Asus to unveil'Kinect enabled'notebooks soon

This much is official. Sometime next month, Microsoft will be launching the Kinect motion sensing controller for the desktop PC platform. CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer has already confirmed this. However, we now learn that it will also be heading for the portable desktop segment, i.e notebooks, as well. If you’re thinking how am I going to balance the Kinect sensor on the lid of the notebook, you should know it won’t such a crude implementation. Just like how Asus started integrating Nvidia’s 3DVision sensor into the bezel of their notebooks, similarly, the cameras and sensors from the Kinect will be stripped out and integrated into the bezel itself.



This news comes from The Daily , who got a chance to see some of these prototypes, behind closed doors, of course. The device was an Asus notebook (Surprise!) running Windows 8 and featured an array of sensors across the top near the webcam. The bottom of the display apparently had a bunch of LEDs lined up, possibly infrared to illuminate the subject in low lighting conditions. Furthermore, a source at Microsoft did confirm that there were indeed official prototype laptops with a built-in Kinect sensor. While gaming is the most obvious use for the Kinect sensors, we think it’s going to be much more than just gaming. Windows 8 will have a Metro UI like element in it, so imagine simply swiping your hand to navigate the tiles. This could also be used for controlling media and you may be able to talk to your notebook, too, since the Kinect recognizes voice commands. This does seem a lot more useful and practical than embedding 3D in a notebook, which let’s face it, hasn’t really caught on at all.

Now, we’re not sure how big a role Microsoft will actually play in developing these notebooks but we have a feeling they’ll simply be licensing the technology and leave it up to the manufacturers as to how to go about implementing it in the final product, much like Windows. Asus may very well be the first to announce such a notebook especially since the company was already working a Kinect-like prototype called the WAVI Xtion, so they might just chuck that and use the Kinect technology instead, since there’s a plethora of games for it, already and integrating that into Windows will be easier, since you have the backing from Microsoft.

FBI developing app to monitor Facebook, Twitter and more

The FBI is working on an app that will create an early warning system from material scraped from social networks. According to the BBC , the application would locate possible global and local threats superimposed onto maps using mash-up technology. The FBI has already asked contractors for solutions and potential costs for the application. The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted a market research request entitled, "Social Media Application" on the web on the 19th of January. The document says that social media is a primary source of intelligence and has become the premier first response tool to key events and a primal alert to developing situations.




The document says, the application should collect open source information and have the ability to "provide an automated capability of search and scrape of social networks including Facebook and Twitter, allow users to create new keyword searches, display different levels of threats as alerts on maps, possibly using colour coding to distinguish priority. Google Maps 3D and Yahoo Maps are listed among the "preferred" mapping options, plot a wide range of domestic and global terror data and immediately translate foreign language tweets into English".

The bureau says that the application will help spot'bad actors', people who intentionally mislead law enforcement officials and spot vulnerabilities in suspected groups. Of course, there are major privacy issues to this application and privacy campaigners have raised concerns on the matter. They say there will be a'dragnet effect', which means that more people than just suspects will have their information and content under surveillance. They say that just because law enforcement has more information, it does not mean that citizens will necessarily be safer. The FBI justifies the information use of people who haven't chosen to make their profiles or information private. In addition to Facebook and Twitter, other websites the FBI intends to monitor are YouTube, Flickr and ItsTrending.com, which is a website that shows highly shared content on Facebook.

Chances are you're reading this article because you suspect someone is piggybacking or using your WiFi without your permission and you want to learnhow to determine if you're correct. When wireless squatters steal your WiFi, they slow down your bandwidth and what's worse, they can even steal information off your computer or infect machines on your network with a virus. Fear not, this articlewill give you the ammunition to fight back. Let's begin by taking aquick look at what makes up yourWiFi network so you can prepare yourself to take control of the Internet connection you pay for.

How does a gun silencer work?

