Tizen bubbles out the bottle

Tizen, the open source operating system that came out of LiMO and MeeGo, has been released. It's available for Intel Atom N2800 and N2600 CPUs and ARM CPUs. Who will adopt Tizen is still up for debate, though Intel are still supporting it as they supported the previous incarnations of MeeGo and prior to that Moblin (which was combined with Nokia's Maemo to form MeeGo). Samsung are also expected to support it too. Nokia which was a major supporter of Maemo/MeeGo has put its efforts into Windows Phone and seems to have dropped support for the Linux'ish based operating systems. The industry as a whole also has generally adopted Android form Google (which was also based on a Linux core). However there still could be a market for Tizen in various connected devices such as automotive (where MeeGo was making inroads). The v1.0 release of the code, known as Larkspur, is available for download from the Tizen Technical Steering Group (TTSG) along with development tools.

Vodafone to speed-up 3G uploads

Vodafone is upgrading base-station software in 3 of its markets (UK, Spain and Italy) that should see uplink speeds increase by around 40%. The upgrades use software from InToTally which solves outer loop power control problems of CDMA and UMTS/HSPA networks. This is due to the way the base-station and terminals continually change their transmit powers to cope with varying network conditions which may not be optimal and the InToTally software changes the algorithms so the system works better. The software only improves the up-link speeds as it's the base-station that's being improved, for handsets to get improvements the InToTally software would need to be installed in them too, though InToTally say that mobile chipsets will incorporate their software within a year and Vodafone has enough clout to persuade handset vendors to adopt the software. Vodafone is also making an undisclosed investment into InToTally.

MyCityWayLondon24 live in time for Jubilee and London Olympics 2012

Argent the largest independent regional media group known for it's London24 website has launched MyCityWayLondon24 in partnership with MyCityWay who are known for their city guides. The app which is available now uses the user's location to find out what's going on around them including live traffic feeds from London's busiest roads or just where to get a coffee. Users can also find out what's playing at a local cinema, find out if there are any local concerts or special events. There's also social aspects so users can connect or leave tips about places. Though the app is free, it will be used to deliver highly localised advertising, coupons and deals. Though the app is initially available on Apple's iOS devices an Android version is due to be released shortly.

Spotify launches on iPad

Spotify has released a new version of their app for iPad which now supports features of the iPad3 such as the high resolution retina display. It's also easier to explore and browse songs (out of the 18m catalogue), when a song is playing the album art is now available in full-screen mode in HD. Playback has also been improved and the app now supports gapless playback and crossfade and there's Airplay integration too as well as social improvements to see what your friends are playing. Spotify for iPad is available immediately from iTunes.

Brand Embassy launches

Brand Embassy is a new tool allowing brands to identify disenchanted users and also influential users and engage with them. Thus negative users can be made positive, while users who support the brand can be further assisted so they support the brand even further. There's a free, fully functional 14 day trial available here. Some big name customers such as O2, Diageo, Johnson & Johnson are using Brand Embassy already.

RIM announced Blackberry 10

Research in Motion (RIM) have released its new operating system (OS) 10 which is based on QNX the multi-tasking microkernel system that's currently used on the Blackberry Playbook. QNX has been around for a long time and is the a very robust real-time OS, which has many similarities to UNIX/Linux in terms of development. RIM is now trying to tempt developers to embrace the new OS and is giving away developer Blackberry 10 phones to all that attend their developer conference in Orlando. The new device is keyboard less, though RIM's virtual keyboard (in the same layout as their existing keyboards) should give users a similar experience - so it looks like the new generation of Apple iPhones or Samsung Galaxy S's. However RIM is keen to point out that this is a developer version and not all the final Blackberry 10 features are in the phones and that consumer devices may be significantly different. RIM have released Blackberry 10 Native SDK which includes Cascades, their Qt based toolkit and also their HTML5 based webworks toolkit. There are still a lot of Blackberry users in the wild (RIM say 77m), but their market share has been dropping. Maybe Blackberry 10 and a focus back into secure enterprise markets will get them more users back again.

