Apple vs. Google
[Apple + Facebook + Tomtom] vs. [Google]. Time to buy some Facebook shares.
By gavmeister on 12 Jun 2012
Shame...
... I was hoping they'd be using NavTeq's maps which are significantly more up-to-date (particularly here in London).
However, if it's just the map data they're using and we won't have to deal with TomTom's poor customer service, then that's some blessing at least.
By mrmmm on 12 Jun 2012
ooooo lookie
How fresh and invigorating.
IOS to incorporate some SatNav into the OS. And get a proper SatNav data company on board too.
Oh, Just like WP7 did with Bing maps and Nokia, a year ago, and more.
You'll be telling me next that Twitter and Facebook don't need separate Apps 'cos they're baked into the OS too, next... What the Fruits have copied that too?
Meanwhile, over in the courts Samsung is being sued for copyright infringement....
By nickallison on 12 Jun 2012
Good for drivers, but is that all?
This might be good for drivers, but there are other reasons to look at a map, and also not just the location where you currently are or might be travelling to.
Is TomTom as good at covering the whole world? Totally unscientific and completely random example - compare Kathmandu on Google and at http://routes.tomtom.com.
What about other geospatial apps that use the in-built mapping?
By halsteadk on 12 Jun 2012
There are some very uninformed opinions here from the anti-Apple trolls whose miserable sarcasm merely illustrates how good the new features from Apple are.
FYI Samsung, RIM and Google already use Tom Tom map information. Apple uses its own cartography to turn the data into vector graphics for smooth zooming, panning and scrolling. As usual, a neat and efficient solution from Apple.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227978/App
le_signs_global_agreement_with_TomTom_for_maps
By SwissMac on 12 Jun 2012
Chinese Telecom Firms to Expand in Latin America - CRIENGLISH.com
OTMT pays $0.17 dividend after Mobinil sale - Reuters
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NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.
PGCIL postpones tower lease plans [Mint, New Delhi] - Businessweek
June 12--State-owned Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL) has put its plan to lease 200,000 of its transmission towers to the telecom sector on the back burner, reflecting the Indian telecom sector losing its sheen.
In the initial phase, the public sector unit (PSU) had plans to expand its telecom business by leasing out 15,000 transmission towers to firms such as
"What can we do? The entire scenario on which we had made these plans has changed after the 2G scam and the Supreme Court verdict," said a top PGCIL executive requesting anonymity.
The national transmission carrier wanted to leverage its extensive reach--particularly in semi-urban and rural areas. PGCIL had hired consultants such as Booz and Co. and KPMG to help it with tower leasing plans and expected to earn '400 crore in annual revenue within eight years of operation. The transmission utility operates 90,000 circuit kilometre of transmission lines with 145 sub-stations.
"The entire market has been down. This has led to the postponement of our plans," said another PGCIL executive who also didn't want to be identified.
The main reason for the drying up of the potential market for tower companies in India is the 2 February Supreme Court verdict that cancelled 122 telecom licences allocated to nine companies in January 2008.
The order led to the number of operators in the country being slashed by half.
Most of the older operators such as Bharti Airtel and
The telecom sector on the whole is also facing significant margin pressure with regulatory uncertainty putting a question mark on the future viability of the business. The 2 February court order also directed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to draw up auction rules. The regulator's rules have set the base price for the auction of basic 2G spectrum as high as '3,622 crore per megahertz. This has led to many of the operators looking to cut spending on capital and operational expenditure, significantly leaving stand-alone tower companies with very little chance of survival.
The growing confusion over the process surrounding the spectrum auction is beginning to affect companies, with some of them putting their fund mobilization plans on hold. A case in point is Reliance Communications (R-Com), the mobile telephony arm of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group halting the proposed sale of its telecom tower assets. Over the last two years, R-Com has been looking to hive off its 50,000 telecom towers in order to bring down debt, but hasn't been able to conclude a deal.
There are may be compatibility issues regarding the use of the power transmission utility's towers for telecom services, according to some experts.
"Most of the towers of Powergrid are not technically feasible for the needs of a telecom company. There are some structural issues in terms of the necessary height and also the space needed for the telecom equipment. The equipment is housed in a base station adjacent to the tower," said a telecom analyst working with a multinational brokerage firm requesting anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the media.
Eurozone Woes Hit Telecoms - CRIENGLISH.com
Samsung plasma wins CNET's accidental burn-in test - CNET Asia
It's 2012, and while many thought plasma TV technology would have died out by now, it's still going strong. Meanwhile, burn-in, the No. 1 perceived problem with the technology, is all gone, right? Well, not exactly.
