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T-Mobile details “3D-capable,” Honeycomb-powered G-Slate tablet

After getting little more thanat the LG-built G-Slate at CES last month, T-Mobile has finally spilled the beans about its upcoming Honeycomb-based Android tablet, including the news that the device will boast a 3D displaywell, "3D-capable," anyway.

Expect the G-Slate to arrive this spring, , complete with a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, support for T-Mobile's 4G HSPA+ network, and Honeycombthe latest, tablet-centric version of Androidunder the hood. Still no word on pricing.

As for the G-Slate's display: it'll be 8.9 inches, a little smaller than those on the current iPad and the upcoming , but bigger than the seven-inch screens on theand the new .

T-Mobile didn't reveal the exact resolution of the G-Slate's screen, although the carrier promised that it'll handle both 720p video playback and 3D.

So, waitare we talking another glasses-free 3D display, like those on theand the upcoming ? Well … probably not, given that T-Mobile says only that the G-Slate's screen is "3D capable." In other word, get ready for glasses.Update: A T-Mobile rep has confirmed that the G-Slate will ship with a pair of (think red and blue lenses).

In back, the G-Slate will boast a stereoscopic camera in back, good for shooting 1080p-quality 3D video that you'll be able to view on a 3D-ready HDTV via the tablet's HDMI-out port, T-Mobile said. You'll also be able to shoot stills with the rear camera's 5MP sensor, while a front-facing lens (no details on the resolution) will handle video chat.

Other details include a built-in gyroscope and accelerometer, 32GB of internal storage, and support for in-browser Flash video.

Still to be determined: whether the G-Slate will come with a USB port or an SD card slot, as well as details on battery life.

News of the G-Slate comes on the heels of the Dell Streak 7, another Android tablet that went on sale through T-Mobile Wednesday. There's also Samsung's Galaxy Tab, which all four of the big carriers began selling late last year.

While the Streak and the Tab are both running on Android 2.2, an earlier version of the Android OS, the G-Slate and upcoming competitors from Motorola and Samsung are powered by Android 3.0 "Honeycomb," the first iteration of Google's mobile OS to be designed specifically for larger tablet screens.

Ben Patterson is a technology blogger for Yahoo! News.

Stocks fall; Dow's 7-day winning streak at risk

NEW YORK – Stocks slipped Wednesday, threatening to break a seven-day streak of gains for the Dow Jones industrial average.

Major indexes fell after the head of the U.S. central bank said that he expects unemployment to remain high for several years. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, told members of the House of Representatives that the economy is strengthening but that companies haven't yet stepped up hiring. Last week, the Labor Department said the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent in January.

Bond prices rose following Bernanke's testimony, reversing a slump that had pushed yields up to their highest levels since April. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite to its price, fell to 3.67 from 3.74 late Tuesday.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 25 points, or 0.2 percent, to 12,207 in afternoon trading. The Standard & Poor's 500 lost 6 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,318. The Nasdaq composite lost 10, or 0.4 percent, to 2,786.

Two members of the Dow index rose following better than expected results. Coca-Cola Co. said its income more than tripled last quarter, helped by the acquisition of a bottler and selling more drinks in North America. The stock rose 0.6 percent.

Walt Disney Co. gained 5.5 percent after reporting strong earnings late Tuesday. The company beat expectations thanks to higher revenues at its ABC and ESPN networks.

Disney helped push consumer discretionary stocks in the S&P index up 0.7 percent, the largest gain of any of the 10 company groups that make up the index.

American International Group Inc. fell 2.7 percent after saying it expects to take a charge of $4.1 billion to build up reserves against losses for its Chartis property and casualty insurance units.

The S&P 500 has closed higher for six of the last seven trading days. The Dow Jones industrial average has risen seven days straight, the first time that has happened since July. The Dow has had only one down day in the last 10, on Jan. 28 when the protests in Egypt escalated.

