I didn’t get to go to CES this year but I wish I had. Sounds like it was a great show.

Computer monitors with mechanical arms, wristwatches and binoculars that play music and phones disguised as cameras are just some of the technological innovations propelling the digital electronics revolution forward

This week’s Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest annual gadget showcase in the United States, featured scores of devices that ignore the classical distinctions separating consumer electronic from computer and communications products.

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This will be a really cool service if it works. I’m sure it wil. Sirius is not backing down to XM. This kind of news should help them catch up from the 1 million people they have to the 3 million XM has. 2005 will be the year to see how innovative the services are.

Making the announcement in Las Vegas before this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, the two companies said that Sirius will build its video applications using the Microsoft tools and work with the software maker to develop programming. Sirius’ initial plans are focused on creating satellite video services that can be viewed both in homes and cars, and the company cited Windows Media’s strengths in compression technology as key to launching its efforts. 

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Ever wonder about if you are walking thru a WiFi hot spot? Now you can just look at your keys, if you can find them. The worlds smallest WiFi signal detector, that just lights up when you enter a zone.

Wi Fi Signal Locator

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BMW, Audi, Daimler Chrysler, Volkswagen, Renault, and Fiat have all received grants from the German government to develop a car-to-car wireless data network using 802.11a and IPv6 technologies to link vehicles to each other to pass on information about traffic, bad weather, and accidents

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Under a broad partnership agreement, engineers from Intel Corp. and AT&T Corp. are working on a range of technologies to make communication services over the Internet simpler and cheaper, executives of both firms say.

At the core of the collaboration is AT&T’s move away from developing proprietary equipment that uses customized parts, which remains the case in the larger telecommunications industry.

Intel, on the other hand, is in the PC industry, which favors standardized, interchangeable off-the-shelf parts as the best way to build reliable products at low cost.

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Boeing details plans for Wi-Fi access, phone service on its planes.

A provider of in-flight Internet access will move a step closer Monday to delivering a system that may someday let airline passengers make calls from their own mobile phones.

Connexion by Boeing, a mobile information service provider that is a division of The Boeing Company, will announce its choice of vendors for the Wi-Fi access points it will start deploying in airliners next year.



The company will use the WASP (Wireless Access Service Point) from Miltope, in Montgomery, Alabama; the rugged device is specially designed for planes and is based on the Colubris Networks CN1054 access device. The planes will be connected to the Internet via satellite at 20 megabits per second downstream and 1 mbps upstream.

Boeing is planning to add live television to its Connexion by Boeing service during 2005, a company executive says.

The television programs will be delivered across the Connexion network, which uses satellites to provide high-speed data connections between aircraft in-flight and ground stations linked to the Internet. The service entered commercial use earlier this year and provides a 5 megabits per second shared downstream and 1 mbps shared upstream connection to suitably equipped aircraft.

On PCWorld |

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Shame on us.

Wireless networks elsewhere are simply better than those in the United States, said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research.

“For a long time, the U.S. had way too many networks being supported by not enough investment,” he said. “The quality of U.S. networks is only now coming close to the quality you would see in major European and Asian markets.”

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So, the ballpark did what Starbucks, the San Jose Sharks and even Bryant Park in New York have done. It went wireless. But with a lean IT department lacking wireless specialization, Bourland looked to Time Warner Cable Houston, which enlisted the help of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Wide Area Management Services (WAMS) to deploy a mega wireless hotspot throughout the entire stadium. “We often leverage partnerships to do the more specialized work that we need to do,” Bourland says. “We’re constantly looking at things, technology included, to offer our fans new ways to experience the game.”

Time Warner, which tapped WAMS to implement more than 90 Cisco Aironet 1200 series 802.11b/g access points and the CiscoWorks Wireless LAN Solution Engine (WLSE) for infrastructure management, managed the scope of the Wi-Fi project. WAMS also supplied Cisco Catalyst series platforms for switching and Cisco series access routers to connect the Cisco access points to the network.

| WAMS

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“If there is a theme for this meeting, it is that we want (new technologies) on the land, in the air, and on the sea” FCC Chairman Michael Powell said. “We are pushing the frontiers in order to bring the information age to all corners of the world.”

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I have no idea how many times I have pitched this idea to retail and everytime they say it can’t work. I guess sometimes you just have to let someone else do it first, like CircuitCity, BestBuy…and a handful of others before the slower moving folks can hitch a ride on the Trolly. This story takes the idea of online/offline to a new level.

“ Cheryl manages a team of seven “pickers,” the people who walk the floors choosing the goods ordered by the growing throngs of Internet shoppers. She’s been working at Tesco for nine years, the last three at Tesco.com.”…

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