T-Mobile, the only major carrier in the U.S. that doesn’t sell iPhones, can’t afford to shy away from an aggro advertising strategy. In August, Untethered.com got a hold of an internal memo to T-Mobile employees to aggressively “sell against the iPhone,” starting today. (The blog also noted the drawback in performance for iPhone users Read More
The hordes began lining up along Fifth Avenue eight days ago. Earlier this week, from inside their glass house, Apple store employees in familiar blue shirts (and the occasional derby cap) looked out towards the queue of customers eager to peel open the wrapping on their iPhone 5. But for employees at the flagship location, the yearly event is trading in its pomp for a more perfunctory feel.
Hushed by corporate mandates, Apple employees weren’t forthcoming about the launch. Betabeat approached several staffers the Fifth Avenue and Grand Central locations, but only one would speak to us on background. Sealed lips smiled calmly, despite the intensity of the reality distortion field outside the store. Read More
Gen Y just loves working for tech companies. This study cites “flexibility,” which we’re just going to read as “free food.” [CNN Money]
AT&T towers are reportedly screwing with a pricey new police radio system in Oakland, California. [Ars Technica]
Quora assesses Y Combinator’s latest batch of graduates. [Quora]
Speaking of YC: Revenue was all the rage at yesterday’s Demo Day. [Bloomberg]
Shoreham, Long Island is one step closer to having its very own Nikola Tesla Science Center: The Oatmeal-instigated Indiegogo fundraiser to buy the inventor’s last remaining lab surpassed its funding goal late yesterday afternoon. [Indiegogo]
Six percent of the American population lives out of reach of broadband. [Wall Street Journal]
It costs $35 million to send an HD video via text while roaming on AT&T. Not a bad deal. [Ryan Kearny]
New Yorkers are surprisingly polite on Twitter. [NBC]
“Have you heard that early Groupon investors are bailing on the company? Well, some of them. Maybe less than half. But one of them is a big name, so it must mean the entire Internet sector is screwed.” [Fortune]
Is Google actually considering ditching its current patent system? [CNET]
Going up! Meet the dude who wants to eschew rockets in favor of elevators to space. [BBC]
HBO still refuses to cooperate with Netflix, much less offer up Game of Thrones for streaming. [Reuters]
Apple misses quarterly earnings; world continues spinning, somehow. [Washington Post]
AT&T, however, is raking in the dough as a majority of its wireless customers are now smartphone users. [Wall Street Journal]
There are an awful lot of rules for volunteers considering blogging about the Olympics. [Wired.co.uk]
And then there’s the possibility of hackers disrupting the games. [Reuters]
This strategy memo from Buzzfeed is curiously lacking in the use of memes and/or cat pics. [Chris Dixon]
Twitter is cooking up a way of calling up old tweets. If only we actually composed tweets for the ages… [New York Times]
Complaining about your underwhelming number of bars is something of a national sport at this point. We’re all paying through the nose for these data plans; how come there’s that one patch of zero coverage in the living room?
Well, carriers have actually been working to fix that. There were 5,000 cell sites around the country in 1990; there are now 280,000. But it seems the rush has a dark side. ProPublica and Frontline have teamed up for an investigation into fatalities among the climbers (often subcontractors) who work on these towers, and sobering is really the only word to describe to describe their findings. Between 2003 and 2011, half of the hundred people who died on communications towers were climbers working on cell sites. Read More
2G isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Not having to rely 2G . . . in 2012. We imagine it’s that kind of realization–coupled with a steady stream of tweets like these (once AT&T users can get a signal, that is)–that has prompted the company to improve bandwidth in New York City. AllThingsD reports Read More
Smartphone sales aren’t going to grow indefinitely, and carriers are starting to look around for new lines of business. Hence, down south in New Orleans, at the annual CTIA wireless conference, AT&T just announced its plans to expand into home security. Yes, you read that right.
PC Mag has details. AT&T will install and monitor the system, but users will also be able to watch and remotely fiddle with things like their door locks, thermostats, and CO2 detectors. (Actually, that sounds like a good way to keep tabs on the cat from one’s work computer. Just a thought.) Why go with AT&T instead of market leader ADT, which you might recognize from their mildly terrifying old commercials? According to the company: Read More
AT&T is kind of notorious for having terrible reception, but they’re making a worthy attempt at redeeming themselves with a microsite published today. The interactive map illustrates where in the New York area the company has instituted upgrades on cell phone towers, broadband speeds and network connections. In Manhattan, the map says that AT&T has made 916 upgrades since January 2011; the company also spent $1.2 billion in wireless and wireline network upgrades in the NYC metro area throughout 2011.
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AT&T just announced free Wi-Fi service at an additional five New York City parks: Astoria Park in Queens, Herbert Von King Park and McCarren Park Field House in Brooklyn, Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan and Clove Lakes Park in Staten Island. Read More
