Still rocking that Palm Zire with your new Intel-based Mac? Then you might just want to reconsider that upgrade to Snow Leopard, as Apple has apparently decided to ditch its support for legacy Palm OS devices in the latest incarnation of iSync. That, as you may be aware, had previously acted as a conduit for Palm's aging but still available Palm Desktop software, and let folks easily sync up their contacts and other data from their Centro, Treo, Zire, Tungsten, or even a venerable old PalmPilot. Of course, that doesn't quite rise to the same level of controversy as the whole Pre / iTunes situation, especially considering that Palm itself has mostly moved on from said devices, and there are still some third-party sync solutions available for folks that want to keep the Palm OS dream alive.

Say it ain't so! We can only imagine that there are quite a few folks out there who will be absolutely elated to hear this news, so we'll get right to it: a femtocell is (likely) coming to AT&T. Nah, we haven't spied any in the wild shots of a rumored box or anything, but a carrier spokeswoman admitted to Unstrung that "as the nation's leading provider of both wireless and broadband, it makes sense that we would examine the potential benefits of femtocells for our customers." Better still, she continued by affirming that it was "currently doing testing in its labs and a trial [was] planned for later this year." Aside from that, we've no real details to pore over, but all we really needed to know has been said. Sprint and Verizon won't be the only providers offering up an in-home mini cell tower, and we'd say this can't possibly come soon enough for AT&Ters sitting squarely in a fringe coverage area.

[Via Brighthand, image courtesy of 3G]

It's not that texting from planes is currently impossible, it's just not terribly reliable. Thanks to Avidyne's Q4-bound MLX770, however, all that is about to change. The two-way datalink receiver will not only enable pilots to have access to the radar mosaic for most of the world along with weather conditions, but it will add support for text messaging right from the MFD. And we're not talking about CPLDC -- we're talking bona fide SMS. To keep pilots from chatting away too much unnecessarily, the system will limit messages to 32 characters, and beyond that, each message sent will run between $1 and $2. And to think, we actually have the nerve to gripe about $0.20 texts...

[Via FlightGlobal]

Here's something you don't hear everyday ever: an Irish air traffic controller helped guide a seriously malfunctioning plane to a safe landing via SMS. In a story that's admittedly tough to fathom, a pilot with four passengers aboard his twin-engined Piper plane lost all on board electrical power, communications and weather functions soon after he lifted off. In a effort to establish any form of contact with someone back on the ground, he phoned a controller at the Cork airport and spoke only momentarily of his troubles before losing voice signal. The quick-thinking controller decided to switch up his conversation method to texting, eventually providing sufficient details to safely guide the pilot in. Can you say "promotion?"

[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of StarWars Blog]

Here's a tip: don't relocate to Japan unless you're entirely down with being monitored practically everywhere you go. Sure, things aren't that serious quite yet, but with RFID tracking going on in schools, prisons, airlines, and now, um, everywhere else, you can pretty much rest assured that big brother is indeed taking notes. The next step in mass monitoring involves GPS, RFID, and cellphones, and the service is intended to track kids' whereabouts and alert parents whenever they enter potentially "dangerous areas." Reportedly, RFID readers will be setup in various areas (like school gates and electric polls) and track tags carried by (incredibly obedient) children, or better yet, simply monitor the GPS locator in the youngster's handset. Of course, we've no idea where these "danger zones" could be, nor how long the crime lords of the area will actually let that pole-sitting RFID reader remain in tact, but the system is supposed to be piloted in "20 regions across the country" real soon.

[Via Textually]

Jumping on the mobile TV bandwagon, kid's channel Nick Jr. has debuted three new "mini pilots" on wireless carriers, ahead of launching them on Nick Jr.'s broadband video service and the channel itself. The three pilots include Pass the Pinha, Jinny Starfly and All Aboard, all developed by Nick Jr.'s Institute of Applied Play, and run between one to three minutes each. Unfortunately, Nick Jr. wasn't kind enough to say which carriers would actually be carrying the pilots.

[Via MocoNews]