Headworx

Blind Calls By Deaf People

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:46:00 +0000

They call me almost every week. I recognize them as they are the only callers not presenting their caller id. The sales people working for my mobile service provider. Yes I must have had agreed somewhere in my contract to let my MNO contact me over the phone. Silly me. But I really did not realize they can be so silly too...

They call me when I am on vacation, interrupting my sea - side lazy afternoons. Or when I am on a business trip. Generally they call me when I am roaming, forcing me to pay for receiving the calls. Silly approach. Their HLRs know I am on a foreign network, and that generally means it is not the best time trying to sell me something on the phone. Is it such a big IT integration issue for a call center software working for a mobile network operator (MNO) to query a HLR before making a call? Or is it cheaper just to call a subscriber ignorantly pretending the operator's sales department has no idea of subscriber's whereabouts (while the billing department precisely knows where I am)?

Each time they call me they try to offer me some more free minutes. I am an asynchronous data type. I love messaging but I hate voice calls. My monthly plan gives me five hundred minutes. Any unused minutes are carried on to a next month. Over two years or so I have accumulated some five thousand unused minutes on my account. That is what my personalized mobile online portal shows. And each month three hundred new minutes are added to the pile. Again the billing department knows all that. So why on earth a salesman from the same company wastes time to annoy me offering an extra thousand minutes to be added to the same pile? The matter of fact I could sell them some... Again, when pre-selecting subscribers to be called with the bonus offer, would it be so difficult to run a query and check whether a subscriber eats up whatever plan she or he is on?

And somehow they must have figured a subscriber-repelling live sales agent is more cost effective than an email template. I bet there are a lot of people like myself, who prefer to answer an email instead of being molested by a sales voice call. They have my email. And it is really what they try to sell what matters, not how hard they push... What they offer, simply does not address my needs, so I do not buy. They would better listen to what I say... Last time they called I asked if I could buy a new phone instead of piling extra voice minutes. "You cannot, sir." was the answer. Yes I know the tele-salesman is running a computerized script and he has no option of selling me a phone (even if that was what I asked for). But he must have somebody he reports to, who designs those call scripts. They are simply blind, not seeing the opportunity.

And they must be deaf, since it was not just once when I asked for an offer for a new phone. Hello! Can you hear me? My Blackberry is in a really poor condition. I dropped it a number of times on a pavement. It survived, but is badly scratched. And the thumb scroll ball gets stuck quite often. And I would love to have 3G along with my UMA / WiFi calling. I heard the new 9700 Bold can do that. Hello! Can you hear me? Silence... Last week they told me to go to the physical store. Hey, I know precisely what I want. Hey, I even can afford the new toy. Hey, you know my address. And a phone number. Hey, I am willing to spend money on a product you offer. Silence...

Well... Year 2010. Information at fingertips. Digitally modeled processes. They have budgets, they have IT support, they can have almost all information about me they want. Yet they behave like souvenir salesmen walking along beaches. Embarrassing...

Living With Many Computers

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:02:00 +0000

For years I have been absolutely happy with my Lenovo X200S laptop. It was light enough to follow me almost everywhere and powerful enough to be the only machine I had. Especially after the SSD upgrade. But I wanted more. I mean less :). I fell in love with the Nokia Booklet 3G and decided to swap the Lenovo for the Nokia. Looking from today's perspective I very often think this was not the best decision. The keyboard on the Nokia is far from what the Lenovo offered. And I miss the trackstick - yes the touchpads are far inferior. And most importantly the Nokia is slow. Even after the SSD upgrade. But on the other hand I love it when I have to carry it, feeling almost no weight in my bag. It fits nicely in my Kata 123-GO photo bag. And most importantly, with its tiny weight, it is able to work all day on a charge. So I never ever carry a power supply with me.

I made some extra setup for the Nokia at home. 22-inch FullHD monitor - the iiyama ProLite E2210HDS (what a name!) connects audio and video via a singe HDMI cable. And the Logitech DiNovo Keyboard / Mouse, connecting via Bluetooth. So essentially docking the Nokia means plugging two cables - HDMI and power. I lived happily with this setup for two months, but realized I needed some more powerful machine for photo editing, video transcoding and other media intensive tasks.

As I was looking for candidates for a desktop computer, the new MacMini arrived. First I tried the native MacOS - the Snow Leopard. Soon I realized I could almost do nothing on this machine, as all my current stuff was on the Nokia laptop. Or in the FireFox browser there, to be more precise.

FireFox now has this FireFox Sync add-on (previously called Mozilla Weave). So I put it to the test. The Sync had been already installed on the Nokia, so all my settings and cookies and autocompletes were stored in the Cloud. I promptly downloaded the FireFox for Mac and installed the Sync. It asked for the account name and security key. The nice thing is the Sync encrypts everything before sending up to the Cloud, so without the encryption key nobody could get hold of your data, even if the Mozilla servers were compromised. After a while it synced the Mac. I could open any page and all passwords and logins were filled by the FireFox automatically. That I used before, when migrating from one machine to another, so no surprise, it worked. But I have never used two active FireFox sessions on two machines simultaneously.

The FireFox Sync has an item called "Tabs From Other Computers" in the History menu. It is a joy. It simply displays all machines you have the FireFox Sync configured on and a list of opened tabs on each of them. Of course the machines do not have to be running. It just displays the last synchronized state. So you can click on any of those tabs and it pops open on the current machine. First I expected all the tabs to be copied across the machines, but the actual approach they use is more clever. There are some tabs you want or need on just one machine. So no point moving everything, especially when you may be on a slow GSM connection or roaming. Any tab from any machine is just a click away.

As I have already moved almost all my workspace to the Cloud (GMail and Google Docs being the most part of my activity), the browser essentially is my desktop. And Firefox with the Sync addon perfectly implements the vision of virtualized context following me across many physical devices. At the moment there are just two devices. Or I should say - three. Three, because I decided to install 64-bit Windows 7 on the Mac Mini. It is a snap using Apple's Boot Camp Assistant and Windows simply flies on this machine. Actually the Mac Mini is the best Windows desktop computer I have ever had. It is fast (the processor / graphics score is 6.0). It is small and absolutely silent, mimicking a desktop lamp stand with a narrow slot for DVDs. And with built in power supply and HDMI out, there are just two cables coming into it: two-pronged power and HDMI. Keyboard, mouse and network are wireless. Beautiful and perfect. So the Mac/Windows 7 makes the third machine in Sync.

Later this week I will be installing the FireFox Home for the iPad. We all know the Safari is the only browser allowed on the iOS. But the Home is the "Sync" part that lets the mobile Safari stay in Sync with other machines, making my iPad just another device my context will follow me to.

GOOG vs AAPL, The Story Continues...

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:53:00 +0000

Apple bypassing Google and then becoming the biggest tech company in the World fuels a lot of talk and speculation. Apple is having a time of its life, with share price up 30% YTD in a shaky market. At the same time Google is down 30% YTD. Definitely investors have fallen in love with Steve Jobs at take whatever Google offers as granted. But paying a closer look may reveal quite a different picture. With all the credits due, Apple is chiefly a design company. Whatever they have done since the original iPhone 1 launch, can hardly be considered innovative or breakthrough. The iPhone was a breakthrough. Nobody expected anything close when they launched. But whatever happened after that has been just incremental, linear improvement. 3G. GPS. More memory and faster processor. Better screen and battery life. Yawn. The null-modem-cable iTunes connectivity remains the same. It is so hard to believe design sells so well. Or that good design is so hard to implement. I wrote about the new Mac Mini. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary about this computer, yet it is a class ahead of any comparable machines. So they can charge premium, people will pay.

On the other hand Google keeps silently improving the Web. Today nobody pays attention to the speed and quality of Web searches. We expect it to be fast and accurate and we take for granted it works. I guess not many people even noticed the improvements Google made to its service even this year. True. They never had an official launch, improving step by step almost every day. So the World pays no attention.

Then it takes a day like a week ago, when I returned from my vacation and uploaded some photos to Picasa. Then I got some comments and questions to reply. I started typing some comments when I noticed that whatever I type in Polish, Google types in parallel in English. My jaw dropped. Yes we have had Google Translate for some years now, but implementing online translation in a chat impressed me. A believe this is an order of magnitude more difficult than building a phone from off-the-shelf components and encasing it in two glass plates contracted from a 3rd party manufacturer.

