T-Mobile and Verizon reportedly refused to kowtow to the National Security Agency’s demand to collect all phone call records. According to the Wall Street Journal, because T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless are owned by European parent companies, they were able to successfully refuse the NSA’s court order.

“T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless don’t participate in their own collection programs because of legal complications stemming, in part, from their foreign ownership. Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG owns 74% of T-Mobile. Verizon Wireless is a joint-venture of Verizon Communications Inc. with the U.K.’s Vodafone Group PLC, which owns a 45% stake,” explain Danny Yadron and Evan Perez in their article.
For those who aren’t fans of the NSA’s record-keeping, the Post says that the NSA can still likely capture 99 percent of the phone data anyway, since most traffic is routed through the U.S.

The Journal report is somewhat curious, since the original story from The Guardian was about a leaked court order specifically for Verizon. Only later did we learn that the U.S. was collecting call records from all major carriers. Ironically, it could be that the court order went through, but Verizon was successfully able to combat the NSA’s demands.

Either way, Europe could be a problem for U.S. spying ambitions, as the European Union has vowed to fight their attempts. As more facts come to light, things are going to get harder for the NSA.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Oh HTC. You’ve produced one of the finest Android smartphones ever (seriously, just look at all these reviews), but you’ve faced more than your share of challenges when it came to actually pumping your top-tier One smartphone. As it happens, that may all soon change.

FocusTaiwan reported earlier today that HTC is preparing to pump out more of its wonderful Ones in short order — Jack Tong, the company’s North Asia president, noted that this month’s production capacity for the flagship device is twice that of April, and that surge will only continue into June.

Sounds pretty yawn-worthy, right? Normally I would spend too much time dwelling on the finer points of production capacity, but here’s a device that was launched to widespread praise by an underdog smartphone company some people have written off, and HTC has basically been getting screwed thanks to part shortages for the One’s Ultrapixel camera and a brief injunction due to the HDR microphone it uses. It’s like a perfect storm of headaches for a company that really, really doesn’t need it — one look at its Q1 financials and it’s clear that HTC needed this launch to go as smoothly as possible. It didn’t.

For what it’s worth, HTC hasn’t disclosed how many Ones it’s shipped since it launched earlier this year. Meanwhile, rival Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has become the Korean electronics giant’s fastest moving smartphone — Samsung shipped 6 million units in just over two weeks, and it hopes to cross the 10 million unit threshold by the end of this month. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that Google’s Hugo Barra showed off a version of the S4 at the company’s I/O developer conference that runs a version of Android that’s unfettered by the software bloat that many a reviewer took umbrage at. Company representatives were careful not to call it a Nexus — even though it seems to harbor many of the advantages inherent to the Nexus line like a clean Android build and access to frequent software updates.

As I noted towards the end of my HTC One review, the wireless industry isn’t a meritocracy — the well-executed device doesn’t always wind up saving the day. Hopefully now that some of these production woes have been ironed out we’ll see HTC live to fight another day, but that’s still far from a given.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Meet the Lumia 925, the latest smartphone flagship in Nokia’s increasingly populous Windows Phone portfolio. The 925 is clearly Nokia’s answer to criticisms of its high end devices being too heavy.  At the device’s London launch earlier today, Vodafone’s Patrick Chomet – brought onstage to talk up the new Lumia which the carrier will be ranging in Europe — couldn’t avoid commenting negatively on the Lumia 920’s weight. For all the noise about the 925’s camera, its less hefty hardware is the key design difference here.

The 925 drops a full 46g compared to the earlier Lumia 920, weighing in at 139g vs the 920’s hefty 185g. The phone feels pleasingly light in the hand, helped by its slender profile: it’s just 8.5mm thick at its thickest point (vs 10.7mm for the 920). In order to achieve a sleeker, lighter device, yet keep the 4.5-inch display, Nokia has dropped built-in wireless charging – but it’s not ditching the tech entirely. It has included wireless charging as an add-on via clip-on shells – likely sold separately — which increase the thickness of the 925 by a few millimetres but don’t appear to add too much weight back on.

It’s a compromise but one that results in a sleeker, more attractive handset out of the box. If it’s a choice between wireless charging – which remains something of a gimmick — or a lightweight phone, most people would opt for the latter. And that’s a calculation Nokia has clearly made with the 925.

