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LAS VEGAS — Tired of playing endless sessions of Spider Solitaire on your laptop? Fear not, weary game enthusiasts. MIT Media Lab alums Jeevan Kalanithi and David Merrill have a solution that blends real-world objects with computer circuits and LCDs.

Sifteo is a very different kind of game cube. Using 1.5-inch blocks that communicate through a Wi-Fi connection, Sifteo brings puzzle games that might otherwise be played on a computer screen to the tactile, tabletop environment.

Instead of loading Text Twist on your PC desktop, you can play a game of Word Play on your literal desktop, physically rearranging the letters that appear on the blocks’ full-color 128-pixel display screens to form words.

Inside each cube is a 32-bit ARM microprocessor, powered by a lithium-ion polymer battery. And just like the iPhone and other smartphones, there’s an accelerometer that can determine the cube’s position, which enables some pretty cool ways to play games.

In Shaper, seen below, players must arrange the cubes into the configurations that appear on each block’s screen.

Sifteo co-founders Jeevan Kalanithi and David Merrill were talking about the idea of Sifteo a year ago at TED, back when the blocks were still called “Siftables.” The two met as undergrads at Stanford University, and both went to the east coast to earn MS degrees at the MIT Media Lab , where they built the Sifteo hardware.

“When we were still in the early stages of development, we took the blocks to an elementary school for testing,” Kalanithi told Wired.com in an interview. “It was amazing to see a bunch of 8-year-old girls moving the blocks around intuitively.”

Right now, Sifteo only has in-house developers working on games for the hardware, but the company wants to eventually open the API up to any and all 3rd-party developers that want to create games for it. “We’re looking for feedback,” Kalanithi said. “Opening this up to different people brings the best possibilities for interesting games.”

Sifteo is currently in an early access testing period, but the company plans to release the product in the Fall. Priced at $150, starter kits will come with three Sifteo blocks, a charging dock and AC adaptor, and a USB wireless link for your Mac or PC. If all goes as planned, by next Christmas you won’t have to play yet another round of Settlers of Catan with the ‘rents again.

See Also:

• TED: Siftable Computing Makes Digital Data Physical
• Scrabble Flash Is a B-L-A-S-T

Photo: Mike Isaac/Wired.com

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Apple’s loose-lipped overseas partners are exchanging whispers about the next-generation iPad, claiming it will come in three different versions, one of which would work with Verizon’s network.

The iPad 2 will support three different wireless configurations: UMTS, CDMA and Wi-Fi only, according to “industry sources” citing component makers. That’s up from the two versions Apple currently offers: UMTS plus Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi only.

To explicate the alphabet soup, UMTS is the standard used by major 3G carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile, while CDMA is compatible with Verizon and Sprint networks.

Currently the 3G iPad ships with a MicroSIM card slot, and in the United States, the only carrier that uses MicroSIM is AT&T. Customers who want to connect to non-AT&T 3G networks must either buy an external wireless hotspot device such as the Verizon MiFi (Verizon even sells a MiFi plus iPad package already) or trim a standard SIM card down to MicroSIM size, like Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel.

The current 3G model of the iPad is not tied to a contract; customers pay a flat rate monthly for data and can opt out whenever they please.

So if this rumor is true, what this means is when the iPad 2 ships, you’ll have to pick a 3G model based on your carrier preference. If you don’t plan to be on the road a lot, there’s still the Wi-Fi option.

Support for both major wireless standards in the U.S. will make the iPad 2 available to a much larger potential audience, whereas before it was only available from AT&T here in the states.

Whether Apple hammers out sales agreements with Verizon or Sprint remains to be seen, however.

Recent rumors suggestion that the iPad 2 will hit stores April 2011, one year after the original iPad’s release. Some third-party protective cases for a purported “iPad 2″ have been cropping up in Asia, hinting at the possibility of a bigger speaker and a rear-facing camera.

Persistent rumors — so far unsubstantiated — have also pointed to a Verizon-compatible iPhone to be released in early 2011. If Verizon got the iPhone and the iPad, it would greatly expand Apple’s potential market, and would also likely deal a severe blow to AT&T, which has been roundly criticized for the inability of its 3G network to keep up with iPhone-induced demand.

