lights

LightSquared today appointed Marc Montagner, a veteran of major telecommunications deals, to the role of chief financial officer.

Montagner's appointment may signal LightSquared's willingness to strike a deal or partnership. One of Montagner's prior roles was the head of merger-and-acquisition activities for Sprint, helping to usher in the $70 billion merger with Nextel back in 2005. He was also co-head of Banc of America Securities' telecom, media and technology merger group.

Montagner had been executive vice president of sales, marketing, and strategy at SkyTerra, which was absorbed by LightSquared in 2010. LightSquared plans to take advantage of … Read more

LightScribe's technology burns customized labels directly onto specially treated DVDs and CDs. To use it, you must have a LightScribe-enabled disk burner. LightScribe Diagnostics Utility is a free tool that can check your system's LightScribe compatibility as well as its readiness to run the software without problems. It also scans for conflicts, suggesting changes that you can accept, reject, or modify. After you've checked out whether your system is ready to run LightScribe, you can uninstall the diagnostic tool or keep it in case you make any hardware or software changes. If you're not sure your … Read more

LightSquared is done with the government's hemming and hawing, and is pressuring for approval to use its spectrum to build a next-generation wireless network.

In the company's most aggressively worded message to the Federal Communications Commission, LightSquared argues that the GPS industry has no right to seek protection from the potential interference that LightSquared's network could cause. It said today that it has filed a petition seeking a declaratory ruling confirming its rights as a spectrum licensee. The company has been battling the perception that its network could possibly cripple critical GPS devices--hurting planes, farming equipment, and … Read more

LightSquared's wireless network will interfere with a "majority" of GPS devices, according to a report from federal officials.

The official report released late yesterday, showed that the LightSquared network still caused harmful interference in a majority of general-purpose GPS receivers, according to Anthony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing, an advisory committee made up of government and industry.

The Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense joined in the statement issued on Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration conducted separate testing, and it also found that LightSquared's network interferes … Read more

This software engineer really, really loves Christmas...and symphonic metal, as his cube decoration contest entry shows.

Redditor and software engineer Billiam5 posted this video on Reddit late last night demonstrating his achievement in action, replete with dancing Christmas lights synced to the song "Wizards in Winter," by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO).

According to the artist himself, Billiam5 used the Arduino prototyping platform and Flash-based animation programming to bring the LEDs to life:… Read more

Most people don't like watching TV in the dark. The problem is, flat-panel TVs tend to reflect light in the room. Even if you have a matte-screen LCD, light bouncing off the screen is going to diminish picture quality in one way or another.

This how-to guide has some obvious and some not-so-obvious tricks and tips to help you make sure that no matter what lighting you have in your room, you're still getting the best picture quality.… Read more

LightSquared believes someone has it out for the startup and its efforts to build a 4G LTE network.

The latest stumbling block came last week in the form of a leak of a preliminary government report, which revealed that the company hadn't settled the concerns that it could disrupt the signal of a large number of personal and military GPS devices.

LightSquared's general counsel, Curtis Lu, blasted the leak, noting that only the negative portions of the tests were shown, and that the conclusions were based on incorrect assumptions.

"The leak was designed to subvert the fairness … Read more

LightSquared's planned 4G wireless network caused "harmful interference" to the majority of GPS receivers used in recent government testing of the network, according to reports citing a draft version of the test results.

LightSquared plans to offer network services like wholesale Internet access to companies such as Best Buy, but concerns about the network knocking out personal or military GPS devices have been raised by the Defense Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, and GPS companies and users. The LightSquared network uses frequencies that are near to those used by GPS devices.

In response to earlier tests, the … Read more

Chevy Volt spontaneous combustion is investigated, Toyota and BMW swap tech, Tokyo Motor Show wows us with weird (duh), and Maybach is dead.