waves

The iPhone is No. 1 in customer satisfaction, says a new ChangeWave survey, but Motorola also has its share of happy Droid users.

Among the 1,009 smartphone owners interviewed by research firm ChangeWave, results released this week found that 77 percent of all Apple iPhone owners said they're very satisfied with their phones. Motorola came in second, with 64 percent of its smartphone users who expressed high satisfaction with their phones.

In comparison, 51 percent of HTC owners and 46 percent of RIM Blackberry buyers said they're very satisfied with their smartphones.

Among specific models, Apple fans who own the newest iPhone 3GS models were more satisfied than those who still use the older 3G. And Motorola can thank the Droid for its high level of customer satisfaction--69 percent of Droid users said they're very satisfied with their phones, while only 50 percent of those who own other Motorola phones said the same.

Of course, we know that iPhone satisfaction varies a lot between rural and urban areas and by geographic location. But ChangeWave spokesman Paul Carton says the customers surveyed were a representative sampling geographically of the U.S. and Canada. Most of those surveyed were U.S. residents, he said.

Looking at HTC's customers, 68 percent of the HTC Hero owners expressed a high degree of satisfaction, compared with 50 percent of those using a Droid Eris and 38 of those with an HTC Touch. ChangeWave was running its survey just when HTC's Droid Incredible hit the market, so it couldn't provide feedback on that new model. But the research firm promised to do a follow-up survey of Droid Incredible owners.

ChangeWave also asked about the mobile operating systems running on smartphones.… Read more

The waters of the Gulf of Mexico will see a novel offshore platform later this year, one that will use wave power to desalinate water.

Independent Natural Resources, which makes the Seadog water pump, on Wednesday said that it has received a permit for a wave power generation facility off the coast of Freeport, Texas. The company says it's the first to receive a "section 10 permit" from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to operate a wave generator in the U.S.

The facility, which the company hopes to put in the water by the … Read more

We got our first glimpse at the Samsung Wave at Mobile World Congress 2010 back in February and now, the first smartphone to run Samsung's Bada mobile operating system is finally available in select European countries.

Those countries include the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, and Samsung plans to bring the Wave to Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. However, don't really expect to see the Wave hitting North American shores too soon.

As we learned at MWC, Bada is an evolution of the middleware that's been on Samsung's phones all … Read more

Aquamarine Power on Wednesday unveiled the next generation in its development of wave energy machines.

The Oyster 2 is a wave-harnessing machine enabling the conversion of hydraulic power to electricity. The new 800-kilowatt model, to be built in Scotland, will be capable of producing 250 percent more power compared to the older Oyster model. The Oyster 2 also has fewer moving parts, and is modular so that parts can be swapped out for maintenance as needed.

As with the earlier Oyster, the Oyster 2 is not the type of wave-harnessing machine that uses underwater turbines or buoys to directly generate … Read more

We wanted Google to announce its set-top box at Google IO today, but what do we get? A new video codec, an app store in Chrome, and (yawn) Google Wave going into open beta. And, oh yeah, homeland security seals (the marine mammals, not the hulky military guys) protecting our harbors.

Google Wave, a Web-based tool to let people chat and collaborate in real time, is now open to the public.

The Google service brought a social dimension when it arrived with much fanfare a half year ago, but in that domain, it was overshadowed by Google Buzz. Buzz, built directly into the widely used Gmail, had a much better built-in user base from the start.

Making Wave public could help restore its fortunes.

"It's clear from the invaluable feedback we've received that Wave is a great place to get work done, in particular for teams working together … Read more

Like all parents, Microsoft likes to tout the accomplishments of its offspring. Any conversation about Hotmail is likely to start with the fact that, at least globally, the free Web mail service has more active accounts than any of its rivals.

Pressed, though, company officials also see Hotmail's shortcomings. In recent years, rivals Google and Yahoo have been ahead of the game when it comes to adding things like conversation views, mobile synchronization and other features. And Yahoo has more U.S. accounts, while Google has been growing faster than Hotmail. Beyond any one feature, though, Hotmail has come … Read more

How much bigger can Google's world get?

As Google prepares for its third major developer conference, it's getting ready to pitch its vision for the future of computing to 5,000 developers and media at San Francisco's Moscone center. When I/O kicks off on Wednesday, don't expect Google CEO Eric Schmidt to break out into a passionate "Developers!" chant like his counterpart at Microsoft, CEO Steve Ballmer, did all those many years ago.

However, this is clearly one area in which Google and Microsoft--bitter rivals otherwise--can agree: developer support is crucial to the … Read more

Verizon's customers are a happy lot. AT&T's? Not so much, still.

At least those are the findings of a survey (PDF) released last week by ChangeWave Research that found Verizon tops among cell phone users for customer satisfaction and fewer dropped calls.

Of the 4,040 wireless subscribers questioned for the survey in March, 49 percent of Verizon's customers said they were very satisfied with their service. In second place was Sprint Nextel with a 35 percent satisfaction rate. T-Mobile and AT&T both tied for last with only 23 percent of their customers … Read more