The wireless backbone provider Towerstream will flip on a dense Manhattan Wi-Fi network: Towerstream built a wireless network in the skyline, paying for prime locations on the top of buildings to point high-speed service at line-of-sight locations where conventional wired or even fiber broadband wasn’t available, would take too long, or wasn’t competitive [...]

Media servers on planes will be used to provide in-flight entertainment over Wi-Fi? Aircell told me years ago that they had provisioned the ability to put media servers on planes, and were waiting for pieces to fall into place. Its public trial with American Airlines on a couple of 767-200s will start this summer.

A new mode in Eye-Fi X2 cards let you rely images through a smartphone using a neat trick: I’m a long-time fan of the Eye-Fi digital camera cards that pack a CPU, a Wi-Fi radio, and now up to 8 GB of storage into an SD or SDHC form factor. The Eye-Fi line is regularly updated to add features like transfer of RAW images or video files, or endless storage, in which images already wirelessly transferred to another location can be deleted when storage is needed. (I haven’t erased my Eye-Fi camera card since that feature came out. I simply don’t need to know what’s on the card any more.

With more people today getting cellphones and ipads etc…., the drain on electrical power grids is increasing. So, incorporating the capacity for the cell phone to independently recharge from the sun rays suggests they might help pull their own weight, and you also wouldn’t must pack a different battery charger or move it around.

AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile lets it build a truly national, robust network at the expense of competition: It’s a little dirty but barely a secret in modern mobile cell world that AT&T doesn’t really have national 2G coverage, much less 3G. AT&T leans on T-Mobile to roam customers in a large number of areas in which AT&T didn’t spend money to build out service. This stems from an agreement years ago when AT&T Wireless consolidated on GSM service, and T-Mobile was building out its initial GSM service. In 2004, the companies dissolved a cooperative agreement (when Cingular bought what was then AT&T Wireless), but roaming never disappeared.

Boingo Wireless gives us a peek under the kimono: It’s rare to get hard, audited, under-threat-of-government-rules numbers in the Wi-Fi hotspot industry. Now we have some. Boingo fired up its operations in 2001, and has taken over nine years to reach profitability under accounting (GAAP) rules. The firm has nearly $35m on hand, which means that on a non-GAAP basis, they’ve been putting money into the bank for years.

Four years ago, big American cities including Minneapolis raced to be the first to make the Internet available to all their citizens. Companies such as EarthLink competed to build multimillion-dollar Wi-Fi networks that would provide fast, inexpensive Internet service while bridging the “digital divide” to people who couldn’t afford pricey plans. Now, most of those cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco, have put their wireless dreams on hold.

Hylas 1 is the first superfast broadband satellite to be launched outside the United States and will be able to handle between 150,000 and 300,000 users at any one time through systems that automatically react to traffic demand by allocating varying amounts of power and bandwith to the different regions. It is estimated there are around 30m without an adequate broadband service in Europe.

AT&T’s CTO has a blog post indirectly critiquing Verizon Wireless’s early LTE launch: I pretty much agree entirely with this John Donovan post. Verizon’s commitment to CDMA left it without a reasonable path to future higher speeds in 3G because Qualcomm’s EVDO path wasn’t compelling enough, and Verizon clearly wanted the worldwide advantage of converging on GSM.

Kyocera Corporation announced that it has installed a total of 305.1kWp of solar power systems to two villages in Mongolia through the World Bank’s Renewable Energy for Rural Access Project. The installations are among the largest stand-alone solar power generating systems in the world. The systems were installed this summer and are now currently helping to provide electricity for the daily needs of the local residents. The World Bank project aims to increase electricity and improve reliability of electricity service through the use of solar energy to help improve the living conditions of the herder population and off-grid village communities.

The service retains the last seven days of uploads at no cost. For $5/mo or $50/yr, you can upgrade to Eye-Fi Premium, which allows unlimited storage with no expiration of links or photos and videos. Eye-Fi View isn’t enabled by default, otherwise you’d be uploading your pictorial evidence to Eye-Fi’s servers without your consent—a bad idea, regardless of whether the photos and videos remain private or not. Eye-Fi View uploads to [4] Eye-Fi Center, a Web site with the same name as the firm’s computer software.

The Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center & Hotel is the world’s largest university-based conference center with 200 hotel rooms and suites, 5 executive board rooms, 18 high-tech meeting rooms, 2 auditoriums, 9,000 sq. feet of exhibit space, a banquet area that seats up to 600, and 2 in-house restaurants. Its conference center sees a wide range of events each year, including academic symposiums, training workshops, organized retreats, and weddings.