The handset design also takes a few steps in a new direction for the Lumia range, with aluminium edging running around its four sides – a band which doubles as the phone’s antenna – coupled with a polycarbonate back. The two-tone look and feel is a definite departure for Nokia’s high end phone design. Colour options are also more subtle, with the black version having anodized, almost charcoal looking aluminium edging, while the white 925 has silver edges. There’s also a grey colourway. The trademark bright Lumia colours are reserved for the wireless charging shells — including red, yellow and cyan.

The PureView-branded 8.7MP camera on the 925 is the other big focus here. The hardware introduces a sixth lens to the device, which Nokia says improves performance in bright sunlight. This is in addition to strong low-light capabilities, which it has touted on its other Lumia flagships – including most recently the Lumia 928.

During the 925 launch Nokia demoed both the low and bright-light photography capabilities of the phone, inviting the press to compare the shots with photos taken on their own smartphones. The Lumia 925 came off as better at snapping in the dark than iPhones, the BlackBerry Z10, the HTC One and even the Lumia 920, pulling a brighter, more colourful image from out of the gloom. It also appeared to capture more detail in strong light conditions in Nokia’s test conditions.

As well as the extra hardware lens, the 925 includes a new suite of camera-editing software called Nokia Smart Camera. This makes use of a burst mode that takes 10 photos at around 5MP each. It then offers a series of image-manipulation options to enhance the photo. Some of these features were a little hit and miss under the press launch lighting conditions. Others looked a little gimmicky, such as the ability to composite a series of movements into one shot. But others seemed like they could be genuinely useful, such as a feature that allows you to create the best shot by choosing from various facial expressions — much like the timeshift feature on the BlackBerry Z10/Q10. Or another that lets you remove a moving object from an image, such as a person or car passing in front of the scene you’re trying to shoot.

The Smart Camera software won’t be exclusive to the Lumia 925 for long – Nokia said it will be pushed out to other Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices as an update in Q3. But for the moment, the Lumia 925 has the lion’s share of Nokia’s camera creativity, including some new features in its Creative Studio image editing app, such as a tilt shift and radial focus. And the Oggl app.

One more new software addition in the 925′s screen settings allows users to tweak the colour saturation and temperature of the AMOLED screen to dial down how poppingly bright the colours are and opt for more muted, photo-realistic tones if you desire. Elsewhere, this is a business-as-usual Windows Phone 8 device loaded with the usual suite of Microsoft and Nokia apps, which include its HERE mapping and location apps and Nokia Music. It is also skinned with the new more flexible Windows Phone homescreen that allows for three different-sized live tiles.

The 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip powering the Lumia 925 doesn’t sound that beefy, considering the proliferation of quad-core phones in the Android ecosystem at least, but it’s as top-of-the range as Windows Phone gets right now. And Nokia argues that no more processing clout is required to do all of the image processing going on under the 925′s hood.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Cisco Meraki, which offers cloud-managed networking solutions, announced a partnership with Facebook last week to include Facebook Wi-Fi in its new Presence platform for businesses to gather location analytics and promote engagement among visitors.

Facebook Wi-Fi is a service that allows businesses to offer customers free Wi-Fi after checking in on the social network. It began as a hackathon project a year ago and gradually rolled out as a local experiment with a few businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now it’s a full-fledged commercial product thanks to the Meraki partnership.

The integration with Presence gives business owners access to Facebook page insights with aggregate demographic information about the customers who check in. The check-in also results in increased exposure for the business and leads users to a business’ Facebook page, which could lead to more Likes or interactions. It could be a useful feature for local businesses, retail locations, the hospitality industry or large events and conferences, which want to learn more about their visitors and generate word of mouth.

For now, Facebook Wi-Fi is only available to businesses through Meraki wireless products. The Presence platform, which includes other real-time location analytics and an API to connect with CRM systems, is included free with the Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN. Meraki says configuring Wi-Fi with Facebook login only requires two clicks in the Meraki dashboard.

Businesses also have the option to allow users to skip the check-in step if they don’t want to share their location on Facebook.