Moshi Monsters wins on Nintendo DS

Moshi Monsters the children's on-line game created by Mindy Candy has now taken over the video games market as their Nintendo DS game Moshling Zoo has taken over the No 1 spot, beating the previous holder Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training. Moshling Zoo has been No 1 for a record braking 15 consecutive weeks. This matches their music prowess as Moshi Monsters: Music Rox! reached number one in the download charts ahead of artists such as Madonna. The on-line game also has 60m users from around the world and in the UK around 1 in 3 children has a Moshi Monster. Michael Acton-Smith the CEO of Mind Candy is rising from strength to strength and everyone's waiting to know what's coming out next from the Mind Candy stable, rumours are that it's another on-line game, but aimed at all the family.

Adobe CS6 for hire

Adobe is allowing users of it's Creative Suite v6 (CS6) to 'rent' the software for $49 per month instead of purchasing it outright. A user can download a single copy for both Mac and Windows (currently this generally requires 2 licenses) and both are included in the rental price. If the user is upgrading from an earlier version (from v3 to v5.5) then the rental price is only $29.99 per month. Of course it's still possible to purchase the full suite for $2,600 which is around 5 years rental (by which time there's bound to be an upgrade). This also links into Adobe's Creative Cloud which offers tools like Photoshop Touch (the on-line version of Photoshop) and allows sharing of content.

Vodafone offers £1.04bn CW

Vodafone has made an offer of £1.04bn ($1.7bn) in cash for C&W (Cable and Wireless Worldwide). This works out at 38p per share which is considerably higher than the original expected offer of £700m. Vodafone is seeing vastly increased mobile data traffic and this may be a defensive move to lessen it's reliance on BT who provide most of their backhaul. Vodafone also wholesales several BT business services, which they'll now be able to offer in-house. C&W also run a broadband LLU service for other providers and again this could be directly used to sell broadband to Vodafone's consumer base. Vodafone replaced all their DSL connections at cell sites with fibre from BT, these can also all be taken in-house using the significant assets of C&W's fiber network that covers much of the UK and in places like Scotland they have better coverage than BT (due to the historical acquisition of THUS Plc which was originally Scottish Telecom prior to the acquisition of Demon Internet). There's sure to be many problems integrating the two companies, though in the long term they gain access to a enterprise and consumer solutions and should deliver long term costs savings

Mundio seeks an injunction against EE

Mundio Mobile is a pan European Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) that operates using the T-Mobile Mobile Network Operator (MNO) network. Mundio operates the MVNO under the Vectone brand in the UK. T-Mobile combined with Orange in the UK to form Everything Everywhere (EE) in 2011 and after the merger they decided to consolidate operations and remove excess network infrastructure (such as radio masts) which should give them savings of around £3.5 billion by 2014. Mundio Mobile gained a low power GSM license in the UK through it's acquisition of Mapesbury Communications several years ago, which gave them a full GSM license (and entry into the GSMA). Now Mundio is seeking an injunction against EE to stop the consolidation ahead of a full trial next March to determine who is liable for any service disruption, and whether EE will be held to “specific performance” guarantees the court could impose. Mundio say the consolidation has caused it's users to receive poor or no coverage. EE wouldn't comment as the case is a current 'legal matter'.

Intel introduces NAND SSDs

Intel has introduced it's 313 series solid state drives (SSDs) based on their single cell NAND design (which are longer lasting and more reliable than existing multi-cell SSDs. The drives are only available in 20GB and 24GB variants and are designed to complement existing hard drives for faster boot up or hibernation. The 20GB drive can sustain 220Mb/s while reading and 100MB/s for writes, while the 24GB drive supports 160MB/s and 115MB/s with pricing of $109 and $139 respectively. Though SSDs are cropping up everywhere they do have long term issues (most consumer SSDs will only support around 5,000 write cycles per cell, but the disks are optimised to minimise writes and cells are switched between blocks as to minimise actual writes per cell) whereas hard drives last for much longer, so hybrid drives may be the optimal solution. here Intel have just removed the SSD cache into a separate disk.