Wi-Fi Direct has a few things in common with newer Bluetooth devices that pair with less effort than in the original Bluetooth schema, and in that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct both advertise available services. But the notion is that you get the speed (up to 802.11n) and security (WPA2 mandatory) of Wi-Fi with enormously simpler setup than connecting to a new Wi-Fi network for a moment and then setting up a connection with a specific device. And in cases in which you don’t have an access point, such as trying to exchange a file between two mobile devices, it’s extremely irritating. (On an iOS device, both parties could have a package like GoodReader that has built in WebDAV client and server software with Bonjour discovery, but you still need an access point to which both devices are connected, and security is an overlay.)

The Long-Term Sequential Test which is conducted by the third party certification organization, TÜV Rheinland, evaluates solar modules with four sub-tests: Damp Heat, Thermal Cycling, Humidity Freeze, and Bypass Diode. These test the module’s overall performance and quality by putting it under harsher conditions than those standardized by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Furthermore, while conventional testing dictates that a separate individual module be used per sub-test, the Long-Term Sequential Test carries out all four sub-tests on the same module, thereby evaluating it under conditions closer to those a product faces over its actual lifetime.

The Kyocera Corporation announced that it will install solar power generating systems using the company’s own solar modules at six domestic plants by March 2011, generating a total of 593kW, as part of its activities to promote environmental protection. This move will increase the number of Kyocera domestic manufacturing sites equipped with solar power generating systems to 10 – all of the company’s manufacturing sites in Japan – and the number of global group company sites to 20. Kyocera already has a number of solar power generating systems installed at its group companies inside and outside Japan, which combined with the new systems, will boost the company’s total output to 1,815kW (1.8MW).

We are seeing the end of virtually all analog television broadcasting throughout the United States. For several years television stations have been simultaneously broadcasting on two separate channels, in both analog and digital. The fact is that DTV stations can co-exist on adjacent channels without interference, which combined with the opening of so many channels formerly occupied by analog transmissions, creates a lot of prime real estate in the electro-magnetic spectrum for reallocation and purchase by other wireless users and services besides broadcasting.

JetBlue subsidiary LiveTV, which supplies live television across JetBlue’s fleet, will manage the integration of the ViaSat broadband and related components onboard the aircraft, leading the certification process and handling the installations. LiveTV will also bring Wi-Fi enabled services into the overall cabin experience, says JetBlue. ”This system will be designed for the 21st century, not just for today’s personal connectivity needs, but with the bandwidth to expand to meet tomorrow’s needs as well,” says JetBlue CEO Dave Barger. ”In just the three years since we launched BetaBlue, the first commercial aircraft with simple messaging capability, technology has advanced by generations. Rather than invest in current technology, designed to transmit broadcast video and audio, we elected to partner with ViaSat to create broadband functionality worthy of today’s interactive personal technology needs.”

Free WiFi is finally coming to city parks next year. Well, not exactly. Cable giants Time Warner and Cablevision have agreed to spend $10 million to provide WiFi service in 32 parks as part of a deal in which the city agreed to give a 10-year renewal of the companies’ lucrative cable-television franchises. Under that deal, which city officials announced Tuesday after two years of stalled cable talks, anyone can have free WiFi in the parks for up to three 10-minute sessions a month – a total of 30 minutes per person. After that, the cable companies will charge you 99 cents a day to surf the Internet.

Dell is entering the increasingly crowded market with a 3.5-inch Android device called the Aero. The long-anticipated move by the computer manufacturer puts Dell in competition with Apple Inc, the market leader in smartphones, and with a clutch of other phones that use Google Inc’s Android operating system.

Following two years of declining expenditures, capital spending on wireless infrastructure is set to rise in 2011 as carriers in the developed world start deploying next-generation 4G networks. Capital spending on wireless infrastructure throughout the world is projected to reach $40.3 billion in 2011, reversing the downward trend that first occurred in 2009 and is expected again this year. Compared to next year’s increase, expenditures dipped 5.7 percent in 2009 to $38.6 billion, and will tumble this year by an additional 2.3 percent to $37.8 billion. The upturn in 2011, however, signals renewed commitment within the industry to move on expansion plans that had been delayed or put on hold because of the global recession. And growth in spending—albeit in the single digits—is now anticipated to continue from next year until the end of the forecast period in 2014.

Android is taking the smart phone market by storm. The OS started with entry level models in 2008, but the flexibility Android offers for hardware designs and its appealing business model in terms of revenue sharing have attracted vigorous support from all nodes in the value chain, including makers of high-end smart phone models. Cell phone OEMs representing all tiers of the industry have committed to support Android, including Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Huawei, AsusTek and ZTE. This broad industry support will allow the Android OS’s usage and market share to exceed that of its chief rival—iOS—in 2012, just five years after its introduction.

Sprint is starting to ship 3G-capable femtocells, but only to qualified customers. Like the previous 2G Airave, the Airave Access Point acts as a mini cell tower using your home or office broadband connection to help boost voice and data coverage. The primary difference between the two is that the Airave Access Point supports EV-DO while the older Airave only supports up to CDMA 1x.

