Similar to the Verizon MiFi hotspot I recently mentioned, Sprint also has a mobile wifi device. The main difference seeming to be that the Sprint device supports their new 4G networks - if you happen to be in an area that supports it. Here is a link to a review from MobileCrunch.

One of the staff here at ORCSWeb has been using the MiFi Mobile Hotspot from Verizon for a few months now and continues to have nothing but great feedback about it. It sounds like something that serious mobile warriors should check out. Here is a link with more details, pictures, and reviews about the product.

http://mobile.engadget.com/2009/05/13/verizon-mifi-2200-review/

I recently mentioned the lack of decent AT&T mobile service coverage in Asheville NC. Well, now I've read that there is an application for the iPhone that allows you to report trouble areas. MY guess is that AT&T isn't going to just run out and drop a bunch of new cell towers in dead zones - I'm sure they largely know of their current coverage dead-zones and could do this already if they wanted. But, maybe if enough different people report problems in certain areas they'll at least serious consider looking into the issues.

"Although the wireless 802.11n standard has just recently been made official, IEEE has begun work on the next iteration of WiFi. The coming upgrade may deliver speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second by improving on the efficiency of existing technology, according to Electronista."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/184067/wifi_80211ac_1gbps_by_2012.html?tk=rss_news

That's interesting. I suspect though that most home users likely get 5 Mbps or slower actual ISP connections to the Internet, so a faster wifi speed won't help in that regard. What it will help though is when people have multiple devices that are connected and streaming information between them. Say you have a TV device that can communicate with your home PC to stream movies (record or playback). This type faster wifi LAN connection would be a nice improvement.

Hopefully as the technology changes and the speed increases, they don't lose coverage range. In fact, I'd say that coverage range is likely a bigger issue right now to home consumers than the wifi speed (due to ISP speed limitations).

I generally don't think of Verizon as a very cutting edge company. I give them a thumbs-up though for the new Verizon Hub product that they've made available.

The video phones buzz was a short fad and flopped. It seems many people don't want to be seen when making a call. (I don't :>)

"Internet phones" though perhaps? I'm not talking about VOIP, but turning the phone into an actual useful Internet device.

Verizon is selling their product as a central "hub" for a variety of things, which I think is pretty cool.

Cell phones can easily connect to the Internet now (CDMA, EVDO, 3G, etc.) - as could even "normal" home phones (DSL uses the same lines) and obviously VOIP can (connected to the Internet as a necessity).

Why not advance the physical phone part like Verizon has? Whip up a touch screen (I picture Microsoft Surface but many times smaller), give it a fairly simple interface (Vista but that actually works well?), add some basic features - multiple email account access, web browser, SMS, VOIP, caller id, contacts, calendar, grocery list (!) - and wow... that could be both a cool, and a very useful, product.

With the Internet-enabling of more and more devices, one thing is for sure: you better have an Internet presence. You want to be "available" to people anytime they get the inclination to look you up. And your website shouldn't be just some boring brochure-ware -> Make it useful. You should also make sure that your site is managed somewhere or by someone so that it can be both fault-tolerant and scale to handle heavy traffic as needed. If people have access to the Internet “all the time” then you and/or your company need to be available when requested… or it’s an easy step to jump over to a competitor’s site to purchase their product instead.

~Brad

I like SSD and I think spinning drives will "go away" over the next few (ten?) years. My Dell XT Tablet though, which has an SSD drive, doesn't always perform IO ideally. I haven't found a pattern, but at times - several times per day, which is often enough to be very annoying - the drive access light will go solid and the system will just pause while something is being accessed on the SSD drive. I've used other systems with SSD though that don't have this problem, so it is likely specific to certain drives or how they are implemented in the system.