Brad Reed

@bwreedbgr brad@bgr.com +Brad Reed

Prior to joining BGR as News Editor, Brad Reed spent five years covering the wireless industry for Network World. His first smartphone was a BlackBerry but he has since become a loyal Android user.

Internet
March 6, 2014
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Google Fiber City Checklist Revealed

Revealed: Everything you need to bring Google Fiber to your city

By on March 6, 2014 at 3:00 PM.

Revealed: Everything you need to bring Google Fiber to your city

Do you want Google Fiber to come to your city? Well get in line: There are plenty of other cities that want it as well. However, DSLReports has done us the favor of posting a Google Fiber City Checklist that Google is handing out to prospective new Fiber locations so we can see all of the hoops that cities will have to jump through before Google will agree to bring its high-speed network to them. More →

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mobile
March 6, 2014
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Verizon Vs. AT&T Vs. T-Mobile

Sorry, Mr. Legere: Yet another study finds Verizon is thumping your network

By on March 6, 2014 at 2:41 PM.

Sorry, Mr. Legere: Yet another study finds Verizon is thumping your network

T-Mobile has done a lot of terrific things ever since John Legere took over as CEO. The company’s early upgrade plans have set new standards in the wireless industry and have been a major boon for users who love having the latest and greatest gadgets. T-Mobile’s program to pay off new customers’ early termination fees is going a long way toward freeing customers from the burdens that come with switching carriers. However, there is simply no denying that the “Uncarrier’s” network still needs more work if it’s going to match the quality of Verizon and AT&T. More →

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mobile
March 6, 2014
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NVIDIA Tegra K1 Benchmark

New benchmark confirms NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 blows every other smartphone chip out of the water

By on March 6, 2014 at 1:54 PM.

New benchmark confirms NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 blows every other smartphone chip out of the water

We’d seen some early benchmarks suggesting that NVIDIA’s new Tegra K1 system on a chip would absolutely crush the performance of any other SoC on the market and now we’ve got some confirmation. Neowin has spotted some new benchmarks for the Tegra K1 and they’ve once again found that NVIDIA’s newest chipset blows every other chip out of the water. According to the benchmarks, there are two versions of the Tegra K1: A dual-core 64-bit version that’s been clocked at 3GHz and that scored a 43617 on AnTuTu’s benchmark and a quad-core version that scored a 43851 on AnTuTu. More →

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Business
March 6, 2014
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Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Found

This could very well be the man who really created Bitcoin

By on March 6, 2014 at 11:10 AM.

This could very well be the man who really created Bitcoin

According to Bitcoin lore, the cryptocurrency got its humble beginnings in a white paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” written by a man calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto. For years, though, no one knew Nakamoto’s actual whereabouts or even if he really existed at all… until now. Newsweek has done some impressive detective work and has tracked down whom it claims to be the real Nakamoto at his home in Temple City, California. More →

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Software
March 6, 2014
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Microsoft Windows 9 Release Date

Is Windows 9 Microsoft’s secret weapon to get people to dump XP?

By on March 6, 2014 at 8:10 AM.

Is Windows 9 Microsoft’s secret weapon to get people to dump XP?

As we mentioned earlier this week, Microsoft has a problem because a huge chunk of Windows XP stragglers still aren’t upgrading to Windows 7 or Windows 8 even though there’s just over a month to go until XP support ends. Tom’s Hardware writes that Microsoft does have one more card to play that it hopes will finally convince XP diehards to switch: Windows 9. More →

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Retail
March 5, 2014
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Big Box Stores Are Dying

One graph shows the slow death of big box electronics stores

By on March 5, 2014 at 11:45 PM.

One graph shows the slow death of big box electronics stores

Amazon and other online retailers are slowly bleeding big-box electronics stores to death, a fact made all the more obvious this week when RadioShack announced that it was closing down 1,100 stores. Paul Kedrosky points us to a graph put together by The Financial Times that shows how the total overall footprint for major electronics retailers in the United States has been shrinking for the past several years. The total number of electronics retailers in the U.S. has been on a downward trajectory ever since 2009 when Circuit City liquidated its last outlet. Best Buy and Apple have held mostly steady but the recent RadioShack closings mean that the number of electronics outlets in the U.S. has shrunken dramatically. The Financial Times’ graph follows below. More →

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Wearables
March 5, 2014
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Samsung Galaxy Glass Features

Samsung’s Google Glass rival might turn your whole hand into a keyboard

By on March 5, 2014 at 9:15 PM.