Photo of the current iPad: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Brian is a Wired.com technology reporter focusing on Apple and Microsoft. He’s also writing a book about the always-connected mobile future called Always On (publishing April 2011 by Da Capo).
Follow @bxchen and @gadgetlab on Twitter.

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Elecom’s wireless headphones for the iPod Shuffle take a low-tech – but still smart – approach to ditching the cable: There is a 3.5mm-jack right there on the side which impales the Shuffle and keeps it in place. To change tracks, volume or anything else, just reach up to your ear and press. Who needs Bluetooth, especially when a Bluetooth dongle is the same size as the Shuffle itself?

It’s ingenious, and although apparently limited to the latest-gen Shuffle, I’m sure some clever hacking would let you squeeze an older Shuffle or even the new Nano on there. Unfortunately, the Actrail headphones (for that is their name) use the dorky wrap-around-the-back-of-your-skull design instead of a proper over-the-head band, but at least they didn’t try it with a pair of earbuds.

A actually spent quite a while some weeks back trying to mount the new touch-screen Nano onto a pair of over-the-head cans. Clipping it in place was easy. The hard part was managing all that leftover cable, which I was in the process of solving when I snapped a leg and on-the-go music seemed a little less appealing all of a sudden.

The Actrails cost 4,200 ($50) a pair and come in pink or white and are available in Japan. Expect a gaggle of copycat designs any day now.

Elecom Actrail product page [Elecom via Oh Gizmo]

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Add Wi-Fi to the list of technologies that the electronics industry wants to use to help eliminate cable clutter.

A new standard called Wi-Fi Direct made an important step towards becoming product reality Monday when the Wi-Fi Alliance announced it would begin certifying products that comply with the standard.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is the industry consortium that oversees the family of wireless technology standards known as Wi-Fi.

With Wi-Fi Direct, devices will be able to connect to one another easily for permanent or temporary connections, without requiring them to join the network of a nearby wireless router.

Instead, you’ll just push a button or tap the “OK” button in an on-screen dialog box, and your devices will link up to each other.

Think of it as the wireless alternative to a USB cable. Wi-Fi Direct joins a host of other wireless technologies, such as WiDi, Wireless USB and W-HDI, all aimed at replacing desktop and entertainment-center cables with skeins of wireless data wending their ethereal way through your house.

Wi-Fi Direct connections could be used to show images from your camera on a friend’s HDTV, display PowerPoint slides from your smartphone on a client’s video projector, send web pages from your tablet to a printer, or even stream HD video from your laptop to your TV. A cutesy animation from the Wi-Fi Alliance (above) shows how this could work.

Devices could support any number of connections, limited primarily by the computing power of the devices themselves and their programming.

“Since you’re not going through a router, there’s no single point of constraint,” says Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The technology will support bandwidth and ranges comparable to what regular Wi-Fi offers: Figueroa claims about 200 meters of maximum range and about 250-300 megabits/second of real throughput. Of course, in the real world, where walls and electronic interference abound, you’ll probably see somewhat less than that.

It should be enough to support a single HD video stream, however, which would be plenty for most home users. And if someone is simultaneously downloading another HD video stream via your Wi-Fi router, the two streams wouldn’t interfere with each other.

The certification program means that manufacturers can begin building compatible products, then get them tested by the Wi-Fi Alliance so they can slap a “Wi-Fi Direct” logo on their packaging. That process starts with the makers of chipsets and plug-in cards, such as Broadcom, which announced a Wi-Fi Direct-certified card Monday.

Within the “near future,” says Figueroa, such capabilities will trickle down to consumer products that incorporate the chipsets and cards now hitting the market. In practice, it could be months before consumer products are on sale, and it may be a year or more before it’s widespread.

But then the tricky part begins, because not all Wi-Fi Direct devices will be able to connect with one another. Devices will only be able to connect with devices that have compatible Wi-Fi Direct support. For instance, a smartphone might support Wi-Fi Direct printing, but not Wi-Fi Direct for an external display — meaning you wouldn’t be able to connect it with your TV, even if your TV supported the standard.

Explaining all that to non-technical consumers is going to be the industry’s next big wireless challenge.

