John Quain

About

John Quain is the Wireless Center Editor and wireless columnist for Ziff Davis Media. He is also the on-air Computer Consultant for CBS News, appearing regularly on the network's overnight newscast Up to the Minute for over 7 years. In addition, Quain does occasional reports for CBS News The Early Show and has been reporting on technology and related business and entertainment news for over 20 years. Quain has appeared regularly on ABC News, CNN, CNNfn, MSNBC, and CNBC.In addition to his online and on-air work, Quain currently contributes articles about computers, the Internet, consumer electronics, and technology to PC Magazine, Popular Science, Esquire, and The New York Times. Other publications Quain contributes to include Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Men's Journal, Tech Edge, and Good Housekeeping.Past positions Quain has held include working as a Contributing Editor at Fast Company magazine for 4 years and at PC Magazine for 9 years. He also wrote a technology column for Brill's Content magazine, was the gadgets columnist at My Generation magazine, was the daily Internet columnist for Time Warner's Pathfinder, and was the computer columnist at The Globe and Mail newspaper.

The VoIP Debates

Are roadblocks standing in the way of VoIP? Pioneering Voice over Internet Protocol companies like Vonage and old-school telecom companies like AT&T are racing to bring inexpensive VoIP services to consumers, and the number of VoIP users is on the rise. But regulators are at odds over how to tax the services. Three states are […]

Tiny Hard Drives Coming to Cell Phones

As manufacturers cram many more features into cell phones, theres one glaring problem: storage capacity. So hard drive makers are looking to spin up tiny drives for wireless handsets. “Beyond one gigabyte, a hard drive can deliver more storage at lower cost than flash memory,” says John Harris, strategic marketing manager for storage-chip maker Agere […]

Putting Spammers in the Pokey

The government wants you to know that violating its CAN-SPAM law can send you up the river. In April, the Department of Justice busted its first accused spammers. Four defendants from the Detroit area—Christopher Chung, Daniel J. Lin, James J. Lin, and Mark M. Sadek—are accused of disguising their identities and hawking a fraudulent $59.95 […]

Almost Blue

To hear some analysts tell it, Bluetooth is already dead. Never mind the Bluetooth expansion cards for PDAs, the wireless earpieces and the handful of handsets available. The protocol is being overrun by the Wi-Fi buzz. Bolstering their position, the nattering nabobs of negativism point to the relative paucity of products, the security problems, and […]

Opera-Based Smart Phones Headed to China

Opera Software ASA hopes the fat lady is singing for WAP. According to the Norwegian developer, its full-function Opera 7 browser for smart phones will be introduced into the potentially lucrative Chinese market by Kyocera. This signals a significant marketing win for Opera. Kyocera, which purchased Qualcomms handset manufacturing business, will employ Opera in its […]

Canadian Companies Forge Wi-Fi Roaming Agreement

In an unprecedented move that may help Wi-Fi roaming become a reality, four Canadian wireless firms signed an “inter-carrier agreement” to use common standards for the interoperability of their public Wi-Fi networks. By simplifying access, the Canadian firms hope theyve found the hot spot for hot spots. According the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications industry association, the […]

Do Cell Phones Kill?

For me, it started and ended on the subway. One day while I waited impatiently for a train I noticed a woman weaving down the platform. She was engrossed with something on her smart phone and just as she passed me she stumbled and nearly fell over the edge and onto the tracks. In Manhattan, […]

And the Winner Is…Cingular

The bidding war is over. Now Cingular can set about creating the nations largest cell phone network. Over the long weekend, Cingular Wireless and Vodafone Group PLC were engaged in a bidding war for AT&T Wireless. Vodafone matched each of Cingulars offers until the bidding got too rich for the U.K. firm. The final price […]

The 3D Gaming—Cell Phone?

The race for better graphics performance on PCs is a long-standing tradition. Now ATI and others want to take cell-phone graphics to the next level. The ATI Imageon 2300 is the first 3D graphics coprocessor for wireless handsets and smart phones, according to ATI. It comes equipped with a full-featured graphics engine, including geometry processing […]

Making Wireless Go Ka-Ching

Wringing money out of new wireless services has become something of an obsession recently. And “ringing” may be exactly the right model. But can anyone predict what the next big thing in wireless will be? Consider the most successful wireless service. If anyone had told me two years ago that it would be a booming […]