ONLY last year, the bosses of global mobile-phone companies active in China were still laughing at the handsets offered by TCL, a Chinese manufacturer of television sets that started making mobile phones in 1999. To most foreigners, its faux-diamond ornamentation is egregiously kitschy. But the Chinese love it, and so TCL has passed Siemens and Samsung to become China's third-largest handset vendor after Motorola and Nokia, two firms that it now has in its sights.
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To mark the 50th anniversary, Scientific American's Editor in Chief John Rennie recently spoke with Watson in his office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he was director for 25 years. Watson reflected on the origins of the double helix discovery, the current state of molecular biology, and controversies surrounding genetic science. (Because of poor health, Crick was not available for comment.) Here is an abridged, edited version of that conversation.
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Boingo announces private label service: In the next step of Boingo Wireless's evolution, they've announced a more general plan to allow companies who want to offer wISP service a private label option. Boingo tested this plan with Earthlink and Fiberlink. The company also announced that a later version of their sniffer software will detect available 2.5G cell data standards to better integrate hot spots with cell operators' offerings. Finally, a little Politburo-style interpretation of the mention of $10 million in software development: this is a boast and a threat. They're telling the world they spent $10M to get this far to make competitors like Cometa turn into cooperative partners when they realize what it takes to get the client side right.

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Intel preps its Centrino launch with Wi-Fi focus: A great roundup of the wireless issues surrounding the Centrino launch. As the article notes, the Wi-Fi incorporated into the Centrino product is a standalone module which contains components by Philips (and also Symbol and Texas Instruments) as Intel's work was ready in time. Intel claims that integration with its processor will produce better wireless results, including lower power use. Other chipmakers have promoted the same benefit, however, without having to make the processor, too. It's absolutely clear that the Centrino campaign will produce something close to total awareness fo wireless networks for anyone who has any interest in computers. Watch for other announcements on Wednesday that will attempt to steal Intel's thunder!

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Broadcom ships 3 million 802.11g chipsets: Jeff Abramowitz, senior director of marketing, said in an interview, "Industry transition from b to g is happening very rapidly." In the next 30 days, he said, Broadcom would announce deals by several PC makers to use Broadcom's chipset. Having been an early adopter helps Broadcom outflank Intel, Abramowitz said, because Intel's Centrino isn't yet 802.11g-based. That support would come later this year in new hardware.

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