It is amazing that anything is ableto silence a gun , but gun silencers actually work on a v­erysimple principle.
Imagine a balloon. If you pop a balloon with a pin, it will make a loud noise. But if you were to untie the end of the balloon and let the air out slowly, you could pop it making very little noise. That is the basic idea behind a gun silencer.
­To fire a bullet from a gun, gunpowder is ignited behind the bullet . The gunpowder creates a high-pressure pulse of hot gas . The pressure of the gas forces the bullet down the barrel of thegun. When the bullet exits the endof the barrel, it is like uncorking a bottle. The pressure behind thebullet is immense, however -- on the order of 3,000 pounds per square inch (psi) -- so the POP that the gun makes as it is uncorked ­is extremely loud.
A silencer screws on to the end of the barrel and has a huge volume compared to the barrel (20 or 30 times greater). With the silencer in place, the pressurized gas behind the­ bullethas a big space to expand into. So the pressure of the hot gas falls significantly. When the bullet finally exits through the hole in the silencer, the pressure being uncorked is much, much lower -- perhaps 60 psi. Therefore, the sound of the gun firing is much softer.
­Several alert readers have written to point out that a bulletthat travels at supersonic speeds cannot be silenced because the bullet creates its own little sonic boom as it travels.Many high-powered loads travel at supersonic speeds. The silencercan remove the "uncorking" sound, but not the sound of the bullet's flight.

Origin of names of famous companies and brands

MERCEDES
This was actually the financier's daughter's name.

ADOBE
This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

APPLE COMPUTERS
It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if
the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 O'clock that evening.

CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed.
It is short for San Francisco.

COMPAQ
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object.

COREL
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland REsearchLaborat ory.

GOOGLE
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders- Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to'Google'...thus the name.

HOTMAIL
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in'mail'and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters"html"- the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.

HEWLETT PACKARD
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett .

INTEL
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company'Moore Noyce'but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

LOTUS (Notes)
Mitch Kapoor got the name for his company from'The Lotus Position'or'Padmasana'. Kapoor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

MICROSOFT
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the'-'was removed later on.

MOTOROLA
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called
Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.

SONY
It originated from the Latin word'sonus'meaning sound, and'sonny'a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN
Founded by four Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.

YAHOO!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

Gmail isnt that smart....see for yourself

I recently discovered something very unusual about the gmail email id.
Suppose that if you have a gmail id by the name of carljohnson@gmail.com ,then it is same as carl.johnson@gmail.com and even same as c.a.r.l.j.o.h.n.s.o.n@gmail.com ,yes this is true there is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE between these 3 ids.Ah, now i know you want to check them yourselves....go on....
The reason for this is that the gmail server does not recognise the dot(.) character and so this kind of thing occurs .
And yes one more thing, one more name for your e-mail id would be carl.johnson@googlemail.com
If u like it please post comments....

Amazon.com makes a mistake and then betrays its customers

Yesterday I came across something interesting about the internet giant Amazon. Amazon.com had committed an error sometime around Christmasin December 2006,where it accidently offered two DVD box sets for the sum total of 0$(or some very small amount in cents).This was a possible mispricing. Obviously,a large number of people took advantageof this generous offer and placedtheir orders.
And Amazon shipped a large number of these orders without actually checking the billing detailsto a large number of customers.Few days later (December 28), after the orders had been received and presumably opened, Amazon contacted all the customers and told them that if they didn't sendback the DVDs, they would go ahead and charge their credit cards.
I feel that this was a complete act of foolishness on part of Amazon.comto threaten its customers like this.The company should have quietly accepted its mistake and instead of bothering its customers it should have concentrated on improving its billing system.As such the free or nearly-free box-sets must have cost them a mint.And it was shocking to see that Amazon did not foresee the consequences of an act like this,they did not realize how much ill will and negative publicity such an event would cause them.
I think that such acts of unauthorized charges on customer's credit cards would make customers lose their trust in big companies like Amazon.It is the duty of such companies to protect user privacy and not go ahead and misuse it.Obviously,I can understand that companies are in business to make a profit, but sometimes it's better to just let things go while admitting a mistake, than to make a few extra bucks in the short term.
What do you think?Feel free to comment.

Is it safe to remove pendrive even without 'safely remove' option..?