More information is available from Facebook’s Help Center and Meraki.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

To use text messaging and navigation on Google Glass, users currently have to pair it with an Android phone and install the Glass companion app on their phones. This will change very soon, however, one of the Google representatives in its New York office told me when I picked up my own unit yesterday afternoon. Glass, the Google employee told me, will soon be able to handle these features independent of the device the user has paired it to (and maybe even independent of the Glass companion app).

While Glass will happily work with any iPhone over Bluetooth or use any Wi-Fi connection to get online, iPhone users are currently unable to get turn-by-turn directions through Glass – one of its killer features. Those direction are pretty useful while you are navigating a new city and they do show off the power of location-based apps on Glass, but the software will currently balk if you ask it to give you directions while it’s connected to an iPhone.

In this context, it’s worth noting that one of the myths surrounding Glass is that it is independently connected to the Internet. That’s not true, however. Instead, Glass users need to have a tethering plan for their phones to connect Glass to the Internet. In the eyes of your wireless provider, Glass is just another device that uses your phone’s personal hotspot feature. This means Glass shouldn’t have to depend on any application that runs on your phone, so the original restriction of making navigation and SMS dependent on the companion app was always a bit odd.

While Glass has a built-in compass, it doesn’t have its own GPS receiver and depends on the phone to provide it with location data. It looks like this was just a function of the beta state of Glass, however, and that we can expect it to soon be fully functional, no matter the device it uses to connect to the Internet.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

At last! Starting today, the MTA is switching on wireless connectivity in 30 underground subway stations around Manhattan.

Wireless connectivity will expand to all of the MTA’s 277 subway stations within the next four years. The MTA also announced that all four major cellular carriers would be expanding their coverage underground, bringing phone and data connectivity to millions of NYC’s commuters.

It may seem a little silly that it’s taken the MTA so long to finally kick things off. TechCrunch first heard news of MTA and Transit Wireless’ intention to build an underground wireless network way back in 2007. But it’s worth noting that New York City’s subway system is 109 years old, and building a new wireless infrastructure in century old tunnels is no easy task.

Usage of the wireless network will be completely free through Boingo Wireless’ advertising and sponsorship platform. At the moment, the wireless network in Times Square is being sponsored by the HTC One. The SSID of the network is “FreeWifiByHTCONE”, and before you connect to the network it shows you a fifteen second HTC One commercial.

The MTA is also bringing cell phone coverage to its vast underground mass transit system. AT&T and T-Mobile users can make and receive calls underground, and Verizon and Sprint are currently finalizing agreements with the MTA to expand coverage to their users as well.

“The future is not only bright, but the future is also connected,” extolled William A. Bayne Jr., CEO of Transit Wireless.

How did MTA’s wireless network perform in practice? Well, I wrote a part of this post on my phone, connected to the Wi-Fi in the Times Square Station. Although the connection is pretty speedy, it disconnected every ten minutes or so before taking a couple of seconds to connect again.

So it isn’t perfect. But it sure is a hell of a lot better than nothing at all.

You can find a list of the MTA’s subway stations that are now connected with Wi-Fi here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Verizon Communications is preparing a $100 billion cash and stock bid to take full control of Verizon Wireless from Vodafone Group, reports Reuters. Verizon’s board is expected to discuss the potential buyout next week ahead of its annual shareholder meeting.

Verizon Communications and UK-based Vodafone formed Verizon Wireless as a joint venture in 1999. Though Verizon has not yet made an official proposal to Vodafone, it has hired banking and legal advisors, according to Reuters’ sources. The company currently owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless. Though it’s uncertain if Vodafone is interested in the deal, Verizon is prepared to take a bid public if negotiations don’t come to fruition.

Reuter’s two unnamed sources state that after contemplating a buyout Verizon Wireless, its British partner, from Vodafone for the past 10 years, Verizon is now “ready to push aggressively for a deal.” Taking full ownership of Verizon Wireless would give Verizon more flexibility thanks to the wireless company’s cash flow. Verizon currently has the advantage of record low interest rates, as well the current strong performance of its shares, which have risen about 20 percent this year and are currently trading at their highest price in a decade. The company would raise about $50 billion of bank financing, and make up the other $50 billion with its own shares.

