In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it’s not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites.

“They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometers (491 miles) over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time,” said Nicholas Johnson, NASA’s chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects.”

More details on CBS site

Tags: collision, iridium, russia, satellite, space, telecom, Telecommunications, USA

Iridium Satellite LLC has finally unveiled a replacement for the (at least) 10 years old Motorola 9505A. The new 9555 satellite phone will be available as from November 08 and comes with some new features.

Phone 9555 at glance:

• Menu-driven interface
• Soft keys for flexible menu choices
• 27% lighter than previous model
• 30% smaller than previous model
• Internally retractable antenna for compact carrying
• Illuminated, weather-resistant keypad redesigned for ease-of-use
• A menu configurable in any of 21 languages
• Improved integration of messaging (short email and SMS)
• Additional address book fields
• Programmable international codes for automatic dialing
• Built-in help function
• Integrated speakerphone
• Mini-USB data port
• Standby time up to 30 hours
• Talk time up to 4 hours

Multimedia News release:

Tags: 9555, communication, global, iridium, satellite, satphone, telecommunication, terminal

Huawei has unveiled the E180 next generation mobile broadband device.

The world’s slimmest HSPA USB stick to date, the only 10mm thick E180 is a highly compact device supporting the complete range of HSPA/UMTS and GSM/GPRS/EDGE network technologies, allowing fast uplink speed rates of up to 5.76Mbps and a downlink of up to 7.2 Mbps.

The E180 is a real plug-and-play device compatible with MS Windows (2000/XP/Vista) as well as Mac OS and is designed with a ultra slim rotatable USB connector, which can be turned by 270 degrees. This way, the USB connector can be stored safely without the need of an additional cover.

The E180 comes with its built-in MicroSD card slot and supports up to 8GB memory card which eliminates the need for an additional USB memory stick to carry documents, music or movies. In addition, the device supports various useful services like SMS/MMS, PC voice, phone book, flow display and statistics.

Availability : Mid-June 2008

Specifications

HSPA/UMTS (2100MHz)
EDGE/GPRS/GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz)
Support 2Mbps (5.76Mbps ready) HSUPA and 7.2Mbps HSDPA services
Support SMS and Voice services
MicroSD Card Slot
Plug & Play
Data statistics
Support Windows2000 , Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac Operating Systems

Source: Huawei

Tags: 3.5G, broadband, data, e180, HSDPA, hspa, HSUPA, huawei, mobile, Mobile Communications, modem, Telecommunications, usb

Features

• Push technologies
• MS Exchange support
• VPN Protocols
• Remote Wipe
• Certificated and Identities
• etc..

Technical Specs:

Cellular and wireless

• UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
• Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

GPS

• Assisted GPS

Storage Capacity

• 8GB or 16GB flash drive

Display

• 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display
• 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi
• Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Colors

• 8GB model: Black
• 16GB model: Black or white

Audio

• Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
• Audio formats supported: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
• User-configurable maximum volume limit
• Stereo earphones with built-in microphone
• Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
• Impedance: 32 ohms

Video

• Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second.

Camera and photos

• 2.0 megapixels Camera located on back of iPhone.
• Photo geotagging
• iPhone and third-party application integration

Power and battery

• Talk time up to 10 hours on 2G
• Standby time: Up to 300 hours
• Browsing up to 6 hours on Wi-Fi
• Video playback: Up to 7 hours
• Audio playback: Up to 24 hours

Size and weight

• H 115.5 x W 62.1 x D 12.3 mm
• 133 grams

Price

• 8 GB : 199 USD Worldwide
• 16GB : 299 USD Worldwide

Availability announced in 25 countries by July 11th and up to 70 later this year.

All details here

Tags: 3G, apple, cellular, iphone, iphone 3G, Mobile Communications, smartphone, Telecommunications

Following the Touch Diamond few days ago, HTC announced the “Touch Pro” which utilizes similar styling and functionality of the highly anticipated Touch Diamond™ and introduces a variety of business-focused enhancements that make getting work done on the go quick and easy.

With the Touch Pro, they introduce a TouchFLO 3D, a touch screen innovation providing a stunningly intuitive way to zip through common tasks like messaging, calendar appointments or making calls with just one touch.  Shall we call TouchFLO 3D the HTC response to Apple ?

Will the Touch Pro the replacement of my aging HTC S620 or will Apple iPhone 3G version (to be announced on June 9th at WWDC) shake the market again with stunning innovations ?

