remove the labels – Gadgets and Life

The FCC has announced (pdf) that they’ll be holding a public hearing on “broadband and the digital future” on July 21, at 4PM EST, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The FCC has recently held hearings on network neutrality at both Harvard University and Stanford University. This particular hearing will instead focus on competition and [...]

What do you do when your company once ruled the Internet, but years of incompetence and an inability to adapt to a changing market results in tens of millions of customers defecting? If you’re AOL, you apparently raise prices. AOL is informing dial-up customers that as of July 27, they’ll be raising the price of [...]

The New York Times notes that the city’s new $500 million high-speed wireless secure data network can, among other uses, expedite the disposal of dead opossum. The city’s NYCWIN network, built by Northrop Grumman, includes some 400 cellular antennas (see pic) covering 95 percent of the city, with nineteen city agencies developing about 53 unique [...]

Given that it’s alleged that AT&T funnels absolutely all of your phone and Internet data directly to the NSA without a warrant or oversight, their marketing decision to make light of those worried about privacy in a new ad for online billing has bloggers complaining (see Boing Boing, GigaOM, Consumerist) about poor taste. Honestly it [...]

RealNetworks today announced that they’ll be offering their library of music without DRM in the MP3 format. The move takes aim at Apple by not only matching Apple’s pricing (US$.99 per song, or $9.99 per album), but by allowing store users to listen to an entire song for free instead of the iTunes method of [...]

As demanded by Canadian regulators, last week Bell Canada finally offered “proof” that their decision to throttle the bandwidth they provide wholesalers (without telling them) was necessary because their network was just so congested. As I noted at the time, the only problem was that the “proof” actually shows their network isn’t all that congested, [...]

Canadian consumers are finally getting the iPhone a year later than their friends to the south. However, customers are annoyed by how expensive and restrictive Rogers’ service plan is. Not only must users sign a mandatory three year contract, but for the same $75 AT&T customers pay, Rogers users get a third less calling time, [...]

On the heels of Charter’s decision last week to suspend their use of NebuAD user tracking ad technology, I’m seeing hints that CenturyTel may be doing the same thing. In addition to reworking their privacy page, the company is e-mailing customers who ask to inform them that plans to implement the gear have been “delayed.” [...]