Wi-Fi gets personal: Groundbreaking Wi-Fi Direct launches today (press release)

Follow us for real-time tech news: Dylan Tweney and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal has a clever Dropbox-based solution for printing documents from a smartphone or tablet, whether your printer’s down the hall or thousands of miles away.

The idea is so simple, you’ll be amazed you haven’t thought to try it yourself. Dropbox is a popular utility that allows users to sync and share files on different computers. Most smartphones have built-in Dropbox applications, and many mobile applications are now integrating Dropbox for remote syncing and storage. You can also add files to your Dropbox account via email or the web.

In this solution, use any of those means to get the file you want printed into a shared Dropbox folder — call it “PrintQueue” — that you’ve set up for this purpose. Your print-capable computer uses a script to monitor “PrintQueue”, automatically print its documents and then move them to a different folder. (Agarwal calls this second folder “logs”; I’d call it “Completed Jobs”). If you’re a clever hacker, you could even add scripts to send a remote notification that the print job has been completed.

For Windows, Agarwal has a downloadable VBS script that will set this up for you; as he notes, there are different scripting solutions for Mac OS X or Linux too.

Once you’ve got this rigged, the immediate use case is to send a document wirelessly from a smartphone or tablet to a local printer. And it is kind of magical to stand there and watch the whole process unfold, as in the video above.

But think beyond that. Suddenly, your printer is capable of networking with any computer, anywhere — with any phone, anywhere — that you approve and authorize. This is potentially so much better than hooking up a computer to a wireless router or navigating the virtual bureaucracy of an office printer network. It’s way better than a fax machine.

This could be one future of social networking and file sharing: instead of big, ad-cluttered feeds that push photos, status updates and Farmville notifications or anonymous networks that chop files into bits and reassemble them, imagine friends and acquaintances broadcasting to each other, wheels within wheels, each with different levels and fields of access. Designating someone a “friend” might not be worth very much in this cockeyed world, but automatic remote access to someone’s printer still means something.

Print Files from any Mobile Phone using Dropbox [Digital Inspiration] via Gizmodo

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Intel has joined the parade of companies trying to beam video to your TV. The chip maker is betting on ‘WiDi,’ its technology for streaming media wirelessly from the PC to the TV.

Intel’s WiDi, which is short for “wireless display,” will remove the pain of stringing HDMI cables between the TV and the laptop.

“This display technology extends the laptop screen to the TV,” says Randy Stude, who handles gaming strategy for Intel. “You don’t need cables or to buy a single-purpose gadget to make the connection.”

Intel showed the WiDi technology at the company’s developer conference in San Francisco earlier this week.

The technology will come pre-loaded in new laptops. Already 44 models sold at Best Buy have the WiDi technology. But consumers will need to buy an additional $100 adapter from Netgear to complete the connection to the TV. Add a wireless remote such as Loop or Glide TV, and consumers can watch web content on a big screen 25 feet to 30 feet away.

Intel is just the latest in a long list of companies that are trying to make it easier for consumers to watch web video in their living room. Companies such as Apple, Boxee and Roku have offered streaming media players for web video enthusiasts.

In May, Google launched Google TV, a new set-top-box platform based on Googles Android operating system that will combine cable programming with access to online photo sites, gaming and music.

Earlier this week, start-up Veebeam introduced a streaming media box that uses wireless USB to connect the laptop to the TV. Veebeam estimates 420 Mbps speeds for wireless USB and offers both 720p and 1080p high-definition video options.

Intel has chosen Wi-Fi to stream content wirelessly. Wi-Fi doesn’t require line of sight and it can reach about 9 Mbps speeds, says Stude. It is much slower than wireless HDMI that can offer speeds of upto 500 Mbps.

Intel’s software will work on all laptops using Arrendale based core i3, i5 and core i7 technologies. But they will have to have Intel’s 802.11-n chips.

“It’s more flexible than a Boxee box or Apple TV,” says Stude. “You are not limited to just a few types of content and put in a walled garden.”

The wireless streaming is currently to limited to 720p resolution and it can’t handle Blu-ray content. Stude says Intel plans to support higher resolution video in the future.

But first, Intel will have to survive the extremely competitive and crowded market. It will have to steal consumers’ attention away from the soon to launch Google TV and the newly introduced $100 Apple TV.