Here is one of the greatest myths.....
How do you eject a pen drive from a computer ?
Most people will right click on their taskbar and click on "Safely remove Hardware ".Then they willpress stop and then Ok. Thereafter,a message will appear saying "The USB mass storage drive can now be safely removed from the system ".Only after seeing this people feel content and hence remove their pen drives or external hard disks or ipods or whatever.
Now I would like to point out 2 things here.
Firstly,this is a myth that if while ejecting your pen drive you don'tfollow the above procedure,your pen drive will be damaged or datawill be corrupted. It is totally safe to remove your pen drive directly .
Now, if you need to know why this conventional procedure is followed then here is the reason :Safely removing button ensures that no data transfer is currently taking place between your PC and the drive.If transfer is taking place then it does not let you remove your drive by giving the error message "This generic volume cannot be stopped now ".So my point is thatif after transferring your files you are sure that no other transfer is under way then you can directly remove your drive.This is completely safe.
Now the second point.If you have a habit of using the conventional procedure and are hesitant to change,then here is a small trick for you.In the taskbar, press right click then immediately followit with a left click.You will get a message "Safely remove USB massstorage device ".Click on it and you are done !! No need to press stop and then ok.This is only a little thing but will definitely makeyour life a lot easier .

Is it safe to remove pendrive even without 'safely remove' option..?

Here is one of the greatest myths.....
How do you eject a pen drive from a computer ?
Most people will right click on their taskbar and click on "Safely remove Hardware ".Then they willpress stop and then Ok. Thereafter,a message will appear saying "The USB mass storage drive can now be safely removed from the system ".Only after seeing this people feel content and hence remove their pen drives or external hard disks or ipods or whatever.
Now I would like to point out 2 things here.
Firstly,this is a myth that if while ejecting your pen drive you don'tfollow the above procedure,your pen drive will be damaged or datawill be corrupted. It is totally safe to remove your pen drive directly .
Now, if you need to know why this conventional procedure is followed then here is the reason :Safely removing button ensures that no data transfer is currently taking place between your PC and the drive.If transfer is taking place then it does not let you remove your drive by giving the error message "This generic volume cannot be stopped now ".So my point is thatif after transferring your files you are sure that no other transfer is under way then you can directly remove your drive.This is completely safe.
Now the second point.If you have a habit of using the conventional procedure and are hesitant to change,then here is a small trick for you.In the taskbar, press right click then immediately followit with a left click.You will get a message "Safely remove USB massstorage device ".Click on it and you are done !! No need to press stop and then ok.This is only a little thing but will definitely makeyour life a lot easier .

IBM achieves breakthrough in data storage technology, creates world’s smallest storage device

Researchers at IBM have achieved a breakthrough in data storage technology by utilizing atomic-scale magnetic memory, creating the world's smallest storage device and perhaps revolutionizing the amount of data we can store on a single device in the future.

There has been some pretty neat stuff coming out of the IBM camp as of late. Earlier this week we got a glimpse of the company’s plans to further develop battery technology in electric cars. Now it looks like another research and development division at IBM is hard at work pushing the envelope, and expanding computer storage space on an atomic level.

IBM is calling it Atomic-scale magnetic memory, and it could very well revolutionize the amount of data we are able to store. According to IBM, at its current state, the computer you are working on takes 1 milliont atoms to store 1 bit of data. With IBM’s research efforts into atomic-scale magnetic memory, one bit of data would only require an array of 12 atoms. That’s quite the difference and opens up a world of possibilities.

It all has to do with data density. Being able to increase data density translates directly to how much data can be stored within a given space; in this case we are measuring space in atoms. IBM uses the example of being able to house your entire music and movie collection on a charm-sized pendant around your neck. That’s pretty impressive even by today’s standards when you consider the average size of USB and hard drives — even the smaller ones.

While the technology isn’t entirely new, IBM has been investigating nanotechnology for over two decades now. The fact that the company is turning its attention towards storage capacity isn’t entirely surprising considering there would be a wide demand both among businesses and consumers.