Verizon spokesman Bob Varettoni declined to confirm the proposal to Reuters, but noted that Verizon had said earlier this month that it would be a willing buyer of Vodafone’s share of Verizon Wireless.

If Verizon does indeed take Verizon Wireless of Vodafone’s hands, it would fit into Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao’s strategy for the company, which has been to streamline its assets after years of rapid expansion. Colao has been exploring options for its stake in Verizon Wireless, which makes up 75 percent of Vodafone’s valuation. Selling its Verizon Wireless share to Verizon is just one of Colao’s options. He could also sell Vodafone in its entirety to Verizon, but that seems less likely because of Vodafone’s relatively high valuation. If Vodafone does indeed sell off its Verizon Wireless stake, it could potentially make the company an attractive acquisition for suitors like AT&T.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

For those in the United States and other locations that are lucky enough to be able to purchase huge data packages for their smartphone, thinking about deciding to “tweet or not to tweet” based on the cost that it could incur is a foreign concept, pun intended. For cell customers in India, it’s a very real situation, and Reliance Communications has partnered with Twitter to bring free, unlimited access to the social network to its prepaid GSM subscribers.

This is yet another example of how important Twitter has become in our daily lives and how integral the communication platform is to locations all over the world. The service be be bundled with live cricket match updates, the most popular sport in the country.

A customized version of the Twitter app has been created, reminding customers that they’re getting free access thanks to Reliance Mobile. If someone taps a link to an outside site, they will be reminded that doing so might incur extra charges.

Reliance is the first operator to partner with Twitter in India, and its Chief Revenue Officer of Wireless, Nilanjan Mukherjee had this to share:

We are delighted to be the first operator to partner with Twitter in India on Twitter Access and offer the first of its kind unlimited Twitter access on our superior network. Our partnership with Twitter in India further strengthens our offering on the social media platform and is in line with our continuous efforts to offer innovative products with incredible affordability for our customers.

Since prepaid cell phones are prominent in countries like India, signing deals like this make the services more attractive. Back to how important cricket is to India’s culture, though. Mukherjee feels like this announcement could cause a “significant shift” of cricket fans to move over to Reliance.

That’s knowing your customers.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Short Version:

The Z2 wireless Airplay speaker from Bowers & Wilkins is a perfectly suitable option for those of us looking for a sightly, powerful, and compact speaker system. Anyone who’s already invested in Bowers & Wilkins systems before, like the Zeppelin Air or the A line should be especially considerate of the sexy little Z2, as it will fit in seamlessly with your current set-up in a relatively quieter room or space like a bedroom or bathroom.

Features:

• Airplay
• Flexible Lightning Dock
• Black and White options
• 2x 3.5-inch full range drivers
• 20 watt-per-channel stereo amplifier
• Price: $399
• Availability: April for black, June for white

Pros:

• Flexible dock keeps iPhone safe
• Sleek, minimalist design
• Powerful, crisp audio
• Easy peasy setup

Cons:

• Only plays wirelessly, despite having the dock
• Same remote as older generation B&W models
• Doesn’t have the same recognizable design as the Zeppelin, if that’s what you’re into

Long Version:

The B&W Z2 is as easy on the eyes as it is on the ears. The dock sinks below the upper ridge of the round, compact speaker making it somewhat invisible from most angles. The rounded shape turns both drivers out to fill up the room, and it surprisingly fits a lot of power into a very smal package.

The whole thing is no more than about 7-inches tall, a foot wide, and four inches deep, and the only thing you might notice is a small LED light on the bottom right of the device to signify pairing, on and off, etc.

The Lightning dock is built onto a hinge so it bends as you insert and remove your iPhone 5. Of course, this excludes anyone without an iPhone 5 or new generation iPods from docking, since the 30-pin isn’t compatible and iPads are too wide.

Setup is a breeze. Just download the Bowers & Wilkins Airplay Setup app and follow the handful of easy steps. Just be ready to have your wifi network info at the ready.

When you’re done, you’ll be able to throw music from your phone to the Z2 (or from Z2 bedroom to Z2 kitchen or Zeppelin Air Living room or A5 bathroom or whatever combination you can afford) and achieve a much richer, fuller experience that follows you around your house and not the other way around.

