How to Profit From a Satellite Communication Resurgence

Only 14 years ago, an innovative startup launched the world’s very first global satellite communication system. Using a hand-held wireless phone, the company’s customers could call anywhere in the world – from the streets of New York to the North Pole to the center of the Sahara Desert.

The sheer cost and scale of the project – which included more than 60 low-orbit satellites – captivated technology and space buffs alike.

“It was the boldest and most-expensive private space initiative yet undertaken,” the Smithsonian reflects, “a test of the post-Cold war notion that markets might replace government as the drivers of space exploration and development.”

The company’s formal launch in 1998 solidified it as a dot-com darling, ushering in a new digital world that would give everyone on Earth the ability to instantly communicate with anyone at the push of a button on a wireless device.

There was just one problem: The venture quickly became a failure of epic proportions.

Nine months after signing its first customer, the company filed for bankruptcy. The era of commercial satellite phones was over before it even began.

The hope and hype of a space-age phone system was gone, and the headlines disappeared. Few noticed when the U.S. Department of Defense – one of the company’s first customers – saved the satellite infrastructure. Even fewer noticed when a group of new investors bought the company and re-branded it. And almost no one realizes how profitable this new company has become. Or that a massive equipment overhaul is about to usher in a new era of breakneck growth in a world where people, ships, airplanes and even machinery demand constant communication.

A bankrupt company with an idea ahead of its time is not the end of this story. In fact, it’s just the beginning…

The dream of a seamless mobile communication network took shape in the late 1980s. It was an engineering team at Motorola that initially had the idea for this global communication service. As it was initially designed, the system called for a network of more than 60 low-orbit satellites to provide a wireless phone signal anywhere in the world.

The idea of a satellite phone service was quite revolutionary at the time. The fact that the concept had never been attempted created several barriers for the engineers at Motorola. For starters, no commercial enterprise had yet to attempt to launch low-Earth orbit satellites for a communications system. It was a logistical nightmare that even required international diplomacy to ensure that the satellite phones would work with every single phone system in the world.

Despite the scale of the project, progress was made. Motorola spun off its space-bound division in 1998. Marketing campaigns for the new brand proclaimed, “One World…One Telephone.”

Now, keep in mind that cellular service in the mid- to late 1990s was spotty at best. And at the time, there was a legitimate debate as to how the world’s mobile communications would evolve. This new satellite phone system was launched at a time when the developed world’s cellular connectivity was still bare-bones.

If you ventured outside a major city, there was little chance you would be able to find a strong cellular signal.
But in the end, you know how the satellite versus cellular story ends. Cheaper cell towers became more ubiquitous, while crippling debt combined with far too few customers doomed the satellite phone business model. According to Reuters, the company charged thousands for one of its satellite phones – and call charges topped $7 per minute. With cellular phone networks growing, the choice was a no-brainer for potential customers looking to stay connected on the go.

But after the bankruptcy, new developments kept the satellite idea on the backburner. The Department of Defense saw a use in the vast satellite network and kept them all in commission. In fact, it was the government that helped find investors to purchase what was left of the company in 2000 for $25 million.
From the rubble of a failed idea, a new venture was born. And so far, that $25 million price tag has been more than worth it…

Now, this company is no longer an ambitious startup trying to sell $7,000 satellite phones. In 2012, this communications company is looking ahead to new opportunities in a world that is becoming more desperate to connect businesses, machines and people.

We all know that cellular telephones are here to stay. But what about the places where cellular service isn’t an option? It’s a bigger piece of the pie than you might think. In fact, only about 8% of the globe is covered by cellular phone service. That’s probably far less than you imagined… but it’s true. So when it comes to connecting vast parts of the world where traditional wireless communications aren’t available, this company and its network of satellites is there to take care of business. The implications are tremendous. Aircraft passengers won’t have to turn off cellphones during their flights, thanks to the company’s connectivity options, according to Reuters. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Machine-to-machine technology is also fueling growth. Commercial shipments, airlines, vehicles and even oil rigs need to be monitored. This makes up its fastest-growing division. With seamless connectivity throughout its satellite network, this company is earning new contracts from organizations beyond government intelligence.

Source : wallstreetdaily

Google Nexus 7 vs. BlackBerry PlayBook

Apple’s iPad rules the tablet roost, but the market for 7-inch tablets is a bit of a free-for-all, and Google’s Nexus 7 and RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook  are two products battling for the same consumers at similar price points.

