Todays & Tomorrows Technology

Vodafone UK have become the latest carrier to offer a femtocell, and the first in Europe to do so. The Vodafone Access Gateway connects to a subscriber’s home or office broadband connection and creates a local “3G cloud” of coverage; up to four Vodafone 3G handsets can use this at any one time, with their calls and data routed over the broadband.

Described as similar to the size of a router, Vodafone are yet to release images of the Access Gateway [image above via bandaancha], but we’re presuming it will be similar to Sprint’s AIRAVE and Verizon’s Wireless Network Extender in the US. As with those femtocells, users can choose to pay a monthly subscription for the Access Gateway – either inclusive in a contract plan, from £15 ($24) per month, or alone from £5 ($8) – but they’re also offering it as a one-off purchase for £160 ($260).

Customers can pre-select the devices that will be allowed access to the femtocell, via an online interface. Sales begin on July 1st.

If you’ve considered Verizon’s FiOS internet service but dismissed it for being too slow for your tastes, the news that they’re speeding up the fiber-optic system will come as a pleasant surprise. The company is boosting downlink/uplink speeds of its entry-level package from 10/2 Mbps to 15/5 Mbps, while the mid-tier 20/5 Mbps climbs to 25/15 Mbps. New York City and Long Island will see even greater increases.

In fact, those two locations will see their entry-level package jump to 25/15 Mbps, with the mid-tier package landing at 35/20 Mbps. That sort of uplink speed is enough to upload a one-hour high-definition movie in around 20 minutes; according to recent research from In-Stat, Verizon says with no small amount of gloating, the average cable internet user sees upload rates of 2.68Mbps.

If sheer speed isn’t enough to lure you in, Verizon are also offering gadget incentives to new subscribers. Anybody subscribing to a triple package of 25/15 Mbps internet (or higher), Extreme HD TV and Essentials voice will get their choice of a Compaq Mini netbook or a Flip Ultra camcorder. Anybody choosing the slower 15/5 Mbps (or higher) connection with TV Essentials and Essentials voice service will get a free Flip Ultra. Those unable to get FiOS will have similar offers for Verizon’s DSL service.

If you’ve been looking for the device that has it all to help you jump into the world of HD radio, then you might just want to check out the Sonoro elements W. This Internet radio can bring you all the HD stations you’ll ever need and then some.

This is definitely a luxury item, sporting a compact design meant to turn heads. It’s capable of delivering Internet radio and FM radio, but no AM, notably. Pandora stations are also available through this device.

16,000 stations are accessible. All you need to do is connect to the Internet via LAN or WiFi connection. This kind of feature set will cost you though. A whopping $499, in fact. So, this definitely isn’t the Internet radio for everyone, but it might just be the thing you want to splurge on.

After mintpass’ English-language site was updated to include the mintpad ultra-portable MID earlier this week, speculation began that a launch in the US and/or Europe was imminent. SlashGear has been talking to mintpass as to the state of play, and it seems that while the mintpad hardware is basically ready for its English-language release, the thin-client UZard browser requires new server support.

To make browsing on the mintpad speedy, together with viewable on the device’s 2.86-inch display, it uses a server-based rendering engine that reformats pages to fit. According to our contact at mintpass, it’s reworking how the UZard server handles non-Korean websites that is causing part of the delays. The company is currently looking for regional partners for distribution and support.

Over at Pocketables, meanwhile, there’s news of 40 mintpad units available to bleeding-edge importers, priced at $169 plus shipping. These units don’t yet have an English-language browser, nor the Sapphire file manager (though you can mount the mintpad as an external drive) and Ad-hoc memo chatting isn’t supported, but Jenn claims all of these issues are expected to be resolved by June 30th.

With rival carrier Orange France rocking their Tabbee WiFi tablet, SFR are retaliating with a compact companion device of their own. The SFR Hubster is currently in trials across France, offering a compact touchscreen, streaming photos, music and video, together with internet access over WiFi or a wired ethernet connection.


Other features include a voice recorder that’s linked into the Hubster’s timer; after recording a message you can program in a time for it to be replayed. Podcasts, MP3 files or the radio can also be used as alarms, and there seems to be TV support though it’s unclear whether this is streaming over the internet connection or from an actual TV tuner; the former seems more likely.

Onboard storage is courtesy of SD/SDHC/MMC cards, and the Hubster is happy with MP3, WAV, WMA and RA audio files, and FLV and MP4 video files. The SFR Hubster will go on sale in France from June 15th, priced at €129 ($182).

It wasn’t all hardware at Apple’s WWDC 2009 event: Safari 4, the company’s browser, finally came out of beta, and Phil Schiller saved some fighting talk for all web rivals. According to Apple, Safari 4 is 7.8x faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, and passes all 100 of the Acid 3 tests while IE8 languishes behind at 21/100.

Safari 4 is also more crash-resistant, thanks to a new way of handling plugins. According to Apple, plugins are the number one cause of browser crashes; by splitting them off as a separate process, should the plugins fail the browser itself will continue to run.

Other changes include Cover Flow review of the browser history and full Spotlight search. Safari 4 is available to download now, for Leopard, Tiger and Windows systems.