The bottom line is, I think Apple is peaking today, being more smoke and mirrors looking forward, especially compared to the immense value buildout inside Google. The World is going to the Cloud, which is Google's primary domain and expertise. Open source Androids invade the market from all angles. Plus Google has a head start in the battle of the next generation TV. Half a year from now the tide will turn and I strongly believe investors will reward the value and reach of Google.

On a final note, just as a food for thought, may be Google should make more noise when they release some important features and upgrades to their services?

Web Or Apps?

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:27:00 +0000

I am a big fan of a life within a browser. I hate apps. Every time I have to install a program or application on my computer or smartphone, I don't like it.

Applications are evil. They crash. They have way too broad access to various niches on my hard drive. I don't trust them, in general. Imagine Mark Zuckerberg writing an application for Windows. What would it be doing? It would spend all time and resources scanning your file system and memory for things it could post on Facebook. It would invite all your friends to become fans of your bank account statements and post your Web browsing history as a Facebook news feed. Trust, or lack of it, is the reason I strongly prefer things running inside my browser. It is a big deal. Remember Activex versus Java in the late 1990's? Microsoft just could not implement secure enough way of handling native - code Activex controls, to prevent potential damage.

It is the same story again on the smartphone / teleputer platforms (the iOs and the Android). Yes, there are the Applications Stores and verification procedures promising to prevent malicious code from penetrating the security barriers. But realistically speaking, it is just a matter of time before a bomb explodes. Then there will be more x-ray machines and more strict procedures, increasing the burden of submitting applications to the stores. Never guaranteeing 100% security.

And apps are pain when they have to be upgraded. After just two weeks my iTunes shows 17 updates waiting for me. I have to download them, sync to all iPods and iPads. The civilization of upgrades.

But there is one very important reason apps are here to stay. At least for a time being. And it is not responsiveness in games nor ability to work offline. It is the monetization machines the application stores are.

Whatever it is, a scenario, an idea, or some piece of content. It is very difficult to monetize when implemented as a Web page. Yes you can run ads or make a member - only part of the site. But micropayments still do not exist on the Web, and there is no easy way to charge a small fee for what you want to offer. But when you decide to implement an app instead of a Web page, the monetization is seamless. Publish to the application store and get your share with every download. We need this for the Web. The one who successfully implements Web micropayments will be big. One day...

Traveling Light

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:09:00 +0000

It is summer vacations time again and I am taking a short break from the sunbath at the pool overlooking endless orchards of lemon trees at the foot of the majestic Etna volcano. This trip to Sicily, which I enjoy a lot, has brought usual thoughts on the state of the gadgets I pack with me.

Surprisingly, my carry on rucksack has been significantly smaller and lighter this year. A clear sign things are going the right direction for gadget maniacs. I no longer have to tug a set of trolleys filled with electronics. Speaking of the rucksack, I am very pleased with the Kata 123-GO-30. Kata is a brand that does not need explanation for photographers. They have probably the best equipment to carry the DSLR stuff. The 123-GO series bags are very light. I picked the 30, as it can accommodate my Nokia 3G booklet, along with the photo stuff (FujiFilm FinePix S5 Pro, four lenses, a flashlight, and some accessories).

The significant reduction of travel weight comes from well optimized set of power supplies and chargers. For the photo camera I picked the Hahnel Ultima II, a truly integrated and multifunctional charger. It is compatible with both European (including Italian) mains standard, as well as the American. It can also work in a car, using a cigarette lighter socket. And it has a USB port, so only a small cable is needed to charge my BlackBerry. The Nokia Booklet power supply is small and light too. Unfortunately it has the thick three-prong power plug, but at least the cable itself is short. Then there is the iPad power supply. It charges the family iPad, we share to browse the Net, play games and display photos. By the way, the iPad camera connection kit has proved to be the most essential iPad accessory. The iPad charger also charges the set of iPods, used for audiobooks and evening parties.

For playing music the iHome IHM79 speakers are a great solution. Compact. Portable. USB powered. And they sound fantastic.

Then there is yet another power supply. The tiny Amazon Kindle one. It is used to constantly power the Huawei 3G/HSPA portable WiFi router. The Huawei is probably the most essential, yet almost invisible gadget, automagically spreading a WiFi cloud around places we stay at. For connectivity in Italy I bough a prepaid SIM card from TIM. At 19 Euro for 100 hours it is not as cheap as the Austrian b.Free or bob, but works very well, delivering almost symmetrical 1-2 Mbps range broadband, enough for most leisure activities, even when shared among five or six devices.

And speaking of Kindle, I decided to take it with me too. It is far from being killed by the iPad. It is very light, does not need to be charged at all, and can be perfectly used on the beach or in the pool, and the screen is still the only one that can be used in sunlight.

The entire setup, as described above, fit in the 123-GO-30, totaling less than 9 kilograms (with camera and lenses probably being close to half of that). Not bad for such a multifunctional setup.

Smart Design Sells

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:59:00 +0000

I have been contemplating getting myself a Mac Mini. The trigger to the thinking in this direction has been my recent adventure with the Nokia Booklet 3G. The Nokia is a great portable machine. Very good balance between screen capacity (resolution/size) and overall bulk of the machine, with phenomenal battery life. And after the 256GB SSD upgrade it really holds everything I have. Unfortunately both the screen and keyboard are too small to be used on a regular basis in the office (or in the home office in my case).

The good solution has been pretty straightforward - I purchased an external monitor. The Nokia has HDMI output and can deliver FullHD resolution (1920x1080), so a matching monitor seemed a good idea. The beauty of the HDMI port is it carries sound too, so essentially docking my Nokia Booklet is a matter of plugging two simple cables - HDMI and USB. HDMI for sound and display. USB to connect to various desktop devices - the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner (btw the ScanSnap is the best product I have had since two or three years, absolutely recommended, hassle-free paper-to-PDF converter), a DVD drive, Logitech mouse/keyboard and a number of others.

Unfortunately the Nokia is not a speed demon. It is just fine for web browsing and light office tasks, but anything more demanding (digital pictures editing, video editing, gaming) is out of question.

But since I already have this beautiful 22 inch HDMI screen, I started thinking of buying a small but more powerful computer to do the digital media tasks. First looks went to the Mac Minis. The monitor has DVI input too, so I was thinking about getting a second hand one, for little less. And this week the new Mac mini has arrived.

I instantly dropped any plans of buying the old generation Mini. The new one is so nice and the design is so simple, yet smart, I am ready to pay the premium. First, it is even smaller. But the dark side of all the Minis was the huge bulk of cables sticking out of its back. And the immense external power supply brick, with its three-prong mains cable. Nothing to fall in love with... But the new Mac Mini has changed a lot here. The DVI out with bulky mini-to-DVI dongle is gone, replaced by standard nice and (relatively) small HDMI port. The power supply is gone too! They found enough place inside the Mini to fit it. And thick three-prong cable is now replaced by a thin two-prong. What a change! With Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, there are just two cables going in: power and display. This is what I am willing to pay for. Smart, minimalistic, elegant.

Apple has been riding the design wave for years, reaping huge profits. It is difficult to understand why other companies have such hard time to match them. One of the reasons I bought the Nokia Booklet was the power supply. Not ideal, but at least somebody took some effort to design in a thin low voltage cable and a relatively short mains cable, reducing travel weight and bulk. It is still far from the weight / volume of the iPad's charger, but definitely a step forward compared to, say, Lenovo netbooks. Every quarter or so Sony releases an even smaller and thinner ultra expensive and ultra portable laptops. I suppose they do not sell well... Hey the machines are now smaller than their power supplies (but they last barely two hours without external energy source)!

It has been proven for years that consumers are ready to pay for smart design. This is a message to system vendors. Think a while. Not just about the core specs. But whether your charger matches your device. Is the plug angled instead of sticking out straight? Is the cable thin and flexible? Is the socket recessed a little? Aren't you trying to save on the number of external controls (think touch brightness and volume sliders...)? Are you USB ports powered when the machine is turned off and charging (this would allow to spare a number of chargers on the road)? These things sound easy and natural. But they rarely are present in products screaming "buy me!". Really smart attention to the details. Wins and sells.