NYSE Euronext Inc., the parent company of the exchange, issued a statement confirming that it was in advanced talks with Germany's stock exchange, Deutsche Boerse, about a possible combination. The plan being discussed would create a company 60 percent owned by Deutsche Boerse shareholders with dual headquarters in Frankfurt and New York. NYSE Euronext's stock jumped 15 percent to $38.30.

U.S. Proposal Raises Questions About Control of Web Addresses

With billions of people accessing the Internet, the Web's governing body has for years been working on a plan to expand the number of available Web addresses. This includes increasing the number of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) so that Web sites are not restricted to things like .com or .edu, but can expand to anything from .technology to .yams.

A recent proposal from the U.S. government, however, has some concerned that government bodies will have the power to "veto" proposed gTLDs they find objectionable. In afor CBS News, a Syracuse University professor suggested that the plan is an "assault on Internet freedom."

The issue is currently handled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based organization that handles Internet governance issues. At its inception, the U.S. had a primary role in ICANN, but itand instead became a member of ICANN's(GAC), a group of government bodies that advises ICANN on issues of public policy.

ICANN has been working on an "Applicant Guidebook," which will basically spell out the rules for proposing and running a new gTLD. The ICANN Board and the GAC will meet from February 28 to March 1 to discuss any issues the GAC has with this Applicant Guidebook. In an effort to streamline the process, the GAC is looking to consolidate its discussion points prior the ICANN meeting via what it calls a "scorecard." Countries can submit proposals, ideas, or objections to this scorecard, and the GAC will present their conclusions to the ICANN community around February 21.

The U.S. contribution to the scorecard, which wasby the Internet Governance Project, would allow the GAC to have a role in rejecting proposed gTLDs.

"Any GAC member may raise an objection to a proposed string [gTLD] for any reason. If it is the consensus position of the GAC not to oppose objection raised by a GAC members or members, ICANN shall reject the application," according to the proposal.

Ultimately, the gTLD issue - what gTLDs are issued and who oversees them - are handled by ICANN. The GAC just has an advisory role. But if the GAC comes across a gTLD it finds objectionable, this U.S. plan would give it the power to reject the gTLD and ICANN would have to honor that rejection. However, there would have to be consensus among every single member of the 100-member GAC to object to the gTLD. For some, that could be viewed as a pretty tough vote to achieve; for others, a good way for governments to assert control over the Web.

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), which oversees the issue in the U.S. via the Commerce Department, said the proposal will prevent certain countries from blocking gTLDs and creating a fragmented Web.

"NTIA believes the suggestion has merit as it diminishes the potential for blocking of top level domain strings considered objectionable by governments," the agency said in a statement. "This type of blocking harms the architecture of the DNS and undermines the goal of universal resolvability (i.e., a single global Internet that facilitates the free flow of goods and services and freedom of expression)."

Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, however, does not think the GAC should have a say at all – consensus or not.

"The Dept. of Commerce is trying to put governments in control of the Internet's domain name system (DNS)," he wrote for CBS. "In an extraordinary reversal of the original U.S. approach to Internet governance, it is proposing that polices developed by ICANN be thrown out and replaced with policies approved by its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC)."

Mueller said that governments typically "scratch one another's backs" and likely wouldn't object to things like China rejecting .humanrights or Saudi Arabia saying no to .gay.

NTIA said in a statement that it "continues to support a multi-stakeholder approach to the coordination of the domain name system to ensure the long-term viability of the Internet as a force for innovation and economic growth."

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T-Mobile tops J.D. Power customer satisfaction study - again

J.D. Power and Associates have , which attempts to measure customer satisfaction with mobile operators based on responses from over 9,700 mobile users who contacted their providers customer service departments from July through December 2010. And, for the second year running, number-four mobile operator T-Mobile earned the top ranking, with an overall score of 758 on a 1,000-point scale. Verizon Wireless came in second with a score of 743; the industry average was 739.