Intel hopes its clout in the PC market will put it ahead of competitors. In bundling the software and chips into the laptop, Intel may have a distribution channel that few of its competitors can match.

But to get there, it will have to find a way to cut price and integrate the $100 Netgear adapter into the laptop.

Photos: Priya Ganapati/Wired.com

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Graphic by Christine Daniloff, via MIT News Office

Sometimes when one of my remotes is missing, I interrogate the others: “Where’s your friend? I know you know something!” In the future, with wireless positioning systems, a version of that method might actually almost work.

Researchers at MIT’s Wireless Communications and Network Sciences Group think networks of devices that communicate their positions to each other will work better than all of the devices transmitting to a single receiver. The latter is how GPS works, and if you’ve used it, you know it isn’t always very precise. In the lab, MIT’s robots can spot a wireless transmitter within a millimeter.

This seems almost intuitive: the more “eyes” you have on an object, the easier it is to triangulate — the robot version of “the wisdom of crowds.” But the key conceptual breakthrough here isn’t actually the number of transmitters or their network arrangement, but what they’re transmitting. MIT News’s Larry Hardesty writes:

Among [the research group's] insights is that networks of wireless devices can improve the precision of their location estimates if they share information about their imprecision. Traditionally, a device broadcasting information about its location would simply offer up its best guess. But if, instead, it sent a probability distribution a range of possible positions and their likelihood the entire network would perform better as a whole. The problem is that sending the probability distribution requires more power and causes more interference than simply sending a guess, so it degrades the networks performance. [The] group is currently working to understand the trade-off between broadcasting full-blown distributions and broadcasting sparser information about distributions.

Much of this research is still theoretical, or has only been deployed in lab settings. But Princeton’s H. Vincent Poor is optimistic about the MIT group’s approach: I don’t see any major obstacles for transferring their basic research to practical applications. In fact, their research was motivated by the real-world need for high-accuracy location-awareness. Like precisely which cushion my remote control is underneath.

Warning: Very Dry Flash Video Of Robots Finding Things Follows

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By John Herman

You live your life at 2.4GHz. Your router, your cordless phone, your Bluetooth earpiece, your baby monitor and your garage opener all love and live on this radio frequency, and no others. Why? The answer is in your kitchen.

What We’re Talking About

Before we charge too far ahead here, let’s run over the basics. Your house or apartment, or the coffee shop you’re sitting in now, is saturated withradio waves. Inconceivable numbers of them, in fact, vibrating forth from radio stations, TV stations, cellular towers, and the universe itself, into the space you inhabit. You’re beingbombarded, constantly, withelectromagnetic waves of all kind of frequencies, many of which have been encoded with specific information, whether it be a voice, a tone, or digital data. Hell, maybe even these very words.

On top of that, you’re surrounded by waves of your own creation. Inside your home are a dozen tiny little radio stations: your router, your cordless phone, your garage door opener. Anything you own that’s wireless, more or less. Friggin’ radio waves: they’re everywhere.

Really, it’s odd that your cordless phone evenhasthat 2.4GHz sticker. To your average, not-so-technically-inclined shopper, it’s a number that means A) nothing, or B) something, but the wrong thing. (“2.4GHz? That’s faster than my computer!”)

What that number actually signifies is broadcast frequency, or the frequency of the waves that the phone’s base station sends to its handset. That’s it. In fact, the hertz itself just just a unit for frequency in any context: it’s the number of times that something happens over the course of a second. In wireless communications, it refers to wave oscillation. In computers, it refers to processor clock rates. For TVs, the rate at which the screen refreshes; for me, clapping in front of my computer right now, it’s the rate at which I’m doing so. One hertz, slow clap.

The question, then, is why so many of your gadgets operate at 2.4GHz, instead of the ~2,399,999,999 whole number frequencies below it, or any number above it. It seems almost controlled, or guided. It seems, maybe, a bit arbitrary. It seems, well,regulated.

