Earlier here on BBB we published a rumor that was floating around the wireless elite about the new iTunes phone. According to those in the ‘know,’ Motorola scrapped their new iTunes phone intro at the last minute due to concerns from wireless carriers. In an attempt to deflect attention away from their precarious relationship with carriers, Motorola now claims that the delay was due to none other than Steve Jobs:

In response to a question about why Motorola did not show its upcoming iTunes phone at the Cebit technology fair in Germany Motorola said it tends to display its products before they go on the market but Apple’s Chief Executive Steve Jobs does not.
[...]
“Steve’s perspective is that you launch a product on Sunday and sell it on Monday.” he added.
[...]
He also downplayed a question about whether the reason Motorola did not unveil the phones at Cebit was because of a disagreement with mobile phone carriers.

“I’ve got lots of carriers fighting to be the first one we go with,” Garriques said in an interview.

Those execs are really bright. I almost believed them. Then again, pissing Steve Jobs off has worked so well for Eisner maybe they figured they could just follow in his footsteps.

As if to reinforce our last posting that Asia always has cooler cellphone tech first, we discovered this bit of next-gen craziness:

“Most games and many other applications are written in 3D although the final image is shown in 2D,” says Ian Thompson, director of business development at Sharp Laboratories of Europe. “In nature humans see the world in 3D and yet we have become accustomed to seeing flat images”

That may be true today, but researchers in many laboratories, including Sharp’s, have their eyes set on the next generation of 3D technology. If mobile displays are necessarily limited by length and width, the only option is to increase their depth. And unlike the 3D movies of yesterday (and even today), the new 3D displays don’t require any special eyewear. Sharp is leading the charge, having supplied mobile phones equipped with “glasses-free” 3D displays to NTT DoCoMo for two years. The company claims that their first 3D handset “sold over 1.5 million units in the first 6 months of sales, more than all previous 3D products combined.” Of course, Sharp is not the only one convinced that mobile 3D is ready for prime time.

It would seem logical that if Apple can sell an iPod shuffle for $99 that you should be able to use your cellphone to play mp3s as well. Motorola and Apple decided to do just that and designed a iPod-like phone that could purchase tracks from the iTunes Music Store and hold about 100 tracks on the phone. While this new phone using wireless technology seems like the next logical step a large obstacle suddenly appeared:

Motorola had previewed the iTunes phone to the media earlier this week, with the intent of publicly announcing it Thursday. Then the company got a last-minute message from a wireless carrier or carriers, and indefinitely postponed the announcement--a highly unusual occurrence.

To make a long story short: electronics manufacturers who make phones are way ahead of the curve. You have probably noticed that people in Asia and Europe always have newer and cooler phones than us dinosaurs here in the USA. The reason for this is quite simple:

Why would a wireless carrier have such sway with the world’s second-largest cell phone-maker? Because of the unique structure of the industry: Wireless carriers--particularly in the U.S.--buy phones and then often subsidize their cost to consumers.

You see, we in America are cheapskates (nothing wrong with that, its all part of capitalism) but unfortunately this gives all the power to the carriers. And now the wireless carriers are each fighting for their own little piece of the wireless pie. Unlike the rest of planet Earth, we do not have a single wireless cellphone standard in the USA. The carriers see the trends towards eventually being stearmrolled into being dumb pipes and are doing everything in their power to prevent this from happening.

Remember “wireless internet” from five years ago? The carriers have always preferred the “walled garden” approach. Word on the street about the mysterious late-night phone call: the carriers have been impressed with the sales of ringtones so they decided that they should start their own music stores and it would be silly if they had to compete with market-leading Apple. Don’t you just hate progress?

No one can say it better than Lessig:

You’ll be pleased to know that communism was defeated in Pennsylvania last year. Governor Ed Rendell signed into law a bill prohibiting the Reds in local government from offering free Wi-Fi throughout their municipalities. The action came after Philadelphia, where more than 50 percent of neighborhoods don’t have access to broadband, embarked on a $10 million wireless Internet project. City leaders had stepped in where the free market had failed. Of course, it’s a slippery slope from free Internet access to Karl Marx. So Rendell, the telecom industry’s latest toady, even while exempting the City of Brotherly Love, acted to spare Pennsylvania from this grave threat to its economic freedom.

