Each year on the evening of December 31st an estimated one million people from around the world flock to New York City’s Times Square to cheer in unison as the final 10 seconds of the year are counted down and the iconic glowing ball is lowered down a 130-foot pole from atop 1 Times Square. BGR recently attended the Philips Ball Test, during which the city does a dry run of the ceremonies that will take place seconds before midnight on New Year’s Eve. We had a chance to sit down with Jeff Straus, ...

What’s better than a hotspot? A hotzone of course. Yesterday, the nation’s second largest cellular provider, AT&T, announced a new initiative that will bring free Wi-Fi to large, populous areas. The move will, according to the announcement, “supplement” mobile broadband coverage in certain areas. “Following a successful pilot program, AT&T today announced plans to expand its deployment of AT&T Wi-Fi hotzones to additional locations in major markets, starting with the...

AT&T’s come up with a pretty novel solution to address its network congestion woes in New York City’s Times Square. Instead of giving its cellular network a much needed boost at the north central area of Times Square near 7th Avenue between 45th and 47th Street, AT&T has announced it will instead offer free public Wi-Fi to all of its customers with 3G smartphones, 3G LaptopConnect cards and AT&T High Speed Internet plans. Anyone with an AT&T 3G smartphone with Wi-Fi enabled with ha...

As part of its “DROID Does” advertising campaign, Verizon Wireless is teaming up with Google, Reuters and R/GA to take over Times Square in a promotion to showcase Google Voice search and the Motorola DROID, just like we reported previously. If you are in Manhattan for the craziness called Black Friday, stroll on down to Times Square and call 888-376-4336 to do a Google search by voice. Your query and local search results will then be displayed on either the Reuters sign or the NASDAQ sign for the...