David Haskin

Sigma Designs and Taiwan’s Acer will work together to develop set-top boxes that can deliver broadband content, the two companies have announced. The box will include Sigma’s REALmagic video decoder silicon and drivers, and is being demonstrated at the COMDEX trade show this week. The companies are targeting the Acer-labeled Advanced STB at consumer electronics […]

British Telecom (BT) has dived into the home Net device business with the release of two simple access devices. The new tools are aimed at simplifying the process of sending and receiving e-mail from home using standard telephone lines. Specifically, BT has rolled out its Easicom TV3 set-top box and the Easicom 1000 desktop smart […]

Sony Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Wednesday unveiled plans to collaborate to create Net devices for consumers. The first phase of the cooperation will be to develop gateway software that will run on digital televisions and home-based Net devices such as set-top boxes.  That software will support both home networking capabilities and home servers. The […]

MyWeb, the American company trying to make major inroads in the Chinese Internet business by selling set-top boxes, will partner with TVSN China to help spur e-commerce in that nation. TVSN is China’s largest television shopping network. Under the agreement, MyWeb will sell TVSN products on-line and TVSN will sell MyWeb’s set-top boxes. “The Chinese […]

Sweden’s AU-System AB has scored a win in the competitive microbrowser business. LG Information and Communications has licensed its Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Browser for its CDMA smart phones for the Korean market. The agreement between the two companies also calls for AU-System to update the browser as new versions of WAP become available. The […]

Ericsson Canada says the company has mandated that it develop broadband third generation (3G) products and it immediately jumped into action. In separate announcements, the company said it will be working with other vendors to deliver video and audio to 3G wireless devices. Specifically, it has agreed with Wysdom Inc. have test Wysdom’s Wireless Jukebox […]

Palm Computing and Symbian, two major developers of handhelds and operating systems for Net devices, have said they will work together to grow the wireless telephony market. The two companies also will discuss licensing each other’s technologies. The companies provided no details beyond that, but did indicate that the cooperation would result in new devices. […]

Ericsson Canada and two other organizations claim they’ve made the first phone call in North America using third generation (3G) WCDMA technology. It might not have been “come here, Watson. I need you,” but some claim that it was almost as historic. The call was between Anthony Schultz, vice president of network planning and operations […]

Two major wireless vendors, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Finland’s Nokia, are starting research initiatives in two of the world’s largest markets. NTT DoCoMo announced that it was setting up a U.S. subsidiary that will invest in wireless technology and conduct research to promote third-generation (3G) wireless technology. The technology laboratory also will work to strengthen […]

The competition is fierce and the Chinese government doesn’t want them, but that hasn’t stopped the American company EnReach from launching a Chinese language portal aimed at set-top users in that country. Last Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Information Industry said that it didn’t want foreign companies creating content for Chinese Internet users. However, other companies […]

Vodafone, has unveiled interactive services for its U.K. wireless phone users and has launched a free ISP service to deliver those services. The company calls the services Vodafone Interactive, which is comprised of four services. The personal preference page enables customers to customize the service, such as delivering personalized news, weather and sports. The second […]

Phone.com announced that ten major Japanese companies have licensed its Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)-compliant microbrowser for use in their wireless smart phones. According to Phone.com, NEC, Casio, Kyocera, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, DENSO, Toshiba, Hitachi and Matsushita have licensed the UP.Browser microbrowser. The company claims that it now has more than 25 licensees for the microbrowser, […]