Sprint and Motorola are joining up to develop WiMax technology for mobile handsets, and to begin testing the broadband access over an area of several miles for the first pilot. Once the initial testing is complete, Sprint has said it will conduct a service trial in a major urban area.

With the recent merger with Nextel Communications, Sprint is in a great position to roll out this technology, as a large part of the desired spectrum has been owned by Nextel. In addition to this, Motorola is the exclusive handset provider for Nextel, which brings them into the picture in a large role also. The technology, which will most likely be approved by the standards committee later this year, should be integrated into Motorola handsets by 2008 for the consumer market to provide next-generation services such as faster data products, mobile TV and video conferencing.

"Sprint is fostering a number of strategic partnerships and investigating multiple technologies in support of future wireless interactive multimedia services," said Oliver Valente, chief technology officer and vice president for Sprint's Technology Development Division. "WiMAX is one of the technologies Sprint is investigating for services which would be considered for deployment in the 2.5 GHz band of spectrum."

Motorola's Senior VP and CTO Dan Coombes added, "Motorola will use its deep heritage in wireless radio technology innovation, IP core switching and wireless devices to help Sprint validate next-generation wireless opportunities."

Apple announced late yesterday that its new iTunes 4.9 software has pulled in Podcast subscriptions topping a million since the launch of the updated software on Tuesday. Announced earlier this week, the new Podcast Directory in iTunes 4.9 features Podcasts from sources such as ABC News, Adam Curry, BBC, Clear Channel, The Dawn and Drew Show, Disney, Engadget, ESPN, Newsweek and NPR member stations.

Market Watch reports that shares of Apple rose 49 cents to $36.86 in late afternoon trading yesterday.

Blackberry competitor Good Technology has announced partnerships with Sprint, Microsoft, IBM and Samsung to try to increase its market share in the wireless corporate e-mail market. The company's GoodLink wireless e-mail service is its most popular offering, but they also offer support software applications and back-end server software. Good's services are available through Sprint on the Treo 650 and Audiovox 6600/6601, along with the new Samsung i730 on the Verizon Wireless network.

Good's partnership with Sprint now brings them to supporting five of the United States' major carriers. Good's CEO, Danny Shader, said that his company's wireless e-mail service is now used by more than 6,500 companies on 100 wireless carriers in 50 countries.

Good's new partnership with IBM is to create a version of GoodLink for Lotus Domino, to be available in the first half of next year for Lotus' more than 118 million users.

Good also announced its partnership with Microsoft which resulted in the latest version of GoodLink which supports Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones. The support for Windows Mobile devices is currently offered through Cingular's Motorola MPx220 and the Audiovox SMT5600.

For those of us who envision needing a petabyte(that's right, 1,048,576GB) of storage in the future for our data centers, EMC has unveiled their DMX-3 storage array. The DMX-3 supports up to 960 hard drives, and will be capable of supporting 1,920 in the first half of next year and over 2,000 by the end of next year.

The product is designed for high-end datacenters, and has nearly double the bandwidth of its predecessor, the Symmetrix DMX-2.

David Donatelli, EMC's Executive VP of storage platform operations, said "Customers can add capacity and performance simply and non-disruptively, which is what high-end performance is all about."

EMC will be offering the DMX-3 to customers in September of this year.