Spectrum Crunch: The Plot Thickens

Late yesterday wireless company T-mobile filed a complaint with the Federal Government urging them to block a deal of Verizon buying cellular spectrum space from a collection of cable companies. Previously I had reported about the impending spectrum crunch as there is not enough space for all the wireless data users and the space could reach deficit levels by next year. Well it appears that the all out war between the phone companies for competing spectrum space is on. Verizon was slated to have a deal in the works with cable giants Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications to purchase a portion of their allotted spectrum within the TV spectrum. T-Mobile claims that this deal would give Verizon an "Excessive concentration" of the wireless spectrum. The deal was a potential $3.6 billion deal between Verizon and before mentioned cable companies. Those in the FCC and congress had raised issue with the agreement especially between the relationship between Comcast and Verizon. Senator Al Franken even released a statement saying "These joint-marketing agreements will turn these rival companies into partners, rather than competitors." Just last year it was T-mobile who was barred from merging with AT&T as it would have created an unfair advantage in the marketplace, now it seems T-mobile is casting those accusations at Verizon. Likely the FCC will bar the deal from taking place, however, this does not mean future deals on a smaller scale will not take place. As the wireless companies scramble to figure out how they are going to deal with the impending spectrum crunch look for the big four wireless companies at each others throats jockeying to secure as much spectrum space as they can get.

New London Ad Knows Your Sex

An ad in London went up today using facial recognition technology and can gear ads toward the sexes. This is all a new development in Ad 2.0 mania. You may have noticed recently Google has been using cookies to track the sites you view so as to better market ads towards you. They are not alone Facebook and other websites do this. Now the technology is coming to the analog world. This isn't the first time an ad like this has been tried, the ads were actually tried in Japan first, not surprisingly. The ads in Japan, however, attempted to establish ones age to market their product. With more and more advertisers pushing toward direct marketing in the new age of web 2.0 and User Verification, an idea unknown before Facebook, expect these ads to more and more prevalent. In fact in a previous post I discussed a leaked Microsoft project in the works which seeks to use facial, vocal and spacial recognition software, similar to that found in the Kinect for the Xbox 360, to create an entirely new user experience for windows users. It seems this technology is just on the brink and the future could be very interesting.

Social News Reader Knows What You Like

Retickr, a news reader app for Macs, is revolutionizing the way you read news. By customizing it to what you want to read. The app does this in several ways, combining your RSS feeds, social network updates and news you like to read. Consider it like a Pandora for news stories. The idea may also be gaining ground according to TechCrunch which has reported the company has just ",received a big update today, as well as a new round of funding. The startup just closed its Series A of $1.5 million led by the Lamp Post Group , the investors who had previously put $150,000 into the company's seed round." The app which became available at noon today on the Mac App store allows you to integrate your Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader feeds and then add those streams into playlists. The previous Retickr did not allow for the syncing process. The news of the product actually makes me wish that they had an alternate version for Windows users, especially as someone who scours through tech industry news on a daily basis to bring my readers up-to-date, interesting and mentally stimulating news. You're welcome. All joking aside I do hope they bring something out for windows users or a competitor comes out on windows. It really does become a hassle scouring Twitter, RSS feeds, Technorati, among other websites just to look for interesting stories to peak my as well as my readers interest.

Could Xfinity's New Streampix Put A Damper In Netflix

This week Comcast is set to launch it's new Streampix for current Comcast users. Will this be enough to challenge Netflix's current dominance in the streaming market? As of late Netflix has made some flops with their current business model, Qwikster anyone, but with the new Streampix with cable giant Comcast behind it could this put a damper on Netflix? Likely not, at least not immediately. The new Streampix will be available only to existing customers and not those not currently subscribed to Comcast services. Furthermore, the company will not offer their product on gaming consoles until next year when it will be available exclusively on the Xbox. The service will be similar in scope to Hulu So yes, Netflix users may be shaking their fists at Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings a little while longer waiting for a legitimate competitor to the current online streaming video service crown.

Anti-Global Warming Groups Smear Campaign Revealed

According to DeSmog Blog  The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, has been implementing a strategy aimed at discrediting and attacking scientists associated with climate change research and was well backed by a long list of corporate sponsors such as RJ Reynolds and other notable high carbon producing corporations. the information was leaked by scientist Peter Gleick according to the UK paper The Guardian. Gleick admits to tricking The Heartland Institute into handing over confidential documents detailing plans to discredit the teaching of science to school children. Further adding to the insult of the new information discovered,  The Heartland Institute has released a statement that they can not "confirm or deny" the statements of the leaked document.

The Impending Spectrum Crunch

Is your cellphone dropping calls, internet getting slower? This may be due to a problem known as Spectrum Crunch, as more and more people get on the smart phone band wagon it reduces the amount of airwaves available and it have reached critical mass. The wireless spectrum, the infrastructure over which all wireless transmissions travel is a finite resource, well we might be quickly approaching that wall. For the average cellphone user this may get very expensive. As smart phone technology has gotten cheaper and cheaper it has allowed more and more people get access to wireless data, now this may cause a massive slow down of wireless devices as we are forced to share a finite amount of airwaves with more and more people. The U.S. still has a slight surplus, however, with current growth rates it could reach deficit levels by the beginning of next year according to the FCC. Some fixes may be available like satellite providers actually selling their allotments to cellphone companies but this again will not be cheap for cellphone users.

Want Your Own Death Star? Cough Up $852 Quadrillion

So according to Centives, Lehigh Colleges blog for Economics Majors, it would cost upwards of $852 Quadrillion just to get a piece your own personal Death Star. That is roughly 13,000 times the worlds gross domestic product. However, it would still be doable according to the site as the amount of iron found on the Earth would allow you to build about 2 billion Death Stars only each would take about 833,000 years to build, maybe even longer since Obama's cancellation of the manned space program. Though the article is somewhat of a joke it does bring the question to mind about the future of space travel on earth. The Galactic Empire in the Star Wars movies was a collection of about 2,000 planets, so to build the Death Star it was an accumulated effort of about 2,000 planets and their collective resources. We on Earth have only ever been to our closest moon and even that may be up for debate. This causes you to wonder about the future possibilities of human beings if we were to colonize other planets and moons and the feats we could achieve given a much larger population spread throughout the solar system with access to the resources of other planets and moons. There are 166 known moons in our solar system and about 366 natural satellites. This may not be 2,000 planets but with access to the resources on those moons and some of our planets humans could very well build our own Death Star in the not so distant future.