coverage

AT&T's 3G upgrades to improve iPhone service

AT&T is upgrading its network and using 850MHz spectrum to beef up its 3G wireless network, which should help alleviate dropped calls and slow network connections for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S users.

Apple said this week that it sold more than a million of the iPhone 3G S model worldwide this past weekend after the phone went on sale Friday. Exactly how many of those phones were activated on AT&T's network in the U.S. isn't yet known, but the addition of more data intensive iPhones is likely to put a strain … Read more

The best coverage on campus

A few weeks ago I returned to my alma mater, the University of San Francisco, to participate in an alumni panel for current journalism students. At the end of the evening a student called Robert Lee introduced himself and told me about a story he wrote in 2005 for USF's student newspaper, the San Francisco Foghorn. With the aim to find the cell phone carrier with the best coverage on USF's campus, Lee and his colleagues conducted a study to test the reception and call quality of the five national carriers (Sprint and Nextel were still separate at … Read more

PCLive offers a free security suite

PCLive.com, a service offered by SecurityCoverage Inc., is attempting to upstage security giants Symantec and McAfee by offering a complete suite of security tools for your desktop--for free. Included within the basic PCLive Security package is a firewall, the open source ClamAV antivirus product, antispyware, a pop-up blocker, plus system cleaner (removes old temp files). PCLive will also check for the latest Microsoft Windows updates that haven't yet been applied to your PC. For a mere $4.95 a month, PCLive Premium Security includes all the basic PCLive Security along with Web content filtering, parental controls, disk maintenance and 24-7 live technical support. SecurityCoverage also offers users of their free PCLive service instant 24-7 technical support for a flat fee of $49.95 per session.

How does it work? OK. The ClamAV product is designed for UNIX and Linux systems. It hasn't been independently tested by Windows-based antivirus testing labs. Also we found that PCLive runs three active processes on your desktop. A couple of times, for no apparent reason, the PCLMonitorService process consumed up to 53 percent of our system resources, considerably slowing our test PC.… Read more

PCLive.com provides a free security suite

PCLive.com, a service offered by SecurityCoverage, is attempting to upstage security giants Symantec and McAfee by offering a complete suite of security tools for your desktop--for free. Included within the basic PCLive Security package is a firewall, the open-source ClamAV antivirus product, antispyware capabilities and a pop-up blocker. What's more, PCLive will take out the trash (clean out old temp files) and check for the latest Microsoft Windows updates that haven't yet been applied to your PC. PCLive will also e-mail you a monthly report of any changes it has made on your computer.

SecurityCoverage offers users … Read more

PCLive.com offered as free Internet security suite

PCLive.com, a service offered by SecurityCoverage Inc., is attempting to upstage security giants Symantec and McAfee by offering a complete suite of security tools for your desktop--for free. Included within the basic PCLive Security package is a firewall, the open source ClamAV antivirus product, antispyware, a pop-up blocker, plus system cleaner (removes old temp files). PCLive will also check for the latest Microsoft Windows updates that haven't yet been applied to your PC. For a mere $4.95 a month, PCLive Premium Security includes all the basic PCLive Security along with Web content filtering, parental controls, disk maintenance … Read more

War coverage drops in second quarter of 2007

The war in Iraq is still the most important issue for many Americans as we prepare to vote for George Bush's replacement, but according to a recent study, the US media's coverage of the war has dropped off during the second quarter of this year. As Reuters reports, much this of this decrease is largely due to the diminished focus on the Washington-based policy debate.… Read more

Sunnily sent from my iPhone--pic e-mails from the beach

Yesterday, my friends Max and Zach and I were like the Three Amigos, but instead of sombreros we were armed with our iPhones. And instead of adventures with El Guapo, we were doing battle with AT&T's El EDGE network, the network the iPhone defaults to when it can't connect to an active Wi-Fi connection.

Our brave amigo adventure began when we decided to celebrate the Fourth by heading north of San Francisco to hang out at Stinson Beach. We got our fill of sun, surf and sand. During hours in the sun we got out our … Read more

SignalMap: Cellular coverage gone social

There's really no better way to see how well you'll get coverage with a phone until you get your hands on it. This usually requires a purchase, or a friend or neighbor who has got the phone and service you're interested in. The next best thing is checking your carrier's site to see if it has a coverage map (here are links to AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint). A third option is SignalMap, a user-generated service that lets people search for and review cellular phone coverage by location.

It's about as simple as … Read more

wiDock: Why not?

Silex Technology America's new wiDock is a pretty hip iPod dock that lets you sync your iPod wirelessly (if you just can't wait for that feature to show up in the iPod itself) via a built-in 802.11b/g module. Its 3.5mm stereo audio and S-Video outputs let you use the wiDock with your home stereo and television set, as well. The dock also has an IR sensor on it that lets you control playback with a standard Apple Remote. Not a bad product at around $120, though maybe not as cool as one with wireless USB, … Read more