A glance at FCC regulations confirms any suspicions. A band of frequencies clustered around 2.4GHz has been designated, along with a handful of others, as the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio bands. “A lot of the unlicensed stufffor example Wi-Fiis on the 2.4GHz or the 900Mhz frequenciesthe ISM bands. You don’t need a license to operate on them.” That’s Ira Kelpz, Deputy Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission, explaining precisely why these ISM bands are attractive to gadget makers: They’re free to use. If routers and cordless phones and whatever else are relegated to a small band 2.4GHz, then their radio waves won’t interfere with, say, cellphones operating at 1.9GHz, or AM radio, which broadcasts between 535 kHz and 1.7 MHz. The ISM is, in effect, a ghetto for unlicensed wireless transmission, recommended first by a quiet little agency in a Swiss office of the UN, called the ITU, then formalized, modified and codified for practical use by the governments of the world, including, of course, our own FCC.

The current ISM standards were established in 1985, and just in time. Our phones were one the cusp of losing their cords, and in the near future, broadband internet connections would come into existence and become magically wireless. All these gadgets needed frequencies that didn’t require licenses, but which were nestled between the ones that did. Frequencies that weren’t so high that they sacrificed broadcast penetration (through walls, for example), but weren’t so low that they required foot-long antennae. In short, they needed the ISM bands. So they took them.

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After a press conference Friday addressing the iPhone 4’s antenna, Apple gave journalists a private tour of its radio-frequency test facility to provide a glimpse into the process of designing wireless products such as iPhones and iPads.

Led by Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert at Apple, the tour gave about 10 reporters and bloggers a peek at Apple’s custom-built wireless testing lab, which consists of several anechoic chambers to measure frequency of each device in various settings.

The tour was held after a press conference, in which Steve Jobs attempted to mitigate a media thunderstorm surrounding the iPhone 4’s purportedly flawed antenna by offering free cases to customers. During the conference, Jobs reinforced his original position that every phone has reception issues when held in certain ways, and he said a flawed software algorithm was making the iPhone 4’s attenuation look worse than it actually was.

Apple called the lab a “black” lab because it was a secret facility that even some employees were unaware of. The company made the lab public to show the world that Apple takes antenna design and wireless testing seriously.

“This is the most advanced lab for doing RF studies that anyone in the world has,” said Phil Schiller, vice president of marketing at Apple. “The designs we do wouldn’t be possible without it.”

Each test chamber is lined with blue pyramid-shaped styrofoam designed to absorb radio-frequency radiation. A robotic arm holding gadgets such as iPads and iPhones spins 360 degrees while a piece of analytics software (ironically running on Windows XP) visualizes the wireless activity of each device. Caballero said each gadget is run through a chamber for at least 24 hours.

In another process Apple also has people sitting inside test chambers, holding a device for about 30 minutes while software analyzes its wireless performance to evaluate its interactions with the human body.Synthetic heads, hands and even feet (think Nike +) are used for some of these tests as well.

Apple’s testing lab looks similar to Celecom’s cellphone radiation testing lab that Wired.com visited last year. Manufacturers who create wireless products must gain certification from an independent lab, which verifies that each device meets acceptable radiation standards set by the Federal Communications Commission.

The difference with Apple is it built its own lab for the sake of having full, granular oversight on the design (and redesign) of its products. Prototypes go through several iterations and tests before they’re finalized into Apple products. (Of course, having its own lab also helps Apple better guard its secrets.)

Before the iPhone 4 became an official product, prototypes of the device were tested in chambers for about two years until Apple settled on a design, Caballero said.

“It’s not trivial to design antennas,” said Caballero, reminiscing on the days older antennas had a single frequency.

After “passive” testing of devices inside isolated chambers, eventually Apple engineers drive around a large van containing synthetic hands gripping gadgets, with a laptop in the back running wireless analytics software to determine how the devices perform in real-world settings. Sometimes humans sit in the car seats holding the devices, too. During the tour, Apple showed a van containing a table full of synthetic hands gripping iPhone 4 devices.

“To do the most challenging design in the world, this is what we have to do,” said Bob Mansfield, Apple’s senior vice president of Macintosh hardware. “This is hardcore stuff.”

Apple earlier today also posted a description and video of its test lab.

Photos courtesy of Apple

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A patent holder on Friday announced it has sued Apple, Google and other major tech companies for allegedly infringing patents on wireless e-mail delivery.

NTP, a business that solely manages patents related to wireless e-mail technologies, said it was suing Apple, Google, HTC Corp, LG Electronics, Microsoft Corporation and Motorola, alleging that they were unfairly using NTP’s intellectual property.

