Wireless is quickly becoming the de facto standard for surfing the Internet and creating home computer networks, according to research released this week by Parks Associates.
The market research firm in Dallas, Texas, found that nearly 2 million American households added a wireless component to their home Internet networks between late 2001 and early 2003. A quarter of all households that have Internet service at home can also tap into the network wirelessly through Wi-Fi technology, Parks Associates researchers said.
"The popularity of wireless networks has provided a tremendous boost for home networking in general," Kurt Scherf, vice president of research for Parks Associates, said in a released statement.
Indeed, wireless technology has become so prevalent in the home that it is now the "driving force" in the adoption of home networking, Scherf said. Wireless gear will account for 40 percent of all devices connected on home Internet networks by the end of 2007, he said.
"The rapid growth of laptop computers used inside and outside the home accounts in large part for the high numbers of wireless products purchased," Scherf said. "In fact, it was among multiple-PC households with at least one laptop where penetration of home networks increased most rapidly in the last 18 months."
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Ring, ring, say 'cheese': J-Phone, the third-largest cell-phone service provider in Japan, just raised the bar in the camera-phone market.
The cell-phone company is now selling the J-SH53 by Sharp, a cell phone with an embedded camera that can take pictures in 1 million effective pixels. Most camera phones can take pictures with only half that resolution, which makes the images appear blurry if significantly enlarged on a monitor or printer.
Also, a 1-megapixel camera phone may give entry-level digital cameras a run for their money, since it boasts the same resolution and lets users make phone calls and send e-mail.
J-Phone's latest offering is available for 19,800 yen, or $170, in a limited quantity of 300 at four J-Phone stores in Tokyo. But the company says it plans to sell the devices throughout the country later in the month.
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Rising star: U.S. teenagers seem to have caught the cell-phone-messaging bug that has plagued European youth for years.
Approximately 2.5 million AT&T Wireless customers typed messages on their cell phones Tuesday night to cast votes for their favorite musical performers on the Fox reality show American Idol, according to AT&T spokesman Ritch Blasi. Tuesday's count almost eclipsed the total votes cast by mobile-phone text messages over the last several months, Blasi said; 2.7 million text-message votes were tallied between February and May 6.
"To put this in perspective, the first text-voting episode in February registered approximately 50,000 text votes," Blasi said. "The numbers have been growing every week into the hundreds of thousands over the last couple of weeks."
AT&T's young customers helped catapult contestant Ruben Studdard to the top. Studdard won the competition by 1,300 votes out of 24 million total votes cast Tuesday night.
For the last three months, AT&T has been heavily promoting cell-phone text messaging on the show, which lets viewers vote for one of several musical performers vying for a million-dollar recording contract. While anyone could call in a vote, AT&T customers could cast their votes using text and participate in polls ranking American Idol judges Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul.