Apple TV 3.0

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:43:00 +0000

Yes, Apple will make TV sets. Not just an add-on set-top-box, but an entire TV. They will be persuading the market, people no longer need traditional TVs, surrounded with multiple boxes, and entangled in the single biggest mess of cables yo have in house. And a number of remotes, one to change volume, another one to switch channels and yet another one to play a movie from a disc.

Even if we do not look too often at the interconnectivity mess behind the TV sets, we hate to operate them. Magnitude of inputs, hundreds of buttons on remote controllers (you know, every single function has to have a button in the TV world...). And it used to be so simple 50 years ago.

Google, together with major partners like Sony, Logitech and DISH, announced the Google TV initiative. A clear sign, after personal computers, game consoles, mobile superphones, the next battle ground is the living room. This has to be true. When yo look at your TV now, it is the most disconnected device you have. While there were times it was the most connected.

The Google / Logitech / Sony / Intel / DISH approach is open. Essentially meaning yet another super-set-top-box. And a cable or two. We can be 110% sure Apple will compete in this TV race too. They even have a product already on the market - the Apple TV 2.0. A set-top-box. But now they feel big enough and powerful enough to offer the complete integrated solution.

There will be a choice of screen sizes. They will have two wires: power and gigabit Ethernet. We will be sing iPhones and iPads to control them. Completely integrated. With iTunes on top, to deliver content (some of it based on the works of LaLa they bought some time ago), and applications. Yes, the apps! Just think about it. Does this make sense to have apps on iPhones and iPads and not on the biggest and best screen in the house? This is just the old model of thinking, that does not make us scream for the big format apps. We are used to the TV being just legacy TV... This will change.

The titans will clash again soon. Google with its openness and Apple with the proprietary cutting edge, elegant and minimalistic approach.

BlackBerry Tablet

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:14:00 +0000

Rumors of a BlackBerry tablet have been circling the Internet for a couple of weeks. Most prophets predict the bPad will be a companion device, connecting via Bluetooth to a BlackBerry smartphone and using it as a connectivity gateway.

This kind of reminds me the old faithful HP Jornada 560 PDA I used to pair over Bluetooth with an Ericsson T39 (one of the first Bluetooth/GPRS phones) to access the Internet. Those were the days! While a lot has changed since then, I still miss the concept of having just one mobile data contract and sharing the connection among many devices. It was Bluetooth then, and it is more WiFi now, with personal hotspots starting too pop up. New smartphones offer the mobile gateway option too - be it Windows Mobile 6.5 or Android. Only Apple does not allow tethering the iPad to the iPhone. But well, we have already learned Apple has it's own vision of the universe. In the meantime let's see what they are up to tomorrow at WWDC.

So coming back to the bPad. I would not be so fast to announce the failure of the concept. A tablet that is the size / weight of the Amazon Kindle would make a perfect mobile companion. And I guarantee it would sell to the existing BlackBerry users for $200 (if they can match this level, dubbed the "I-don't-have-to-as-my-wife's-permission"). We know a 6-inch touch tablet with WiFi and Bluetooth can easily meet this price point. What is important here, the current BlackBerry owners would not need to sign any additional contracts to use it away from homes/ offices.

Yes I know the Palm Foleo failed. But the concept of the companion device has legs in my opinion. Especially if it stays under 10 ounces, does require neither setup nor contract, and has other smart features (like reusing the charger). A Web/reader, or just a hassle - free, bigger screen for those airport lounges waiting minutes, when you are too lazy to take out the laptop, and you do not carry the iPad with you, due to the weight.

QuickLogic And Nokia: Confirmed

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:00:00 +0000

QuickLogic has been mentioned here a number of times. It was brought to me by Paul McWilliams, the editor of Next Inning, a technology investment newsletter. QuickLogic is a very smart company, and I like it a lot. With smart chips, referred to as CSSP's (Customer Specific Standard Products), QuickLogic helps to speed time to market delivery of new gadgets. It essentially fills the feature gaps, which are left open by long design times of the integrated circuits: processors and SoC's (Systems on Chip).

Yesterday, by courtesy of Brian Coleman, the brain behind the Domino Analytics, I got a confirmation that QuickLogic won a slot in the latest Nokia CS-18 HSPA USB modem, called the Nokia Internet Stick. The CS-18 is built around the Icera soft modem processor and is able to deliver HSPA speeds of up to 21Mbps downstream / 5.76Mbps upstream. Today's feature trend with USB wireless modems is they offer flash memory storage along with their primary function - wireless connectivity. The Icera processor cannot handle SD-card interface on its own, hence the presence of the QuickLogic helper chip.

Nokia is a very important win for QuickLogic. First, it is a major brand, and in a play to catch up with the competition in the USB modem market, it will be pushing sales of the CS-18 hard. And second, the just started relationship with QuickLogic will not end with the CS-18. QuickLogic has many exciting solutions in its portfolio. Some of them, like the display enhancement, are able to empower Nokia with features to fight for the pole position in the exploding smartphone / tablet market.

Follow Me Across Devices

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sat, 29 May 2010 10:03:00 +0000

Apple has become the world's largest technology company, crowning the phenomenal decade of growth. Overtaking Google and Microsoft, firing on all cylinders fueled by extra hot (I mean cool...) products and even more expectations. I bet nobody predicted such outcome ten years ago, when the first iPod (5GB spindle, firewire) was hitting the store shelves. The iPhone has been even bigger game changer, essentially transforming the industry. Today every phone is a smartphone, with the top ones trying to challenge the king. Mobile Internet is a service we all know, understand and expect. George Gilder's vision of a teleputer is reality today. So the question now is about tomorrow, and few years from now. Will Apple stay at the top or will it be conquered?

We live in an ever accelerating world, so any long term predictions are inaccurate by default. Today, instead of predicting, I will focus on what I want, and wait for to happen. If my wishes and needs are in parallel with other's wishes and needs, chances are the technology and market will develop to answer the needs and fulfill the wishes.

The computers I use are always a compromise. A compromise between comfort and size / weight. Between processing power and battery life. And there is no way to have a single machine, that is ideal for every task. That is why we usually have more than one computer. One with a big screen and big keyboard and comfortable mouse sitting on the desk at home or at work. The second - portable one. It is either a laptop that is too heavy, or a netbook that has too small screen and keyboard. Then some of us have iPads / Kindles and similar tablets. And finally smartphones. What all these computers have in common now is the applications and content we use and share among them. We take pictures with smartphones, want them to display on iPads. We write documents on desktops and want to continue reviewing them on the road. We book hotel rooms and air tickets on our laptops and want to have them on our smartphones. Today even TV is entangled in these scenarios (and will be more... you have probably already seen the Google TV...). Why not starting an episode in the living room and continue while riding a bus?

So the idea is to have the context following us when we switch from one device to another. By context I mean the state of everything we do with computers. The open tabs in Web browser. Position of those tabs. Browsing history. Saved passwords and cookies. Spellcheckers with customized dictionaries and rules. Multimedia with position markers - where we paused reading / watching / listening. Address books. Points of interest geotagged on maps. And even trash cans / recycle bins.

First, to get there, we have to virtualize the context. We have to move all our activities to a single master machine, somewhere in the cloud. A machine that is as personal as my email account, and will keep the entire context of mine. Installed applications. Opened documents. Saved passwords. Customized spellcheckers. Favorites. Plus the content we own - music, photos, and so on. I do not care where exactly this machine is physically located. I just want to be sure it is secure, always accessible, and has enough capacity to hold everything I want.

Once it is there, all my computers will be just screens and keyboards attached to this master computer. I can start any task on one screen / keyboard and continue on another, exactly from the point I left. Even the simplest tasks of putting a shopping list on a desktop computer, and then grabbing my cellphone, and go to the shopping mall, and follow the list. Without any synchronization task in between.

What is more... switching to a new device, a task we hate today, will not require any effort. Unbox, connect to the Internet, log on to your master computer and you are done. No extra syncing, no application installation / reinstallation. Everything as before, only in a new form factor. Just imagine how big an opportunity this is for the hardware vendors! We would be changing devices much more often...