How does it work, though? And how were scientists from IBM’s research team able to accomplish such a task? Well it isn’t as confusing as you might imagine. The team at IBM started by creating a tiny storage device by arranging two rows of six iron atoms on a copper nitride surface, by utilizingantiferromagnetism, which occurs when atoms of an opposing magnetic orientation are positioned near one another, researchers were able to program and store IBM’s motto “Think” on the tiny array. The experiment took place at a temperature of absolute zero, but according to IBM would also be viable at room temperatures, which would bump the up the atom count to 150 — still a far cry from 1 million.

It’s still unclear as to how far off it will be before IBM can successfully offer its technology commercially to consumers, if at all, but it’s still impressive nonetheless. As we delve further into the HD era and the distribution of purely digital content, technology like IBM’s atomic-scale magnetic memory will prove to be quite useful. Besides, how else are we going to store all our favorite Star Trek episodes? 

Is ’5G’ mobile broadband just around the corner? IMT-Advanced explained

Can't wait to get on the 4G LTE bandwagon? Think bigger. A new standard called IMT-Advanced promises speeds up to 10 times faster, and it's just been approved.

With Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint racing to bring 4G LTE services to customers (and T-Mobile having long marketed its hot-rodded HSPA+ as 4G technology) it might seem the 4G mobile broadband is on the verge of going mainstream. But what if we said these technologies were really just a sort of “4G Lite,” and the real 4G was just around the corner — and up to 10 times faster than what mobile operators are touting as 4G today. Would you be interested?

That’s exactly what’s happening. At its meeting this week in Geneva, Switzerland, the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency focused on communications technology, has just approved the specifications for IMT-Advanced.

“IMT-Advanced marks a huge leap forward in state-of-the-art technologies, which will make the present day smart phone feel like an old dial-up Internet connection,”" said ITU secretary-general Hamadoun Touré, in a statement. “Access to the Internet, streaming videos, and data transfers anytime, anywhere will be better than most desktop connections today.”

Sound good? We thought so.

What is IMT-Advanced?

IMT stands for “International Mobile Telecommunications. For the last 25 years or so, the ITU’s IMT standards have helped shape the way mobile services have developed worldwide. IMT-Advanced isn’t a specific technology like HSPA+, WiMax, or LTE—rather, it’s a specification and list of requirements for high-speed mobile broadband service. Communications developers still have to build gear that meets the specs, and they can do that any way they like. Once their technologies have been proven to meet the requirements, they can get the official IMT-Advanced designation.

The last set of standards the ITU approved were called IMT-2000, and they’re the basis for the 3G technologies carriers have been rolling out for the last decade. IMT-Advanced is the next generation of these technologies, so technically IMT-Advanced defines 4G. And guess what? The LTE, WiMax, and HSPA+ services that have been rolled out to consumers and marketed as “4G” don’t measure up.

Right now two technologies have been found to meet the IMT-Advanced criteria: WirelessMAN-Advanced and and LTE-Advanced. WirelessMAN-Advanced is an evolution of the 802.16e technologies that serve as the basis for today’s WiMax services (WiMax is essentially a friendlier marketing term). As the name implies, LTE-Advanced is a further refinement of existing LTE technology that brings it into full compliance with IMT-Advanced requirements.

Just as with WiMax and LTE today, there will be likely be competing technologies bringing IMT-Advanced capabilities to consumers. Right now, LTE-Advanced would seem to have the upper hand, primarily because the vast majority of wireless operators around the world have worked to standardize on current LTE technologies, and that ought to give them a leg up on moving to LTE-Advanced. However, there are networks — like Sprint and Clearwire along with others in South Korea, Russia, Belarus, and Nicaragua — that have chosen to run with WiMax technology.

What will IMT-Advanced bring?

The main benefit of IMT-Advanced will be bandwidth, but we’ll simplify that to speed.

Today, most mobile data users rely on 3G technologies, and typical download rates are around 2 Mbit/s downstream, and far less upstream — something like 200 Kbit/s. Given the right conditions, 3G technology can hit 14.4 Mbit/s downstream and 5.76 Mbit/s upstream. Tweaks to the systems and HPSA+ services like those operated by T-Mobile can push that theoretical limit to 42 Mbit/s downstream — and T-Mobile hopes to be able to crank that up again to 82 Mbit/s downstream in order to compete with LTE services.

