China issues licenses for next generation 3G wireless services

David Barboza reports for The New York Times:

 

"After years of delays, the Chinese government said late Wednesday that it would issue licenses for next generation 3G wireless services, which could fuel growth in what is already the world’s biggest market for wireless services,"

"China’s State Council, or Cabinet, made the announcement on its Web site saying the government would back three standards, including one chiefly developed in China,"

 

"The move, which has been expected for much of the year, is significant because it opens the way for cellphone users here to have faster downloads of video, data and Web-browsing services, and for telecommunications companies to charge more for their high-speed services."

 

"China said it would issue licenses for each of the three major standards, the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard, as well as two international 3G standards that are favored in the United States and Europe."

"The country now has more than 600 million cellphone subscribers, by far the largest number in the world, and there is fierce competition among international companies to capture market share,"

 

"By some estimates, China could have 150 million 3G cellphone subscribers by 2010, which would mean bigger revenues and profits for mobile operators."

"The government did not announce which Chinese wireless services companies would get which licenses."

Full article here.

Is possible to have Airport Express in Hotel for iPod Touch/iphone without notebook?

Scenario: I'm tired of lugging around my Macbook just to check email. It would be great to take a airport express and my ipod touch to a hotel and plug the airport express into the provided Ethernet connection and create my own wireless network for my ipod touch. Is there an airport utility for the ipod touch so I can change settings in the airport express to get connected to a hotel Ethernet connection?

Resolution: You can plug in the AirPort Express (AE) at the hotel. If the AE's configuration matches the settings required at the hotel... it will work. However, if it did work, the AE would have to be left at factory default settings, as such to prevent your own settings from interfering. (It would broadcast the network name as, "Apple Network..." followed by several random letters and numbers.) Press and hold in the reset button to restore to factory default.

TIME Magazine -- Top 10 iPhone Apps for 2008

Top 10 iPhone Apps for 2008 (from Time Magazine)

1. Pandora Internet Radio (free, for iPhone and iPod touch)
2. AroundMe (free, for iPhone and iPod touch)
3. AP Mobile News Network (free, for iPhone and iPod touch)
4. Ocarina ($0.99, for iPhone)
5. Wikipanion (free, for iPhone and iPod touch)
6. Adrenaline Pool Lite (free, for iPhone and iPod touch)
7. Instapaper (free, for iPhone and iPod touch)
8. NetNewsWire (free, for iPhone and iPod touch)
9. iTalk Recorder (free, for iPhone and iPod touch 2G)
10. FakeCalls ($0.99, for iPhone)

Full article here.

What's new in 2.2

• Podcast downloading over WiFi AND Phone Internet service. However, we’re not happy that you can’t subscribe or download huge podcasts; there is a cap on the size ( a 10MB cap).
• Apple has also tweaked the visual voicemail and removed some bugs from the overall fluidity of the GUI.
• After Google introduced “Street View” on the G1, Apple really wanted that same technology and have now added it to Google Maps.  Yet, unfortunately, this only works on the iPhone 1 and 2G and not on the iPod Touch.
• Apple has done some great work on the App Store.  New sorting options of “Top Paid,” “Top Free,” and “Release Date” are available when browsing categories like “Games” or “Productivity” which allows for more pleasant control over what you see. A large icon taken from a popular application is now also displayed next to each category name to help identify it. Plus, when viewing a specific application’s details, all screenshots for the application are now accessible on the devices through a nice slide show.  
• Another big thing they have added is rating.  When you delete icons they will now ask you if you want to rate the App. before deleting it.   Of course, you can always respectfully decline. 
• You can now also turn of the “auto-correction” while typing.
• They have added new feature where pressing the Home button when viewing any Home screen application page will bring you to the first page.
• The new 2.2 OS has also solved the problems with Mail’s fetching schedules, and it has also improved formatting of wide HTML e-mail.
• Now this may be the placebo effect but everything seems much faster.  Apps start faster, the system is more responsive, google maps pinpoints your location faster, and even safari seems smoother.
  

More detail, please refer to http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/softwareupdate.html

Five top tips for new iPhone users

Get a brand new iPhone for Christmas? Here are a handful of our top tips to help you make the most of it.

 

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/137805/2008/12/iphone_tips.html

iPhone or iPod Touch Typing Tricks

Contractions

When you want to type a contraction like "can't" or "shouldn't," don't bother putting in the apostrophe. It is smart enough to guess that cant is "can't." (When you're typing in a word like "we'll," where the uncontracted "well" is a common word, add an extra "l". It corrects welll to "we'll" and shelll to "she'll."

Punctuation Dragging

If you plan to use only one item of punctuation at a time, such as a comma or period, save time by dragging. Drag from the ".?123" button to the item you want to include. By starting the drag at ".?123", it switches momentarily to the numbers and punctuation view. After selecting your item, the keyboard automatically bounces back to the alphabet.

Accents

Tap and hold any keyboard letter to view accented versions of that letter. For example, tapping and holding N presents you with the option of adding n, ´n, or ñ. This shortcut makes it much easier to type foreign words.

Caps Lock

To enable caps lock, go to Settings ➤ General ➤ Keyboard preferences. When enabled, you can double-tap the caps button to toggle the lock on and off.

Deleting Words at a Time

When you press and hold the delete key, it starts off by deleting one letter and then the next. But if you hold it for longer than about a line of text, it switches to word deletion and starts removing entire words at a time, making it easier to clear text on a system where you cannot "select all" and then cut.

Auto-Capitalization

It automatically capitalizes the start of sentences. So you can type the day has begun, and it is smart enough to capitalize "the": "The day has begun". This means you don't have to worry about pressing the shift key at the beginning of every sentence or even when you type "i". i went to the park becomes "I went to the park".