“Use of NTP’s intellectual property without a license is just plain unfair to NTP and its licensees,” said Donald E. Stout, NTP’s co-founder, “Unfortunately, litigation is our only means of ensuring the inventor of the fundamental technology on which wireless email is based, Tom Campana, and NTP shareholders are recognized, and are fairly and reasonably compensated for their innovative work and investment. We took the necessary action to protect our intellectual property.”

NTP is known for taking similar action against Research in Motion over wireless e-mail technology. The two parties in 2006 reached a settlement in which RIM agreed to pay $612 million to NTP.

Though NTP claims it is protecting its intellectual property, it does not itself produce or offer any wireless e-mail software or services, meaning it does not practice its own patents. In addition to RIM, NTP has also fired legal shells at Palm, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T. Some observers have labeled NTP a “patent troll.”

Photo: caribb/Flickr

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Wired.com reader Ryan Rhea says he found a way to double the download speed of his new iPhone 4 with nothing more than black electrician’s tape.

Rhea, clearly a graduate of the Home Depot School of Gadget Hacks, simply applied a thin strip of black tape on the lower left corner of the phone’s outer metal band, starting right below the volume buttons and extending down to the edge of the speaker on the bottom of the phone.

That was enough to stop the reception problem reported by many iPhone 4 customers. For those with this problem, touching the lower left corner of their new phone causes signal strength to drop, often cutting off calls and sharply decreasing data download speeds.

Wired.com has not been able to duplicate the problem, although more than 30 readers have reported experiencing it.

That metal band forms the phone’s antenna, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained when announcing the iPhone 4 earlier this month. And while touching a radio or TV antenna can often improve reception, by making the conductive surface of your skin into an extension of the antenna, it seems to have the opposite effect on the iPhone 4.

Several readers have reported that putting the iPhone 4 into a protective case, such as the $30 “bumper” case sold by Apple, solves the problem.

The electrical tape achieves the same result at a much lower cost, by putting an electrical insulator between you and the phone’s antenna. In Rhea’s case, his 3G download speed as reported by Testmyiphone.com went from 0.41 Mbps without the tape to 0.82 Mbps with the tape (in both cases, with the phone gripped firmly in his left hand).

The cost for a roll of electrical tape? About $4 for a 66-foot roll of 3/4″ tape, which should be enough to fix your iPhone — and about 790 others.

As a bonus, electrical tape also works great for fixing nerdy glasses.

Photo courtesy Ryan Rhea

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The unlimited data plan party could end soon. Verizon Wireless has hinted it is likely to follow AT&T and restrict the amount of data consumers can suck in through their phones.

“We will probably need to change the design of our pricing where it will not be totally unlimited, flat rate,” Verizon’s chief financial officer John Killian told Bloomberg.

For nearly 90 percent of smartphone users, new pricing plans are unlikely to make a big difference in how they use their phones, says Chetan Sharma, who runs a consulting firm focusing on telecom issues. But for super-users, this could signal a change in how smartphones and apps are designed.

It could force developers and entrepreneurs to take a second look at how data is delivered and optimized.

“So far, the ecosystem hasn’t paid attention to delivery efficiency,” says Sharma. “Content developers rarely care how much data is being transferred over their app. Now there’s room for technology that can help change that.”

Wireless service providers’ decision to do away with unlimited data plans plans runs orthogonal to what smartphones makers are doing. Smartphones today are in a race to offer more storage, along with the ability to shoot high-definition videos and photos. And they encourage you to share, uploading those files to YouTube and Flickr. Add to that video chat capability, especially over cellular networks, and there’s more stress than ever on the network.

“It was unsustainable,” says Sharma. “It couldn’t have gone on forever.”

After Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it unlocked a world where users spend more time surfing on the phones, playing with apps and watching YouTube clips than talking on their phone. A Consumer Reports study found that the average iPhone user consumes 273 MB of data per month. About 4 percent users in that study gobbled an average of 1 GB per month.

Sharma estimates an average iPhone consumer uses about 600 MB a month, while a smartphone user who’s not on the iPhone or using an Android device takes in about 300 MB of data monthly. Unless, something changes, that data consumption will only go up, especially with the introduction of more powerful smartphones, straining the network’s capacity, he says.

