Tech firms lead stock climb, Apple earnings up, iPhone tracking draws scrutiny

LEADING THE DAY: Tech companies led the way Wednesday as stocks climbed to their highest levels since 2008, The Washington Post reported.

Strong reports from tech stalwarts such as Intel, IBM and Apple could be good indicators for the rest of the economy, signaling that other companies are in the position to make investments in equipment and technology.

Apple earnings: In an earnings call yesterday, Apple reported $24.67 billion in earnings, up 83 percent over last year. Record-breaking sales for the iPhone made up for lower-than-expected sales of the iPad. Apple COO Tim Cook, who is the company’s acting CEO in Steve Jobs’s absence, said iPad sales were low because of supply problems.

Looking ahead, Cook said that the disaster in Japan would not affect Apple’s supply chain, though he did forecast its effect on the Japanese economy would lower Apple’s revenue by about 1 percent. He did not comment on speculation that the iPhone 5 will launch in the fall instead of the summer.

iPhone tracking:Several members of Congress have called on Apple to explain a tracking file in its 3G devices. The file was found by two researchers who were looking for a way to visualize mobile data.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has written a letter to Apple asking for more information on why the company is collecting the information. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) issued a statement saying he is “deeply disturbed” by the report, The Hill reported.

An FCC official told Politico that the the agency is looking into the matter.

Nokia, Microsoft sign agreement: Finalizing their agreement from last month, Nokia and Microsoft have officially signed a definitive contract to put the Windows mobile platform on all Nokia phones. The agreement was signed ahead of schedule.

In an interview with All Things Digital’s Ina Fried, Microsoft phone head Andy Lees said, “We’ve gotten to where we have gotten to faster than we thought. Now we know who is exactly writing each piece of code.”

Amazon tablet: Amazon has long been rumored to be working on a tablet, and a report from the tech blog GDGT speculates that Samsung is already working on the project. In the report, Engadget founder Peter Rojas makes a well-reasoned argument that the company could be the only one who can take on Apple’s iPad, working off of its existing customer base.

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Japanese nuclear crisis boosts interest in at-home radiation monitoring

Some people are so concerned about the possibility of harmful radiation from Japan they have started their own do-it-yourself backyard radiation monitoring system — just like weather-watchers — except these folks are equipped with handheld Geiger counters and a strong distrust of the government.
“There’s a hunger out there,” said Tim Flanegin, who runs the Radiation Network Web site from Prescott, Ariz. “People are telling me they can’t get any information from the government and they don’t believe what’s coming.”

Flanegin’s network uses hand-held Geiger counters connected to laptop computers and his own software program to generate an online map with radiation levels displayed by members of the volunteer group.

“It’s a grass-roots effort and we have a lot of good citizens doing their patriotic duty,” Flanegin said.

So far, they haven’t turned up anything unusual.

Flanegin sells Geiger counters on his Web site that cost anywhere from $260 to $1,200 each. Originally designed for rockhounds to identify gems and minerals in the desert Southwest, Flanegin sold out his entire stock last week.

Mark Krubsack, a 56-year-old retired IRS agent, uses an older radiation counter to explore abandoned uranium mines in the mountains near his home in Fresno, Calif. After the nuclear accident in Japan, he bought a new Geiger counter and hooked it up to a personal computer. He checks the readings several times a day and posts them online. Krubsack said he doesn’t trust the information he’s receiving from government health or environmental officials.

“I believe they have an agenda not to cause panic or concern and I don’t think they provide accurate information,” Krubsack said. So far, he hasn’t seen anything unusual, though.

“This is hopefully once-in-a-lifetime thing. There’s not a whole heck of a lot of things I could do about it. I tried to get potassium iodide pills, but they were all sold out,” he said, referring to the compound that can block certain harmful effects of radiation on the thyroid gland and is being given to residents of affected areas around the earthquake-damaged nuclear plant in Japan.

Krubsack is part of a network of radiation watchers led by Chris Smolinski, who runs a home-based electronics business called Black Cat Systems out of his Westminster, Md., home. Smolinski also builds and sells portable Geiger counters. But he doesn’t share the anti-government views of some of his clients.

“There are all sorts of people who think there are government conspiracies about everything,” Smolinski said. “I think the [radiation] data is completely accurate. I’m just curious.”

Some experts say these hand-held devices aren’t sensitive enough to pick up radiation from the nuclear plant in Japan and that people might be wasting their time and money.

“I think that people who are out to go and get hysterical will fulfill their mission,” said Ed Morse, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

Morse says that the devices might confuse people who will find small amounts of background radiation in ordinary things like kitty litter, salt substitutes or granite countertops.

To detect the kind of nuclear isotopes produced by nuclear fission requires a device that can sample large quantities of the air over time and then analyze the results in an accredited laboratory. Morse and other experts say these small Geiger counters might come in handy if you live next to a nuclear plant, but not if you are trying to detect radiation from far away.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency runs its own network of 124 air monitors to detect radiation called RadNet. Results are posted online. The Energy Department also maintains the capability to detect tiny quantities of radioisotopes that might indicate underground nuclear tests, according to a statement by EPA officials last week. One of these detectors in Sacramento picked up a small quantity of the isotope xenon-133 “approximately one-millionth of the dose rate that a person normally receives from rocks, bricks, the sun and other natural background sources,” said the EPA statement.