Now to put all those visions in a context. I have spent a lot of time with both Apple and Google products. iPhones and Androids. iWork and Google Docs. And I can tell you. Apple has the edge in hardware design and appeal. But Google is so far ahead fulfilling the vision of virtualized personal context following the user to any device, that the gap, at the moment, widens and seems almost impossible to close.

I remember working on a single text document simultaneously with a friend of mine two years ago. Two cursors, one at the desk using a PC, the other on a netbook in a train. And it is not a closed ecosystem. Using Google, I write my shopping list now in a FireFox window, and I pick my BlackBerry, where the document is updated. No syncing. Just opening a link. I did my conference presentation in Microsoft Office 2007 PowerPoint, uploaded it to Google Docs, where I continued editing it, and I can run the slideshow on my Nexus / Android smartphone now.

Comparing this to the experience of moving the same presentation from Windows via iTunes to the iPad - the latter was a nightmare. I had to connect the iPad to the laptop with a cable (kind of reminds me the null-modem based Laplink file transfers of the early 1990's). Beforehand I had to purchase the iPad Pages application (even though I already had one PowerPoint license for making slides). Then it finally showed on the iPad, but with evident conversion errors. Much more effective way was to play the same presentation on the iPad using just the Safari browser connected to the Google Docs service. The presentation renders way better than using iPad's Pages. Unfortunately does not output via the VGA connector, which seems to be reserved for the selected native iPad applications only.

So yes, I will keep on using Apple's hardware. The iPod Nano, I like to play my MP3s with. The iPad is also really nice and comfortable in many circumstances. And I will keep on using many other devices - my laptop, my Kindle reader, my smartphone. But I will not spend money on applications tied to any particular platform. So good bye, Apple AppStore. And I will not spend money on content playable on a single closed platform either. Thank you iBooks, and welcome Amazon Kindle. Any Kindle book I buy from Amazon, I can read on my laptop, my smartphone, my Kindle reader, and the iPad too, with the context synchronized (it opens on a page I left, when switching devices). And I will not be spending time creating content on applications tied to any particular platform. Microsoft Office has been good as a starting point (I have been using it for almost twenty years now....), but I can see Google Docs can already handle presentations better than I expected, and they are instantly available on any device I access the Web with.

It is time to start moving the personal context to the cloud, freeing it from the physical bounds of local hardware. Google seems to be the right starting point, with additional services like Kindle and Pandora. And by the way this is the old idea of Java clients, promoted in the late 1990's by a company named Sun (that does not exist anymore). Ten years ago it was too early. Connectivity was just not there. But now it is. Apps and null modem cables are dead. Long live the Web and wireless.

PS. I suppose some readers hear the Chrome OS ringing behind the story. I would not write off the other names... Microsoft has something brewing. And of course we have HP with the recently acquired WebOS (although Matias Duarte joins the Android team...).

Will MNOs Lose Their Voice Customers?

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:41:00 +0000

In the fixed line era, a phone number has been tied to a line. In the mobile voice era it has been tied to a handset (or a SIM card). In the coming mobile data era, the phone number will be fully virtualized. Tied to a profile of a user that logs on to a mobile terminal.

Trying to look at the potential landscape of mobile network operators in 2020, one thing seems to be clear. There will be no voice calls, at least not on a network level. All parts of a network will be packet data. Packet data with many classes of service, of course. There will be customers paying premium for priority and may be even CIRs (although the idea of CIR in a mobile network with shared resources may be stretched a little...). Voice will be data too. Simply VoIP.

Mobile VoIP, when finally supported by MNOs and handset vendors, will free us from tying our numbers to the mobile operators we sign connectivity contracts with. Phone numbers will become fully virtualized. Depending on a profile we sign on with when, booting the handset, and not tied to the signal provider.

Of course the incumbent MNOs will be providing voice number service too. But we will not have to get it from them. And most of us will not. Some because they will prefer to stay less tied to a single company. And others because there will be may voice number service providers, offering us much more flexibility and more features.

Think Facebook. Or Google Voice. They are the companies you may want to have your voice number registered with. Offering you many more features to handle a voice call, offering seamless addressbook integration, synchronization and backup. Services and features we have been begging our present MNOs to no avail. Not to mention integration of availability statuses, multimodal (text / voice / video) calls, wideband quality and so on... Worry not. There are other providers happy to give us what we want. And let the incumbents become dumb pipes, albeit mobile ones.

Fun With The iPad Camera Kit

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sat, 15 May 2010 15:32:00 +0000

Today on a somewhat lighter note... I have been having some fun with the iPad Camera Kit. As you probably know, the kit comes as a set of two adapters. The first one is a SD-card adapter, the second one is a USB adapter. Both connect to the only one port iPads have -the dock connector port.

Both adapters are aimed at performing just one function - copying digital photos from either an SD card or directly from a camera (over a USB cable) to the iPad. The Photos system application is responsible for handling this task. And there is nothing more. It simply scans a camera - specific subfolder of the \DCIM folder on the attached storage and lets you select and copy photos to the iPad. Disappointing, I have not even found a way to copy the photos to the host computer. I was hoping to see the copied photo files somewhere within the iTunes, but it seems like I was hoping for too much...

But I decided to play a little bit with the kit. There is nothing you can do with the SD adapter, apart from plugging an SD card into it, but with the USB... :)

First I checked the USB adapter works not only directly with a camera over a cable. It perfectly fine accepts USB card readers, in my case I plugged in a USB-to-CF adapter and the CompactFlash card from my FujiFilm S5 Pro was recognized. Still only the \DCIM\100_FUJI subfolder was accessible (photos outside this folder were not visible from the iPad). But at least the camera kit proved to be useful to interface the iPad to a CompactFlash card (via USB reader).

The second test was to see if it works with a hub. I have this nice Belkin TuneSync powered hub. It is powered, has 5 USB ports and an iPod connector. Plugging the hub to the iPad and then the CF reader to the hub worked just fine. That means the Photos application is able to traverse hubs and iterate through ports to find the storage it handles. So far so good. Having a hub connected, I tried to plug in two card readers. And two is too much for the iPad. Once it finds the first one, it stops looking further. Unplugging either of the two let the other one be visible.

The final test was to plug a hard drive. I had this small 1.8 incher taken out from the Nokia Booklet at hand. Plugging it in (via the hub and an USB to SATA adapter), however, did not result in any action.

The bottom line is iPad is (hardware - wise) capable of interfacing to various storage subsystems. The limits are in the software, or more precisely - at the strategy level. For some reason Apple does not want people to make use of external storage.

But there was some fun at the end. I plugged my old iPod to the Belkin hub and guess what - it was visible by the iPad. Allowing to unidirectionally share content (photos) between the two. Is this something Apple has forgotten to block? I do not have a second iPad at hand to test, but it looks like the camera kit allows to hook the two together :)

Nokia Booklet 3G - The iPad Alternative

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:34:00 +0000

It looks like I have found the ultimate netbook. The Nokia Booklet 3G. I will not use the word "killer" here, but this is a computer that can be considered a serious alternative to the iPad. The Nokia is based on a different approach, the more traditional one. It is a classic. Mechanical keyboard, Intel CPU, non - touch screen and runs Windows 7. But what is unique to the Nokia, among many other netbook designs, it is the first, which hits at least the same score on the "cool factor" meter. I took a number of photos of both devices side by side, so you may judge for yourself. For me it has been the love at first sight. And it is not only the looks.

Before the Nokia, there had been several approaches before, by Sony among others, to create the ultimate mobile computer. But the Sony Vaio X was able to run only for three hours on a charge. While the Nokia is designed to run for twelve hours. To be honest the battery performance sold me the machine. Full day computing on a single charge is very important. Especially when the size and weight of the computer goes down. Often supplies and cables weigh a third of the machine they power. First this is not the case with the Nokia, as the designers put at least the same attention to the power supply design as they did to the main unit. And second, with 12 hours battery, there is no need to carry a power supply on a one day trip.

