CLEARWIRE ANNOUNCES PLANS TO ADOPT 4G LTE

Clearwire on Wednesday announced its intent to adopt LTE across its network. The 4G wholesaler says it may add LTE Advanced-ready technology to its network that will provide up to 120Mbps download speeds according to network technology trials. ”Clearwire plans to raise the bar again for mobile broadband service in the United States,” said John Stanton, Clearwire’s Chairman and interim CEO, in a statement. “Our leadership in launching 4G services forced a major change in the competitive mobile data landscape. Now, we plan to bring our considerable spectrum portfolio to bear to deliver an LTE network capable of meeting the future demands of the market.”

Clearwire confirmed that it does not intend to discontinue support for its 4G WiMAX network in the near term, and it will continue to build out its WiMAX network. The company did not put a timeline on the plans, however, saying that its entire LTE deployment strategy is “subject to additional funding.”

MOZILLA REVEALS PLUG-INS THAT SLOW DOWN FIREFOX

Mozilla has put a great deal of time and effort working speed improvements into the latest version of its Firefox browser but sometimes all that hard work is for naught due to slow add-ons from third-party developers. In an effort to raise awareness and to push developers to optimize their plugins, perhaps, Mozilla has published a list of the add-ons that slow down Firefox the most. Among the worst offenders are FoxLingo, AniWeather, FoxyTunes and Xmarks Sync. In a bit of irony, an add-on called “FastestFox” that is supposed to speed up browsing by simplifying repetitive tasks is No.8 on Mozilla’s list. If you’ve been experiencing some slowness in Firefox and are wondering which add-ons might be the culprit, click here for Mozilla’s complete list.

APPLE TO INTRODUCE NEW HIGH SPEED CONNECTION TECHNOLOGY

According to a source at CNet, Apple is expected to announce a new high-speed connection technology soon. Intel has been working on a technology called Light Peak for years and recently said the initial version would be based on copper, as practical realities dictate more conventional technology.

Apple is expected to adopt this technology in the near future--but likely use a name other than Light Peak, a source familiar with this aspect of Apple's plans said. Intel has said in the past that the first products using Light Peak should appear in the first half of 2011.
When Intel initially demonstrated Light Peak at its developer conference in 2009 it used a machine running Apple's Mac OS X.

It is not known if Light Peak will make it into the Macbook Pro refresh (rumored to be coming February 24th) or make its debut later.

Light Peak was originally touted by Intel as the holy grail of connector technology: a single replacement for the myriad cables that connect to monitors, external drives, scanners, printers, and anything else that plugs into a computer. But Intel--and Apple--may be targeting more specific connection protocols, at least initially.

Light Peak is significantly faster than even USB 3.0, carrying data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously. Connection speeds will not be affected by the transition to copper, according to Intel.

Sony is also expected to be an early adopter of the technology.

GOOGLE CHROME 9 NOW AVAILABLE

Google has released its latest update to the Chrome browser, bringing the version up to 9. Google has made some speed improvements to the browser. Other enhancements include 3D WebGL graphics, Chrome Instant Search and Chrome Web Store.

Your current Chrome browser should automatically update, but if it doesn't, click the wrench and About Google Chrome. The browser will check for updates and begin the process.

MOZILLA BLOCKS SKYPE TOOLBAR BY DEFAULT DUE TO CRASHING

Mozilla has added the Skype toolbar to the blocklist it uses to block add-ons by default. The Skype toolbar gets automatically installed when the user installs or updates the main Skype application.

The issue with the Skype Toolbar for Mozilla is the fact it is creating two rather large problems in the Firefox browser. The first is that it makes Firefox crash a lot as the Mozilla blog entry about the toolbar explains:

The current shipping version of the Skype Toolbar is one of the top crashers of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, and was involved in almost 40,000 crashes of Firefox last week.

The second problem is that is causes a major performance hit for the browser:

The methods it uses to detect and re-render phone numbers can make DOM manipulation up to 300 times slower, which drastically affects the page rendering times of a large percentage of web content served today (plain English: to the user, it appears that Firefox is slow loading web pages).

Mozilla does not want users to experience slow loading web pages and have a browser that crashes unexpectedly. So it has been decided the Skype Toolbar is being blocked by default for the time being.

Mozilla has made this a "soft" block, so users can still install the toolbar by overriding the block. Mozilla and Skype are talking to work out a resolution to the issues.

RUMOR: SPEED AND DATA TIERS COMING TO AT&T 4G LTE SERVICE

BGR is reporting that AT&T may be bring not only data plan tiers when they launch their 4G LTE service in 2011, but also speed tiers as well.

Just like broadband internet, AT&T plans on delivering varying speeds to users depending on the tier they subscribe to.

Data tiers are nothing new and have recently been implemented by most major carriers. AT&T will let users subscribe to "data buckets" of varying sizes similar to AT&T's current data plans.

In addition, the plans will afford users the opportunity to boost services temporarily for a fee. The documents BGR obtained refer to "Top Up Sessions", which allow users to increase their data allotment for the remainder of a billing cycle, and “Speed Up Sessions,” which will allow subscribers on lower-tier plans to speed up their service for a specific duration.