J.D. Power also found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that customers are generally more satisfied with their support queries if they interact with a human beingwhether over a phone or in-person at a storeas opposed to dealing with automated response systems via phone or the Web.

As more companies encourage customers to contact them on the Web to save operating costs, they run the risk of increased customer churn if the number of contacts needed to resolve a complaint or issue rises, said J.D. Power and Associates senior director for wireless services Kirk Parsons, in a statement. Switching intent is four times as high among those who rate their wireless carrier below average in customer care, so the challenge for wireless carriers is to offer an easy and efficient customer care transaction experience.

The study, currently in its ninth year, found that just over half (51 percent) of telephone contacts in the industry are resolved primarily by a service representative, rather than via automated systems. Where the industry average satisfaction level was 739, the satisfaction level for Web-based contact was just 684 out of 1,000, and automated response systems only did a little better, averaging 704. Reaching a live human being, however, had an overall satisfaction rate of 774.

The study also found customers are most satisfied with their customer service experience if they spend only a short time using automated systems, and quickly move on to a live representative. The study found T-Mobile did a particularly good job at handling calls that move through automated systems to live representatives, as well as direct calls to customer service, although T-Mobile also lead all wireless carriers amongst users seeking help online.

V-Rooms Offer Free Data Upload for Canadian Clients

V-Rooms™, a leading virtual data room (VDR) provider, is offering its Canadian clients free data upload services to save costs associated with Canada’s new metered Internet usage laws, referred to as Usage-Based Billing (UBB)

Atlanta, GA (Vocus/PRWEB) February 04, 2011

V-Rooms™, a leading(VDR) provider, is offering its Canadian clients free data upload services to save costs associated with Canada’s new metered Internet usage laws, referred to as Usage-Based Billing (UBB).Clients may simply mail their files on CDs or DVDs to the V-Rooms staff, which will then upload their data for free, saving clients money in not exceeding bandwidth caps.

With UBB, Internet Service Providers (ISP) may provide end users with a very low upload/download cap, and charge them as they exceed that allowable amount. Monthly caps recommended have been as low as 25GB. For users who are viewing hundreds, possibly thousands, of documents and files in conjunction with a merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction, the bandwidth may easily be exceeded.

For those Canadian companies who are involved in cross border transactions, V-Rooms provides for a significant cost savings since the V-Rooms servers and ISP are located within the U.S. Therefore, when these documents and files are accessed by non-Canadian based end users, the bandwidth limitations do not even come into consideration.

“We are offering this free data upload service for our Canadian clients.However, we feel that the costs associated with UBB upload/download bandwidth caps will prompt some companies to move technologically backward, relying on paper, fax and courier services to exchange sensitive information.Actually, a new company is offering to download information, burn CDs and ship to their Canadian customers," said Dan Bradbary, CEO of V-Rooms . “In reality, this type of data bandwidth restriction will tend to push business out of Canada into other countries, such as the U.S., where these restrictions do not exist. We just want to help our clients save money wherever they are located.”

In this era of the internet, when information sharing is at the touch of a button, the dilemma is how to keep sensitive corporate information confidential. With the current Wikileaks situation, having comprehensive document control features and audit trails will provide even more accountability in complex business transactions, and go a long way in controlling “data leakage”. The enactment of the Canadian UBB laws will be counterproductive to the handling of sensitive information and will be a technologically backwards step in the online sharing of corporate information.

About V-Rooms:Due Diligence Online, LLC (800-731-6379). V-Rooms provides a privately-branded online virtual data room solution, designed to streamline document management, collaboration, exchange and archiving for Investment Banking, Financial, Legal and Corporate professionals. Our document repository facilitates the compliant and auditable exchange of sensitive information to accelerate complex, information-intensive processes, while reducing the time and expenses associated with data distribution, courier, printing and travel.

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Karen Perkins, PresidentV-Rooms800-731-6379Email Information