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Verizon Wireless has reportedly fired several employees for accessing the cell phone records of President-elect Barack Obama.

The mobile provider got rid of an undisclosed number of workers after they gained unauthorized access to a now inactive account used by Obama, according to CNN.com.

“We don’t have anything to add from our statement of last Thursday,” a Verizon spokesman said in an e-mail. “Wouldn’t deny (nor confirm) what CNN has reported, though.”

Verizon announced Thursday that employees had accessed an Obama account tied to a flip-phone, not a PDA like the BlackBerry.

“All employees who have accessed the account - whether authorized or not - have been put on immediate leave, with pay,” Verizon said at the time. “As the circumstances of each individual employee’s access to the account are determined, the company will take appropriate actions.”

Employees found to have accessed Obama’s account for legitimate reasons will be reinstated while those who did so without cause will “face appropriate disciplinary action,” Verizon said.

While on the campaign trail, Obama has been spotted with a BlackBerry, a Motorola RAZR flip phone, and an iPhone, among other devices.

Original post by Chloe Albanesius

Several Verizon Wireless employees gained unauthorized access to the cell phone account of President-elect Barack Obama, the provider revealed Thursday.

“This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed President-elect Barack Obama’s personal cell phone account,” Verizon said in a Thursday statement.

Verizon said the account has been inactive for several months and was tied to a flip phone, not a smart phone like the BlackBerry. Obama has been pictured several times talking on a Motorola Razr (above), a flip phone that is available through Verizon Wireless.

Obama has also been spotted with the BlackBerry and the Apple iPhone.

“All employees who have accessed the account - whether authorized or not - have been put on immediate leave, with pay,” Verizon said. “As the circumstances of each individual employee’s access to the account are determined, the company will take appropriate actions.”

Employees found to have accessed Obama’s account for legitimate reasons will be reinstated while those who did so without cause will “face appropriate disciplinary action,” Verizon said.

“We apologize to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day,” the company said.

There has been speculation in the past week about whether Obama will be able to keep his BlackBerry after he is sworn into office. For security reasons, U.S. presidents have traditionally surrendered their electronic devices while in office, and Thursday’s Verizon incident highlights why that type of precaution might still be necessary.

Original post by Chloe Albanesius

With our hands-on review of the new BlackBerry Storm for Verizon now up over at PCMag.com, you had to know it was only a matter of time before we got around to shooting a video of RIM’s new touchscreen smartphone in action.

Our editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff and lead phone analyst Sascha Segan talk about the pros and cons of the new handset, after the jump.

Original post by Brian Heater

How appropriate: a BlackBerry Storm giveaway, in a storm!

If you live or work in NYC, you′ve got till 7 PM today to get over to Times Square (on 46th and Broadway) for a chance to win a BlackBerry Storm. But be prepared to get soaked and to wait for upwards of an hour. Here’s how it works:

• Contestants are locked in a wind tunnel booth with flying tickets redeemable for prizes .

• Contestants have 30 seconds to grab as many tickets as possible.
• Make it out with 7 black tickets = you get a BlackBerry Storm in the mail.
• Make it out with 6 red tickets = you win a Jabra Bluetooth headset.
• Make it out with none of the above, and you bring decades of shame to your family name.

If you just want some hands-on time with the smartphone, you can head over there too. After the jump, check out a video of the action and pictures of contestants in action!

Original post by Gearlog

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Misc. Gadgets

Esteemed lens manufacturer Carl Zeiss is breaking new ground by releasing the PhotoScope 85 T* FL, a spotting scope that also serves as a seven megapixel digital camera — just in case “super-zoom” wasn’t enough for you. With 15 - 45x magnification, a focal length of 600 - 1800 mm, a flip-out OLED display, and an IR remote for vibration-free release, it’s great for birdwatchers but perhaps even better for the paparazzi. Look for it in Spring or Summer 2009 if you’re planning to profit off the next Amy Winehouse meltdown.

[Via PhotographyBLOG]

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Original post by Samuel Axon

Filed under: Cellphones

Not that Motorola’s Q11 comes as any big surprise, but it’s nice to see the Windows Mobile 6.1-packin’ smartphone get all official on us. Now boasting its very own dedicated page on Moto’s website, the Q11 comes to us with quad-band GPRS / EDGE (no 3G, for whatever reason), a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, 64MB of RAM, microSD card slot, Bluetooth 2.1, a 320 x 240 resolution display, integrated GPS and a multimedia player with support for all sorts of file formats. You can also expect up to 450 minutes of talk time and up to 195 hours in standby, but you won’t be able to wrap your paws around it until December. As for carriers and pricing? Patience, friends, patience.