The Audi A8 will feature the Mobile Media Interface Plus in-car navigation system, which will act as a mobile “hotspot”, enabling passengers to connect Wi-Fi enabled devices to the internet. The sat-nav also has Google Earth built in to it, providing driers with high-resolution, three-dimensional satellite imagery. Audi said that the system, when combined with a street atlas and other online content, can provide real-time route planning, location-specific points of interest or local restaurant reviews, as well as up-to-the-minute traffic information.

Mayor Boris Johnson first said that he wanted London to become “a wi-fi city”, where the internet was available anywhere, in September 2008. “Let’s do it, beginning in Stratford in this fantastic area of opportunity,” referring to the location of the main 2012 Olympic site. During Google’s Zeitgeist event in Hertfordshire, held on Tuesday, Boris Johnson once again pledged that the capital would become one huge wi-fi hotspot. He told 400 business leaders: “Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet, was born in London, so we claim paternity of the internet. ”London is the home of technological innovation. We in City Hall are doing our best to keep up, and one of our most important projects is called wi-fi London.” The mayor explained how street furniture, such as lamp posts and bus stops, could be wi-fi enabled using existing cabling.

Wireless hotspots are spreading across the world’s cities, with blanket wi-fi zones now being rolled out in many city centres. Operators are providing wireless surfing at the touch of a button from the park, the bus or the street corner. So what does the wireless future have to offer?

Users of the new city-wide wi-fi networks will be required to pay access charges to an account provider, such as BT Openzone or T-Mobile. The revenues will be shared between the owners of the street furniture on which the equipment is installed (usually local councils), wi-fi hotspot suppliers and the internet service providers.

World radio enthusiasts used to have to buy expensive communications receivers and antennas and put up with patchy shortwave reception. This has all changed with the development of internet radio. Now world radio is available to everyone. Internet radio brings you radio stations worldwide, easily accessible over GPRS, WLAN or 3G. Using the Station Directory you can search for stations by name, genre, language or location. If you’re looking for radio inspiration you can browse ‘Top Stations’ to find out what everybody else is listening to. Variable download rates offer a quality listening experience. What is even greater about this is that you can listen to it even without your computer.

The telecom behemoth is also gigantic in giving away Wi-Fi to customers: AT&T’s quarterly report on Wi-Fi usage finds the firm serving 121m sessions in the first six months of 2010; that compares to 86m sessions in all of 2009. Second quarter 2010 saw 68m sessions used, compared with 15m in the year-ago second quarter. Second quarter was also a 30-percent increase over first quarter.

Kyocera Corporation (President: Tetsuo Kuba; herein “Kyocera“) announced that the company has started supplying solar modules for “Toyota Solar Panels,“ which are to be installed in recreational boats manufactured and sold by Toyota Motor Corporation (herein “Toyota“). Toyota Solar Panels can also be installed as an optional unit on recreational boats manufactured by other companies.

Google won’t be sucking down Wi-Fi signals in its future street view efforts in some countries. After the debacle of Google first saying it wasn’t collecting data from Wi-Fi networks, only scanning for readily available public information, and then discovering and admitting it had stored information, the company is taking a different tack. It’s restarting street view photography in Ireland, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden, but vehicles won’t have Wi-Fi hardware on board, and the software has been vetted by a third-party to ensure there’s no component that might have collected Wi-Fi data still installed even though removing the hardware might be seen as enough.

Utopian and radical architects in the 1960s predicted that cities in the future would not only be made of brick and mortar, but also defined by bits and flows of information. The urban dweller would become a nomad who inhabits a space in constant flux, mutating in real time. Their vision has taken on new meaning in an age when information networks rule over many of the city’s functions, and define our experiences as much as the physical infrastructures, while mobile technologies transform our sense of time and of space. In this film, “Wireless in the World” simple visualisations of radio ‘spaces’ are overlaid into urban spaces.

In-Stat says that $95m in revenue will be taken in for in flight WiFi, almost entirely by Aircell, in 2010. That’s a fair amount of money for the first year in which a substantial number of planes across multiple airlines are in operation, but still doesn’t represent a lot of usage overall. Delta still represents the lion’s share of equipped planes, even as other airlines have signed up, typically in a more limited fashion for the large operators. Virgin America and AirTran have equipped their entire fleets, but those fleets are quite small.

FORD SYNC GOES WIFI TURNING CAR INTO MOBILE INTERNET HOT SPOT FOR PASSENGERS WHILE ON THE GO

• Next-generation SYNC® system to incorporate in-car WiFi system powered by customer’s USB mobile broadband modem, turning entire car into hot spot

• New capability will be standard on select SYNC-equipped [...]