HTC Touch Pro Specifications

• Processor:  Qualcomm® MSM7201A™ 528 MHz
• Operating System: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Memories: ROM 512 MB – RAM: 288MB
• Dimensions: 102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 18.05 mm (T)
• Weight: 165 g (with battery)
• Display: 2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
• Network HSDPA/WCDMA:    Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
  Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
• Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:   Europe/Asia: 900/1800/1900 MHz
• Device Control: TouchFLO™ 3D Touch-sensitive navigation control
• Keyboard: Slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard
• GPS: GPS and A-GPS ready
• Connectivity:
• Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
  Wi-Fi® IEEE 802.11 b/g
  HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0, audio jack, and TV Out* in one)
• Camera:
  Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus and flash light
  Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
• Audio: Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
• Battery: Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery 1340 mAh
• Talk time:
  Up to 397 minutes for WCDMA
  Up to 485 minutes for GSM
• Standby time:
  Up to 503 hours for WCDMA
  Up to 406 hours for GSM
• Video call time:
  Up to 201 minutes for WCDMA
• Expansion Slot: MicroSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
• AC Adapter: Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
• DC output: 5V and 1A

Tags: cellphone, communication, gsm, htc, mobile, Mobile Communications, smartphone, touch, touchflo 3d, touchpro, windows mobile 6

Not releated at all with Nomadcom (just in case some might have a doubt) ,

Skype has selected Rebecca, a 26 y/o Australian girl, to take up the "Skype Nomad Challenge" which is to travel non-stop around the Globe and demonstrates that Skype is now mobile.

Over 33 days, Rebecca "The Nomad" will be using as many different forms of transport possible for a girl – from jumbo jets to dog sleds, canoes to camels, sky diving to revolving restaurants.

Her non-stop journey started on May 5th from London (UK) to Singapore, China, Australia (current location) Alaska, USA an back to Europe.

To keep in touch, Rebecca uses SkypePhones as well as a Nokia N810 (the Internet Tablet) loaded with, indeed, Skype software. 

All related links which also gives a good overview of what Web 2.0 is offering:

• Twitter
• Skype: theskypenomad
• Flickr
• You Tube
• Blog
• My space
• Facebook
  

All this perpetual motion is also for a good cause – to create some noise about an awesome charity called Motivation. Basically, they help disabled people in poor countries get mobile.

I may propose to Skype the Challenge #2 as I have an extended list of countries and locations which cannot be so called "Internet/mobile phone" friendly… interested ?

Tags: 33 days, challenge, charity, gsm, internet, Mobile Communications, motivation, N810, Nomad Tools, rebecca, skype, Skype nomad, Travel, VoIP, wifi, world, worldwide

HTC launched earlier this week in London the "Touch Diamond" the lastest smartphone of their TOUCH series.

The Touch Diamond is a stainless steel frame based of only 11.5mm thick, comes with a 2.8 inch touch-sensitive TFT 640×480 VGA screen. An integrated GPS system as well as a 3.2 megapixel camera and a second VGA CMOS one are also available.

This "iPhone-like" smartphone will be available in Europe and Asia in June 08 for about 770 USD.

Surprisingly, there is apparently no Mini-SD card slot to extend the 4 GB internal storage memory.

Highlights:

• 2.8-inch touch screen, with four times the pixels of most phones.

• Vibrant TouchFLO 3D user interface, responding perfectly to your finger gestures when scrolling through contacts, browsing the web, and launching media… all vividly displayed as photos and artwork powered by the 3D graphics processor.
• HTC Weather – providing a constant view of weather at home and abroad.
• Surf and download at broadband speed with HSDPA internet connectivity.
• 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera for quality stills and video.
• 4GB of internal storage to preserve more photos, music, files and exchanged data than ever before.
• Integrated GPS for use with maps software for a full turn-by-turn satellite navigation experience.

Technical Specifications:

• Processor
  Qualcomm® MSM7201A' 528 MHz

• Operating System
  Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Memory
  ROM: 256 MB
  RAM: 192 MB DDR SDRAM
  Internal storage: 4 GB
• Dimensions
  102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 11.5 mm (T)
• Weight
  110 g (with battery)
• Display
  2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
• Network
  HSDPA/WCDMA: Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
  Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds

  Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
  Europe/Asia: 900/1800/1900 MHz
  (Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)

• Device Control
  TouchFLO' 3D
  Touch-sensitive navigation control
• GPS
  GPS and A-GPS ready
• Connectivity
  Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
  Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
  HTC ExtUSB' (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
• Camera
  Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus
  Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
• Audio
  Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
• Ring tone supported formats:
  MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB
  40 polyphonic and Standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI
• Battery
  Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery
  Capacity: 900 mAh
• Talk time:
  Up to 270 minutes for WCDMA
  Up to 330 minutes for GSM
• Standby time:
  Up to 396 hours for WCDMA
  Up to 285 hours for GSM
• Video call time: Up to 145 minutes for WCDMA
  (The above are subject to network and phone usage.)
• AC Adapter
  Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
  DC output: 5V and 1A

All informations on HTC site

Tags: diamond, gsm, htc, iphone, mobile, network, phone, smartphone, touch, touch diamond, touch screen, touchflo, windows, windows mobile 6

The WNDW team has released its second edition of the book "Wireless Networking in the Developing World". The 425 page book includes lots of new material, including new chapters on solar power and economic planning, several new case studies.