The “4G” WiMax and LTE technologies being marketed today improve on 3G capabilities. In ideal conditions (and with a full 20MHz of frequency space available) WiMax can offer up to 128 Mbit/s downstream and 56 Mbit/s upstream, and LTE has a theoretical peak capacity of 100 Mbit/s upstream and 50 Mbit/s downstream in the same conditions. Of course, real-world bandwidth is going to be lower: Some of the capacity is taken up with protocol transaction and housekeeping to keep things moving along, and sometimes problems or interference means data has to be re-sent. Furthermore, not all base site locations are going to have a full 20MHz available, and a site’s bandwidth is shared amongst all users connected to a particular site. Those ideal conditions mean you can’t be moving: The more (and faster) your mobile device moves, the worse its data performance becomes.

Mobile technologies implementing the IMT-Advanced requirements will blow all those technologies out of the water. IMT-Advanced is to offer a nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s downstream while moving, even at high speeds relative to a base site. That means users in cars, trains, and even planes should be able to receive mobile broadband service in the neighborhood of theoretical maximums for current “4G” mobile broadband technology. And it gets better: if you’re not moving, IMT-Advanced technologies should be able to deliver a theoretical maximum of 1 Gbit/s, which is ten times more bandwidth.

If all that seems like technical gobbledegook, think of it this way: With IMT-Advanced technology, it should take about 20 seconds to download a full-length (44 min) standard-definition television episode to a smartphone. Want high-definition? It’ll take less than a 90 seconds. How about a whole album of music? Roughly one minute at full CD quality, no compression. That’s faster than most users’ fixed-line broadband connections to their homes.

IMT-Advanced also includes new techniques for dynamically sharing network resources, so base stations using the technology can support more concurrent users per cell. The technology is also designed to offer global roaming capabilities and seamless handoffs between base stations, meaning users are less likely to experience hiccups as they move between one site and another. For markets like the United States where available radio spectrum has often been sliced up into lots of tiny pieces, IMT-Advanced also scales well from small to large blocks of spectrum, enabling operators to use their spectrum more efficiently — although the best performance (of course) comes with the biggest blocks.

How will all that bandwidth be used?

Like current WiMax and LTE technologies, IMT-Advanced 4G connectivity can be used for a broadband connection to homes or businesses. Since those connections won’t be moving, fixed-point connections should enjoy lots of bandwidth, assuming providers want to offer affordable service plans. For folks who can’t get cable, fiber, or high-speed DSL connections (or just don’t like the strings providers attach to those services) IMT-Advanced technologies might be a viable alternative, particularly in rural areas and other communities under-served by existing broadband providers.

For mobile users, IMT-Advanced holds out the possibility of significantly raising or perhaps eliminating those pesky data caps imposed by mobile operators. As LTE users are already discovering, data caps can be a significant impediment to use: Some users of Verizon LTE have reported they could potentially blow through a month’s worth of LTE data service in less than an hour of Internet use.

The notion that raising the bandwidth capabilities for mobile networks could raise or eliminate data caps might seem counter-intuitive: After all, U.S. mobile operators (particularly AT&T) have long been complaining that they have trouble keeping up with the data demands of their customers.

However, the only way mobile operators will be able to sell services using the bandwidth offered by IMT-Advanced technologies will be to introduce innovative new services that require that bandwidth. Obvious applications include things like offering high-definition streaming video. With IMT-Advanced technologies, mobile users might be able to engage in high-definition video chats or watch live, high-definition television (or, heck, even slap on 3G headgear) while on high-speed commuter rail — and never experience a hiccup.

When will IMT-Advanced reach the streets?

The ITU’s formal adoption of the IMT-Advanced specification doesn’t do much for getting the technology deployed. The ITU doesn’t develop or build telecommunications gear itself. Furthermore, despite its role within the United Nations and broad international support, ITU requirements aren’t considered binding standards. The ITU is just one standards body among many: the WiMax Forum, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers also play roles in solidifying telecommunications technologies. In other words, implementation details still need to be hashed out amongst other standards bodies, licensing issues resolved, and then telecommunications developers can start working to build gear and adapt their existing technologies to support IMT-Advanced. Bottom line, it’s going to be at least a couple years before IMT-Advanced starts to trickle into the marketplace.