And there are more options, not present in other netbooks. The screen is high - res, 1280x720, which is a little less than my current 1440x900, but it is far better than the standard netbook 1024x600 (limited by licensing restrictions of the Intel Atom chip). 1280 x 720 seems to be perfectly fine for me, especially when properly configured. A word on that. Most web pages are designed for 1024 width. That potentially leaves 256 pixels to be utilized. I reconfigured my windows to have the taskbar vertically at the right edge. I also armed my FireFox with the Tree Style Tab addon, effectively moving the tabs from top to the left edge. That still leaves 1024 horizontally for Web pages without a horizontal scrollbar, while showing full gallery of up to 30 or more open tabs. At the same time getting rid of the bookmarks tab, using small menu icons and turning off the text menu bar maximizes vertical space.

The Nokia also has other goodies. As the "3G" name implies, there is a built-in HSPA wireless modem (by Option), with conveniently located SIM card slot. It takes a standard SIM and does not require shutting down the machine or removing a battery. The driver integrates with standard Windows 7 dialer and does not introduce any fancy 3rd party application. There is a 1.3MP video conferencing webcam with microphone. Stereo speakers, SD card slot, HDMI out and three USB slots.

I did a clean Windows 7 install (this has been my paranoid rule of the thumb, since I once purchased a WiFi router with a trojan preinstalled). The device specific drivers had to be downloaded from the Nokia website. But they installed without a glitch (including the BIOS update). You can feel the machine is not a speed daemon. It runs the single core (with Hyperthreading and VT) Intel Atom Z530 at 1,6GHz with 2 watts power budget. There is no active cooling (no fan), meaning the machine is very quiet. The aluminum case acts as a heat sink, but is only very lightly warm.

The slowest part of the system is definitely the 1.8 inch 120GB hard drive, which seems to be just a bad design decision. My own acceptance test for the Nokia has been the upgrade to fast SSD storage. The original hard drive in the Nokia is a 1.8" Toshiba MK1235GSL 120 GB consuming 700mA at 3.3V. I intended to upgrade it with the 1.8" Toshiba THNS256GG8BAAA-FDE coming from my Lenovo X200s. The latter drive is a fast SSD, with capacity adequate for my present needs and - most importantly - it is an FDE drive. FDE means Full Disk Encryption. There is a security chip (similar to TPM) on the drive and the drive self encrypts all the information written to it. Such process is both trouble-free (no software needed) and fast (does not depend on host CPU). As I write this column, my SSD - FDE - upgraded Nokia is finishing copying data from the NAS server. I am going to describe the SSD upgrade procedure in a separate column, for the moment all I can say it works and is fast. The downside has been the battery life - contrary to the crowd wisdom, SSD drives often consume more power. The one I have is rated at 1600mA, a 130% increase over the original one, taking the battery life down to 8.5 hours, which is acceptable to me, considering the speed increase, and the fact the upgraded machine has zero electric motors inside, making it the first 100% solid state computer I have ever had.

Last but not least, there are a couple of nice to have accessories I would recommend, should you decide to make the Nokia Booklet a primary workhorse. A wired (RJ-45) USB - to - Ethernet adapter may be handy in some situations (they can be purchased very cheap, for less than $10). I am also looking for a nice (preferably DisplayLink - based) USB - to VGA adapter, as there are still projectors not equipped with HDMI socket.

Finally I have to confess there is one thing making me mad. It is the audio port, a 3.5mm one, with integrated microphone connector. Like in all iPhones, iPads and BlackBerries. But no! Nokia has managed to make it incompatible. The headphones that come with the Nokia do not work with an iPhone, iPad or Blackberry. And the Blackberry headphones do not work with the Nokia. Aaaarrrrrrrggghhhhhhh! Why oh why....? It is like the "micro SIM in the iPad" decision... Something I will never understand....

The Ultimate Gadget Bag

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 02 May 2010 18:37:00 +0000

There are times when I tug along with me a lot of stuff. I mean gadgets. Typical lazy vacations, when I fly away, then rent a car and drive around... I have my fully equipped D-SLR camera, with a number of lenses. It is accompanied by all sorts of accessories - filters, cleaning kits, spare batteries, chargers. I also have a second, small camera for hiking trips or skiing, it has its own set of batteries, filters, a charger. Then there is a laptop. The often mentioned here Lenovo X200s. With own power supply. Then a bunch of laptop accessories - USB cables, wireless modem / Wi-Fi router, USB sticks. This is all delicate and precious, so pack all those items as my carry-on luggage. I have been through many cases, sacks, bigger and bigger as my gadget ballast keeps getting bigger and heavier. Finally I have settled with - what I consider today the ultimate gadget case - the Pelican 1510. It is designed from the ground up to accommodate gadgets. The basic configuration is a sturdy case, with soft padded dividers, aimed at holding the photographic equipment. Quite often it is configured with the Lid Organizer, a set of zipped pouches attached to the lid. Perfect for photographers.

I am not sure for how long the Pelican 1510 has been on the market, but it surely remembers the days of analog photography. Why? Because there is no dedicated compartment for a laptop computer. And laptops today are considered photo equipment. Almost every photographer carries a laptop nowadays. Unfortunately the 1510 cannot be configured to accommodate a laptop. Or can it?

There is another version of the 1510, called the Laptop overnight case, or LOC. It does not have the photo - oriented padded divider, but on the other hand has a lid equipped with a laptop case and a pouch for power supply / cables and other small accessories.

The two variants can be merged. Unfortunately you cannot just go and buy the lid laptop pouch. You have to buy another case, the 1510 LOC, and move the lid to the original 1510. Or better, start with the 1510 LOC and buy a set of padded dividers for it (part number 1515). During my last trip to CES, I was lucky enough to "sell" my story to the marketing team of Pelican Products. They were very kind and shipped me the laptop lid insert. I hope they will make it a standard accessory. Or will even consider offering a preconfigured 1510 case with both padded dividers for cameras / lenses and a lid capable of accommodating a laptop computer. This is now my configuration of choice, and I am very happy with the case. At the moment it allows me to store all the gadget equipment I ever wanted to carry with me. And I really hope the Moore's Law and other general trends in miniaturization will continue looking forward, to balance my ever growing number of gadgets. The airline limits are strict and the 1510 is already the maximum carry on size allowed.

iPad Falls Short

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:30:00 +0000

The title says it... I am disappointed with the iPad. Well, actually it has been only four days since it arrived (I wanted it earlier but the volcano messed my plans). The bar of expectations has probably been raised too high. So what is up with the device?

First it is very cool. Probably the coolest gadget on Earth. A little heavier than expected, but feels great in hand. Feels even better in the original case. The case itself is one of the smartest designs I have ever seen. It covers the screen. It folds back 180 degrees. It can be folded to raise the angle of the device sitting on your laps. Or it can be used as a table stand when you want the Pad to act as a photo frame. Cool :). The on-screen keyboard works better than expected. I am writing this column sitting on a train with the iPad on my lap. It is the best virtual touch keyboard I have ever used. The screen is very good. The touch interface works brilliantly. The battery life is awesome - full day on full brightness.

So could the hardware be improved? Certainly yes, but it already is on a top level. There is really nothing to complain about. And nobody has ever done it better so far. I mean the mix of screen, weight, battery life, input interface. Almost perfect. Two little improvements I would add are: BlackBerry - style "touch and hold to get a capital letter" option and dedicated screen brightness control. Yes, there is an ambient light sensor, but you need different settings for slideshows (brightness and vivid) and different for reading a book (dimmed). So I find myself often going to the setup screen to change the brightness.

Speaking of hardware / system issues, one thing Windows users should note is poor quality of text rendering on the otherwise gorgeous iPad display. Clearly (pun intended) the iPad does not support the ClearType technology. It is understandable, as ClearType is owned by Microsoft, but this has been a big setback for me. Certainly a point Microsoft should use to demonstrate their slates display content “so much better” than the competition.

Where is the heart of the problem of my disappointment then? It is the software.

