Radio Waves Archive

  • Sprint 4G lights up in Los Angeles, but only temporarily

    Sprint 4G lights up in Los Angeles, but only temporarily

    Posted on June 10, 2010 | No Comments
    Got an EVO 4G? Live in Los Angeles? Get ready! It’s Easter Egg huntin’ time! Early yesterday, reports started trickling in that Sprint had fired up 4G service in Los Angeles — but here’s the catch: it wasn’t working in all of Los Angeles, or even consistently in the same spots. As it turns out, Sprint’s [...]

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  • Video: NHK’s millimeter-wave TV camera films “invisible” objects

    Video: NHK’s millimeter-wave TV camera films “invisible” objects

    Posted on June 7, 2010 | No Comments
    NHK isn't just Japan's national TV broadcaster, but it's also developing some pretty cool technology on its own. One example is a "millimeter-wave TV camera", which takes images of objects (or people, for that matter) by using radio waves instead of visible light. The camera makes it possible to see objects "hidden" behind fog or plywood, for example, in the images.

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  • AT&T’s signal-boosting 3G MicroCell hitting the shelves in San Francisco today

    AT&T’s signal-boosting 3G MicroCell hitting the shelves in San Francisco today

    Posted on April 11, 2010 | No Comments
    If AT&T gets a bad rap for having poor signal quality in any city, it's San Francisco. Part of this is due to the sudden influx of iPhones in the Silicon Valley that began in 2007, putting an almighty strain on the network; of the roughly 800,000 or so people living in San Francisco, we're estimating that around 10 million of them (or 1,150%) are carrying iPhones. Throw in ridiculous topography and monstrous buildings, and it starts to get tough to properly blanket the entire area in radio waves. Thus, it should come as no surprise that San Francisco is one of the first cities to be getting AT&T's cell-tower-in-a-box, the 3G MicroCell. AT&T just hit us up to let us know that we should start seeing the little router-sized, broadband-powered signal boosters on the shelves in their San Francisco stores beginning today.

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  • Thanko USB Radio tunes in horse races, presumably Tokyo

    Thanko USB Radio tunes in horse races, presumably Tokyo

    Posted on December 15, 2009 | No Comments
    Thanko, everyone's favorite crapvendor, is offering a short wave/AM/FM radio that plugs right into your PC for maximum shortwaving experience. I'm not quite sure who's on short wave anymore but I'm sure there's someone out there endlessly repeating numbers and calling for help from a desert island.

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  • Science sez Wi-Fi is totally safe, not likely to cause people illness

    Science sez Wi-Fi is totally safe, not likely to cause people illness

    Posted on December 3, 2009 | No Comments
    There's been a few stories over the years about people being overly sensitive to Wi-Fi. It makes them sick and whatnot. There's usually one reaction to such stories: bologna. (That's not my reaction, mind you. If you're sick, you're sick. Who am I to call you a liar?) Well now! A series of studies, carried out by the UK Department of Health, say “there is no consistent evidence to date that exposure to radio waves from wireless networks adversely affects the health of the general population and that there is no reason why schools and others should not use Wi-Fi equipment.”

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  • T-Mobile fires up 3G in St. Louis, MO

    T-Mobile fires up 3G in St. Louis, MO

    Posted on August 13, 2009 | No Comments
    Fact: That is actually what 3G radio waves look like. Yep, little tiny 3Gs. Crazy coincidence. You feel that warmth, St. Louis? That’s the feeling of 3G radio waves swimming around your head. Following launches in El Paso, Bakersfield, Thousand Oaks, Milwaukee, Chattanooga, Jacksonville, and a ton of other cities, T-Mobile has just flipped the switches [...]

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  • Why Nokia and Sony Ericsson are failing

    Why Nokia and Sony Ericsson are failing

    Posted on July 24, 2009 | No Comments
    Fosfor posted an incredible look at what has befallen phone manufacturers and why they're all faltering. Mikael heeded over to Nokia and Sony Ericsson's sites and tried to list all of the models available. Nokia had 44 and S-E had 70. He then points out that there are three iPhones at best and in reality there are only two. It costs money to manufacture and sell things. While many of the phones on Nokia's site may be out of production, they still show them to users as if they were available. This is wrong-headed and ridiculous. The manufacturers will complain that carriers make them offer so many phones. Carrier A wants a cheap phone to sell to grandmas in Latvia while Carrier B wants a fancy phone to sell to the rich in South Africa. Cry me a river. Are we really that neophiliac that every country and every carrier has to have something a little different? Do we really have to bend our desires to what companies that essentially sell the transmission of bits over radio waves want?

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  • Slab-Like iPhone Case Hewn From Solid Metal

    Slab-Like iPhone Case Hewn From Solid Metal

    Posted on July 15, 2009 | No Comments
    Every morning my inbox is almost full of pitches for various iPhone cases. Gel skins and anodized pictures of sock monkeys are today’s offerings. They are almost always humdrum, and usually virtual clones of one another, probably all starting life in the same Chinese factory. But the Exovault is different, and not just because no PR [...]

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