With the iPhone, AT&T has been the first to feel the pain. In response, earlier this month, AT&T introduced a tiered pricing structure for data. Instead of a flat monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data, AT&T users will now pay $15 a month for 200 MB, or $25 a month for $2GB. (See what AT&T’s limited data plans mean for you.)

Verizon is not changing the status quo just yet. The company has hinted it will introduce tiered data pricing plans as it opens up its LTE or 4G network. 4G data cards on the Verizon’s network could be launched later this year, followed by the first 4G smartphone next year, estimates Sharma.

A Verizon spokesperson declined to comment on when the company plans to introduce new data pricing plans.

“Unlimited pricing works well when you are trying to create demand,” says Sharma. “But now carriers are facing the reality that while their data revenue is fixed, their costs keep going up.”

Last year, approximately 70 percent of data traffic on wireless networks came from data cards. This year, smartphones will pretty much account for all data requests, says Sharma.

“The iPhone has catapulted the whole data issue to the forefront.”

Photo: (DJOtaku/Flickr)

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A number of customers who pre-ordered Apple’s iPhone 4 have reported receiving the handset two days before its official release date. Also, those who didn’t pre-order the device will be able to pick one up at an AT&T store on a first-come, first-serve basis as soon as next Tuesday.

An AT&T spokesman said iPhone 4 will begin arriving this week for customers who preordered. Those who preordered an iPhone 4 for home delivery will receive an e-mail when their order is shipped. The company will also begin phoning customers this week who placed reservations to notify them when their iPhone 4 is available for in-store pickups. Last, customers who did not preorder the device will be able to line up for an iPhone 4 at an AT&T store next Tuesday.

“iPhone 4 pre-order sales on June 15 were 10 times higher than the first day of pre-ordering for the iPhone 3GS last year,” AT&T said in a statement Tuesday. “Demand is simply unprecedented. Were thrilled to see the excitement around iPhone 4 and are committed to helping as many customers as quickly as we can. As we said last week, were committed to fulfilling preorders first and are on track to do so.”

AT&T’s announcement followed individual reports from pre-order customers who claimed their iPhone 4 had already arrived in the mail.

The release of the iPhone 4 has been bumpy, to say the least. When Apple and AT&T opened preorders for the iPhone 4 last week, their servers were overwhelmed by the gigantic number of preorders, and in some instances AT&T’s website even sprung a security leak. Later, Apple and AT&T said the problems were due to an unprecedented number of preorders 600,000 on day one.

UPDATED: The first version of this story incorrectly stated that AT&T would start delivering iPhones this week.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Can’t live with them, can’t live without them! Those black power cords are almost always annoying but there’s no way around it – unless manufacturers can license Fulton Innovation’s wireless power technology.

Fulton did a demo today integrating its technology into a blender to show how it can work in a “high powered device.” The blender works without a power cord or cable. It is placed on what Fulton calls countertop that has ‘eCoupled-enabled’

Here’s how it works. Fulton, which is a subsidiary of Amway, splits a power supply coil into two parts, one of which is built into a surface (hence the eCoupled-enabled surface) and the other is incorporated into the device to power or charge.

A shared electromagnetic field is generated when the power supply and receiving coils are positioned near each other, wirelessly transferring power to or charging the device, says Fulton.

An eCoupled-enabled surface recognizes devices with similar embedded technology technology and power is transferred from the supply coil to the receiving coil in the device.

There’s also an element of intelligence as the surface and the device communicate to monitor and adapt the power to meet the needs of the device, says the company.

So far Fulton has demonstrated the idea in cellphones and MP3 players that require lower power (five watts or less) but now it says it can wirelessly power kitchen devices such as blenders, grills and coffee makers that require kilowatts of power.

But here’s the catch. Fulton has been promising this for at least two years now.

It showed the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2007 and offered the same list of partners – Motorola, Leggett & Platt and Herman Miller- that it says it is working with to make power and charging cords obsolete.

Fulton says its engineers have been working on the technology for nearly 10 years now.

So while its latest blender is neat, it looks like Fulton Innovation hasn’t made much progress beyond the concept stage.

The video of the wireless blender:

Posted under Gadget Reviews