So much news passes before our collective eyes every day that we couldn’t possibly cover it all. Mostly because much of it isn’t worth covering! But here are a some borderline tidbits we passed on, just in case.
As head of the US Senate’s privacy panel, Senator Al Franken has spearheaded the investigation into Carrier IQ’s potential violations of multiple federal statutes. Now he’s requested AT&T, Sprint, HTC and Samsung explain themselves as to what data exactly they’ve gathered using the program. They have until December 14 to respond. [Electronista]
It hasn’t been a good week for Carrier IQ. First a damning video apparently illustrating the extent of what information the program collects surfaces, then everything goes to shit. Now, the company is facing a Senate investigation for potentially millions of violations of privacy laws. And this is the response?
According to wireless guru John Stanton, he and Steve Jobs repeatedly discussed the feasibility of creating a “synthetic carrier” over Wi-Fi connections — thereby squeezing out AT&T — between 2005 and 2007.
Siri–the equally impressive and gimmicky iPhone 4S’ smart assistant–connects to Apple’s servers every time you ask for something or dictate a message. It sends your query and analyses it, returning you whatever it thinks is the correct answer or action.
Of all the fake, gimpy, tortoise-slow 4Gs of the world, AT&T has historically been far and away the fakest, gimpiest, tortoise-slowest. But the real-deal LTE hotness is coming soon. And as this real-life demo shows, it’s going to be blazing.