What is burn-in?
While it's possible to test for many aspects of a TV's performance here at CNET, one thing we have never been able to test for is burn-in. The reason? Any meaningful test of burn-in could potentially harm the television, and we currently we don't have the budget to go around intentionally destroying review samples.
Burn-in, also known as image retention, is the effect in which a residual image is still visible as a more-or-less faint, ghostly background behind whatever you watch. It typically appears when the entire picture or elements thereof are left unmoving onscreen for hours at a time. Plasma TV makers have implemented technology such as pixel orbiters in order to stop contrasting, static images from burning into your screen. As we found out inadvertently, one maker's technology seems to work better than another.
The setup
As part of our normal plasma TV test procedure, we loop an industry-standard DVD to simulate normal viewing conditions for 100 hours or more before we calibrate. I set up that loop one afternoon recently after receiving three manufacturer-supplied review samples, a Samsung PS60E6500, a Panasonic TH-P55GT50, and a Panasonic TH-P65VT50, and left for the night. I came back the next morning to find the TVs stuck on the DVD's static title screen, which had been displaying on all three TVs for about 8 hours. Don't try this at home, folks!
While this was an (unhappy) accident, it did tell us something about the state of anti-burn-in technology in 2012, and may even affect your buying decision. As a "test" it's valid enough: Each plasma was brand-new, each was set to the default "Movie" or THX Cinema" mode with no other changes made to the default settings, and each ran for the same amount of time with the same material. The question is: which TV fared best?
In one case the screen looked no different than it had before I turned the lights off the night before. Two, however, had the image of the menu emblazoned across everything they displayed.
(Credit: Josh Goldman/CNET)
(Credit: Josh Goldman/CNET)
(Credit: Josh Goldman/CNET)
The winner? The Samsung PSE6500, with virtually no image retention at all. Meanwhile both Panasonics were looking much worse for wear.
But this isn't where things ended. While we were able to then calibrate and test the Samsung just fine, we weren't going to leave things as they were with the Panasonic TVs.
The "cure"
The advice offered most often to sufferers of burn-in is to "watch 24 hours of static," but as no one uses analog tuners anymore, this is hardly helpful. In truth, running any full-screen image works just as well. We used the same "burn-in" disk as before and left it running over the long Memorial Day weekend.
As a result of four days' continuous running--equivalent to almost a month's normal viewing--the retained image on the VT50 basically vanished. The residual image on the GT50, while much fainter than it appeared at first, was still discernible, so we ran the disk for another couple of nights.
Disaster struck again, this time after my colleague David Katzmaier had set up the overnight loop. It stopped on the same title screen, imprinting the same static image even further. We gave up and asked Panasonic for a second GT50 review sample, and expect it to arrive this week.
At this point you may be wondering whether any amount of exercise with a moving image could serve to cure the GT50' image retention, or whether it actually was permanent. I just don't know, and there's no way to tell without running it for another few hundred hours. My guess is that the image on the GT50 eventually would go away, but since we sent back that original review sample we won't know for sure.
What can you do?
While our attempts to fix the problem worked on two out of the three plasmas--and could work on the GT50 with more time--if you find yourself stuck with persistent burn-in there is not much you can do beyond simply watching more TV and hoping it goes away. No manufacturer's warranties currently cover burn-in.
As a preventative measure, make sure to enable screen savers on your video equipment, try to avoid having it show static images and letterbox bars for prolonged periods of time, and be especially careful during the first few hundred hours of your new plasma TV's lifespan. That's when its screen is most vulnerable to image retention.
Conclusion
It's hard to draw wider conclusions about Samsung and Panasonic plasmas' burn-in fighting characteristics from this one inadvertent test, so I'll just stick to the three plasmas here. If you're buying a TV and want to use it as an occasional PC monitor I would still recommend using an LCD, but gaming and occasional Web browsing on a plasma is fine.
The fact that these effects faded over time should give you some reassurance that this is not a permanent issue for a modern plasma TV. If it doesn't, by all means get an LCD.
But despite the ever-decreasing concerns about burn-in there's one reason I will always pick a plasma over an LCD: Image quality. For the money nothing can beat a plasma for deep black levels, wide viewing angles, uniformity, and motion-blur-free gaming. Until OLED TVs become affordable--and word is they may also be susceptible to burn-in--I will be choosing a plasma for use at home.
Via CNET.com
Lenovo turns mobile broadband operator for 3G-equipped ThinkPads - zdnet.co.uk
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