In Irving, Texas, ridiculously close to my last home, Madelyn Beaird, a student at MacArthur High School, was suspected of being involved in an incident on campus that involved a gun and some cars that were keyed. When teachers asked her to turn over her mobile phone to inspect her text messages, she panicked and…
Huawei announces new E583C portable hotspot and E173u USB modem
Chinese manufacturer Huawei unveiled two new products for hooking up your gear on the go. The E583C, a mouthful if there ever was one, is a portable hotspot much like the popular MiFi built by Novatel. It features the ability to connect up to 5 device to WiFi and a 6th via the built in…
Ultrabrief: Huawei wanted to pay more for Motorola than what Nokia Siemens offered
Last month Nokia Siemens Networks purchased Motorola’s network assets for a cool $1.2 billion. Sources are telling Bloomberg that Chinese infrastructure supplier Huawei bid at least $100 million higher than that, but they were shot down due to fears that the American government would step in and kick the deal to the curb. Politics is…
Happy 25th Birthday SMS! [OMG 4 RLZ BEEN DAT LNG?!]
Self proclaimed “SMS Expert” Sheri Wells has enough cash to issue a press release that hit the wires this morning wishing SMS a happy 25th birthday. According to her the technology was invented in a Vodafone laboratory, but there are quite a few Nokia engineers who would question that claim. She goes on to say…
Ultrabrief: Rumor: Nokia N8 to ship in limited quantities on September 25; firmware update in November
I’m sick and tired writing about the Nokia N8 because it’s old news as far as I’m concerned. It was announced on April 27 and if rumors are true then it’s going to launch on September 25; over 150 days later or almost 5 months! Not only is it shipping 5 months after the announcement…
Guy spends $1500, makes system that can listen in on your mobile phone calls
The 18th annual Defcon security conference in Las Vegas just finished yesterday and one of the highlights of the show was a presentation given by Chris Paget who demonstrated a $1500 system used to intercept and record mobile phone calls. The system uses a classic man in the middle attack technique. What’s essentially happening is…
McAfee buys tenCube, plans to make your mobile phone secure and easy to find in case it gets lost
McAfee, the brand Windows geeks know and mostly loathe, has acquired Singapore based tenCube with the intent to enter the mobile services spaces. Now unlike McAfee’s desktop antivirus software, the company doesn’t intend to scare the bejesus out of you into buying their bloatware. Instead they’d like to clone Apple’s MobileMe or RIM’s BlackBerry Protect…
Ultrabrief: Samsung to announce something on August 11th [Tablet?]
CrunchGear just got the above pictured press invite to a Samsung event due to take place on the 11th of August. They [CrunchGear] think Samsung is going to announce their 7 inch Android tablet there. Maybe … or maybe not. We’ll find out in less than 10 days. In the mean time, we’re trying to…
AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile team up with Discover for NFC payments
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are teaming up with Discover and Barclays to test NFC payments in the Atlanta area as well as three other cities. The operators have been searching for a CEO for this new venture. AT&T and Verizon will get equal stakes in the company, with T-Mobile having a smaller chunk of the…
Smartphones shipments grew 64% world wide, Android grew 886% too
Analysts at Canalys have crunched the latest facts and figures from everyone’s Q2 financial results and have unearthed that smartphones shipments grew 64% world wide compared to Q2 2009, and that the number of Android device that have shipped in the same year on year period has increased a startling 886%. Nokia has maintained their…