in game mechanics via its involvement with SCVNGR. At this year’s South By Southwest Interactive Festival, SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch spoke about the game layer that they were applying to the real world. This would supposedly give the check-in and daily deal trends a second life by instilling a sense of interaction between person and location.
At around $2 a piece, NFC tags are a cheap and an affordable way for a company to start applying its own game layer. Clothing brand WeSC, for example, used an older form of NFC-style technology to turn the company’s shoes into keys to unlocking features in the world around wearers. Tags were embedded in shoes and by stepping on specific mats around cities, wearers could become Facebook friends, have their photo taken and sent to the brands Twitter, or unlock free deals at certain businesses.
Information In a Natural Way
To use a QR code or LBSN, users have to pull out their phones, open an app, snap a photo, or type in a location – these are unnatural behaviors and take a fair amount of time to complete. What NFC offers is convenience. With NFC, a poster on the street could offer a coupon and collecting it would be as easy as brushing your pocket against the display. The small, flat size of NFC tags makes them ideal to embed in almost any medium, and they can be waterproofed and ruggedized to withstand time and trials.
Secure Documents Sharing
Health applications make up one of the fastest growing segments of the app market. People are hungry to take control of the documents and health management that have so long been kept behind lock and key by doctors. However, security in how this information is stored and exchanged has remained a primary concern on both the personal and medical industry level.
NFC allows information to be securely transferred to caregivers instantly – and it goes well beyond our phones. NFC can be put into medical devices such as blood sugar monitors or even skin patches, allowing doctors to offload the information when the patient comes in for a visit or for the patient to upload it via their phone. Google has long envisioned empowering people medically via Google Health, and wide distribution of NFC is one more step in that direction.
Today’s announcement hints at only a small part of the larger role NFC is set to play in our lives. As more NFC enabled phones hit the market and as more retailers acquire the technology to accept it, the adoption rate will undoubtedly skyrocket.
Just as the iPhone sent every company scrambling for a way to use apps, businesses today should be asking themselves: How can we use NFC?
Still not sure what 4G really means? A new bill put before Congress today intends to push wireless providers to dish all the dirty details about their data networks.
The television is getting more interactive, at least for Comcast subscribers.
For some developers,
[This post by Rachel Youens of mobile app consultancy and developer Mutual Mobile, was originally published at 
NFC effectively solves the validity issue by placing a hotspot inside businesses that consumers simply have to wave their phones near to check in. In the past year, Google Places
NFC allows information to be securely transferred to caregivers instantly – and it goes well beyond our phones. NFC can be put into medical devices such as blood sugar monitors or even