[Via UnwiredView]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

While Samsung’s latest cellphone-related release doesn’t pack quite the excitement as what T-Mobile unveiled yesterday, those obsessed with ultrathin lines packed together in the shape of a rectangle will be thrilled. Said mega-corp has landed an agreement with Scanbuy that will preload the ScanLife mobile 2D barcode application on an unspecified number of Samsung’s cameraphones. The program enables the handsets to easily read and digest EZcodes and other major 2D barcode formats, and while you’re probably envisioning some sort of warehouse scenario right now, the possibilities for on-the-go marketing are nearly endless. Expect Scanbuy-equipped Samsung cellies to go on sale in Spain, Italy, and Denmark as early as next month, with availability in other major markets to follow suit shortly.

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Original post by Darren Murph

OnRelay today announced its support of sipXecs, an open source platform to provide low-cost business telephony with mobile extensions. OnRelay’s Hosted MBX with sipXecs allows businesses to deploy a mobile office communication system (mobile PBX) with no additional investment in infrastructure: no desk phones, proprietary PBXs or cabling. With MBX the mobile phone is the only “desk phone″ employees require.

Interviewing CEO Ivar Plahte he stated, “The reason why we chose sipXecs over Asterisk is the architecture and the philosophies behind the software was very similar to how we think and how we work here. Because we are pretty fanatic about object-oriented (programming). It seemed to be a good fit in how things were designed and modeled. It has some very strong focus on SIP and we figured it could do what we needed it to do. We did some feasability studies and it really came out on top when we did some proto-typing.”

OnRelay’s software supports LDAP and Active Directory for automatic provisioning. It also leverages IMAP for unified messaging capabilities. The current MBX system allows an enterprise to keep their PBX but replace their desktop phones with cellphones for true mobile productivity. MBX connects to an existing PBX via a CTI interface and “mobilizes″ it, giving full PBX functionality on the mobile phone itself via an application you load onto supported mobile handsets. It’s not a WiFi or softphone application. It actually works directly over 3G and EVDO. It uses the standard mobile network as the voice bearer but uses signalling across the mobile data connection which is handled in parallel by the software application loaded onto supported smart phones.

Today’s open source announcement opens the benefits of OnRelay Hosted MBX to the small to medium enterprise (SME) market. By choosing the leading open source PBX sipXecs, OnRelay can offer a plug and play office communication system at a SME segment price-point.

“OnRelay’s support of open source means that SMEs can benefit from the flexibility and features of a fully fledged mobile PBX,” notes OnRelay CEO, Ivar Plahte. “Other hosted PBX alternatives such as Centrex take an over simplified, cookie-cutter approach to enterprise telephony. They fail to offer the rich functionality SMEs require in today’s converging world. Open source brings feature richness and internet-level scalability to OnRelay’s mobile PBX platform.”

According to Ovum’s practice leader for mobile, Jeremy Green, “Hitherto many SMEs have been reluctant to consider mobile-only strategy for telephone extensions, because they’ve been concerned that the functionality of existing PBX add-ons and hosted platforms didn’t offer them the controls and tools that they needed. New developments in this market mean that mobile-only strategy is worth a second look.”

SipXecs is a stable and scalable voice over IP (VoIP) open source system built for enterprise users. Based entirely on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standard, sipXecs brings an extensive feature set to OnRelay MBX, including active directory integration, presence and Microsoft exchange support. SipXecs uses internet techniques and a distributed architecture to ensure a highly secure IP voice system.

OnRelay’s Hosted MBX with sipXecs is targeted particularly well to the next generation of telecom providers. In lowering the cost of entry, it allows innovative players to host enterprise-class telephony for the SME market.

Tags: mobile, office communications, OnRelay, OnRelay Hosted MBX, pbx, sipXecs, voip

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Portable Audio, Portable Video

There it is, Sony Ericsson just went live with its new 𑠙 powerhouse, 3G slider. Just as we heard, it sports a 2.4-inch display with automatic screen rotation courtesy of an accelerometer, WiFi, aGPS with Google Maps for Mobile, 1GB included M2 memory, built-in FM radio, RSS reader, and full HTML browser. It also features a 3.2 megapixel cam that can capture video and then upload directly to YouTube under a new partnership with Google. Also announced in a UMA variant (G705u) — an SE first — built exclusive for Orange to bridge GSM and WiFi networks. Headed to the US in Q1 2009.