It is not known what the tiers will look like or the associated price of them, but we do know the trials will begin in May of this year.

T-MOBILE YEARS AWAY FROM LTE

T-Mobile is sticking with HSPA+ for the long haul, Bloombergreports — or at least for another few years. While major competitors build out LTE and WiMAX 4G networks, T-Mobile will continue to focus on its HSPA+ 4G network. T-Mobile has already stated that it intends to double the theoretical limit on the download side of its HSPA+ network from 21Mbps to 42Mbps in 2011. That speed increase and possible subsequent improvements to the carrier’s HSPA+ gear will have to suffice for “a few years” according to T-Mobile executives.

T-Mobile’s data network does not yet have to deal with the congestion seen on other networks, so high-speed HSPA+ is more than sufficient for the carrier at the moment. Other more congested networks have a more urgent need to deploy LTE and WiMAX, which can accommodate a greater number of simultaneous data connections with less of an impact on performance.

CONSUMERS CONFUSED BY WHAT 4G MEANS ACCORDING TO NIELSEN

One of the buzzwords emerging here at this year's Consumer Electronics Show is 4G; just today, Verizon Wireless unveiled 10 new 4G LTE devices. But does the average person even really know what that means?

A recent Nielsen study found that 83 percent of the 2,100 people it polled were aware of 4G technology, but only 51 percent actually understood what 4G entailed.
The confusion shouldn't be all that surprising; even the experts have gone back and forth over the definition recently.

In October, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) proclaimed that only LTE-Advanced and WiMAX 2 (802.16m) qualified as 4G, meaning that 4G networks being advertised by Sprint, MetroPCS, Verizon, and T-Mobile actually weren't. Two months later, however, the ITU reversed course and loosened its definition of 4G to include LTE, WiMax, and HSPA+.

When Nielsen asked respondents to define 4G, many of them sided with the ITU's original definition. About 54 percent said 4G was mobile data speeds of more than 100 MBits/s. "However, "no carrier worldwide currently reaches speeds that high," Nielsen said. Some people, meanwhile, also confused the "4" in iPhone 4 to mean that it's a 4G phone (it's not).
Perhaps confusion will be good for business, though. Nielsen said that almost 3 in 10 consumers said they would buy a 4G device in the next 12 months.

SPEED UP FIREFOX BY MOVING CACHE TO RAM

Since your computer can access data in RAM faster than on a hard drive, moving cached data to RAM can improve your page load times. In Firefox, all you need to do to move your caches to RAM is open up about:config and make a few tweaks.

Once you get into about:config, type browser.cache into the filter bar at the top. Find browser.cache.disk.enable and set it to false by double clicking on it. You'll then want to set browser.cache.memory.enable to true (mine seemed to already be set as such), and create a new preference by right clicking anywhere, hitting New, and choosing Integer. Call the preference browser.cache.memory.capacity and hit OK. In the next window, type in the number of kilobytes you want to assign to the cache (for example, typing 100000 would create a cache of 100,000 kilobytes or 100 megabytes). A value of -1 will tell Firefox to dynamically determine the cache size depending on how much RAM you have. [Gizmodo]

HUGHES LAUNCHING NEW JUPITER SATELLITE IN 2012

If you're stuck in an area that's not served by an existing broadband source, your options for hopping on the world wide web at a rate hastier than 56Kbps are limited. Severely limited. The go-to alternative for the past few years has been HughesNet, a satellite-based "broadband" service that offers users 2Mbps down / 300Kbps up for a staggering $120 per month. It's definitely a last resort, and many satellite gamers have kvetched that triple-digit ping times have all but destroyed their yearning to catch a round of Counter-Strike before hitting the sack. If all goes well, however, this entire situation could be up-ended by 2012. Hughes just landed the financing it needs to launch a $400 million Jupiter satellite into orbit, theoretically giving it over 100 gigabits per second of capacity and enabling it to seriously expand its customer base. Once launched, consumers could be offered download rates as high as 20Mbps, and while that's far from impressive, it's definitely a step-up for those positioned in bandwidth-starved locales. [Engadget]

UNIQUE SIKORSKY HELICOPTER BREAKS SPEED RECORD - WITH VIDEO

Sikorsky, the venerable helicopter manufacturer, has just broken the helicopter speed record with its X2 vehicle.  This unique helicopter has 2 counter rotating main rotors with a push prop in the rear instead of the usual parallel fan blade.  The Sikorsky website description of the helicopter:

The X2 uses a single T800 engine to power both the rotors and the tail-mounted variable-pitch propeller, which provides forward thrust to enable the high speed. Other technologies include fly-by-wire flight controls and active vibration control.


In the beginning of the video you can see the X2 Light Tactical Helicopter being developed for military use. [Gizmodo]

IBM CLAIMS WORLDS FASTEST PROCESSOR

IBM has claimed they have created the world's fastest processor at 5.2GHz.  The z196 processor is a quad-core manufactured using their 45 nanometer technology.  The processor has 1.4 billion transistors and is capable of more than 50 billion instructions a second, all without any water cooling or fancy tricks.

Fujitsu's Venus processor claims to handle 128 billion instructions per second, so IBM may not be holding the crown for very long. [Engadget]