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Verizon has a new iPhone? Not really.

Meet the new iPhone - somewhat the same as the old iPhone.
Powered off, the Verizon Wireless version of Apple's iPhone 4 that's now in stores differs only at the margins from the AT&T model that's been available since last summer: The Verizon model has one extra black line on its outside edge, a bigger ring/vibrate switch and no SIM card slot.

The software on the Verizon iPhone also offers few differences from what's on the AT&T iPhone. At its introduction last month, Verizon touted a WiFi sharing feature that's more capable than the single-computer tethering option AT&T provides - but AT&T is supposed to get the same feature within days.

Bigger variations surface in Verizon and AT&T's pricing. Both charge new and renewing customers the same for the phone itself - $199 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage and $299 for a 32GB model, with two-year contracts required - but their service plans don't match up.

AT&T sells voice, messaging and data separately, and you can spend considerably less on AT&T for more restricted service - $54.99 a month buys you 450 minutes of anytime calling at $39.99, 200 megabytes of data at $15, and no texts included. Then again, adding a more realistic 2GB "DataPro" option and a $10 bundle of 1,000 messages brings AT&T's iPhone cost to $74.99; upgrading to unlimited texting pushes it to $84.99.

Verizon, meanwhile, offers only one, unlimited data plan for $29.99 (though it reserves the right to brake the access of customers it considers overusers). Its 450-minute calling plan costs $39.99; you can buy bundles of individual messages, as at AT&T, up to $20 for 5,000. Or you can pay $59.99 for 450 anytime minutes plus unlimited messaging, the recommended entry-level plan on Verizon's site. Your monthly bill will run at least $69.98, with unlimited texting bumping the total to $89.98.

(Comparable combinations of unlimited smartphone data and texting, plus 450 minutes of anytime calling, costs $79.99 from Sprint and T-Mobile.)

AT&T and Verizon charge $20 extra for tethering and WiFi hotspot capability, respectively. But AT&T's option doesn't add to the 2GB cap of the required DataPro plan, so it can quickly inflate your bill with overage fees of $10 for every extra gigabyte.

The biggest difference is outside the phones themselves - the network they're on. Many people have been yearning for a Verizon iPhone mainly because AT&T has had so much trouble keeping its iPhone users connected - they've had calls drop or been unable to get online at all, even while their iPhones show four or five bars of a 3G signal.
AT&T counters that its system allows you to talk and surf the Web at the same time, while Verizon's technology doesn't permit that. You can also use an AT&T iPhone in many more countries overseas, albeit at steep roaming rates.

Verizon has a much better reputation for network capacity and performance. Will that reputation survive the iPhone's arrival? We won't know for sure until weeks or months from now, when problems have had more time to surface.

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Obama touts plan to get wireless Internet to 98 percent of U.S.

MARQUETTE, MICH. - In this remote snow-swept college town rejuvenated in part by Internet commerce, President Obama outlined a plan Thursday to create similar economic stories through the expansion of super-fast wireless Internet connections.

Speaking at Northern Michigan University, Obama said he would use $18 billion in federal funds to get 98 percent of the nation connected to the Internet on smartphones and tablet computers in five years.

To get there, the federal government will try to bring more radio waves into the hands of wireless carriers to bolster the nation's networks and prevent a jam of Internet traffic. He said he hoped to raise about $27.8 billion by auctioning airwaves now in the hands of television stations and government agencies.

And with that auction money, the government would fund new rural 4G wireless networks and a mobile communications system for fire, police and emergency responders. The remaining funds raised - about $10 billion - would go toward lowering the federal deficit over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office has said the deficit will climb to $1.5 trillion this year.

First outlined in Obama's State of the Union speech, the plan is part of a push to reshape the nation's infrastructure of deteriorating roadways and manufacturing plants into one with high-speed railways and high-speed Internet networks that the president said are essential for the United States to compete in the global economy.

"To attract the best jobs and newest industries, we've got to out-innovate, out-educate, out-build and out-hustle the rest of the world," Obama said in his speech.

The president chose to visit Marquette because of the town's success in attracting commercial partners such as Intel to build a mobile broadband network based on WiMax technology on the university campus. Northern Michigan University partnered with towns nearby to expand cell towers so elementary schools, police and residents could also access wireless networks fast enough to access streaming videos without a wired connection.
Experts say Obama's plan is ambitious and complicated and relies heavily on the participation of cautious television broadcasters, who are loath to give up their greatest asset: spectrum.

Specifically, $10.7 billion would fund a new public-safety network so first responders from various emergency services can communicate on one system, sending video files and e-mails during disasters and national security threats.

The administration also plans a one-time allotment of $5 billion from a federal phone subsidy to expand wireless broadband in rural areas. About $3 billion would go to a government research program that would develop methods for using mobile Internet access for emerging technologies and for health, education and energy applications.

The plan does not detail how much money it would return to broadcasters who give up airwaves in voluntary "incentive auctions." The administration has promised that those television broadcasters would get a cut of the proceeds but hasn't offered more details.

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