Cell Tower News

On the eve of their big press conference where they are expected to announce their “Gmail killer”, Facebook has overtaken eBay in value to become the third most valuable web-based company in the US.

The talent shortage in Silicon Valley only seems to be getting worse. Following a series of high-profile departures from Google (mostly in the direction of Facebook), and talks of some big-money deals going on in an effort to retain staff. There was a story going round (completely unconfirmed, of course) that Google gave a senior engineer $3.5million in stock to stop them leaving for Facebook.

Another day, another swirling internet rumour vortex. Well, we needed something to fill the void now all that Nexus Two business is sorted out, didn’t we? A few months ago we got wind of an internal Facebook product codenamed “Project Titan”, which Facebook apparently refer to as their “GMail killer”.

Sure, Silicon Valley has a remarkable pedigree and history of producing world-beating technology companies, as well as an established technology presence, networking scene and excellent weather, but you know what us Brits have? Words.

Lars Rasmussen, the engineer behind Google Maps and later Google Wave, has left Google for pastures new. Like a great number of ex-Googlers these days, those new pastures are Facebook.

It’s a strange tradition, but a tradition nonetheless. As each delicious Android release has come and gone, Google has taken delivery of an oversized statue of that release’s namesake for proud display on the lawn of the firm’s Mountain View Googleplex.

App developers hoping to get their offerings snapped up or funded by the carrier giants often have to endure a lengthy odyssey of between 23-26 meetings with upwards of 60 people, it emerged at the TC3 Telecom Council Carrier Connections conference in Silicon Valley Thursday.

It may be the big Apple, but all eyes will be on RIM tomorrow as it holds its big summer announcement event extravaganza in New York on Tuesday.

It may be the big Apple, but all eyes will be on RIM tomorrow as it holds its big summer announcement event extravaganza in New York on Tuesday.

Korea’s KT telecom has taken the above words to heart in its recent establishment of 27,000 new Wi-Fi zones throughout the country, clearly marking its territory before other telcos like main rival SK telecom can even say “Wi-Fi.”

Korea’s KT telecom has taken the above words to heart in its recent establishment of 27,000 new Wi-Fi zones throughout the country, clearly marking its territory before other telcos like main rival SK telecom can even say “Wi-Fi.”

Samsung UK is giving out free Galaxy S smartphones to people who have publicly expressed their frustration with the new iPhone 4 on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Never mind face-time, Skype has done an about-face when it comes to its plans to charge for VoIP based calls over 3G, deciding to let the unwashed masses have their fill for free.

Never mind face-time, Skype has done an about-face when it comes to its plans to charge for VoIP based calls over 3G, deciding to let the unwashed masses have their fill for free.

AT&T Mobility said it activated a record 3.2 million Apple Inc. iPhones on its network during the recently completed second quarter that included only about a week worth of the latest iPhone 4 sales. The strong activations helped push the industry’s No. 2 carrier to 1.562 million net customer additions during the quarter and ending the first half of the year with 90.130 million devices on its network.

If you consider yourself to be more of a rugged, rough and tumble Android user, who doesn’t mince his words and prefers to push-to-talk, you may just grunt with joy at Sprint’s new military grade Motorola i1 offering.

While most of America may be going gaga for Apple’s antenns this morning, other (possibly more sensible) Murkins are focusing their hype on the new Motorola Droid X smartphone, resulting in its complete sell out from retail stores on its first day of sale and clogging Verizon’s phone activation infrastructure.

While most of America may be going gaga for Apple’s antenns this morning, other (possibly more sensible) Murkins are focusing their hype on the new Motorola Droid X smartphone, resulting in its complete sell out from retail stores on its first day of sale and clogging Verizon’s phone activation infrastructure.

VoIP continues to gain traction with carriers and push into mainstream, with Jajah announcing Thursday it was launching its IP-based long distance call service with Telefónica Europe across Europe under O2’s banner.

Microsoft appears to have grown itself a sense of humor, with the firm’s COO Kevin Turner declaring in a speech at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference that Apple’s iPhone 4 “might be their Vista,” owing to the plethora of problems the device faces.

Speaking at the MobileBeat2010 conference in San Francisco on Monday, AT&T’s Chief Technology Officer John Donovan discussed convergence, the “consumerization of enterprise,” and the surge in mobile broadband, all while artfully managing to avoid the meat of the main issues faced by the carrier.

Apple is well known for its “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude when it comes to its own products, but the Cupertino company came as close as it probably ever will to admitting a problem when it kicked a hacker out of its App Store this weekend.

Cisco has surprised the world yet again, announcing at the company’s Cisco Live 2010 conference on Tuesday that it would come out with its own tablet, called “Cius,” aimed at corporate users and singularly-focused on delivering high-quality video conferencing.

Another nail has been brutally hammered into Adobe Flash’s coffin with the Porn industry coming out in support of HTML5, forming an unlikely thought alliance with Apple.

AT&T put out a press release today touting its purported improvement of 3G coverage in New York City, home to most iPhone toting hipsters.