The security around the Oscars was tight as any large gathering of Hollywood’s elite is bound to be. In yet another example of people missing the bigger picture, hackers sat in the crowd with antennas hidden in their backpacks “bluesnarfing” precious data from every Hilton-wannabe’s cellphone:

It’s Sunday night at the Oscars, and the place is crawling with security people. A police helicopter circles overhead. Steven Spielberg, Paris Hilton and Prince get into limousines, but one can barely see them from behind all the barriers.

To John Hering, though, the place is like a sieve.

“Most people are worried about physical security,” he said. But electronic security is another matter — Hering’s, actually. “As every single celebrity, VIP and executive drives by us, we’re going to be able to scan their mobile phones.”

Don’t you just love the Internet?

Don’t you hate it when you give your phone number to someone at a club, and then some time later her hardware gets hacked and your number gets broadcast all over the world for anyone at all to see? And then you start getting crank calls from these morons who don’t even know you, and your only option is to change your number so they quit calling you?

We hate that too.

Over a month ago BBB reported about Hilton’s Sidekick II being hacked. We don’t understand why it is only now becoming a big story but we suspect that it has something to do with the girl-on-girl topless action photos.

Celebrity cell hackings would cause one to think that people would become more aware of their wireless security. Alas, we all know that you did nothing. Nothing other than murmur “this won’t happen to me” while drooling over Hilton’s topless photos.

Dave Nardoni at First Response Consulting provided a handy summary of one of the primary ways your cellphone can get hacked:

If you heard about Paris Hilton or Vin Diesel cell phone getting hack this weekend, they are not alone as it can happen to anyone.

The Hack-
Hackers are using website such as http://www.covertcall.com (5 free tries) and others to call a victims cell phone using the victims “caller id”.  This is done via the website, the hacker will enter their cell number and the victim’s cell and called id number.  The cell/pcs provider (Sprint/Nextel/T-mobile) will see the caller id and things [sic] it is the victim calling from his own cell phone.  The cell provider then sends the hacker’s call into the victim’s voicemail.  Now the hacker can listen to voicemail, get group address books, and change passwords*

How to Prevent-
To prevent this hack, you need to make sure your voicemail is set-up to ask for a password when you dial from you cell phone.  This feature is usually called “Skip-Passcode”.

Make sure you have a password setup to access your voicemail.

Over the last five years there has been a war going on right in the air around us that you may not have noticed. While companies like Clear Channel have been quietly consolidating power in the radio spectrum all across the country, low-power FM stations, musicians and pirates of all kinds have been fighting for their right to broadcast at the FCC.

The new terminology for these low-power, local radio stations is called “Localism.” The FCC has setup a task force where you can read some of the dry descriptions of the battle.

Many of our friends over at the FMC (the Future of Music Coalition) have been filing interesting briefs on behalf of those voices that are lost in the monopolization of the public airwaves.

On January 3, FMC, AFTRA, AFM, the Recording Academy and the Recording Artists’ Coalition filed joint reply comments at the FCC on localism in broadcasting.  In this filing, the musicians’ groups focused on three areas in which the Commission sought input, and which broadcasters and citizens filed comments:

• Local musicians’ concerns about local programming and access to radio;
• The existence and impact of “pay for play” business practices; and
• The domination of centralized programming masquerading as local programming through such developments as voice-tracking.

Our filing included excerpts of comments filed by citizens, broadcasters, on-air talent and musicians, many of which articulated the problems of localism and access to local radio on a very personal and concrete level.

In addition to these points, the recording artist groups repeated at the outset – media ownership matters.  It is simply impossible to discuss how to promote localism without consideration of the consolidated ownership patterns emerging throughout this country.

Now that Chairman Powell is stepping down the whole future of broadcasting is up in the air again (no pun intended).

Verizon announced today that they will be introducing music video downloads on their new cell phones. Certainly with the success that downloading ringtones has brought to cell carriers this seems like a logical move. That is until you read about halfway through the press release cum Reuters news article:

Verizon, the first to offer U.S. video services to mobile phones with data speeds similar to home computers, will charge $3.99 for each music video download on top of the $15 a month it plans to charge for V Cast.

