Sprint

With a mandate to "improve execution across the board," wireless carrier Sprint Nextel named industry veteran Dan Hesse as its president and CEO.

Hesse is a former AT&T Wireless executive and was head of Embarq, the telephone division Sprint spun off in May last year, so he knows his way around the telecommunications business, but his new job nonetheless comes with considerable pressure.

The company's search for a new chief executive began in early October, when the Sprint board pushed out chairman and CEO Gary Forsee and tapped Chief Financial Officer Paul Saleh to become acting CEO. … Read more

As any cell phone user can attest, a number of taxes and fees always make into your carrier bill. Though the archaic federal excise tax ended last year, the remaining charges can still add an extra $10 to your bill each month.

While the surcharges are standard across almost all carriers, Sprint said this week that it would no longer bill customers for three of the fees. Gone are the Federal Programs Cost Recovery fee, the Federal E911 surcharge, and the Wireless Local Number Portability fee. As the combined cost of the charges is only about $2 each month, the … Read more

I wrote about Kindle when it was announced, and again when it arrived, but all of that was just warmup. Today I'll be providing a genuine review.

I've had my Kindle for eight days now. I've bought eight books for it (well, seven plus a short story) and read three of them, installed over 90 other free ebooks, spent time browsing the Web, and... I actually read the manual. On the Kindle, naturally.

It's a good thing I ordered mine so quickly, Amazon's web page for Kindle says they're sold out and they don'… Read more

Sprint could probably use a little help getting its business back on track, but it's not to the point where it's desperate, according to a report Thursday afternoon.

The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) reported Thursday that Sprint rejected a $5 billion investment bid this month from Providence Equity Partners and South Korean carrier SK Telecom. As part of the deal, former Nextel CEO Tim Donahue would have returned to Sprint, where he served as chairman of the company from the close of Sprint's acquisition of Nextel in 2005 until the end of last year.

Sprint … Read more

Amazon has released Kindle, its new e-book reader.

[Later update: my Kindle review is online now.]

Newsweek has published a lengthy article about it. CNET's coverage includes a review, a photo gallery, a Crave blog, and a News.com blog. That's plenty of factual coverage.

I won't rehash the basic features of Kindle, but I will try to compare it with the Sony Reader--now in its second generation and Kindle's primary competition. I will also talk about what I see as the strong and weak points of the Kindle design.

Disclaimer: This is all based on … Read more

Hold the gravy! Check it out--it looks like you can add the Sprint store to your list of places to shop on Black Friday, as the carrier announced today that the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130, Motorola Q9c, and Motorola i335 will all be available starting November 23, though you'll only be able to purchase the Moto Q9c online for the time-being.

The RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130 will run $199.99 with a two-year contract and has built-in GPS and EV-DO with support for the Sprint Power Vision services, including Sprint Music Store, Sprint TV, and Sprint Navigation--a pretty robust … Read more