It all starts with the iTunes. The iPad is a slave device. It cannot live a life on its own. When you turn it on after unboxing for the first time, you can do nothing with it. You have to connect it to a master computer (Mac or Windows) running iTunes. The connection is by means of a white cable, which reminds me the old days of 1980’s, when we used to "network" computers with serial null-modem cables. When connected, iTunes does some initialization work and offers you to upload music and photos to the iPad. And here is the second problem. The process is very slow. Transferring music, it shows at least some progress, but when it gets to photos, it stalls. Mine was sitting doing nothing for more than an hour. And then it announced, it had some 12 thousand photos to "optimize". Strange, as I thought my photos were already quite optimal, but it seemed Apple had different opinion on that. The "optimization" process was running at a speed of about 40 photos a minute, so I quickly figured out it needed about 5 hours to finish the job. Too much. Especially as there is no way to use the iPad when it syncs. It only displays the "slide to cancel" message. I canceled, planning to rerun the job in the night. But this experience was repelling. You wait for this glory gadget for months (or even years in my case). Then it ships. Then the volcano erupts. Finally you get it and it wants five hours on its own to do some "optimization". Grrrrrrr...

The iTunes - like it or not - becomes now your daily mantra. Anything you want to do with the iPad requires iTunes. And this software is so poorly designed. It started years ago as a console to manage music on iPods. But then iPods evolved into iPhones and iPhones into iPads, which in fact are full blown portable computers, while the iTunes concept has remained the same... Be a master and have its slave on a cable leash... It is a bad fit now. iPad should synch everything over its Wi-Fi connection and, more importantly, do it in the background. Tethering it to the host machine over a cable is no longer in vogue. Microsoft had this concept (remember ActiveSync?) about ten years ago, but now Windows phones sync over either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Even Blackberries can do this sans wires. Hello Apple...!

In the anticipation of the arrival of the iPad, I had purchased a number of applications beforehand. iTunes downloaded them charging my credit card accordingly. I spent some $100 for those apps (count that in when you estimate your iPad investment). The apps are cool. There are thousands of them. Most are still available only for iPhones (iPad can run them, but they look ugly). So to prevent an aesthetics shock, buy only the genuine iPad apps (dubbed sometimes high-res or HD). After consulting a friend of mine, who is a Mac addict, I got the X-Plane flight simulator, the Formula 1 app, a game of chess and a bunch of others. Later on I realized I needed the iWorks suite (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) too. That set me back another $30. They are all very cool. The coolest one probably is The Elements, a beautiful interactive periodical table. My kid also loves playing the X-Plane.

I also got myself the Amazon Kindle reader application. The Kindle I like. It is simple to use and most importantly makes me comfortable buying Amazon ebooks, as I can read them on my laptop, my dedicated Kindle reader and now the iPad. It is not so with the iBooks app, that is very cool, but closed only to Apple platform. With Kindle I am certain whatever device I will end up in future (Android is now the likely contender, keep on reading to see why…), my Kindle ebooks will be available there. Good strategy, Amazon!

The apps are great. Have I said this already? Yes they are cool. My kid loves them. But I realized I really do not need them. May be to show to people how cool the iPad is. But more than ever, I realized, I needed the Web. The iPad comes with Apple's Web browser - the Safari. Safari has been the key factor behind the success of the iPhone, delivering the best mobile browsing experience. So the expectations for the iPad have already been elevated very high. And disappointment is even higher. Safari experience on the iPad is far inferior to the current standard I am used to, which is the Firefox turbo on Windows. By "turbo" I mean several add-ons, which make Firefox the browser platform of choice. The first one is the AdBlock Plus. It does what it says. Removes advertisements completely. Even the Google's sponsored links. And the entire sidebar of Facebook ads. You get more screen real estate for the content, more battery life (CPU cycles are not wasted to animate the ads), and of course, much less distraction. I just cannot imagine living without the ABP now. Once you try it, there is no way back. The second Firefox add-on I use is the Tree Style Tabs. It allows positioning the browser tabs on the left side of the application's window, which is especially handy on panoramic (16:10) displays that are now very common. I usually keep about 20 tabs opened on average, and TST is a great way to organize them. The last of my Firefox turbochargers is the Weave. It silently synchronizes all tabs, settings, cookies, and browsing history with the Cloud. So any other machine I run the Firefox on, it comes up with exact copy of my browsing session. Just think how lovely it would be to have this kind of functionality... To resume on a tablet the exact multi-tab browsing session you left on your big computer. Yes it would, but Safari on the iPad does not even have tabbed browsing to start with... Not to mention ad blocking add-ons or cloud based session synchronization.

Soon, when I got to the Web, I have found many other annoying limitations the iPad browser has (wonder why Steve Jobs still claims it does so many things better than a laptop... maybe he should use Firefox from time to time to be able to judge it better?). The glorified HTML 5 support is still not perfect - see the cover photo of YouTube embedded in a Google Reader page. But for me the most annoying issue is the lack of support for rich text html edit boxes. Due to this limitation Google Docs that I use heavily, work only in read-only mode, which is a big problem for me, making me think of other tablet computers, likely the ones running Android. Android will handle Google Docs perfectly, I take this for granted. Blogger does not work either. Yes I write this column now on the iPad, but have to use the bare html view, as the "compose" rich text view is not supported by Safari. Editing larger pieces of text is a problem even outside Safari. And not because of the lack of physical keyboard (the on–screen one works really well), but because there are no cursor keys. Simple task of fixing a typo a few lines above becomes monumental and annoying. Apple has tried to avoid the concept of a cursor, but it appears to be central to any document editing process.

Now when I saved my unfinished work in Blogger, I cannot continue with it on the iPad. The editing windows opens, but there is no way to get to the end of the typed text. Touch scrolling scrolls the entire page, not the text in the edit box. The rescue comes by means of the Pages application and copy / paste. But I would never call this is done “so much better than on a laptop”.

Flash does not work either, but you already know that. What has surprised me though, is how many sites use Flash, not only to display video, but many various components on interactive pages. It will take years until they all move to Flash-less design. Until that happens you are left in the cold with the iPad. On the other hand Google is integrating Flash deeply into their browser, so Chrome on Android potentially offers even better Web experience from the day one.
I also had problems getting to some sites I use daily. They are not mainstream, but use legitimate html constructs, and Safari somehow has problems with them. This is a potential show stopper, as it is hard for me to imagine right now going on a month - long vacations and not being able to access certain discussion forums I read daily.

There is no printing support and no way to create a PDF snapshot of whatever you have on a screen – be it a document or an electronic flight ticket, I usually back up as PDF. Also when somebody emails you a ZIPped file, you are toast.

Having said all that, I still like the device in some scenarios. Not much has changed since the day it was announced for the first time by Steve Jobs. It is great to read the morning paper, taking little space on the table, fits well beside a coffee cup. It is handy to do casual web browsing on a sofa. It is a great photo frame and a nice Twitterfall client (provided your budget can handle such extravagance). I also found it OK for a one day business trip. It is small enough to fit in a crowded economy-class seat and the battery is powerful enough to stop thinking of turning it off at all. But for anything more than that, I will be gladly coming back to my “Windows 7 / Firefox turbo” SSD Lenovo X200s laptop. It has been unbeatable for 18 months now.

Also my iPad already has its best friend. It is the Huawei E5 personal Wi-Fi mobile router. It makes any iPad a 3G one. Can even handle several at the same time, without the hysteria of micro-SIM cards.

Volcanic Panic

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:38:00 +0000

I planned to attend the Emerging Communications eComm 2010 conference in San Francisco, starting tomorrow. Unfortunately I will not be there due to the #ashtag. All planes are grounded and flights canceled. Truly disappointing, as I was really looking forward to the eComm sessions loaded with unprecedentedly fresh ideas.