For now, when AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are trying to peddle their latest 4G services, just remember “real” 4G is just around the corner — although, when it gets here, we’re sure mobile operators will be tempted to call it “5G.”

Is ’5G’ mobile broadband just around the corner? IMT-Advanced explained

Can't wait to get on the 4G LTE bandwagon? Think bigger. A new standard called IMT-Advanced promises speeds up to 10 times faster, and it's just been approved.

With Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint racing to bring 4G LTE services to customers (and T-Mobile having long marketed its hot-rodded HSPA+ as 4G technology) it might seem the 4G mobile broadband is on the verge of going mainstream. But what if we said these technologies were really just a sort of “4G Lite,” and the real 4G was just around the corner — and up to 10 times faster than what mobile operators are touting as 4G today. Would you be interested?

That’s exactly what’s happening. At its meeting this week in Geneva, Switzerland, the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency focused on communications technology, has just approved the specifications for IMT-Advanced.

“IMT-Advanced marks a huge leap forward in state-of-the-art technologies, which will make the present day smart phone feel like an old dial-up Internet connection,”" said ITU secretary-general Hamadoun Touré, in a statement. “Access to the Internet, streaming videos, and data transfers anytime, anywhere will be better than most desktop connections today.”

Sound good? We thought so.

What is IMT-Advanced?

IMT stands for “International Mobile Telecommunications. For the last 25 years or so, the ITU’s IMT standards have helped shape the way mobile services have developed worldwide. IMT-Advanced isn’t a specific technology like HSPA+, WiMax, or LTE—rather, it’s a specification and list of requirements for high-speed mobile broadband service. Communications developers still have to build gear that meets the specs, and they can do that any way they like. Once their technologies have been proven to meet the requirements, they can get the official IMT-Advanced designation.

The last set of standards the ITU approved were called IMT-2000, and they’re the basis for the 3G technologies carriers have been rolling out for the last decade. IMT-Advanced is the next generation of these technologies, so technically IMT-Advanced defines 4G. And guess what? The LTE, WiMax, and HSPA+ services that have been rolled out to consumers and marketed as “4G” don’t measure up.

Right now two technologies have been found to meet the IMT-Advanced criteria: WirelessMAN-Advanced and and LTE-Advanced. WirelessMAN-Advanced is an evolution of the 802.16e technologies that serve as the basis for today’s WiMax services (WiMax is essentially a friendlier marketing term). As the name implies, LTE-Advanced is a further refinement of existing LTE technology that brings it into full compliance with IMT-Advanced requirements.

Just as with WiMax and LTE today, there will be likely be competing technologies bringing IMT-Advanced capabilities to consumers. Right now, LTE-Advanced would seem to have the upper hand, primarily because the vast majority of wireless operators around the world have worked to standardize on current LTE technologies, and that ought to give them a leg up on moving to LTE-Advanced. However, there are networks — like Sprint and Clearwire along with others in South Korea, Russia, Belarus, and Nicaragua — that have chosen to run with WiMax technology.

What will IMT-Advanced bring?

The main benefit of IMT-Advanced will be bandwidth, but we’ll simplify that to speed.

Today, most mobile data users rely on 3G technologies, and typical download rates are around 2 Mbit/s downstream, and far less upstream — something like 200 Kbit/s. Given the right conditions, 3G technology can hit 14.4 Mbit/s downstream and 5.76 Mbit/s upstream. Tweaks to the systems and HPSA+ services like those operated by T-Mobile can push that theoretical limit to 42 Mbit/s downstream — and T-Mobile hopes to be able to crank that up again to 82 Mbit/s downstream in order to compete with LTE services.

