7:36 PM
A Chinese news agency apparently used footage from the "Top Gun" movie when they were discussing Chinese Air Force training exercises and showed a jet destroying a J-10 fighter. After a side-by-side comparison was posted online between the news footage and movie, the Chinese news agency removed the video of its broadcast and refused to comment on the similarity:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/top-gun-footage-used-chinese-news-broadcast
The DoD spent more than $400 mil on the Gorgon Stare program in 2009-2010, wanting that new camera system for UAVs to boost surveillance efforts in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the surveillance system failed in testing, with poor or delayed video quality, gaps between pictures from each camera, and a SERIOUS problem of producing inaccurate coordinates--that could result in air strikes on wrong targets:
http://www.asdnews.com/news/33125/New_US_drone_spy_cameras_fail_Air_Force_test:_study.htm
Solar-powered trash cans not only reduce the carbon footprint of trash cans, but they have been found to save money. Solar powered trash cans periodically compact the trash inside to make room for more trash and call for pickup when they are full-fewer pickups means savings on truck fuel and maintenance staff time:
http://news.brown.edu/features/2011/02/belly
One definite sign of the change in economic conditions--just 6 companies had IPOs in 2008, but in the last 3 months of 2010 *57* companies had IPOs and 56 others registered for IPOs:
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/02/08/ernst-young-says-ipos-continue-to-gain-steam-in-2011/
Gov. Jerry Brown wants to cut off half of the cell phones that the state of California pays for--cutting 48,000 of the 96,000 cell phones issued. He acknowledges that some state employees are required to stay in touch 24/7, but he feels (and I agree) that having the state pay for cell phones for 40% of all state employees is excessive:
http://urgentcomm.com/mobile_voice/news/brown-ends-state-cell-20110208/?cid=nl_uctoday
Alcatel-Lucent demonstrated the next generation of base stations--their 2" cube 3G/LTE base station that doubles data rates while using half the power and costing 50% less to operate. The miniaturized base station market is projected to increase to $16 bil in the next 5 years, with Verizon, China Mobile, and Orange already testing the technology. These cubes could replace the big cell phone towers we see everywhere, with double the capacity and half the costs:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/02/alcatel-lightradio-cube-shaped-antenna.html
Police officers are using a powerful new iPhone/iPad add to fight crime--the app allows police officers to "see" behind doors or walls by alerting them to any potential dangers inside. Three California police departments have already successfully tested the app and now it is spreading nationwide:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/02/06/prweb5041124.DTL
Verizon will be demonstrating Voice over LTE next week at Mobile World Congress, with the Android-based LG Revolution the first VoLTE phone. Video over LTE is expected to be coming soon. VoLTE is another way for Verizon to get subscribers off of their 3G network as iPhone users increasingly use their 3G network:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/02/08/verizon.volte/
Teardowns on the Verizon iPhone 4 discovered some interesting things. It should be no surprise that the Verizon iPhone has a new antenna design after the AT&T iPhone 4 had such prominent antenna problems, with the dual-antenna design giving better signal quality than the AT&T iPhone. It was interesting to find out that the Verizon iPhone runs a baseband chip from Qualcomm that supports CDMA, EV-DO, as well as GSM and HSPA+...the same chip that enables the Motorola Droid Pro to be a global phone, so the Verizon iPhone could become a global phone if it supported SIM cards:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/inside-verizon-iphone-new-antenna-qualcomm-chip-global-use/2011-02-08
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/top-gun-footage-used-chinese-news-broadcast
The DoD spent more than $400 mil on the Gorgon Stare program in 2009-2010, wanting that new camera system for UAVs to boost surveillance efforts in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the surveillance system failed in testing, with poor or delayed video quality, gaps between pictures from each camera, and a SERIOUS problem of producing inaccurate coordinates--that could result in air strikes on wrong targets:
http://www.asdnews.com/news/33125/New_US_drone_spy_cameras_fail_Air_Force_test:_study.htm
Solar-powered trash cans not only reduce the carbon footprint of trash cans, but they have been found to save money. Solar powered trash cans periodically compact the trash inside to make room for more trash and call for pickup when they are full-fewer pickups means savings on truck fuel and maintenance staff time:
http://news.brown.edu/features/2011/02/belly
One definite sign of the change in economic conditions--just 6 companies had IPOs in 2008, but in the last 3 months of 2010 *57* companies had IPOs and 56 others registered for IPOs:
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/02/08/ernst-young-says-ipos-continue-to-gain-steam-in-2011/
Gov. Jerry Brown wants to cut off half of the cell phones that the state of California pays for--cutting 48,000 of the 96,000 cell phones issued. He acknowledges that some state employees are required to stay in touch 24/7, but he feels (and I agree) that having the state pay for cell phones for 40% of all state employees is excessive:
http://urgentcomm.com/mobile_voice/news/brown-ends-state-cell-20110208/?cid=nl_uctoday
Alcatel-Lucent demonstrated the next generation of base stations--their 2" cube 3G/LTE base station that doubles data rates while using half the power and costing 50% less to operate. The miniaturized base station market is projected to increase to $16 bil in the next 5 years, with Verizon, China Mobile, and Orange already testing the technology. These cubes could replace the big cell phone towers we see everywhere, with double the capacity and half the costs:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/02/alcatel-lightradio-cube-shaped-antenna.html
Police officers are using a powerful new iPhone/iPad add to fight crime--the app allows police officers to "see" behind doors or walls by alerting them to any potential dangers inside. Three California police departments have already successfully tested the app and now it is spreading nationwide:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/02/06/prweb5041124.DTL
Verizon will be demonstrating Voice over LTE next week at Mobile World Congress, with the Android-based LG Revolution the first VoLTE phone. Video over LTE is expected to be coming soon. VoLTE is another way for Verizon to get subscribers off of their 3G network as iPhone users increasingly use their 3G network:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/02/08/verizon.volte/
Teardowns on the Verizon iPhone 4 discovered some interesting things. It should be no surprise that the Verizon iPhone has a new antenna design after the AT&T iPhone 4 had such prominent antenna problems, with the dual-antenna design giving better signal quality than the AT&T iPhone. It was interesting to find out that the Verizon iPhone runs a baseband chip from Qualcomm that supports CDMA, EV-DO, as well as GSM and HSPA+...the same chip that enables the Motorola Droid Pro to be a global phone, so the Verizon iPhone could become a global phone if it supported SIM cards:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/inside-verizon-iphone-new-antenna-qualcomm-chip-global-use/2011-02-08