Archive for January, 2010

Now that AT&T has taken its lumps from competitors and users over the size of its 3G network, the company is determined not to be caught flat footed again.

Just one day after Apple announced that its new iPad tablet would be available on both AT&T and Verizon, AT&T began touting investments in its 3G HSPA network that the company believes will give it the ability to handle increased traffic from mobile devices. During a conference call Thursday, AT&T COO John Stankey said that the company was investing $2 billion in improving its wireless network in 2010 and that it would construct roughly 2,000 new cell sites to expand its coverage.

Apple tablet carrier smackdown: Verizon vs. AT&TAT&T says that a big part of its wireless network upgrade will come through its transition to HSPA 7.2 technology that the company expects will cover 90% of its 3G network by the end of 2011. HSPA 7.2 is a variation of the GSM-based HSPA technology that has a peak speed of 7.2Mbps, although AT&T cautions that most users are unlikely to see data rates approaching theoretical peak speeds.

In addition to switching its 3G network to HSPA 7.2, AT&T is also hoping to boost network capacity by utilizing more spectrum on the 850MHz band. The company is hoping that deploying its 3G network over the 850MHz spectrum will solve some of the big capacity and propagation problems it has encountered in major markets such as New York and San Francisco.

All of these upgrades to the 3G network are intended to hold mobile users over until AT&T makes the switch to a 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in 2012. Verizon is expected to be the first carrier to offer LTE services this year, although its offerings will likely be data-only since standards for LTE voice and SMS have yet to be finalized.

AT&T’s 3G network came under fire from rival Verizon last year as Verizon’s now-famous “There’s a Map for That” ads typically showed AT&T users struggling to use applications on their mobile devices while Verizon customers happily watch live streaming videos. The ads then would display maps that show the total geographical reach of 3G coverage for each carrier, with Verizon’s map showing a far larger area of the country covered by its 3G service.

All of the built-in apps on iPad were designed from the ground up to take advantage of the large Multi-Touch screen. And they work in any orientation. So you can do things with these apps that you can’t do on any other device.

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Safari

The large Multi-Touch screen on iPad lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen — one page at a time. With vibrant color and sharp text. So whether you’re looking at a page in portrait or landscape, you can see everything at a size that’s actually readable. And with iPad, navigating the web has never been easier or more intuitive. Because you use the most natural pointing device there is: your finger. Scroll through a page just by flicking your finger up or down on the screen. Or pinch to zoom in or out on a photo. There’s also a thumbnail view that shows all your open pages in a grid, to let you quickly move from one page to the next.

Mail

See and touch your email in ways you never could before. In landscape, you get a split-screen view showing both an opened email and the messages in your inbox. To see the opened email by itself, turn iPad to portrait, and the email automatically rotates and fills the screen. No matter which orientation you use, you can scroll through your mail, compose a new email using the large, onscreen keyboard, or delete messages with nothing more than a tap and a flick. If someone emails you a photo, you can see it right in the message. You can also save the photos in an email directly to the built-in Photos app. And iPad works with all the most popular email providers, including MobileMe, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL.

Photos

With its crisp, vibrant display and unique software features, iPad is an extraordinary way to enjoy and share your photos. For example, the Photos app displays the photos in an album as though they were in a stack. Just tap the stack, and the whole album opens up. From there, you can flip through your pictures, zoom in or out, or watch a slideshow. You can even use your iPad as a beautiful digital photo frame while it’s is docked or charging. And there are lots of ways to import photos: You can sync them from your computer, download them from an email, or import them directly from your camera using the optional Apple Camera Connection Kit.

In addition to letting you access a streamlined version of your Google Voice inbox, the new web app also lets you display your Google Voice number as the outbound caller ID (so return calls come back to your Google Voice number), send and receive text messages for free, and place international calls at Google Voice’s low rates.

To get started, visit m.google.com/voice in your mobile browser. For quick access, don’t forget to create a shortcut to this URL on your home screen or Palm Launcher.

Just a reminder: you’ll need a Google Voice account and a voice plan on your cell phone to place calls using this web app. Don’t have a Google Voice account? Request an invite.

Google’s release Monday of a “stable channel” update of the Google Chrome browser for Windows features HTML and JavaScript APIs as well as browser extensions, according to company blogs.

The company defines its stable channel as one that offers features and fixes that have been thoroughly tested in the beta channel, even if they may not be the latest features.

[ InfoWorld's Test Center pitted Chrome against Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 browser. ]

Among the APIs included is Web SQL Database API, enabling storage of data in a structured manner on a user’s computer, said Ian Fette, Google Chrome product manager.

The Web Storage API offers a local storage component for simpler client-side storage of small amounts of data. Another API, WebSockets, has been implemented for sending data over a persistent bi-directional communication channel. A notification API enables use of a panel in the user’s status bar area to present information like event reminders or status updates.

“We’re already working on making these new APIs more useful, and you should see a couple of improvements on the developer channel soon,” Fette said in the Google Chromium Blog. For example, Google also is working on an Application Cache capability, to serve HTML and JavaScript that references content in the Web SQL Database.

The extensions in Chrome offer content and functionality from a Web site into the browser regardless of what sites the user has open; they can provide alerts and notifications or perhaps let a user access favorite Web services from icons next to a user’s address bar.

“Google Chrome extensions use the same multi-process technology that makes the browser fast and more secure, so that extensions won’t crash or slow down your browser,” Fette said in the Google Code Blog. Google offers an online extensions gallery.

One comment in the Google Chromium blog, however, was a bit dismissive of Chrome.

“As long as Chrome puts Linux on the back burner, Chrome is on my back burner. It is not important to me and will remain so until developer attitude improves,” the commenter said.

Chrome is downloadable at Google’s Web site.

This story, “Google offers HTML APIs and browser extenstions in Chrome,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in software development at InfoWorld.com.