Cell Phone Hub

The International Imaging Industry Association — colloquially known as I3A — announced today that Google’s signed on as a member of the non-profit organization. They’ve also simultaneously announced that pre-existing member Microsoft has joined forces with Google on the Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative. What’s that all about? The initiative, which also calls Motorola, Eastman Kodak, Nokia, and other members, is dedicated to creating the metrics needed to “produce an accurate and repeatable testing program for camera phone image quality.” Considering the wild variances in quality among different cellphones, such formalized measurement techniques would surely be welcomed by everyone on planet earth.

Google and Microsoft join I3A’s Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

White space devices seem likely to play a major part in the FCC’s solution to the wireless spectrum crisis. Operating in the buffers between frequencies used by television broadcasts, these devices will be able to exploit TV’s airspace without interfering with the incumbent users’ traffic. The unlicensed utilization of white spaces has been approved going on for a year now, but really important government stuff has gotten in the way of making that vote a reality. It was only recently that Claudville, Virginia got the very first such network, and initial results show that it hasn’t disrupted any of the fine, fine programming percolating the local airwaves. The only issue we see is that your WSD will need to be capable of both identifying its own position by GPS and hooking up to the database to find out what bands it may use, but then it’s not like anyone sells smartphones without these capabilities nowadays, is it?

FCC starts up white spaces database, devices now inevitable originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.