Initially my flight was scheduled for Friday, April 16th. Initial connection from KRK to FRA departing at 11AM, then an hour and a half in FRA and the second leg to SFO. The day before I was returning home by car, late in the evening. Got a message about the volcano and the mess it produced... (BTW: Iceland should pay a huge pollution tax now...). But my flight was still showing green. Then the events started to flow:

April 16th, 00:10:00Z. I get an SMS from Lufthansa staqting my flight had been canceled and suggesting contacting the Lufthansa Service Center in Germany by phone. I was asleep at that time.
April 16th, 03:35:00Z. I wake up and check the clock on my BlackBerry. There is a new SMS notification icon active. The flight is canceled - I think before opening the message. It is. I try to call the number included in the message. I even do not get a "busy" tone, only the "Call Failed - congestion" message. I try to redial the number several times, but the message repeats. Clearly their call center capacity is exhausted to the point I even cannot reach the IVR. All the incoming trunks must be filled. I try to call the Lufthansa Service Center in Poland, only to hear a message they open at 8AM (06:00:00Z).
April 16th, 03:45:00Z. I try to look up some other service desk numbers on the lufthansa.com web site. But the web site is down, only showing the IBM WebSphere portal headers. This must be really bad - I think to myself. People desperately look for any information and all systems are down due to overload.
April 16th, 03:50:00Z. I find the number to the British Lufthansa Office in my Blackberry address book. Expecting long waiting time, to save on the phone bill, I call UK using Skype. The IVR answers and I keep on waiting (couldn't the system say the estimated waiting time?). After 50 minutes on line the call disconnects due to "insufficient funds". Strange. My Skype is set up to automatically top up using PayPal, when the account balance drops below 2 EUR. So it should recharge, but it did not.
April 16th, 04:40:00Z. I call my bank (my PayPal is linked to my credit card) to ask if they have something to do with Skype not recharging. Ah yes - they say - it is our anti-fraud system that kicks in... It let two transactions in a row, but blocked the third one. Thank you Bank, I have just lost a precious hour, not to mention EUR 20 I paid waiting on the line to the Lufthansa service center in the UK.
April 16th, 04:50:00Z. I check the lufthansa.com and it is working. I am able to get a list of phone numbers to service centers around the world.
April 16th, 04:52:00Z. I call the Lufhansa office in India using skype. But this a bad idea. I quickly realize the Indian English may be difficult for me and the waiting time may be long (it is the middle of the day in India).
April 16th, 04:53:00Z. I call the Lufhansa office in the USA. It is midnight over there, so I expect reasonable waiting time. The good news is the Skype call to 1-800 is free. So at least my bank will not mess up with this call. I switch the call to speakerphone and go take a shower.
April 16th, 05:59:40Z. I am still waiting on the line to the US office. In the meantime I try to call the local Polish office, still getting a message they open at 8AM (06:00:00Z).
April 16th, 06:00:05Z. I redial the Polish office only to get the 'Call failed - congestion" message I was getting trying to call the German office two hours ago.
April 16th, 06:20:00Z. My US call waiting in line is answered. With a help of an agent, I rebook my flight to Sunday.
April 16th, 18:00:00Z. Saturday flights are all canceled. Good I re-booked for Sunday - I thought.
April 17th, 14:00:00Z. I see the late evening flight from MUC to KRK is canceled. This means the plane will not be in KRK to take off on Sunday morning.
April 17th, 14:05:00Z. I try to call the Polish office. Congestion. Call the US office via Skype. After 45 minutes I am talking to an agent. He says there are no seats available on any flight on Monday. Sunday from MUC to SFO is the only option. And it is not cancelled. I need to get to Munich somehow.
April 17th, 15:00:00Z. I go to the train station to buy a ticket to Munich via Vienna. There is a very long line to the international counters. But they have some tickets left (after two hours in line). I come back home, finish packing things. My train leaves at 22:00:00Z.
April 17th, 21:00:00Z. I check the Munich Airport web site again. The Sunday SFO flight was one of a few not canceled. But now it shows as canceled.
April 17th, 21:05:00Z. I call the US office via Skype again. After just 15 minutes I am talking to an agent. She offers me a flight on April 22nd. Too late. I cancel my trip.

Retrospective. I wonder how many people were left stranded just because the had not had any access to relevant flight information. It is really ridiculous such simple processes as rebooking to the next available flight are not available via Internet. You have to call a live agent, who really gives you two options: fly the next available flight or cancel. I think 80% of cases would be solved this way. But no. They ask you to call a number that is simply not available, when too many people are calling. Even worse. The web servers are not scaled enough to service much higher traffic. Yeah I know - operating costs. But what are the costs of a couple of machines, compared to overcrowded service desks and call centers and customers left stranded...? It is clear someone should realize people know how to use the Internet, they have Internet access, either at home or on the road via their smartphones. Internet has been DESIGNED to keep working when all other means of communications fail. It is where most of us go in case of wide - reaching state of emergency, looking for information. It is really time to plan the capacity to handle traffic in such cases. It will be much more cost effective than scaling existing call centers 10-fold. Some may say hardware is expensive so we will not be planning for emergency floods. But there is virtualization. What would it cost Lufthansa to keep a sufficient number of hibernated virtual machines on Amazon's EC2? Nothing... And such instances could be put to work, should any unexpected event occur. Surely sounds like a simpler plan than having thousands of call center overflow agents waiting on standby. It is about time to rethink the strategy of being accessible to the customers. Technology makes it quite simple. If there is a will, there is a way...

Human Error

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:05:00 +0000

Days like today bring some more general reflections. Yesterday's tragic crash of presidential plane killed 96 people, among them the President of Poland.

But the World never goes to a stand still. As time goes by, the human nature is to learn from mistakes and improve the collective knowledge, wisdom and experience to avoid such catastrophes in future. Punishments (as Jeffrey Satinover points out in The Quantum Brain), together with rewards, are essential base-forming ingredients of the learning curve of our civilization.

Speaking of the learning curve - the rate of air crash related fatalities has dropped tenfold over the last thirty years. This by itself is a proof we learn and draw conclusions.

In the recent years there has been a far and wide reaching trend of implementing various computer systems aimed to improve flight safety. And the wisdom of the crowd is they are usually doing the opposite. Every now and then we read media reports of aviation accidents where computers are pointed as primary causes of accidents. I have had many discussions on that. Even not touching aviation, people often point car ABS systems as not being able to brake as efficient as a non-aided human driver. That may be true, but only in ideal, predictable conditions, when the driver is focused on his performance. And this is the point. Fatigue and distractions are concepts not known in software algorithms and electronic brains. So is mental pressure and audacity. In vast majority of situations ABS saves lives. Because we are not top performing race drivers, and we are "just" humans, meaning we happen to be distracted and tired and surprised with sudden and unexpected conditions.

The same principle applies to aviation safety. We are eager to discuss the potential contribution of fly - by - wire system failures, especially to the accidents, that have not been fully explained. Like the June 2009 AF447. Deep in our minds we tend to favor smart humans over dumb computers. But computer failures do not explain why the AF447 flew straight into an inter tropical convergent zone cumulonimbus build-out, while the fuel calculations potentially do. And here we touch another factor, frequently contributing to disasters, which is cost cutting, a direct derivative of greed.

Of course there are many well known accidents, that simply could not have been avoided simply because we did not fully understand the underlying conditions. Like the fatal series of Comet disasters of 1954 caused by previously unknown phenomena of metal fatigue. Or the loss of the Columbia space shuttle. But statistically, like it or not, majority (more than 50%) of aviation accidents are caused by human errors. At the same time the big decline in fatalities over the last thirty years has to be contributed to increased use of computers assisting humans in difficult tasks of piloting and navigating aircrafts. Computers are far from perfect though - we still learn and improve both the hardware and algorithms. But their unspoken strength is they always obey the rules, while humans repeatedly tend to bend them, as if they were not able to learn from the past mistakes.

iPad Will Be To Printed Magazines What iPod Was to CDs

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 18:55:00 +0000

The Web is abuzz on what iPad will be, will change or not... The early reviews are very positive. In my opinion there is one long reaching aspect we have not paid enough attention to... yet...

Magazines.

We have already had paperback books finding their new electronic homes in e-Readers around the world. Kindle was a great product. Was. Because its time has just passed. A typical "generation 1" e-Reader, represented by Kindle and other less successful platforms, was an almost 1:1 electronic equivalent of the black-and-white paper version. They were very good for static, monochrome text. Books were followed by newspapers, delivered daily in their electronic versions to Kindles. Amazon of course was trying to do the same with magazines, that, by definition, have much richer content, with glossy paper, color fonts and especially color pictures. And here is where the "generation 1" of e-Readers has come short. I tried a trial subscription to Time on my Kindle, but canceled it just after getting the first piece of content. It was completely stripped of everything that makes me buying Time. Honestly Time on my Blackberry (via dedicated application) is a better experience than Time on Kindle.