The Nexus 7 comes off a hot summer that saw it sold out after it launched in July. At $209 for the 8GB version and $259 for the 16GB, customers had little reason to argue with the price. Of course, there are trade-offs, what with there being no rear camera, no memory card slot and no cellular data. But an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and a 720p HD display are compelling on their own. Oh, and it helps that it stays on for eight to 10 hours on one charge.

The Wi-Fi-only PlayBook came to market 15 months before the Nexus 7, though the 4G LTE version recently launched in August. The apples-to-apples comparison is with the Wi-Fi-only PlayBook, a much-maligned device that has undergone two price cuts in less than a year. The recent 2.1 operating system added more functionality to the tablet that brings it closer to what the original vision was. It will also be upgradeable to BlackBerry 10 when that finally comes to market in early 2013.

As is, the 32GB PlayBook is now just $149.99, while the 64GB is $219.99. That’s four times the internal memory of the 16GB Nexus 7 for $40 less. A good deal, or a smokescreen for a product lacking in other key areas?

The answer to that largely comes from accessibility and compatibility. In that sense, the Nexus 7 wins because Android trumps the PlayBook’s operating system in both respects. It has more apps, offers more variety and can interface with more accessories and third-party products than the PlayBook can.

Netflix, Kindle, Firefox, Dropbox, TuneIn and a wide swath of games and useful apps aren’t available on the PlayBook like they are on the Nexus 7. What BlackBerry App World offers are alternative and workaround apps.

Kobo instead of Kindle. SimpleBrowser instead of Firefox. Netflix doesn’t support the PlayBook, but Flix offers a way to make it happen. Forget finding TuneIn, so look for BlackBerry Radio to fill in with its 50,000 radio stations.

There are plenty of business apps in Google Play, but the PlayBook has more variety and better security. Some even interface with BlackBerry phones. Multitasking is great on the PlayBook, and watching movies or shows stored on either device isn’t all that different, except for screen resolution.

The PlayBook can run Android apps, but only the ones that have been ported over to App World. Tech-savvy users can install unsupported ones through a process called “sideloading”, which requires an app called DDPB be installed first.

What matters here depends on how you measure either tablet’s ability to do what you actually want it to do. For convenience and playing around, the Nexus 7 wins. For basic tasks and something small business-friendly, the PlayBook is a good bet.

Source : calgaryherald

Review: Nexus 7 tablet

The Nexus 7 sets the new gold standard for budget tablets.

After several years of watching manufacturers achieve mixed results with Android tablets, Google has finally had enough. Much like Microsoft’s forthcoming Surface tablets, the Nexus 7 is an attempt to marry the company’s popular OS with the quality of hardware it deserves – and at the right price.

It isn’t technically a Google tablet. You won’t find the company’s name on the device at all. Instead, Google has co-opted an Asus tablet first seen at CES in January, reworked some aspects and come up with something it was happy with – although only Asus has its name on the device.

Whoever takes the credit, the Nexus 7 has attracted plenty of attention with its mouth-watering sub-$300 price tag. For that money, you get a narrow device with a 7in widescreen display, a first look at Android’s 4.1 Jelly Bean update, and even a $25 Google Play voucher.

Little wonder
It’s immediately obvious that the Nexus 7 is a cut above most budget tablets. It’s just the right size and weight (340g) to fit in the hand, and its mottled rear panel feels soft on the palm. A speaker grille sits just below the Asus logo, with power and volume controls on the right edge, and headphone and micro-USB sockets on the bottom edge. It’s sparse, but its gentle curves mean that it feels far from cheap.

The screen is a 1280 x 800 IPS panel, making for a pixel density of 216ppi – not up there with the iPad, but higher than any smaller tablet we’ve seen. It’s pretty sharp and readable, and the wide aspect makes movie-watching a treat. We measured the maximum brightness at 330cd/m2 and the contrast at 1100:1. Our only complaint is that colours lack punch, with a washed-out look that’s noticeable next to more expensive tablets. The speaker on the rear delivers alright sound but you’ll want to keep your headphones to hand.

Inside, Asus has installed a quad-core 1.3GHz Tegra 3 chip and 1GB of RAM, so this is a blisteringly fast device. It scored 3687 in the Quadrant benchmark and took 1799ms to complete the SunSpider JavaScript test – both scores are as fast as tablets at twice the price. It effortlessly ran every app we threw at it, including the intensive Shadowgun and the oddly demanding Angry Birds Space, and everything about the OS feels smooth and responsive in a way that Android just hasn’t managed until now – Jelly Bean’s Project Butter advancements have clearly smoothed out many aspects. It did get slightly hot after prolonged gaming, but never dangerously so; we measured the back at 42°C.

