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The Federal Communications Commission plans to begin a process in a few months aimed at auctioning airwaves that failed to garner enough interest during the 2008 spectrum auction.

Technology

The segment, called the D-block, is part of the 700 megahertz band of the airwaves that raised about $19 billion for the U.S. government when other blocks were sold to carriers in 2008. But the D-Block did not sell because carriers did not like some of the conditions for use.

Companies are waiting for the FCC to issue the terms and conditions, if any, to be attached to the auction for use of the D block airwaves.

Jamie Barnett, chief of the FCC Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau, told Reuters on Friday, after speaking to state and local emergency officials who want the D block for public safety use, that the FCC could issue a notice of inquiry “early summer” but a final decision has not been made.

The auction, which is planned for commercial purposes, could take place in the first or second quarter of 2011, he said.

The opening of the 10-megahertz D-block could be welcome news for smaller carriers such as T-Mobile, the U.S. unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, which wants to acquire more spectrum to better compete with powerhouses AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

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New smartphones, faster networks and unveiled alliances will be at the center of next week’s CTIA Wireless 2010 convention in Las Vegas, which runs from March 23-25. Big companies ranging from Microsoft to Verizon will demonstrate new devices, and featured speakers include AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and “Avatar” director James Cameron.

For many attendees, though, the prospect of an Academy Award-winning director discussing the virtues of mobile technology could be eclipsed by potentially paradigm-shifting announcements by wireless carriers.

The rumor-mill suggests that Sprint will unveil the first smartphone capable of running on an ultra-speedy 4G network via WiMax technology. “Our checks indicate that Sprint will launch a CDMA/WiMax handset at CTIA called the HTC Supersonic,” Macquarie analyst Philip Cusick wrote in a research note, as quoted by Reuters on March 17. Other analysts are apparently backing that prediction.

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It’s not uncommon to hear about the high demand of medical-related jobs such as nursing. With an aging Baby Boomer population, the expectation for growing demand in health care jobs is real, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor statistics, which predicted “3.2 million new wage and salary jobs between 2008 and 2018, more than any other industry, largely in response to rapid growth in the elderly population” in an updated February report. IT is expected to reap some of the benefits of this health care growth spurt. Evidence from a couple of new reports from health care IT industry organizations shows demand for health care-related technology jobs is on the rise. 

Hospitals, medical clinics, doctor’s offices and other health care organizations are facing government-mandated deadlines in a host of areas such as electronic medical records (EMR), clinical systems and new privacy and medical-coding standards. The U.S. government’s 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) requires that health care organizations show “meaningful use” of certified health care IT products if those organizations want to reap the financial subsidies the government is offering, and that is spurring increased technology budgets and new job demand.  

When Google last month pledged to build and test ultrahigh speed broadband networks, it touched off quite a competition among city leaders from the east coast to the west coast who want their municipalities to be among those to go Google.  

Google Feb. 10 said that it will build broadband networks that zip 1 gigabit of data per second to users’ computers in a handful of regions in the United States. The idea is to reach 50,000 to 500,000 people, possibly generating new applications such as streaming high-definition video content and real-time multimedia collaboration.

Google asked communities interested in being its guinea pigs for the test to volunteer for the test by March 26. With that deadline hurtling near, counties are ratcheting up the rhetoric, making their cases for why they should be among the chosen few.

A few years ago, the idea that Google might join carriers and ISPs in delivering fiber to the home might seem like an anathema to the world’s largest search engine, which at the time was sticking to search and Web applications.

But with users’ consumption of Web video apps such as YouTube reaching 24 hours a minute in 2010, along with the boost in popularity host of social networking, gaming and work-related apps, Google has decided it is time to own the pipes that shuttle this data.

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A Phoenix-based company called Objecs has created the Memorial RosettaStone Tablet, which makes it possible for cemetery visitors to access text and images merely by touching a cell phone to a headstone.

Bearing the tagline “be discovered–3,200 years from today,” the product is available as an iPod-size stone tablet or a coin-size stick-on polymer tag that adheres directly to the headstone. It’s microchip-enabled and uses NFC (near-field communication, a subset of RFID) to stream personal information, photos, and even messages from the deceased lying beneath to any Internet-enabled mobile device.

