September 21, 2005, 4:55 PM PDT
LG is on a roll
Posted by: Kent German

While it was a cell phone nobody in the United States just a few years ago, LG has been steadily climbing the ladder to cell phone somebody ever since. According to IDG, the Korean electronics company shipped more CDMA handsets in the United States than any other mobile manufacturer. LG first achieved the number one spot in the second quarter of last year and has held onto its ranking ever since. On the GSM side and overall, LG is in fourth place in the United States.

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September 21, 2005, 2:31 PM PDT
Firefox fixes flaws
Posted by: Molly Wood

Firefox has released a browser update to fix some critical security flaws. The update comes just days after Symantec said Firefox is actually more vulnerable to attack than IE--although Symantec also said Mozilla is quicker to fix its browser than Microsoft. Witness today's update, for example.

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September 21, 2005, 2:29 PM PDT
Thin is in
Posted by: Molly Wood

Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, and now NEC. Spurred by the almost obscene thinness of the Razr, NEC has announced the "world's thinnest" flip phone. But what did this phone have to sacrifice to become so skinny, and where will it end? I mean, really. It just doesn't look healthy!

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September 21, 2005, 1:57 PM PDT
Opportunity from Google WiFi
Posted by: Dorian Benkoil

Could Google's confirmation that it's providing hot spots prove a boon to meatspace small-business owners? Perhaps, if Google follows its Ad Sense pattern of cutting others in on revenue to build volume. If Google, strategically, is in the business of building mass segmentable audiences to which it can serve ads at low cost, then it will likely need small businesses that gather people who use their laptops, businesses such as cafes and bookstores, to help get that mass audience to which it can serve ads at its Wi-Fi hot spots.

True, a small retail-oriented business can set up its own Wi-Fi hot spot, but if you're selling cake, coffee, and a place for a little reading or discussion, you may not be, nor want to be, in the business of mastering technology for the masses, as well. Rather than have to learn the technology and pay for the hot spot to attract customers, why not let the technologists handle it and, meanwhile, take a cut of the revenue rather than incur costs? (I frequent Starbucks mainly for the reliable Wi-Fi service everywhere in the United States and pay another $19 per month for T-Mobile HotSpot service but would gladly use a free service, if it were as available and performed as well.)

One downside: According to the story "customers would be required to load a copy of Cisco's secure network software and Google's 'toolbar' program on their laptops." We haven't yet confirmed what incentives the cafes are receiving from Google to test the Wi-Fi service, if any.

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September 21, 2005, 11:40 AM PDT
Demo Fall '05: Smart phones get the shaft?
Posted by: Lindsey Turrentine

Ah, here they are: the phone products. I left DemoFall '05 yesterday shocked by the absence of mobile products on stage. This morning, they made themselves known. Over the past two hours, we've seen a parade of games, voice, video--even eBay bidding applications and services for cell phones. No gadgets, though. Just "soft" products.

Interestingly, though, most of Demo's next big things for cell phones don't cater to smart phones. Six new apps and services out of the eight that I saw make moves to put "smart" tools on "regular" cell phones. Some examples:

AirSet
Wow, I feel like I'm back in 1999. The AirSet service helps you share calendars on the Internet, letting multiple groups--say, soccer leagues and family members--push their events onto your schedule and vice versa. (Yep, it's a PIM. Honestly, did you think you'd ever hear that term again?) Either way, on the surface, AirSet isn't groundbreaking, especially given well-established competitors such as Yahoo Groups. The difference, though, is that AirSet can send and receive calendar info from your cell phone and it "deep syncs" with Microsoft Outlook and Palm Desktop.

Gnumber Unwired Buyer
The most basic version of this free service sounds straightforward: Unwired Buyer lets you participate in eBay auctions over the phone, using voice prompts. The idea here is that if you can call in a bid, you'll never miss the end of an auction. The really interesting part about this service, though, is its potential: If you can make any sort of online transaction by voice via a VoIP back end (that's how Gnumber does it), imagine what you could do while you should be driving.

TalkPlus Mobile Call Manager
TalkPlus calls its almost-beta service the first cellular VoIP application. In other words, it uses cellular data networks, rather than the Internet, to make calls on any BREW- or Java-based cell phone. Pros? TalkPlus says you can manage multiple phone numbers on your cell, send international calls at broadband rates, and set up voice conferences with up to 10 participants. Question is: Will it sound OK? We'll find out when the beta service launches in 30 days.

I saw more apps for "normal" phones, too, and a couple of notables for smart phones, including a phone-based, GPS-like navigation system called Destinator Anywhere (just now launching in the United States) and a cool-looking remote document search and retrieval service called EasyReach. But if I'm to believe Demo, my smart phone won't be seeing the lion's share of third-party innovation anytime soon.

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September 21, 2005, 10:19 AM PDT
Mercedes-Benz does the safety dance
Posted by: Wayne Cunningham

Research in image recognition technology lets cars pay attention to the road and react to dangerous situations while the driver is distracted. Mercedes-Benz showed off some of this research at the Frankfurt auto show with a driving simulator. A video in the simulator showed the viewpoint of the driver as it focused away from the road on distractions like a pretty girl on the sidewalk. The video also showed the car recognizing warning signals such as red traffic lights, causing the car to brake slightly or even come to a full stop, which was communicated through jolts to the car seat in the simulator. Now I know some people will complain that the driver, not the car, should be doing the driving, but I've seen enough people yakking away on cell phones or digging through the glove box in traffic to realize that technology like this can probably prevent collisions with other cars and pedestrians.

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