Tag archive: Minneapolis

Analog television hasn't even been fully switched off in order to make room for new wireless services, and already Verizon Wireless has announced it plans to roll out mobile broadband services based on LTE technology in the United States beginning this year. The so-called 4G services will first launch as mobile connectivity for notebook computer users in two U.S. cities during 2009, and Verizon expects to expand that footprint to 25… Read More

Earlier this year, cable operator Comcast began offering 50 Mbps Internet service to customers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, and claimed that the new “wideband” offering would be available throughout its entire service area by the year 2010. Now the company is making its first steps in that direction, announcing an expansion of 50 Mbps service in selected markets. According to Comcast, 50 Mbps service will go online part of… Read More

A new market research study from MultiMedia Intelligence ranks U.S. cities on the basis of how wide their residents have adopted in-home networking during 2007. Perhaps not surprisingly, San Francisco topped the survey results, with some 28 percent of households having adopted home networking technologies. San Francisco was closely followed by Miami at 27 percent, and Los Angeles at 24 percent. If you're wondering why other… Read More

Electronics retailer Best Buy has announced a partnership with Zoomsystems to introduce self-serve gadget kiosks in a handful of major U.S. airports. Described as a pilot program, the kiosks will operate under the name “Best Buy Express” and carry small electronics items like portable storage devices and memory cards, chargers, headphones, travel adapters, gaming devices, digital cameras, and cell phone and computer… Read More

Speaking at the Merril Lynch U.S. Media Conference in London, Comcast senior VP of investor relations Marlene Dooner said the company plans to offer cable Internet customers bandwidth up to 100 Mbps in most of its markets by early 2010—and some 20 percent of its markets may have the service by the end of 2008. In a not-unrelated forecast, Dooner also says Comcast expects to have converted analog television channels to digital in most… Read More

Struggling ISP and broadband provider EarthLink has announced that it is pulling the plug on Philadelphia's Wi-Fi network as of June 12, 2008. The move marks the latest chapter in EarthLink's rapid exit from the never-really-materialized municipal Wi-Fi arena, in which metropolitan areas attempted to set up various forms of Wi-Fi Internet access for residents: late last year, EarthLink announced it was cutting funding for… Read More

Regional telecommunications operator Qwest announced today that it is introducing 12 and 20 Mbps DSL service in 23 of its top markets, Dubbed Qwest Titanium and Qwest Quantum, respectively, the company expects the services to be available to over 2 million customers by the end of 2008. The 20 Mbps service is currently the fastest DSL service available from a major U.S. telephone operator. “Our customers tell us that they want more… Read More

Cable operator Comcast has begun offering 50 Mbps broadband Internet service in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, and says it plans to introduce the new high-speed offering throughout its entire service area by the year 2010. Comcast is pricing the new service at $149.99 per month for residential service, which is roughly triple the price of Comcast's previous highest-bandwidth offering. Business customers will pay $199.95 a month.… Read More

According to a CNN story, the wanted poster has returned. Once a feature of American life (we’ve all seen those old Westerns), it had been pretty much limitedto post offices in recent years.   But in the South, they’re being used to help catch criminals. Although there aren’t too many digital billboards – only around 500 out of atotal of 450,000 billboards, according to the industry – they’ve proved very… Read More

The rock star formerly, and now once again, known as Prince has announced a campaign against Web piracy of his music and image, and he’s brought in a sheriff to deal with it.   The diminutive Minneapolis musician has declared his intent to “reclaim the Internet” by threatening to sue YouTube, eBay, and Pirate Bay as part of a legal initiative against piracy.   He’s being represented in the move by the… Read More

Swarmcast has unveiled its Autobahn Accelerator for iTunes, a program which purports to speed up downloads of music, video, previews, and other media from Apple's iTunes Store. Autobahn uses what Swarmcast calls “multi-source streaming” to download data from a variety of network sources in parallel rather than relying on serial delivery from a single source. Swarmcast claims Autobahn Accellerator for iTunes can reduce the… Read More

The Poynter Institute's EyeTrack07 study keps track of how 600 test subjects read broadsheet, tabloid, and online publications and found that online readers actually read 77 percent of what they chose to read. In comparison, broadsheet readers only took in 62 percent of what they chose to read, while tabloid reader read just 57 percent. The study results fly in the face of well-accepted notions that online readers have short… Read More

Mobile phone operator Verizon Wireless has flipped the switch on what it surely hopes will be a major new revenue channel as it rolls out high-speed wireless technologies: V Cast Mobile TV, the first commercial mobile television service in the United States. Developed by Qualcom's MediaFlo gorup, the service is available only in a limited number of markets in 20 states and only works with the $199 Samsung SCH-U620 handset, but… Read More

RadioShack Corporation announced today that it has begun offering MovieBeam's set-top boxes at 1,700 retail locations in 331 mjor metropolitan areas where MovieBeam service is available. At first glance, MovieBeam—backed by Disney, Cisco, Intel, and others—seems like a lot of other set-top box services offering on-demand, rental access to movies. And, indeed, the MovieLink boxes store up to 100 movies, and offer instant… Read More

If you think your quirky local TV anchor has the stuff to become an Internet celebrity…he or she might just have gotten their change. In an interesting move, Yahoo and CBS have inked a video syndication agreement to put local news video from 16 CBS-owned stations on the Internet via Yahoo's enormous Internet presence. The agreement goes into effect October 17th, and is the first time network-owned stations have entered a… Read More