Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse says he hopes to keep the company's data plans unlimited as the company shifts toward faster 4G services through the WiMax technology it's rolling out in cities across the nation.AT&T, which offers Apple's iPhone, is already capping the amount of data users get with a plan, and Verizon has talked about doing the same.

The proliferation of smart phones and other wireless-enabled data-heavy devices has made consumers ever-hungrier for data, and carriers say they're struggling to accommodate the demand.In a keynote yesterday at EmTech 2010, Hesse noted that when carriers moved to 3G technologies, "the solution was there before the problem", meaning few consumers used enough data to justify 3G. Today, Hesse says, consumers are waiting for faster networks.Sprint is certainly encouraging people to think about what they could do with faster speeds. [Read the full article]

Harry Atwater, a professor from Caltech, says the way to make solar cells that can compete with fossil fuels is to make them thin and flexible. He is not the first to sing the praises of flexible solar cells, but people usually point to their potential applications on tents or backpacks, where they won't do much to reduce carbon emissions or fossil fuel use. Atwater likes them for their potential to reduce shipping and installation costs.Unlike today's rigid, class encapsulated solar panels, flexible solar panels don't need to be protected by rigid frames for shipping, so they take up much less space, reducing shipping costs. There also lighter, which makes them easier to install. Speaking at the EmTech 10 conference at MIT today, Atwater proposed another way to reduce installation costs: he suggess using farm equipment fitted with laser levels to quickly install large fields of flexible solar panels, laying them out the way plastic sheeting is laid out in some farming today. [Read the full article]

A new class of devices able to create Wi-Fi-like connections that span miles rather than meters just jumped significantly closer to market. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has made a crucial decision on the rules that will regulate such devices, which will use the "white spaces" between TV channels that were freed up by the analog switch off.Although the FCC voted in November 2008 to open up these white spaces, the exact rules governing how they could be used were not decided. Companies of all sizes, ranging from Google to startups, with plans for gadgets and services using white spaces have been waiting since then. Some have spent money lobbying for rules favorable to rapid development of a whole new sector.A key concern was whether the FCC would stick with a previous suggestion that white spaces devices must constantly listen for broadcasts from TV stations and wireless microphones to ensure they wouldn't cause interference. [Read the full article]

In what's shaping up to be the next big entertainment-meets-technology battleground, consumers are being presented with ever more ways to connect their television sets to the Internet.This week, Roku, a company based in Saratoga, California, launched a new lineup of video players designed to stream high-definition content from Internet destinations such as Netflix, Amazon, and Pandora. The cost will be $60 for a basic player and $100 for one that offers a variety of ways to connect to other devices. Both are equipped for high-definition playback.Roku was one of the first companies to stream Internet content to televisions; it released its first video player in May 2008. Since then, the market for Internet-connected set-top boxes for televisions has become much more crowded. Competition is intense because, along with free shows and clips, the Internet can be used to deliver premium, cable-like content. [Read the full article]