ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

Best Buy’s Mobile Lifestyle Stores

01 November 2008 Bob Snyder Retailer News

Unlike previous Best Buy mobile stores, Mobile Life stores will focus on mobile lifestyle and feature-connected laptops, data devices and CE appliances that connect to mobile networks.

"These stores are going after a much bigger space than mobile phone retail competency," Best Buy Mobile Marketing VP Scott Moore says. Sure, these devices are available at Best Buy’s big stores, but Mobile Life stores will concentrate them in a single location and show how they create a larger wireless environment.

"Experience zones" at the new stores have demos like how Slingbox can place-shift TV content to a mobile phone, laptop or device.

Unlike the Best Buy Mobile stores on the East Coast that sell only mobile phones, Best Buy Mobile Life will be bigger (3000 sq. feet vs. 1000) and much smaller than Best Buy’s usual 40,000 sq. feet. Each store will have a Geek Squad agent on site and Best Buy Mobile's Walk-Out-Working program that provides multimedia and smart-phone set up.

Go Best Buy Mobile Life

Big Changes in Internet, Cautions Cerf

01 November 2008 Bob Snyder Comms and Internet

CERF With internet addresses running out in mid-2010, the move to IPv6 will give the Internet a much larger address space and ensure future growth, says internet pioneer Vinton Cerf.

And he should know, he made the decision for the IPv4 32-bit address space in 1977, “at a time when it was uncertain if the Internet would work," and when “128-bit address space seemed excessive.” Now at Google, Cerf feels the internet will see lots of change.

Coming is a domain name system security via DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) and the addition of non-Latin domain names (Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Chinese etc) and so we can get spam in all scripts.

Go Cerf, the Internet

“MotoAURA” First with Circular Display

01 November 2008 Bob Snyder Mobile Phones

Everyone is getting punished on the high end of the mobile phone market but fearless Motorola thinks AURA, world's first handset with a full color circular LCD, can crack it.

At just under 1.6”, the 16 million colors display features 480-pixel diameter res that produces 300 dots per inch density. The phone features a swivel design where the display can stay fixed while the outer cover rotates for number pad access.

AURA is made of a 62-carat sapphire lens to protects a 2- megapixel camera, a stainless steel body with ball bearings, and an aluminum keypad. Comes with 2GB built-in memory, a media player app, stereo Bluetooth and EDGE data.

Go "MotoAura"