Let’s do the math: to download one music video will cost you a minimum of $20 (not to mention the purchase of a snazzy $200 phone to play the videos). Now we understand that everyone wants to become the next iTunes Music Store but Apple has a great product at a great price ($1) with no monthly subscription. I just can’t see people tripping over themselves to pay $4 for a music video that only plays on a tiny, crappy cell phone screen.

Maybe teenagers today have a lot more of an allowance than I ever had as a kid. If I had twenty bucks to spare in my disposable income I certainly wouldn’t spend it on this, would you?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or perhaps stumbling around Sundance drunk) you must have heard all the hype about 2005 being the year of the cell phone. The BBC has a cute piece on yet another video-on-cellphone project: Fox’s “24.” Noting how people don’t really have the patience to watch video on a tiny handset for a long period of time, Fox is splitting episodes into 60 second bites. The BBC shivers with excitement in claiming:

So a new form of video is being devised. Just as radio and then television spawned new genres of drama so will video phones.

Let’s not get too excited folks, perhaps our British friends have forgotten Edison’s ”Kinetoscope” that played short films lasting mere seconds on index cards in the 1890’s? Frankly, I know that there is only one form of video that will succeed on cellphones: those short videos of suicide bombers driving shiny new VWs. Or maybe you can use the video recording feature on your shiny new cellphone to get yourself and your high-school girlfriend in some real trouble.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. The BBC pauses for a moment to note that there is a tiny little snag in its “new medium” hyperbole:

Television companies usually own the dramas they’ve made, so simply putting them on new broadcasting outlets like mobile phones causes legal difficulties.

Contracts have to be renegotiated. Accordingly, the phone version of “24” will be re-shot with a new cast.

That’s right folks, they’re turning your cellphone into a display for re-runs that are so low-budget that they can’t afford the original material. I’m sure you can hardly wait.

Sundance is renowned for world premieres but there was a different sort of premiere taking place with the new documentary “Rize”:

PARK CITY, Utah—It was a film without film, a movie without moving parts. The premiere of Rize that took place last Saturday at a ski lodge here was a historic event—the first feature film to be delivered via wireless technology.

Wired’s article is one of many heralding the event that took place at Sundance. David LaChappelle’s documentary was shot on HD so it was already a digital production to begin with. Now it is only a matter of time before all films will come from a digital source. Say goodbye to lugging those cans around the world for distribution.

USC researcher Hartmut Neven has developed software that can do facial recognition on your cell phone using the built-in camera. While the LAPD is already using this technology to nab suspects based on mugshots, Neven has a much grander idea for the future of the technology.

A nice rollout example would be a movie guide. If you see a billboard of a movie on a bus, you take a shot of it [using your cameraphone] and then are routed to a relevant site where you can download a trailer or get show times. All we would need are images of a couple hundred billboards. The same is true with the Louvre example, where a collection of images already exists. With our technology, it doesn’t take an expert to train the system to recognize an object.

In other words, Neven wants people to be able to use cameras to google the world. See an interesting restaraunt? Just photograph it and see what comes up…

If you thought integrating your iPod and cell phone into your snowboarding jacket was cool, just wait until they are integrated with your sunglasses. After all, I wear my sunglasses a lot more in LA than I would ever wear a snowboarding jacket.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT) on Friday announced a joint venture with eyewear maker Oakley Inc. (NYSE:OO) to develop new Bluetooth-enabled wearable wireless communications devices.

Think all those emails and pictures you are sending with your new camera/pda phone are hilarious? Well apparently hackers think they are too. Before you take embarassing and potentially incriminating photos of yourself or your celeb friends, keep in mind that others may be watching too:

The hacker’s access to the T-Mobile gave him more than just Secret Service documents. A friend of Jacobsen’s says that prior to his arrest, Jacobsen provided him with digital photos that he claimed celebrities had snapped with their cell phone cameras. “He basically just said there was flaw in the way the cell phone servers were set up,” says William Genovese, a 27-year-old hacker facing unrelated charges for allegedly selling a copy of Microsoft’s leaked source code for $20.00. Genovese provided SecurityFocus with an address on his website featuring what appears to be grainy candid shots of Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Nicole Richie, and Paris Hilton.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine a world where everyone has a camera on them at all times. Sting certainly found out while he was vacationing at a high class skiing resort:

“Sting had been staying with his family at luxury hotel Cristallo in Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the northeastern mountains of Italy, but after a few days he left the noble ski station to escape the harassment of the amateur paparazzi.