The book is released for free under a Creative Commons license and is available in several languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, and soon Arabic and Portuguese). and it is free to download, print, update, or redistribute it.

The Wireless Networking in the Developing World book is just one part of the WNDW project. Community forums, training workshops, and additional material are also available on their website, http://wndw.net/.

via : Lunch over IP 

Tags: 2008, art, blog, book, community, develloping country, development, free, HP, ia, im, internet, King, lan, language, network, nomadcom.net, pda, power, project, release, Telecommunications, train, update, W NDW, web, website, wifi, wireless, world, wp, www

I haven't review in details all news from the CES 2008 that closed its doors on Thursday but it seems the Global Energy problem contributes to have better ideas regarding the way we can power our IT stuff.

One company, Green Plug, has identified a significant contributor to the high cost of battery-powered consumer electronics products, wasted energy and unnecessary toxic waste. A typical home or office has a dozen or more power transformers that convert between 90V and 254V wall power to device-specific DC power. Every adapter is physically unique and therefore is thrown away every time a device is replaced.

Green Plug comes with a better idea.

Creating a standardize power supply which can be used by all Green Plug^TM compliant devices utilize uniform cables and connectors; so, you never have to worry about finding the right adapter for your laptop, DV camera, cell phone or power tool.

Let's hope they will be able to convinced enough partners to have a real impact on the market and we'll have soon all our electronic devices using a single and unique type of power supply.

Tags: 2008, adaptor, art, ATT, blog, cable, camera, ces, electricity, energy, find, fon, Gadgets, global, global power efficiency, green, ia, im, Impact, lan, laptop, nomadcom.net, phone, power, power adaptor, review, supply, web, wp, www

Since, mid-2006 mobile phones with a built-in 3 MP camera and optical zoon are available on the market and already represent an alternative to low end digital camera. More than 70 models are available today with a 3 to 5 MP resolution. One of the first phone with a "real camera" was the famous one Nokia N93 and its Carl Zeiss Optics.

Samsung is now putting even more pressure on camera makers with the soon release (first on European market) of its G800. A 5 MP digital camera with 3x optical zoom into mobile phone… or is it the opposite? 

The specifications are rather attractive:

• Quad bands (900 / 1800 / 1900 / 2100  )
• Data network HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• 2.4 inches TFT display with 256K colors
• Size 101x52x19mm for 129 gr (25% lighter than the Nokia N93)
• Standby 220 hours, talk time 3.5 hours.
• Memory 160 MB + MicroSD slot
• Document views (Office, PPT, PDF,)
• Email (POP3, IMAP), SMS, MMS,
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB 2.0, PCSync, OutlookSync, etc..
• FM Receiver, Java embedded, MP3, etc..

and indeed the built-in camera:

• 5 Mio Pixel
• 2592х1944 pixels
• autofocus
• video recording mode: MPEG4, 3GPP, H.263, H.264
• xenon flash
• 3x optical zoom /4x digital
• 4 shot modes
• 4 quality settings
• brightness adjustment

 All other specs are here

The big plus is definitively the 3x optical zoom which makes the difference with other 5 MP phones.  The resolution race continues as Samsung (them again) Electro-Mechanics announced on November 15th that 8 MP camera phones may be available by next summer following the successful development of a 10.5 x 11.5 x 9.4mm 8 megapixel CMOS censor.

Will camera makers develop new "point and shoot" camera with built-in phones  and multimedia facilities such MP3 player and FM receiver ?

I'm impatient to have one "box" less to carry when traveling…

What will you drop first ? your camera or your phone ?

Tags: 2007, 5 MP, 8 MP, api, ATT, blog, camera, ces, connectivity, development, digital, europe, flash, fon, gap, ia, im, lan, light, map, megapixels, memory, mobile, mobile phone, models, network, nokia, nomadcom.net, PDF, phone, phones, photo, point and shoot, press, release, resolution, samsung, sms, sun, Travel, uk, usb, video, wp, www