Ofcom extends deadline to EE consultation

Ofcom has extended the deadline for stakeholders to respond to the consultation on whether to allow the variance on Everything Everywhere's (EE) 1800MHz license to allow WiMAX and LTE technologies. EE already have to give back some of the 1800MHz spectrum as part of the merger between T-Mobile and Orange and this could be used by another licensee for LTE/WiMAX services. There have been vocal complaints from other Mobile Network Operators (MNO) that this would give EE an unfair advantage by them being able to launch LTE services ahead of all the other UK MNOs. The deadline for respondents has been extended to May 8th 2012 and can be seen here.

Intel promotes new Ultrabooks

Intel is running a campaign called 'Temptations' to promote the new Ultrabooks. Some of the videos are quite humorous, though the actual events only seemed to take place in the Asia Pacific region, hopefully they'll come over here. The set of videos can be seen here.

ARM introduces new 32bit CPU

ARM is known for it's big processors that are licensed to all and sundry for inclusion in products like the newly announced Apple iPad3 which uses an A5X CPU (dual core CPU cores running at 1GHz with a 4 core GPU) and many other licensees including Qualcomm for their Snapdragon range etc. ARM are also big into micro controllers that sit in the myriad of deices that require some form of control (toys, white goods, dumb phones etc), these also tend to be very low power devices. ARM's latest version is the Cortex-M0+ or Flycatcher which uses 9uA/MHz on a very cheap to fabricate 90nm process (Intel's latest CPUs are all on 22nm substrates) and use around 1/3 of the power required by existing 8 and 16bit CPU architectures. The Cortex-M0+ is software backwards compatible with the older Cortex-M0 range of processors so all existing software can be used. This is a potentially huge market and Ericcson estimate that there will be 50bn units with these types of processor in them by 2020 - which will make up the internet of things. ARM will also offer low power Bluetooth and other connectivity products which can be paired with the processors.

Ofcom proposes to vary Everything Everywhere's 1800MHz license

Ofcom the regulator covering media, broadcasting, telecoms, radio and postal services has announced a consultation on the proposal to amend Everything Everywhere's (EE) 1800MHz licenses to allow the use of LTE and WiMAX technologies. The original license only allowed 2G (GSM, GPRS, EDGE) and then 3G services (UMTS). If this variation is granted, it's likely that EE will be the first mobile network operator to offer LTE national services in the UK and this may distort the market, though Ofcom do not believe this to be true. The consultation closes on 17 April 2012 and stakeholders can respond on-line.

Ofcom consults on GPS repeaters

Ofcom is holding a consultation on the use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) repeaters which operate in the following band 1164-1215 MHz, 1215-1300 MHz and 1559-1610 MHz. These cover both the US Global Positioning System and EU Galileo GNSS. A repeater system consists on an external aerial, a transmitter and an internal aerial which would allow GNSS reception indoors where normally there would be no reception. Ofcom is proposing a light licensing regime whereby users of GNSS repeaters would have to register their location with Ofcom. This is to quell concerns from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) who believe there could be aircraft interference. This proposal is in-line with CEPT and EU recommendations. This does not cover any kind of mobile repeater use (unless operated by a licensed Mobile Network Operator) or any other technology which could cause interference and any such use would still be a criminal offence under the Wireless Telegraphy Act (WTA) 2006. The consultation (available here) closes 16th April 2012.

INTRO the networking app for professionals

he number of apps being developed to find friends or even stangers around you are growing rapidly and The Next Web have reported Hightlight and Glancee recently that will make life easier for South by SouthWest. Many of these apps are based on social features while a new app INTRO uses social but in a business context. It allows the user to specify the business types of people they are looking for and will notify them when the matches are in the vacinity. It uses the user's social graphs from Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Foursquare, so as well as showing you who's nearby who meets your criteria it also shows you why they are relevant. The matching algorithms are intellegent so you can be specific e.g. you’re looking for an app developer, co-founder, or investor or you'd just like to meet people in the London tech scene. As the app uses location data (but only ambient data, so it's not doing GPS lookups all the time) it's always looking out for those useful people around you. Recently INTRO has added a teleport feature so now you don't even have to attend SXSW you just teleport there through the app and it will then suggest useful business contacts who are there. So rather than spending huge amounts of money on tickets, planes and hotels - you just use INFO and still meet the the relevant people. INTRO is available from the iTunes store now

Sub10 does 60GHz backhaul

Sub10 a company based out of Devon has been touting its 60GHz backhaul technology at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this year as a solution for mobile network operators (MNOs) as a solution to the massively increased bandwidth demands that modern smartphones put on them.

