Canton Country Day School leaps to laptops

Canton Repository

It’s 8 p.m.

And instead of watching “The Vampire Diaries,” your eighth-grader is holding a video conference on Skype. She’s joined remotely with a group of students from her class.

While it seems like something students will be doing in a rather distant future, it’s today’s reality for students at Canton Country Day School.

On Monday, every student in grades four through eight received his or her own laptop. The one-to-one laptop program involves about half of the school’s student body of about 200.

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4G upgrades to speed up pace of doing business

Crain's Cleveland Business

Some of the newest smart phones are about to become fast phones, relatively speaking.

Most of the major wireless phone service providers are in the midst of launching faster, “4G” data service in Northeast Ohio and across the country.

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FCC: ‘Super Wi-Fi’ could be a year away

Associated Press

A new flavor of Wi-Fi, with longer range and wall-piercing power, could show up in wireless gadgets a year from now if the Federal Communications Commission works out the last details of new spectrum rules that have been long in the making.

Nearly two years ago, the FCC voted to open up the airwaves between broadcast TV channels — so-called “white spaces” — for wireless broadband connections that would work like Wi-Fi on steroids. But wrangling over key technical details, including concerns about interference with TV signals and wireless microphones, has prevented exploitation of these spaces.

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White spaces for hospital broadband

ZDNet

Not all hospitals and clinics are within easy reach of fiber.

Those that have fiber can create amazing networks. They can create a WiFi mesh that will speed imaging reports from radiology to doctors’ handheld devices, that let sick patients play games with their grandchildren, and that make the wireless health Internet a reality.

For those without, not so much. Hospitals like Hocking Valley Community Hospital in Logan, Ohio would love to give WiFi to doctors, patients and families, but how do they backhaul the signal?

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Washington, D.C., Extends Free Wi-Fi Coverage to the National Mall

Government Technology

Who flew the Spirit of St. Louis airplane that's parked in the National Air and Space Museum? For visitors there, the answer -- Charles Lindbergh -- is now a click away, and it doesn't require a smartphone and wireless subscription.

The National Mall in Washington, D.C., has been covered by free Wi-Fi hot spots, officials announced Wednesday, Sept. 8 -- a new service made possible through cooperation of Washington, D.C.'s technology office, federal agencies and private-sector partners.

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AT&T invests $200M in Ohio, $80M in Kentucky

Business Courier of Cincinnati

AT&T Inc. invested more than $200 million in its wireless and wireline networks in Ohio and $80 million in Kentucky in the first six months of 2010.

The Ohio investment included adding 11 new cell antennas throughout the state, including in areas around Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland and upgrading 17 cell sites to mobile broadband service, the Dallas-based company (NYSE:T) announced.

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Cleveland school parents get Internet safety guide from FTC

Plain Dealer

Cleveland School District parents will receive a free guide to the Internet so they can talk to their children about being careful online.

The schools will give out as many as 50,000 copies of a Federal Trade Commission publication, "Net Cetera." The distribution ranks as one of the largest for the guide since it was made available a little less than a year ago, according to officials from the FTC's regional office in Cleveland.

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Hybrid broadband TV service starts at $4.99

Columbus Dispatch

A service has quietly entered the central Ohio market, billing itself as a cheaper way to view TV than cable or satellite service.

Sezmi offers a limited version of its hybrid broadcast/broadband TV service at $4.99 per month.

The service features basics such as all local channels and subchannels (such as AccuWeather) and a program guide. It also offers advanced features such as DVR capabilities that allow viewers to record, pause or rewind live TV; access to on-demand movies and TV shows; access to Web videos from sites such as YouTube; and personalized user profiles that automatically suggest new content.

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5 ways to use social media for better emergency response

Federal Computer Week

Emergency management, once the province of official channels, is going where the people are.

More people now use social media tools to report emergencies or call for help, and they expect government response agencies to be actively engaged in using the technology, too, according to a recent Red Cross survey.

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Ohio Internet start-up pitches social competition

TechLifeOhio

Connected Life Labs (CLL), an Internet start-up based in Columbus, announced the beta launch of Traxier.com, a social networking platform that lets users compete and interact with each other based on real-life activities.

"Life is all about competition," said Tanya Cinco, Traxier Product Manager. "Traxier.com lets people compete with each other on the normal, everyday things they do."

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Juror who blurted out verdict on Facebook fined $250, ordered to write essay

Cleveland Plain Dealer

A Detroit-area woman who was removed from a jury for declaring the defendant guilty on Facebook before the trial was over has been ordered to pay $250 and write an essay about the constitutional right to a fair trial.

Hadley Jons of Warren, Mich. told a judge on Thursday that she is "very sorry."

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Could Cheap iTunes Rentals Change Television Online?

New York Times

During today’s press event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that 450 million TV episodes, along with 11.7 billion songs, 100 million movies and 35 million books, have been downloaded from the iTunes store, making it the number one digital media store in the world. How will its newly announced 99-cent rental program change the marketplace? It depends what’s on offer.

When we compared Hulu Plus to Netflix Instant during its launch, we found while the back catalog was comparable, Hulu Plus had Netflix easily beat when it came to new episodes of current shows. Apple’s rental program, though, draws from a larger pool of content, which could be a game changer.

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T-Mobile USA Awarded EPA Mobility Contract

Bradenton Herald

T-Mobile USA, Inc. announced that the company has been awarded a three-year blanket purchase agreement (BPA) with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Under the terms of the agreement, the EPA and its 17,000 employees will have access to a full range of T-Mobile products and services – from the company’s global Wi-Fi calling capabilities and broad selection of government-approved devices to its super-fast HSPA+ mobile broadband network, which now covers nearly 50 metropolitan markets. T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network is the most pervasive to offer 4G speeds in the country1.

The first major carrier to offer Wi-Fi calling, T-Mobile helps enterprises, like the EPA, take advantage of this technology to enhance domestic and international coverage, reduce domestic and international minute usage, increase enterprise mobility cost savings, and improve productivity benefits from open Wi-Fi access points across the globe. The company now hosts approximately 40 million Wi-Fi calls per month.

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