Legion of Angels News Archive

NEW YORK - Picture whipping out your cell phone and catching up with “Lost” or “Jeopardy,” or watching the local 11 o’clock news, all for free.

You can do this with an imported Chinese phone, but you can’t with any phone sold in the U.S. — at least not without monthly charges.

This is one of the reasons the United States is behind several other countries when it comes to making television an attractive option for cell phones. Carrier business models are partly at fault, but choices about TV technology made long ago are largely to blame.

Most phones sold in Japan can tune in to free TV broadcasts, and there are tens of millions of viewers. Cell phones that can tune in to free broadcasts are also available in South Korea, Germany and China.

But only 3 percent of Americans regularly watched video on their cell phones late last year, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That figure includes people who watched short, downloaded clips rather than broadcast TV.

For starters, you can blame the impending shutdown of all full-power analog TV broadcasts on Feb. 17, a deadline set by the government. That Chinese handset, made by ZTE Corp., can only tune in to analog transmissions. Because most of them are going away, there’s no real point in selling phones like that in the United States.

China is keeping its analog broadcasts until 2015, six years longer than the U.S., so the phones are viable there. Ironically, the TV reception chip inside comes from a U.S. company, Telegent Systems Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The analog U.S. broadcasts are being replaced by digital broadcasts, but there are no phones anywhere that can tune in to those.

When the U.S. digital TV standard was laid down in the early ’90s by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, it was optimized for high-definition signals to stationary antennas, according to Mark Richter, president of the industry group.

At the time, cell phones had screens that could display eight digits and nothing else, so little thought was given making the broadcasts work with mobile gadgets.

The Europeans created their digital television standard later and made it a bit more amenable to mobile reception, Richter said. Thus, there are now phones sold in Germany that can receive local digital broadcasts intended for stationary TVs.

Weijie Yun, Telegent’s chief executive, said it’s theoretically possible to receive U.S. digital terrestrial broadcasts on a phone, but engineers have yet to overcome key technical challenges. For now, Telegent’s chips can receive analog broadcasts in most countries of the world, and digital broadcasts in Europe and a few countries outside it.

Because U.S. phones can’t receive regular broadcast TV, carriers have had to look to other solutions. Cell-phone technology company Qualcomm Inc. has created a network that broadcasts signals designed for cell phones. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless sell some handsets that can tune in to these broadcasts.

Sprint Nextel Corp. has contracted with another company, MobiTV Inc., which streams lo-fi streaming video over the phones’ broadband connections. The fourth national carrier, T-Mobile USA, doesn’t have a TV service.

The common denominator for the existing services is that they cost money, limiting their adoption. AT&T and Verizon Wireless charge $15 per month for 10 channels. Sprint bundles MobiTV with some high-end plans and charges $9.99 per month as standalone service.

In-Stat analyst Michelle Abraham estimates that Qualcomm’s MediaFLO has 100,000 subscribers. MobiTV has done better, with about 4 million subscribers.

Research director John Barrett at analysis firm Parks Associates points to the fees as a problem, and recommends that operators provide free content.

“A free taste would go a long way in making the consumer case for mobile TV,” he wrote in a recent report. “Mobile TV services have taken off in Japan and South Korea, where service is offered free of charge. In Italy, where additional fees have been the norm, usage has been limited.”

This month, Toshiba Corp. announced it would end a pay-TV system for handsets because of the popularity of free TV broadcasts.

“That’s one of the key barriers,” Telegent’s Yun said. “Once you start charging consumers, they start getting turned off.”

U.S. TV broadcasters are quite eager to provide free broadcasts to cell phones, just as they do to TVs with “rabbit-ear” antennas. They’ve formed the Open Mobile Video Coalition, which estimates that advertising-financed TV for cell phones could be a $2 billion market.

They want to reach cell phones through another wireless standard the ATSC is creating. It will use regular TV frequencies to reach mobile gadgets, meaning TV stations will be able to broadcast from existing towers.

The goal is to complete the new standard, called ATSC-M/H, by the first quarter of next year, Richter said. That could mean broadcasts will be operational before the end of next year.

It’s not completely clear that the technology would be used for free TV — the possibility to charge viewers monthly fees will be built in — but it would be natural for broadcasters to simulcast their regular advertising-financed programming on the mobile channel.

The big question then, Abraham said, is whether broadcasters will be able to persuade carriers to sell TV-capable phones.

AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said it was too early speculate.

“If the answer ends up being ‘yes,’” Abraham said, “then that opens up a very large market.”

Source — Yahoo!

(CNN) – A one-word blog post from a cell phone helped to free an American student from an Egyptian jail, but it took the signatures and support of thousands of activists to get his translator out.

When detained in April, graduate student James Karl Buck turned to his cell phone and typed the message, “Arrested,” alerting all his friends on the microblog service Twitter site.

Upon his release shortly afterward, the first thing Buck did was send another message, “Free.”

On Tuesday, nearly three months after the American and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested, Buck turned to Twitter again — this time to tell everyone that Maree was safe at home.

The post: “Mohammed is free, Mohammed is free!”

Twitter, a social-networking blog site, allows users to send status updates, or “tweets,” from cell phones, instant messaging services and Facebook in 140 characters or less.

Buck spent much of the time after his release working to free his friend. But it was not until shortly after Maree’s release that Buck and his translator were finally able to speak — through instant messenger.