Samsung’s Google Glass rival might turn your whole hand into a keyboard

We’ve known for a while now that Samsung has been working on its own wearable computer headset that will be similar in a lot of ways to Google Glass. However one thing we’ve wondered is how Samsung plans to differentiate its own digital headset from Google’s, and now thanks to a patent filing uncovered by Galaxy Club, we might have a better idea. More →

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Business
March 5, 2014
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Why Did Steve Ballmer Retire

New report suggests Ballmer screamed his way out of a job

By on March 5, 2014 at 8:00 PM.

New report suggests Ballmer screamed his way out of a job

By his own admission, outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is “big, bald and loud.” These are traits that have helped him impose his will at Microsoft for years but apparently there are limits to how far Ballmer’s brash personality can take him. Unnamed sources tell Bloomberg Businessweek that Microsoft’s board of directors finally reached the end of its rope with Ballmer after he got into a screaming match with them over his plan to buy up Nokia’s handset division last year. More →

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Security
March 5, 2014
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Android Malware Google Play

Why Android users shouldn’t worry (too much) about malware

By on March 5, 2014 at 6:45 PM.

Why Android users shouldn’t worry (too much) about malware

So we know that malware developers absolutely love targeting Android since it’s not only the most widely used mobile operating system in the world but it’s also the least tightly controlled of all the other major mobile platforms. The Next Web points us to the latest study from F-Secure showing that, unsurprisingly, 97% of mobile malware found last year targeted Android phones. However, there’s some potentially good news here for Android users: As long as they’re smart, the chances of them ever encountering such malware are pretty slim. More →

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mobile
March 5, 2014
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T-Mobile CEO Legere Network Quality

Legere: Study calling T-Mobile the worst network is ‘slanted,’ ‘out of date’

By on March 5, 2014 at 4:42 PM.

Legere: Study calling T-Mobile the worst network is ‘slanted,’ ‘out of date’

You didn’t think T-Mobile CEO John Legere was going to take a new study that trashed his company’s wireless network lying down, did you? RootMetrics this week unveiled a major new study of American wireless carriers that ranked T-Mobile’s network dead last in multiple categories including overall performance, reliability, call quality and text message performance. On his Twitter account, Legere sarcastically congratulated his competitors for posting such strong results “LAST year” and went on to say that the data used in the study is “slanted” and “out of date” even though it was conducted in the second half of 2013. More →

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Business
March 5, 2014
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Sprint T-Mobile Merger News

The Sprint-T-Mobile merger has been put on ice

By on March 5, 2014 at 4:21 PM.

The Sprint-T-Mobile merger has been put on ice

It figures: Just when we were starting to see one good reason for Sprint to acquire T-Mobile, the whole transaction has been put on ice. Bloomberg News reports that Deutsche Telekom CEO Timotheus Höttges doesn’t see any sale of T-Mobile to Sprint happening anytime soon, which seems to indicate that Sprint and DT have been unsuccessful in their efforts to win over U.S. regulators. This news comes just as Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son had started to go on a public relations charm offensive aimed at winning over a skeptical public about the potential benefits of a merger between the two carriers. If the two companies decide to put the merger on hold, it will be interesting to see whether Sprint adopts some of the more aggressive tactics that have helped T-Mobile win over lots of customers for the past few quarters.

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mobile
March 5, 2014
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Samsung Android Traffic Share

Here’s yet another way Samsung is stomping out all Android rivals

By on March 5, 2014 at 4:00 PM.

Here’s yet another way Samsung is stomping out all Android rivals

When people talk about Android phones these days, there’s a good chance they’re really referring to Samsung and one of its many, many, many Galaxy devices. Mobile advertising firm Chitika has found that Samsung smartphones and tablets accounted for 55.5% of all North American mobile ad impressions on its network among Android devices, which is pretty astonishing considering that no other Android OEM even cracked 10%. More →

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mobile
March 5, 2014
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The All New HTC One Dual Cameras

New leak shows All New HTC One’s dual cameras up close and personal

By on March 5, 2014 at 3:18 PM.

New leak shows All New HTC One’s dual cameras up close and personal

There seems to be nothing that HTC can do to stop detail pictures of The All-New HTC One from leaking out. @evleaks has now posted a new leaked picture that gives us our best look yet at the new flagship device’s dual rear-facing cameras, which HTC will likely tout as a major differentiator when it unveils the device on March 25th. Cameras have become a hot point of competition for many smartphone manufacturers, especially after Nokia threw down the gauntlet last year when it unleashed the Lumia 1020′s amazing 41-megapixel camera onto the world. HTC has long ago stopped playing the megapixel game, however, and leaked specs for The All New HTC One indicate that HTC is referring to its dual-camera setup only as an “UltraPixel” camera. @evleaks’ closeup of The All New HTC One’s cameras follows below. More →

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