Carl Weinschenk

Seven Tips for Effective Unified Communications Security Forgive unified communications (UC) if it has something of an identity crisis. In an era in which apps downloaded to mobile and stationary devices can mime many of the functions and features offered by traditional UC platforms, the sector is struggling to retain its relevance— and to explain […]

Are Smartphone Owners Switching Teams? The growth of smartphones and tablets has led to a parallel growth in studies and assessments of how many devices have been sold in a given quarter and year. Such analysis is valuable in telling the industry where it stands, but the greater value may be in providing an idea […]

Eleven New and Noteworthy iOS Business Apps One critique of journalism that I offer is that topics are covered when they make dramatic news but ignored when more subtle things occur. Indeed, it makes sense to look back on the progress of recently covered topics. More specifically, it is a good idea to follow up […]

Survey Shows Majority of Companies Are Vulnerable to BYOD Risks It’s counterintuitive to think that a mobile device – in this case, an iOS device – can be hacked through its charger. That, however, is exactly what a hack developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology can do. Mactans, named after the black widow spider […]

Study Reveals Abuse of Mobile App Permissions It’s another Friday in a summer that seems, if anything, to be accelerating. Again, we have no shortage of important news and interesting commentary this week. Faster Wi-Fi at Starbucks Starbucks is about to add a bit more caffeine to its Wi-Fi connections. This week, the company said […]

The big news of the past year or so in the cellular world has been the successful rollout of LTE. Indeed, announcements of carrier expansions to long lists of new towns and cities hardly qualify as news any longer. It is important to note, however, that there are two kinds of LTE: Frequency-Division Duplex LTE […]

The small-cell sector is entering a new phase that will be characterized by extensive rollouts and flexible—and in some cases very creative—implementations. Indeed, small cell vendors are set to be one of the key beneficiaries of the explosion of cellular and wireless use. Small cells won’t work alone, though. Observers say they will partner with […]

Device definitions and regulations surrounding how equipment is used don’t generally create much excitement. As the capabilities and capacities of networks explode, though, these become very important issues. At Wired, Ryan Singel discusses a complaint filed with the Federal Communications Commission by a gentleman named Douglas McClendon. McClendon claims that Google Fiber’s prohibition of servers […]

The term “smart city” conjures up a raft of images, from directing people to where they need to go to more efficiently handling chores, from electrical distribution to waste disposal. Indeed, that’s the challenge. “smart city” is a vague catch-all term that essentially is impossible to precisely define. Almost any electronic means of making urban […]

M2M’s Disruptive Momentum Revealed A tremendous amount of attention has been lavished on machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. One of its great selling points is its ubiquity. It holds the promise of burrowing into the nooks and crannies of everyday life and providing communications affecting a massive number of mundane uses. It’s a terrific time and labor […]

The summer is passing quickly, with none of the traditional letup in news and commentary. People, it seems, either no longer treat themselves to time off or take “work-cations.” In any event, here are highlights from the past week. Opening Up 5 GHz Bandwidth It’s a surprise when any story starts with this phrase: “A […]

Android: More Vendors, More Flexible and Fun Devices The next big release in the world of Android will be Key Lime Pie. This week, Google did make a smaller bit of news when it released an incremental update to Jelly Bean, the current latest-and-greatest version of the operating system. Amir Efrati, a Wall Street Journal […]