“He was totally in good spirits; he joked with me,” Buck said. “I told him he was a hero, and that because of his case and what he suffered, he’s brought a lot of attention to the government’s behavior in Egypt.”

Immediately, Buck said he apologized to the translator because he felt guilty about his detention.

Buck, 29, a graduate student from the University of California, Berkeley, working on a photography project for his master’s thesis, met Maree, a 23-year-old Egyptian veterinary student, in Mahalla. Maree offered to help Buck as he photographed anti-government protests over low wages and rising food prices in April.

During one of the demonstrations, Buck and Maree were detained. En route to the police station, Buck sent a message via Twitter, and his school hired an attorney and was able to get him released within a day. But Maree remained in jail for nearly three months.

After his release, Buck returned home and used his Twitter network, now more than 570 followers strong, to help free his translator and friend.

Fueled by the gnawing guilt of leaving Maree behind, Buck set out to enlist all the help he could in hopes of sparking a movement for the translator’s release.

He began setting up a virtual online command post to demand Maree’s release. He contacted U.S. and Egyptian authorities and human rights groups and used everything from Twitter updates, blog posts on his Web site to an electronic petition signed by more than 900 people.

Maree’s brother, Ahmed, said it was an unbelievable feeling to have Mohammed home.

“It’s like someone was dead and [brought] back to life,” he said.

Maree’s family was worried about when, if ever, he would be freed. After reports of alleged torture in prison, relatives feared for his life.

Rumors began swirling a week ago that there had been a development in Maree’s case, but details were scarce, so Buck said he tried not to get too excited.

“Any change in the case could have been equally bad news or good news,” Buck said. “And so far it had all been bad news.”

Buck said he cringed each time he checked his e-mail lately about what was happening. Then he got an e-mail from Maree saying he had been released.

There was little information surrounding Maree’s detention. Speculation about Maree’s whereabouts was fueled by confusion about what initially happened to the translator. Government officials in Egypt said they could neither confirm nor deny Maree’s detention during the past three months as well as his recent release despite repeated requests for comment.

When CNN called Attiya Shakran, press counsel for the Egyptian Consulate in San Francisco about the pair’s detention, he said Maree had been in custody of Egyptian authorities longer than Buck, but was released April 13. But two days later, Maree’s family told CNN they still had not seen him.

And Shakran told CNN in June that Maree, in fact, was still in custody.

Attorneys from the Hisham Mubarak Law Center in Egypt said they visited Maree in one of the three prisons in which he was held. In the meetings, Maree claimed he was tortured, one of the lawyers said.

Maree said he was beaten and electrically shocked throughout his detention by Egyptian authorities, according to that lawyer, Khaled Ali.

“During this period he felt he was on the brink of death,” Ali said in an e-mail.

With Maree finally safe, Buck said he wants to try to work with Twitter on establishing a global network help line for those who find themselves in similar situations.

Buck said he hopes to visit his translator in Egypt as soon as possible and meet his family so he can apologize to them and tell them about the impact Maree has made.

“I think he’s a hero. Some people might think it sounds silly,” Buck said. “But he went to jail for his beliefs. Instead of selling out or making something up, he really was willing to stand up to the intimidation. It’s people like him that make cracks in a dark wall to let light come in.”

Source — CNN

First the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg jumped the gun, publishing his online review of Apple’s new iPhone 3G on Tuesday night, more than a day before his usual Thursday column appears.

Then, about an hour later, the New York Times responded in kind, posting their own review, by David Pogue, on the NYTimes.com front page. Like Mossberg’s, Pogue’s review is datelined Wednesday, July 9.

About the same time (we’ve lost track of the sequence), America’s third national paper, USA Today, followed suit, posting a review by Edward C. Baig.

And so Apple (AAPL) fans eager to hear if the new iPhone is worth buying get their answer — or rather three answers — well before they have to decide whether or not to stand in line.

Once again, Steve Jobs has tightly controlled the initial wave of critical commentary by handing out advanced copies to his favorite reviewers — two of whom make a nice living publishing books about Apple products (Pogue writes “Missing Manuals” and Baig writes “For Dummies” books).

But if he sought to curry special favor — or control the timing — Jobs was only partly successful. Although Baig’s review is quite enthusiastic (”two thumbs up”), Mossberg’s and Pogue’s are what is known in the theater as mixed positive.

The money quotes:

Mossberg: “If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker battery life. The same goes for those with existing iPhones who love the device but crave faster cellular data speeds. But if you already own an iPhone, and can usually use Wi-Fi for data, you probably should hold off and get the free software upgrade before deciding whether it’s worth getting the new hardware.”

Pogue: “So the iPhone 3G is a nice upgrade. It more than keeps pace with advancing technology, and new buyers will generally be delighted….But it’s not so much better that it turns all those original iPhones into has-beens. Indeed, the really big deal is the iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store, neither of which requires buying a new iPhone. That twist may come as a refreshing surprise to planned-obsolescence conspiracy theorists — and everyone who stood in line last year.”

Baig: “Extra, extra: iPhone 3G: The Sequel, is worth the wait….It’s cheaper, faster and a lot friendlier for business. Apple’s blockbuster smartphone already had nifty features such as visual voicemail, a splendid built-in video iPod and the best mobile Web browser I’ve ever used. With GPS newly added to the mix, this handheld marvel has no equal among consumer-oriented smartphones.”

Source — CNN