Monday, August 11, 2003

Ultrawideband It looks like Samsung is convinced that the standard for UWB proposed by the Multiband OFDM Alliance [http://www.multibandofdm.org/] is likely to win the standards race, so they are trying to get jump on the industry with commercial products. What markets they will go after first should be interesting, but they apparently aren't saying yet.  Samsung to team on ultrawideband. The consumer-electronics company pairs with chipmaker Staccato Communications to develop products using ultrawideband, a technology that's 100 times faster than Bluetooth. [CNET News.com] 5:11:27 PM    comment []

Sexiest Man In America ABC recently launched it's "Search for the sexiest man in America" contest in conjunction with TV show All My Children [ http://amc.tcsinteractive.com/phase3/index.cfm ] . The contest is comparable to some of BSkyB's iTV programs in the UK. Consumers can use their cell phones to vote by sending a premium text message to the show. [This requires a subscription to premium text messaging plus a transaction charge $0.50 per message.] This is something of a milestone. It is the first time in the USA that we have seen a linkage between a television program and the use of cellular telephone text messaging premium services. 3:10:26 PM    comment []