idl3mind.net

AT&T’s cellular Internet access will be more than five times faster in 2009 than it is this year, the company’s mobility chief Ralph de la Vega said today at Morgan Stanley’s annual Communications Conference. The executive says that the company’s HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) network will be improved from the theoretical peak downloads of 3.6 megabits per second common across most of the network today to about 20 megabits per second in 2009.

In spite of the increase in speed, the improvement won’t require a major reworking of AT&T’s existing cell tower infrastructure and will primarily involve a software upgrade for the network, de la Vega explains. He adds that an interim HSPA upgrade to 7.2 megabits per second is already “in the labs” and that the company’s Option network cards are already capable of the 7.2Mbps speed.

This quick ramp-up in speed is why AT&T isn’t concerned about the expansion of Sprint’s Xohm and the unified Clearwire WiMAX service, he says. Although WiMAX will be available this year and is considered 4G, AT&T’s time-to-market for its upgraded 3G will allow it to offer competitive speeds across a wider area sooner than the new challenger.

The company official also reiterated AT&T’s plans to offer 700MHz 4G access through the Long Term Evolution standard by approximately 2010, when peak downloads should near the 100-megabit mark. Verizon also plans 700MHz LTE of its own but plans to launch slightly earlier, unveiling an early network in late 2009.

Both the improved 3G as well as 4G are considered essential by most experts for broadband-level services on cellular networks, including two-way video calling, permanent video downloads, and real-time online apps such as multiplayer games. De la Vega acknowledged that AT&T would have to shift its emphasis from traditional calls to Internet features in the process.

“The future is all about data,” according to the AT&T senior official.

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You’ve made it. You’re in the big city, living the dream. In an apartment the size of a small bathroom. With no kitchen in sight. Enter the Hansen Living Instant Kitchen ($TBD). This all-in-one unit contains everything you need — oven, gas jets, electric power, refrigerator and sink. Installation involves wrangling it up two flights of narrow stairs and hooking it up to a water supply and plugging it into an electric outlet. [via]

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I’ve been playing Guitar Hero III quite a bit since the St Patrick’s Day parade on 3/17/2008 this year.

Just doing some surfing around on YouTube, these videos came across my path, and I just wanted to share them. They are both videos of Through Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. One is of this badass college kid playing TFaF on expert on GH3. The other is someone that composed TFoF in some sort of emulated Mario Paint composer program. Both are very impressive. I’m in awe of both individual videos.

Two German doctors presented case studies today suggesting that chewing too much sugar-free gum could lead to extreme weight loss of up to 20% of a person’s normal body weight.

The work, which appears in the journal BMJ, consists of two case studies (pdf). In the first, a 21-year old woman reported experienced severe diarrhea four to twelve times per day. She’d lost 11 kilograms and had a body mass index of 16.6, substantially below normal. Patient interviews revealed she was chewing about 15 pieces of sugar free gum per day. She stopped chewing the gum and her symptoms disappeared. A middle aged man had similar symptoms and the same miraculous weight-gain upon cessation of gum chewing.

Given that most weight-loss drugs have a difficult time producing one-pound per week weight loss, you might think the scientists would trumpet these findings as a prelude to the newest blockbuster pharmaceutical. But sadly, the drop in pounds was the result of diarrhea and other bowel-trouble caused by ingesting too much sorbitol, a common sweetener that has laxative properties at high dosages.

As John Clemens, a UCLA professor told WebMD about sorbitol, “The laxative effect is very well documented,” he said.

“We would not expect the average consumer to consume upwards of 20 sticks of gum a day.”

That might have been true before these findings, but now, I expect to add at least 15 sticks of chewing gum to my diet per hamburger eaten. Hey, laxatives worked for the guys on my high school’s wrestling team.

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