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals

We tried to take OCZ’s Neural Impulse Actuator seriously, we really did. But unable to suppress those recurring images of Geordi La Forge, we simply couldn’t help ourselves from having a laugh at this thing’s expense. Nevertheless, the way-more-solemn dudes and dudettes over at HotHardware managed to give this brain-computer interface a fair shake, and overall, it was pretty impressed. Still, the bottom line is this: “the NIA is a very unique input device and possibly the first true brain-computer interface to hit the retail market,” but it’s not “a replacement for traditional input methods.” Granted, critics did point out that it would supplement current devices quite well, but only after “slogging through” hours upon hours of training. The hardcore among us may be willing to put in the time necessary to really get a lot out of this; for everyone else, just continue to point and laugh while masking your ignorance.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays

As if we needed any more evidence that the 16:9 laptop bandwagon is already roaring right along, DigiTimes is now reporting that LG and AU Optronics are each readying some 17.3-inch panels boasting the increasingly common aspect ratio. If the usual unnamed “industry sources” are to be believed, those panels will supposedly be finding their way into laptops from Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, and Asustek, among others, although it’s not clear when those will actually be showing up. Somewhat interestingly, those same sources also say that Samsung has no plans to produce 17.3-inch panels of its own, although at the rate these various slight changes in sizes keep cropping up, we wouldn’t be surprised if that situation changed sooner rather than later.

[Via TG Daily]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

AU Optronics (AUO) is tooting the “world’s first” horn this morning with its new curved TFT-LCD process on glass substrate. They′ve also got the world’s slimmest — 0.63mm — TFT-LCD available in both 1.9-inch and relatively massive 8-inch versions, the latter boasting a 400cd/m2 brightness and 2.1-gram weight. Not bad, but they can′t hold a candela to future generation OLEDs. Perhaps most interesting, though, are a pair of in-cell, multi-touch displays offered at 4.3- and 8-inches. The panels are said to offer superior anti-glare properties while manufacturing the multi-touch feature directly into the LCD cell without necessitating any additional glass. The 4.3-inch panel hits mass-production this quarter. Feel free to speculate on which MID devices might sport ‘em.

[Via DigiTimes]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Beginning today, all passengers flying on Singapore Airlines A340-500 flights between Singapore and Newark, N.J., will get a little extra love for their iPods and iPhones.

The airline′s in-flight KrisWorld entertainment system offers an integrated 9-and 30-pin connection, letting passengers charge their Apple devices and connect them to the 15.4-inch widescreen LCD display and noise-canceling headphones. Docked iPods and iPhones will mute for cabin crew and pilot announcements, just like standard in-air entertainment.

The service will expand to those traveling between Singapore and Los Angeles in August.

Original post by Brian Heater

Shock, pandemonium, and tears may be some of the reactions of those today who still have not yet purchased an iPhone. Apple just announced that the coveted portable device has sold out online, according to CNN.

Apple has not released any information yet as to when more shipments of the iPhone will be available online, but said that some iPhones can still be found in brick-and-mortar stores. The article states Apple has already sold over 5.4 million of the portable Internet gadgets worldwide and expects to sell 10 million by the end of the year.

The technology giant plans on making software updates to the iPhone this summer to help it work better with corporate email. And the company is widely expected to release its next-gen iPhone, which will have faster Web-surfing ability.

Original post by Jared Preusz

Speaking of watching TV on your iPhone, Orb Networks claims to have “the world’s first way to stream live TV to the iPhone and iPod Touch.” The company designed OrbLive, an app created to work with jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches.

Users install Orb’s streaming app on a PC with a TV tuner and OrbLive on their iPhone or iPod Touch. Set the PC the live TV, and you can stream the content direct to your Wi-Fi enable Apple device. Okay, so it’s not the most high-tech of solutions, but at least Orb can happy claim “first,” right?

Said Orb’s CEO, Joe Costello, “Although the iPhone provides users with a great way to experience the Web, it offers a ridiculously sub-par streaming video experience. When all the carriers’ free phones can stream lots of things that my iPhone can’t, something’s seriously wrong. OrbLive finally brings the iPhone’s streaming video experience up to par with other mobile phones.”

Dag, Steve, are you gonna take that?

Original post by Brian Heater