The daily Corriere della Sera quotes Sting’s snowboard teacher Alberto Belfi saying: “People were continuously taking pictures of him with their cell phones. They were rude, placing themselves without asking and without consideration in front of him at the restaurant or in the line to the skilift to get a close-up”.

I have seen the camphone future and it is an orwellian one indeed.

As the old ad in Soma magazine once said: “In the future you will dress for surveillance.”

Cell phone or PDA? Some people use both. Some people would like to have both integrated into one device. Convergence is a goldmine for the phone manufacturers since they get to sell expensive PDA phones with lots of features. The downside of course is that these large bricks rarely work well, are expensive and are too fragile. Not to mention that they either don’t have the form factor that works well for a phone or a PDA. As a recent survey just revealed we all know that a jack of all trades is master of none:

The study and survey noted that device vendors obviously believe in the
convergence of the two types of devices or they wouldn’t be adding
wireless connectivity to PDAs and PDA functions to phones, the study
noted. But each form factor has its strengths and a survey run as part
of the study found that users don’t necessarily want convergence.

The survey also notes that people rarely use most of the features in their PDA phones anyways.

Ever since Apple’s airport technology has popularized Wi-Fi you can now find wireless hotspots nearly anywhere that you spend a lot of time. At home, at work, the airport and the local cafe are all expected to have wireless installed and the coverage is growing every day. If you don’t believe me, check out this map created by SoCalWUG (the Southern California Wireless Users Group) where they flew over LA in an airplane to see how many hotspots they could find. Wi-Fi uses an unlicensed band of our radio spectrum which brings up some interesting issues.

In Japan and Taiwan, cell phone makers already sell models of phones that not only use the local cellular network but can switch to use internet connections over Wi-Fi so that you don’t have to use up or pay for precious minutes. Like most good technologies, this may have arrived in Asia first but it is just now beginning to trickle down to the second-class USofA:

The new Wi-Fi handset, to be known as the F-1000, would be designed to work with Vonage phone service out of the box for U.S. subscribers. The phones would take advantage of local radio airwaves on the most mainstream of Wi-Fi standards—the so-called “B” standard.

The Wi-Fi handset can act as a replacement to traditional fixed-line phones that a subscriber might have around the house. It can also work when it is within range of any nearby Wi-Fi hotspot out of the house, according to UTStarcom.

If you think turning all the cable/telecom/power companies into dumb pipes is a revolution, imagine what the impact will be on the cellular phone industry. Today we have several companies that have virtual monopolies in each major market using incompatible wireless technologies. If you’ve ever had to deal with the poor service and extortionate fees of a cellphone I am sure that you will eagerly anticipate the early death of the cellular firms. Remember when they promised “wireless internet”? Be careful what you wish for…

It is now the year 2005 and we are still left wondering where are all the jetpacks, flying cars and aluminum suits promised to us by every Sci-Fi film. While we may still not have a personal jetpack to rise high above the LA traffic and smog we can at least breathe a sigh of relief that someone is finally beginning to integrate audio technology into clothing. After all, putting some audio cables inside a jacket is merely the low-hanging fruit of our techno-fashion future.

In a bid to increase the appeal of Motorola’s phones and a continuation of Burton’s iPod integrated line of clothing, the two companies announced today that they will be selling jackets that integrate cell phones and iPods in one convenient (if expensive) snowboarder jacket.

The jackets will have a padded casing for a Motorola cell phone and an MP3 music player. They will feature a device on the sleeve that lets the wearer control incoming and outgoing calls, and toggle back and forth to music, sending audio signals to removable speakers in the hood.

The new clothes will use Blue Tooth, a popular technology that allows devices such as headsets and computers to communicate with each other over a short range without wired connections.

Integrating our portable gadgets (that seem to multiply every time we aren’t looking) into clothing has seemed like a no-brainer forever. Burton’s involvement in this initiative is no surprise since after the release of the initial iPods they announced their first iPod jacket. It was later followed with an entire line of iPod integrated gear likethis backpack with iPod integration. Do only hip snowboarders deserve this technology? Apparently Motorola believes this is the way to “hipsterize” their image as they have lost ground in the cell phone arena in 2004.