The “4G” WiMax and LTE technologies being marketed today improve on 3G capabilities. In ideal conditions (and with a full 20MHz of frequency space available) WiMax can offer up to 128 Mbit/s downstream and 56 Mbit/s upstream, and LTE has a theoretical peak capacity of 100 Mbit/s upstream and 50 Mbit/s downstream in the same conditions. Of course, real-world bandwidth is going to be lower: Some of the capacity is taken up with protocol transaction and housekeeping to keep things moving along, and sometimes problems or interference means data has to be re-sent. Furthermore, not all base site locations are going to have a full 20MHz available, and a site’s bandwidth is shared amongst all users connected to a particular site. Those ideal conditions mean you can’t be moving: The more (and faster) your mobile device moves, the worse its data performance becomes.

Mobile technologies implementing the IMT-Advanced requirements will blow all those technologies out of the water. IMT-Advanced is to offer a nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s downstream while moving, even at high speeds relative to a base site. That means users in cars, trains, and even planes should be able to receive mobile broadband service in the neighborhood of theoretical maximums for current “4G” mobile broadband technology. And it gets better: if you’re not moving, IMT-Advanced technologies should be able to deliver a theoretical maximum of 1 Gbit/s, which is ten times more bandwidth.

If all that seems like technical gobbledegook, think of it this way: With IMT-Advanced technology, it should take about 20 seconds to download a full-length (44 min) standard-definition television episode to a smartphone. Want high-definition? It’ll take less than a 90 seconds. How about a whole album of music? Roughly one minute at full CD quality, no compression. That’s faster than most users’ fixed-line broadband connections to their homes.

IMT-Advanced also includes new techniques for dynamically sharing network resources, so base stations using the technology can support more concurrent users per cell. The technology is also designed to offer global roaming capabilities and seamless handoffs between base stations, meaning users are less likely to experience hiccups as they move between one site and another. For markets like the United States where available radio spectrum has often been sliced up into lots of tiny pieces, IMT-Advanced also scales well from small to large blocks of spectrum, enabling operators to use their spectrum more efficiently — although the best performance (of course) comes with the biggest blocks.

How will all that bandwidth be used?

Like current WiMax and LTE technologies, IMT-Advanced 4G connectivity can be used for a broadband connection to homes or businesses. Since those connections won’t be moving, fixed-point connections should enjoy lots of bandwidth, assuming providers want to offer affordable service plans. For folks who can’t get cable, fiber, or high-speed DSL connections (or just don’t like the strings providers attach to those services) IMT-Advanced technologies might be a viable alternative, particularly in rural areas and other communities under-served by existing broadband providers.

For mobile users, IMT-Advanced holds out the possibility of significantly raising or perhaps eliminating those pesky data caps imposed by mobile operators. As LTE users are already discovering, data caps can be a significant impediment to use: Some users of Verizon LTE have reported they could potentially blow through a month’s worth of LTE data service in less than an hour of Internet use.

The notion that raising the bandwidth capabilities for mobile networks could raise or eliminate data caps might seem counter-intuitive: After all, U.S. mobile operators (particularly AT&T) have long been complaining that they have trouble keeping up with the data demands of their customers.

However, the only way mobile operators will be able to sell services using the bandwidth offered by IMT-Advanced technologies will be to introduce innovative new services that require that bandwidth. Obvious applications include things like offering high-definition streaming video. With IMT-Advanced technologies, mobile users might be able to engage in high-definition video chats or watch live, high-definition television (or, heck, even slap on 3G headgear) while on high-speed commuter rail — and never experience a hiccup.

When will IMT-Advanced reach the streets?

The ITU’s formal adoption of the IMT-Advanced specification doesn’t do much for getting the technology deployed. The ITU doesn’t develop or build telecommunications gear itself. Furthermore, despite its role within the United Nations and broad international support, ITU requirements aren’t considered binding standards. The ITU is just one standards body among many: the WiMax Forum, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers also play roles in solidifying telecommunications technologies. In other words, implementation details still need to be hashed out amongst other standards bodies, licensing issues resolved, and then telecommunications developers can start working to build gear and adapt their existing technologies to support IMT-Advanced. Bottom line, it’s going to be at least a couple years before IMT-Advanced starts to trickle into the marketplace.

For now, when AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are trying to peddle their latest 4G services, just remember “real” 4G is just around the corner — although, when it gets here, we’re sure mobile operators will be tempted to call it “5G.”