60GHz is license exempt in the UK (and Europe) and supports high data rates. The only disadvantage is that it's absorbed by Oxygen molecules so it can only travel a limited distance and it can be affected by rain. The disadvantage, however, is also an advantage as it means that signals from neighbouring links are unlikely to interfere giving the advantages of licensed spectrum.

Optimity based out of London's Silicon Roundabout area is already offering connectivity solutions based on 60GHz technology as well as traditional 5GHz solutions and are able to connect start-ups much more rapidly than competing fibre products.

The iStorage datAshur

iStorage manufacture secure storage systems and they've just released the datAshur which is a USB Flash Drive.

It's quite a large drive being 8cm by 2cm by 1cm, including the aluminum jacket which should protect it from most drops or even being driven over.

Pulling the drive out the sleeve reveals why it needs to be that big, there's a 10 digit keypad on it (numbers read 1 2, 3 4, 5 6, 7 8, 9 0, keys 2 through 9 also have a standard phone letters on then i.e. key 2 also has ABC).

In order to use the drive the user must first enter a PIN (between 7 and 15 digits) which unlocks the drive, then it can be inserted into a standard USB2.0 socket (though it will work with USB 1 and 3 devices too) and look like a standard Flash Drive. All data that is stored on the drive is AES 256bit hardware encrypted. If the drive is plugged into a system without being unlocked it wont appear as a valid drive and cant be mounted.

When the drive is ejected, it will then automatically lock again.

Corporate use

The datAshur actually has 2 PINs a user PIN and an admin PIN. If the drive is put into admin mode, then it will clear the user PIN first and expect the next action to be to set a new user PIN and if this isn't done it will go back into sleep mode (the drive cant be accessed as a Flash Drive).

This mode is useful in a business environment so the IT department can select an admin key and if a user forgets their key it can be reset (or if a user leaves, the user PIN can be reset and the data still be made available).

Hacking

If the the wrong PIN is entered 10 times, then the drive will automatically trash the the AES key and generate a new one (which means all data on the drive is also trashed and unreadable). Also both the admin and user PINs will be cleared.

Though big and bulky and not the prettiest of Flash Drives, the datAshur will be invaluable to companies or individuals worrying about carrying sensitive data around and even if the drive is lost, the data is unusable without a correct PIN making it pretty secure.

It comes in 3 sizes

4GB £39
8GB £59
16GB £79

and is available from iStorage

New Sony Xperia models

Sony have announced the Sony Xperia S, P, U (and Ion and LTE model).

The Xperia S is the thigh end, P middle and U consumer phone.

The S has a dual core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and 3d graphics accelerated GPU with Bravia and 32GB of storage. The display is HD and uses LED/LCD to produce an amazing display which very high contrast and bright colours. It also has the usual features of 3 axis accelerometer, gyroscope etc with WiFi and Bluetooth. When attached via HDMI to a SmartTV, the phone can be controlled through the TV remote, accessing all the phones connectivity functions and for viewing Full HD at 1080p resolution.

The P has a slightly less powerful CPU and less storage though still displays HD content. When connected to a TV it only supports Dh at 720p resolution.

Sony also announced the SmartWatch which connects to Sony's phones. Sony has pre-installed the SmartWatch app as standard, but the SmartWatch can connect to any Android phone by downloading the app from Android Marketplace. It has an OLED touch screen display and a metal surround. Various (coloured) straps are available for the watch, though it can removed and clipped onto a belt (or equivalent).

It has many features

* Find your phone - will cause the phone to ring, even if the phone is in silent mode.

* If the watch loses connection with the phone (i.e. say the phone is being stolen) it will buzz 3 times.

* It support social media streams and these can be viewed and simple actions taken (like retweeting) by touching the relevant part of the screen.

* It shows the time (taken from the phone).

* The Android App support plug-ins allowing mini-apps to be run on the SmartWatch.

Now Sony have lost Ericcson, they've gone back to making very pretty phones and the Xperia S has the potential to be a real contender the iPhone.