At $225, consider this a “lifetime” investment if you’re dead concerned about vanishing into obscurity down the generations. If you opt for the tablet version, you can even personalize the gadget with images that tell a bit about the deceased: bicyclist, artist, guitar player, mail carrier, and so on.

This isn’t a totally novel idea. The enterprising Japanese have had their own Ishinokoe, or “voice of stone,” with commemoration windows that sport Japan’s version of a 2D bar code (the QR Code) inside.

Visitors simply snap a picture of the code with their mobile phone, and voila, instant access to the deceased’s photos and profile. Going one step further, this will eventually even keep a log of visitors, as well as enable virtual grave visiting via cell phone for added convenience. For better or for worse, till death do us not part, so it would seem.

(Source: Crave

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Opera Software expects that Apple will allow Opera Mini onto the iPhone, co-founder Jon von Tetzschner told eWEEK in a March 19 interview, and plans to release the browser through the App Store at an unannounced point in the near future.    

“Our expectation is that Apple will allow it,” von Tetzschner said. “Why will they block ours?”

Posting Opera Mini as a free mobile application, von Tetzschner added, was deemed by Opera to be the only route for distributing the browser to as many iPhone users as possible; offering it as a free download from the Opera site would only make it available to jailbroken iPhones, which would come with its own set of issues.

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Now, New York City’s enterprising mobile food vendors are using the instant messaging website to help their hoards of hungry followers stay tuned to their favorite delicacies.

Kim Ima, owner of the Treats Truck, which serves up caramel creme sandwiches, sugar cookies with icing, and other diet busting delights, uses Twitter to stay in touch with her 3,000 fans.

“For someone like Kim with St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Wednesday, she wasn’t sure if she was going to park here. So with Twitter she was able to provide location updates and we knew where to find her,” said customer EJ Cory.

Twitter allows users to enter messages from a computer or mobile phone, which are instantly transmitted to other users who choose to read their “tweets.”

The service riles some, who say it encourages people to post irrelevant details about their daily lives, such as what they had for breakfast.

There are about 3,000 licensed food vending trucks in New York City, according The Street Vendor Project, representing a sizable niche for Twitter.

Kenny Lao parks his Rickshaw Dumpling truck next to the Treats Truck most Fridays. He has been tweeting since his truck first hit the streets for business and says Twitter is an ideal tool to keep in touch with his 5,000 followers.

“People really depend on us to be at certain locations on every day of the week and they get super-duper excited for dumpling day and this is the best way for us to tell them,” he said.

Twitter, founded in 2006, is free for its millions of users and its founders are still trying to turn the loss-making enterprise into a cash cow.

Last year Twitter hit the headlines for the role it played in helping demonstrators in Iran organize anti-government protests. The White House famously asked Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance during the protests so demonstrators could stay connected.

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The FBI announced that two software programmers have been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury.

Bernie’s not the only one heading to the big house it would appear. Two Madoff Investment (BLMIS) employees are facing up to 30 years in jail for designing special software programs that contained fraudulent financial records and data.

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that JEROME O’HARA and GEORGE PEREZ – former computer programmers for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC (”BLMIS”) – were indicted today by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on charges of conspiracy, falsifying records of a broker-dealer, and falsifying records of an investment adviser.

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Palm’s third-quarter results were worse than feared, possibly as a result of bad choices and the difficulty of launching a new platform. One fix could be to turn to Google’s Android mobile operating system, which consumers are embracing. However, some financial analysts are questioning Palm’s future viability.

Palm’s poor third-quarter performance may be the result of bad choices, paired with the difficulty of rallying support behind a new mobile platform. While an aggressive ad campaign could help, it can’t be the only answer to Palm’s woes, industry analysts say.
 
On March 18, the maker of the Pre and Pixi mobile devices reported selling only 408,000 smartphones during the quarter—a loss of 29 percent from the second quarter of the year and 15 percent year over year.

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