With all that power crammed into such a small device, battery life is hugely important. Asus has squeezed in a non-removable 4325mAh battery, and the Nexus 7 ran dry after 8hrs 48mins of running a video on loop at half brightness with Wi-Fi disabled. This result isn’t anywhere near the best in its field, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a travelling device.

There are only three areas in which the budget obviously shows. First, there’s no camera on the rear, leaving you with an average 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera. Second, although it’s advanced enough to include NFC, there’s no 3G option.

Finally, there’s the issue of storage: the Nexus 7 is available in 8GB ($249) and 16GB ($299) flavours, with no card slots to add to that. Even with its modest price, we’d be reluctant to buy the cheaper model – with the focus on content consumption, you’d fill that 8GB in no time at all.

Source : pcauthority

Google Nexus 7 review: Even iPad Mini may not beat it

There are three things that you must know about Google’s Nexus 7 tablet. 1) It is a 7 inch tablet. 2) It runs Jelly Bean, and 3) it costs $199.

Steve Jobs famously said that 7 inch tablets were impractical. Too small for reading, surfing, playing games or watching movies, and too big to use as a phone. Well, he was wrong. The 7 inchers have come of age and Google’s Nexus 7 is the beauty of the ball.

MG Siegler, the Techcrunch writer and known Apple fanboy, could not help praising the tablet. “With the Nexus 7, Google has, for the first time, created an Android product that I would buy for myself. And I wouldn’t have an issue recommending it to anyone else,” Siegler wrote.

The 7-inch form factor makes the tablet perfect for many situations for which the 10 inch iPad is not good. For example, reading in bed, wrote Seigler. Also a 7 inch can be used with one hand, a 10 inch tablet can’t, a 7 inch tablet is much more portable, because of its size and weight, which the 10 incher is not.

The Nexus is a beautiful tablet. “It’s sleek and beautiful, with rounded edges, unlike the sawed-off rectangular back of the Fire, and a “pleather” back panel that feels great,” wrote David Pogue of New York Times. The ‘pleather’ refers to the leather-like feel Google was able to achieve on the back panel of the Nexus 7, even though it is made of plastic. The back is easy to hold in the hand, and makes the Nexus look classy.

Now, to the part about the Jelly Bean.

This latest and greatest iteration of Android came with something called Project Butter. The endeavour was to make the whole OS faster and smoother by fixing 60 fps as the default frame rate across the OS. Going by the  reviews the effort was success.

“Jelly Bean finally puts Android on a par with Apple’s iOS operating system, which drives the iPhone and iPad, in two key respects: Responsiveness (when the hardware is potent enough) and elimination of the constant need to resort to menus, which plagued most prior versions of Android,” wrote Walt Mossberg of the AllthingsD.

Jelly Bean is fast and responsive, rivalling the iOS in this respect. Its voice assistant, which is fundamentally different than Siri, in that it gives functional information rather than talking with you – has got a more natural voice with Jelly Bean. Google also introduced a new feature called Google Now which supplies information relevant to your time and place – like bus route information when you are at a bus stop – or flight information if you had been searching for it, and so on. Voice dictation works even when offline, (Apple products can’t do that) you can also save Google maps for offline use, and the notification centre has been touched up.

The Nexus 7 also beats the iPad in battery life. In Mossberg’s  test, its battery lasted longer than that of the iPad, coming in at 10 hrs 44 minutes, while the iPad logs in 9 hrs and 58 mins.

There are some drawbacks to the Nexus 7.

While it is a fully featured tablet, its storage capacity is just 8 and 16 GB. (Google is about to launch a 32 GB version, which will see the price of the base model go down further).

It does not have expandable storage, and  there is no way to beam your content to a TV. Google launched an iTunes like store called the Google Play. But its content offering falls short of both Apple and Amazon. Though apps for Android have been growing fast, it still does not have enough optimized apps for tablets. Thus what you get are scaled version of the phone app. Even though that does not look as bad on a 7 inch tablet as it could on a 10 inch one, especially optimized apps are in a different class altogether.

Despite these failings the $199 price tag makes it a steal. Apple’s iPad comes for $500 dollars. Other 7 inch tablets, like Galaxy Tab from Samsung comes for $250 dollar, and they are not as good.

Source : nvonews