Blog articles from 01/2009

After the Chinese government issued 3G licenses to the country’s mobile operators last week, three major carriers came out today with their ambitious 3G service investment plans. Collectively, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom will eventually lash out about $41 billion on 3G infrastructure, terminal devices and 3G services over the next few years. China Mobile has the biggest agenda. Over the next two years, the incumbent mobile operator plans to install 80,000 base stations...

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officially launched a PHR pilot on Tuesday in the states of Arizona and Utah. According to the design of the pilot, it will run for about a year before CMS considers the next stage. Four PHR service providers, including Google Health, HealthTrio, NoMoreClipboard, and PassportMD, contracted with CMS on this pilot. These providers will compete with one another in these two states trying to sign up users. To incentivize providers as well as...

Today, movie rental giant Blockbuster announced a partnership with Sonic Solutions that will allow it to stream movies and shows not only on TVs and PCs, but also on mobile phones, portable media players, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes and digital video recorders. Between them, Blockbuster and Sonic already have deals with such CE manufacturers as LG Electronics, Samsung, and VIZIO. VIZIO had just taken the wraps off of its “Connected HDTV” Platform at CES last week. VIZIO’s other...

Brings Energy Management, Monitoring and Conservation to the Home for Consumers and Utilities -- Simple self-installable kit lets consumers manage energy usage and reduce utility bills with smart power adapters, thermostats, and an in-home energy control center. 4Home , the leader in home control services, announced a new energy management system, 4Home Energy . Offering onsite or remote monitoring, this new system gives consumers a connected home solution for controlling...

I thought that this article captured the major CES announcements very well: * LG Electronics and VIZIO and Netflix; * LG, Samsung, Sony, and VIZIO all demonstrating the Yahoo! Widget Channel; * Intel says that both Samsung and Toshiba will launch products with the CE 3100 SoC and the Widget Channel framework; and * MySpace is launching a TV widget.

Many manufacturers are developing apps that make Apple's ubiquitous mobile device a touchpanel controller for automation, lighting, distributed audio and more. Apple’s iPhone is doubling as a new type of touchpanel controller these days. Apple has already sold more than 6 million iPhones, and many home control companies are capitalizing on that trend by engineering their systems to communicate directly with the mobile device, as well as with Apple’s iPod and iPod touch products....

By the end of 2008, Boxer had 689,000 digital TV subscriptions. Competition between Pay-TV operators in the Swedish digital TV market have intensified throughout the year. As a result, subscriptions decreased by 3% from the start of 2008 with 709,000 subscribers. In March 2008, Boxer was selected Pay-TV operator for the approaching Danish digital terrestrial network; in addition, Boxer received an equivalent licence to be the Pay-TV operator in the Irish digital TV network in July...

Last week, President-elect Barack Obama openly pledged to computerize the nation’s medical records in five years. The promise is ambitious, as I remembered talks about computerized medical records dated as far back as in 1999. Will Obama accomplish this goal? The first barrier is himself and his administration. I am impressed with his resolve and courage to take on this issue in his first year. But the reality is that the economic recovery is the national priority and if he has...