Google Bids to Help San Francisco Go Wireless      October 02, 2005

Google ended months of speculation late Friday afternoon by submitting a proposal to offer a free wireless Internet service to the city of San Francisco.

The proposal, which is one of a range of proposals being submitted both by large communications firms and small start-ups, is in response to a TechConnect program proposed by the city's mayor, Gavin Newsom, this year. Mr. Newsom has positioned the program as a way to offer universal and affordable broadband Internet access to the city's residents and businesses.

In recent months, speculation about Google's plans as an Internet service provider has reached a fevered pitch. However, the company said Friday that it did not yet have plans to roll out free nationwide Internet services.

Instead, it called its proposal to San Francisco an opportunity to learn about offering a range of location-based services, including advertising.

"Offering a free service like this is a great way to support the Bay Area," said Chris Sacca, a new-business development executive at Google. "We don't have any plans outside of the Bay Area."

He said the company expected to compete with a number of providers for the right to offer the new city service.

The service will take Google into a new technology arena beyond its rapidly growing Internet services. The Google proposal calls for deploying a wireless network based on the 802.11b and g standards and then upgrading t....

Posted by Lohrasp at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)

EMS Enhanced Messaging Service      September 21, 2005

Enhanced Messaging Service also known as EMS is an extension of the Short Message Service (SMS). An EMS enabled mobile phone can send and receive messages that have special text formatting (such as bold or italic), animations, pictures, icons, sound effects and special ring tones. As EMS is completely an open standard that can be supported by any manufacturer in the interest of interoperability between consumers. The EMS standard was defined by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The same standardization body which is responsible for the success of GSM and standardization of SMS (Short Messaging Service) originated.

EMS is considered as an intermediate technology between SMS and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), with more capabilities than the former (i.e. SMS), but

Posted by Lohrasp at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access)     

Code-Division Multiple Access most popularly known as CDMA is a digital cellular technology that uses spread-spectrum techniques. Like GSM, CDMA does not assign a specific frequency to each user; instead each and every channel uses the full available spectrum. Conversations are individually encoded with a pseudo-random digital sequence.

As CDMA works on a spread-spectrum technology it can provide better capacity for voice and data communication than other mobile technologies, this allows more subscribers to connect at any given time. CDMA is the common platform on which 3G technologies are built.

CDMA technology was first used during the World War II by the British and their Allies, so the Germans could not attempt to jam the transmissions. The British and their Allies decided to transmit the information over several frequencies, instead of using only one frequency. This made it absolutely difficult for the Germans to pick up the complete signal.

Posted by Lohrasp at 01:16 AM | Comments (0)

Infrared      September 17, 2005

Infrared is a method of wireless communication between two devices for the transmission of data, infrared is also known as IR. As wireless communication has always offered an alternative solution to the fixed / wired networks. The main benefit of infrared is mobility and compact terminals. Infrared communication is for short range communications on embedded devices of all types. The infrared feature is widely available in PDAs, cell phones / mobile phones, and desktop computers and its peripherals. The wireless communication utilizes radio waves, however this alone is not sufficient for the future, and as radio wireless communications have quite a few disadvantages.

Posted by Lohrasp at 11:58 PM | Comments (2)