Of course, not everything is perfect. If you’re putting extra strain on your Wifi network while streaming to the Z2, especially if that extra strain is coming from the same device that’s streaming, there are bound to be a few drops or off moments. However, I’ve found the Z2 to be more reliable than the A7 I tested a few months ago, so there’s progress being made.

On a brighter note, the Z2 offers a surprisingly excellent listening experience given its size. Whether it was to entertain at a loud party or have something pleasing on in the background, the Z2 always sounded great and had a deep but clear bass. It’s the cheapest offering to date from a company that’s been a pack leader in the wireless iOS audio world. And it lives up to its brand name.

The remote isn’t changed at all from the A7 or original Zeppelin systems, which is annoying if only because it seems stagnant for a company that always seems to be cognizant of the maxim: “Iterate, iterate, iterate.”

All in all, it’s a solid little speaker for a fair price, and worth some serious consideration from audiophile iPhone 5 owners and B&W loyalists.

To learn more about the Z2 and it’s companion the Zeppelin Air, check out the video below, or feel free to read up the all-wireless A7 from B&W in our review right here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

There are approximately 11.3 million elderly Americans that live independently in their own homes. Although many seniors choose to live by themselves without any assistance, it can be a challenge for their children to ensure their parents are doing alright.

Lively is an innovative service that helps you keep tabs on the routine activities of your parents or grandparents.

For those of us who have parents that choose to live by themselves, phone conversations quickly spiral into a form of parent-sitting. A phone conversation becomes a checklist of things you want to make sure your parents have done. You ask them they’ve taken their pills, if they’re eating well, or if they’ve been outside today.

“It’s a very long list of things you have to go through,” says David Glickman, COO of Lively, “and it can end up eating a lot time for any meaningful conversation about what’s actually going on in their lives.”

What Lively aims to do is to bring families closer together with a service that offers two different products: LivelyHub and LivelyGram.

LivelyHub is a non invasive way of keeping tabs on the day-to-day activities of your parents or grandparents.

There’s a wireless hub, which resembles a friendly looking router, and six passive sensors that connect to the hub using cellular technology. LivelyHub doesn’t require you to have an existing cellular data plan of any kind. In fact, it doesn’t even need an existing wireless internet connection.

It’s a little like Amazon’s Whispernet in that regard, which allows you to purchase and download books on Kindles over 3G data without needing to sign up for a cellular data plan. All you have to do is plug the LivelyHub into a power socket, and sensors start collecting data automatically.

The sensors are put in places all around the house that your parents or grandparents interact with as a part of their daily routine. For example, you could place the sensors on refrigerator doors, on kitchen cabinets, on a pillbox, or a key chain. These sensors adapt to and learn the day-to-day routine of your parents or grandparents.

There’s a tiny accelerometer inside each sensor, and it simply pings the hub whenever the refrigerator door the sensor is attached to is opened, and so on and so forth. It can’t track your location or do anything like that. If the daily routine of your parents or grandparents seems to differ, it alerts you through Lively’s website or iPhone app.

These notifications are displayed in a very friendly and accessible way. If there’s nothing wrong, you are presented with a row of green smiley faces. But if it’s been a couple of hours since your grandmother took her daily regimen of pills, it alerts you with an orange sad face.

If that sounds a little invasive to you, Lively assures that their pilot test of 30 homes in Florida produced overwhelmingly positive results. “We heard consistently in our pilot test that this was something they wanted in their homes,” says Glickman. “No one ever felt like LivelyHub was violating their privacy.”

LivelyGram is a supplementary service that sends your parents or grandparents a personalized physical tri fold card every two weeks. The card is filled with status updates from any family members willing to contribute.

You can also choose which tweets and Instagram pictures you want them to see, so there’s no chance that your grandmother will come across any pictures or updates she might find offensive or unsavory.

If they don’t find LivelyHub particularly invasive, it sounds like it could be an exceedingly convenient way of making sure your parents or grandparents are doing okay.

LivelyHub and LivelyGram can be had together for $149, with a $19.95 monthly subscription. They’re currently seeking to raise $100,000 over at Kickstarter by May 16.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch