In Johannesburg, South Africa, some thieves have found that there’s an even cheaper and more anonymous way to make phone calls than buying disposable “burners” (like those featuring so prominently in The Wire): Traffic lights. More »
I must have slept through the Vodafone announcement that as part of their ongoing 3G upgrade, which should finish by the end of this month and brings 3G service to 94 per cent of the population, they were also boosting their 2G network. But boosting it they are! More »
AT&T users can now snap up the AT&T USBConnect Quicksilver, one of the smallest 3G HSPA-capable devices out there. The tiny little hub weighs 34 grams and uses the new Icera Livanto chipset, which handles GSM/GPRS/EDGE/3G data. That’ll give you 70 to 135kpbs downloads on an EDGE network, and 700kbps to 1.7 Mbps downloads on HSPA. Best of all, it’s free (if you get it with a two year contract and mail in the $US100 rebate). [CrunchGear]
A “leak” at a UK online retailer’s site reveals a whole bunch of info on TomTom’s Go 940 Live GPS system: it looks like the system comes with a GPRS unit to give it live traffic and fuel-price info and the ability to Google search. Yep, alongside the IQ routing and intelligent lane advice that the Go 930 and the new Pro units have is a TomTom HD Traffic unit using GPRS to garner local traffic info, weather conditions, and lets you Google for whatever info you might need on the road. That traffic info is gathered “via anonymous mobile phone monitoring,” but whether its these units that do the uploading, or a different system, is unclear. The unit’s available on pre-order in the UK for around US$800, with the Live service likely to cost US$10-US$15 per month, but there’s no data on when it’ll hit the US. [Handtec.co.uk via GPSLodge Thanks, Jay!]
Reader Dan just dropped us a tip that Vodafone seem to be hitting customers who use their unlocked iPhone’s Wi-Fi with GPRS data charges:
There’s only five more sleeps until the Australian snow season kicks off, and even though a quick check of the NSW resort’s snow cams shows that there isn’t too much of the powdery white stuff on the ground at the moment, it’s still shaping up to be an awesome year in the “alps”. Why, you ask? Because this year, there’s an awesome new gadget to track your runs using a combination of GPS and GPRS technology.
It’s called Flaik, and last Friday it walked away with the top prize at the Australian International Design Awards.
The Gadget: A handheld internet browsing device that functions using a GPRS data connection, freeing you from the confines of limited Wi-Fi coverage. The Pocketsurfer 2 incorporates a specialised compression technology that does away with the typical slow speeds associated with GPRS. Datawind did great work in implementing an accelerated form of GPRS, but the gadget itself left us longing for V3.0.
