Crunchgear: Qualcomm

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Qualcomm explores new market: finding lost dogs

Greg Kumparak — editor of MobileCrunch.com, the mobile industry blog TechCrunch network. Greg writing for TechCrunch network since May 2008. Greg was born in the vicinity of San Jose, California and currently lives in East Bay. ? Read More

Qualcomm. You've probably heard of them. Hell, chances are pretty good that you have a bit of Qualcomm in your Pocket right now, if you have any recent, popular Android phone out there, at least. More likely is it works on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset.

Qualcomm was up to all sorts of fun things recently: they've got the SDK that makes it possible for just about any developer to create otherwise insurmountable augmented reality projects, they make all kinds of work around location-based technology, peer-to-peer, and now they're ... uh ... construction of rechargeable GPS collar that will help you track your lost dog.

Entitled "tagg", this thing is built one from Qualcomm in the new wholly owned subsidiaries, Snaptracs.

Here's how it works:

Charge up the Tagg, then strap for your cat the dog's existing collar. Qualcomm said it should reasonably well on any dog or cat for more than 10 pounds. Looks a bit silly at that little Bull Dog there — but hey, look silly it's better than watching gone forever you define "Tagg zone", which identify places pet frequently visits most like your House and surrounding yard. at any time, you can use your mobile or browser-based tool to ping the collar to the current location of your dog every time your puppy is moved from the zone it beforehand, "Tagg"you send e-mail and/or text, alerting you that Mr. mittens decided to go on an adventure. rechargeable battery lasts about 30 days (although you'll probably want to charge it is nothing like losing your dog at day 30) When the collar is low, you'll be sent a text to remind you that the time had come for the juice. "Journey "button allows you to temporarily disable the collar, allowing you to adopt a snowflake over the fence line (for, say, walks) without warning, blow up your mailbox.

Oh and it's waterproof. As anyone who has ever lost a dog come back to what seems to be all out of the mud in the world can tell you, this is probably a good idea.

Collar wireless network is Verizon. Qualcomm said that this thing should begin sometime in September, with 200 bucks, nabbing you collar, charger and one year of tracking service.

In July 1985, seven industry veterans came together in den Dr. Irwin Jacobs San Diego home to discuss the idea. These visionaries — Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, ...

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Friday, August 5, 2011

Qualcomm Snapdragon overhauls brand ditches misleading names chipset

If you have a Smartphone, made over the last year or so that are not made by Apple or Samsung, likely preeeetty, well that is powered by a Snapdragon chipset Qualcomm's. Now, the chances that you actually could call what chipset Snapdragon he has ... Yes, pretty much zilch.

Problem: outside of the main brand "Snapdragon", Qualcomm has not done the best job in the differentiation of what chipset is which. MSM8260? MSM855T? MSM8930? OMGWTFBBQ? I am doing this for my work, and I still won't be able to tell you that one who cheat sheets.

This morning, Qualcomm announced a major overhaul with snapdragon brand. It should make things a little less confusing.

In short, they are almost impossible to remember the numbers of models and multilevel. They will have four tiers (or "system" as they call them) to begin with: S1, S2, S3 and S4. The higher the number the better specification.

S1, for example, is for the "Mass Market" phones — things on the lower end of what powers Qualcomm (anything 1 GHz and below). Things like the HTC Droid incredible or status. S2 is the good universities Guide for high-performance smart phones & tablets (1.4 GHz) as HTC Thunder, while S3 is intended for current high end stuff (1.5 GHz) as EVO 3D.

S4 encapsulates everything between 1.6 GHz and 2.5 Ghz — which, as you know, does not include actually anything just yet. The first devices in this range does not start, hitting shelves until next year as soon as possible.

Interestingly, Qualcomm said that the device will always be treated as device S2 S2-S2 is S1, S3 is S2, etc as I understand it, it sounds like Qualcomm plans to simply add new levels of system as time goes on. Man S10 is going to be funny.

Qualcomm will almost certainly have a big ol' ugly model numbers in one way or another for mega geeks among us to distinguish between similar tables — they just do not expect anyone to actually remember them.

Here's a look at what's changed:

Old and Busted:

New Hotness:

In July 1985, seven industry veterans came together in den Dr. Irwin Jacobs San Diego home to discuss the idea. These visionaries — Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, ...

View the original article here