Now enter the iPad. Color and motion replace static gray-scale. The viewing pleasure is like HDTV compared to the old black and white tube TVs. Plus touch navigation on top of that, replacing old style cursor and buttons. Battery life is shorter, but as long as it is full day, it is irrelevant. Cellphones have trained us the nightly charging habit. Now that we have the Kindle application available on iPad, all purchased Amazon e-Books can be on the iPad too. But magazines will breathe full life and color.

But this is just the beginning. Once unleashed from their static paper form, magazines will have to evolve. Just look at the mind - opening experimental interactive magazine cover, that has been circulating the Web for two weeks now: http://vimeo.com/10207926. This is the future of content - rich periodicals. They will finally have to reinvent themselves. But the opportunity for a second live of Time, National Geographic, Cosmopolitan, Newsweek and many others is here. People will line up to subscribe.

By the way it is interesting to watch the clash of the titans (Apple and Adobe), looking at how the leading Web sites, that used to rely on Flash are investing time and money to dress up and look pretty on iPads. The above Vimeo example used to be flash - only, yet it is on Apple's list of iPad-ready sites, meaning it will work Flash-free. We cannot say Apple has already killed Adobe, but certainly proves a Flash - free future is possible.

Predictive Mobile Navigation - Reloaded

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 17:42:00 +0000

Back in 2008 I touched on the concept of two-way personal navigation systems. Most navigation devices / applications today are still one - way. They receive GPS signals from satellites, and based on that compute the current location, rendering it based on locally stored map data. usually the story ends at this point.

Now consider what happens when all these millions GPS receivers can report their whereabouts on-line, real-time, to some servers in the Cloud. And calm down please you who cry "privacy violation" now. It is not about you personally. It is about statistics of the crowds. Just quantitative data. I do not care where exactly or how fast you drive. But knowing where and how fast how many people are moving (or standing still) means a lot. Simply means real time traffic data.

Of course we have had such systems for years now. Variants of the TMC (Traffic Message Channel, based on FM radio broadcast technology) are in service world-wide. But the are neither accurate, nor secure (due to poor authentication hackers can easily inject bogus TMC messages into the system), and require special FM receivers.

Today we have this strong teleputer trend - every mobile phone becomes a personal connected multi-purpose supercomputer, taking over functions of variety of dedicated devices. I have not seen the exact numbers but it is not a far stretch to assume there are as many people using their superphones as personal navigators, as people using dedicated personal navigators. And that ration tilts towards the superphones. By the way: have you noticed almost all new phones being released now are almost identical? I mean they entire surface is a giant high resolution touch display? This is what makes phone a superphone and places making voice calls somewhere down the priority list. The top of that list is occupied by applications. Web, music, messaging, social networking and... navigation.

When personal navigation moves from being a device to being an application on an always - connected personal superphone platform, suddenly there is an always-on TCP/IP communications channel at disposal. And there are servers happy to receive and crunch the location data sent over this channel. Inrix is probably the leader in this space, offering its real traffic data as a service to many service providers worldwide.

But real time is no longer satisfactory. What we want are forecasts. Triangle Software, the provider of the Beat The Traffic, has recently launched new consumer - oriented services. They have just announced iPhone and Blackberry (what about the Android?) applications available at http://beatthetraffic.mobi.

Of course traffic forecasting is just one application of two - way mobile navigation systems. There are many more, including dynamic, location - based social networks (where Aha Mobile is extending its lead), various alerting systems and - of course - targeted advertising ("You have been driving for three hours now, time for a rest, a highly recommended cafe is just 5 miles ahead...").

And by the way - speaking of mobile / targeted advertising - MNOs should offer a service like that: I give them a list of phone numbers (think: participants in my loyalty program) and a list of GPS coordinates (think: locations of my retail stores). Now every time somebody from the first list arrives in proximity of a location from the second list, they fire me an event, I can respond to. Usually by sending a personalized message. I know many companies willing to pay good money for such stream of events. Great example of a two - sided business model. Anybody?

eComm2010 USA

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:10:00 +0000

Today I would like to attract your attention to the upcoming Emerging Communications 2010 conference. There are not many events I am so honestly positive about, but this one is special. The reason is it gathers many "out of the box" thinkers. It is put together by Lee S Dryburgh, the man I referred to in my post back in 2007. When I met Lee at that time he was a speaker at another conference. Later on he started putting together the eComm series. I have to say I love his vision.

I have been working with MNOs for many years now. Both with big and small ones. And I have to say I am terrified witnessing the lack of innovation they have. The bigger they are, the worse. Yes I know things are different in Asia. But Asia is a different story. At the same time Europe and North America offer just three basic services. Bell - style poor quality point - to - point audio calls, short text messages and dumb data transfer. And it has been like that for the last 15 years. Sounds like it is time for a change. But it looks like nobody is interested. They complain the (voice) revenues go down and costs (mobile data) go up. And not really much is being done to change it. At the same time mobile money and banking in Africa skyrockets and Asians use their mobiles in thousands scenarios not even thought possible by the Western world.

And that is why I love the eComm series. The ideas and concepts these people put together are so refreshing, they restore the faith in the industry. At the same time we may be certain we will see many successful ideas and ventures. Suffice to say my 2007 blog post mentioned above refers to Facebook as the primary vehicle for user generated content. Today we have Facebook surpassing Google in certain metrics, and nobody questions its leadership.

So come down to San Francisco in April for a strong dose of industry refreshments. I will be there too, sharing the excitement of the visionary speakers and thinkers. For those willing to join I have a special discount code: use SEYQVPAI when registering. And see you there :).

iPad or Flash?

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

So the iPad can be preordered now. I somehow lost my initial enthusiasm, so my personal feeling is the preorders are not building as fast as expected. But this is just personal. In fact folks may be racing out since the gates opened last week...

So why the loss of excitement? Well... honestly my feeling is the device is not 100% perfect.

First thinking of buying the iPad at the very first possible moment, I started thinking about it is as of a purely Web tablet. Thus no need for local storage (especially not for the overpriced 64GB of flash). My iPad content will be in the Cloud. Or on my laptop.

This is the second point. The iPad will never replace my laptop. It is designed to be a slave accessory. Synced via iTunes to the master. It has no I/O ports, so I will not be using it to collect my digital pictures directly from a camera either. So to carry the iPad with me on the road I would need to carry BOTH my notebook and the iPad, which would be an utterly stupid setup (I try travel light, but still feel I tug along with me too many gadgets).

So the iPad will stay at home, on a sofa or in a kitchen. That is why I tend to lean towards the WiFi-only version (neither 3G nor GPS is needed at home).

Then I started thinking about the sofa computing. What do I do there? Well... mostly browsing light, casual content. And that includes Flash. All those hundreds of crap "funny" links and attachments people forward each other using email and various other social services. Hey, wait! Did I say "Flash"? Flash is evil... ruled out of the iPad. So no sofa computing either?

In the end it looks like it is going to finally find a resting place in a kitchen. AllRecipes.COM alone is enough to justify at least one iPad per household. The second one may ultimately go to the bathroom, especially when M-Edge will arm it with its custom, floating, waterproof case (a killer accessory for the iPad in my opinion).

And that is about it. So I have a place for two basic models in my house (kitchen and bathroom). Should I then go and spend my frequent flier miles to get on a morning transatlantic flight to New York on Saturday, April 3rd, to pick up the preordered ones and get back home? I still have not pulled the trigger... and chances are I will be waiting for the HP Slate, that potentially can fully replace my traditional laptop. Otherwise I may select to spend $300 or less for one of those "50-or-more" tablets coming to the market before the end of the year (as promised recently by ARM).

Femtocells On The Rise

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:35:00 +0000

Following my recent Mobile World Congress 2010 recap, there is one subject I did not touch, that deserves a separate blog entry.

Femtocells.

I posted on femtocells back in November 2009. The post was inspired by the upcoming book by George Gilder, that will be the American version of the original works of Henry Gau. Gau / Gilder vision is, as always, both ultimate and radical, heralding the inevitable failure of LTE and massive simplification of network topology, optimized for just one task: bidirectional video streaming. While Gau Telecosm is by no means the Vision for the perfect world, the reality is, as always, far more complicated.

Personally I think we will get there, but the road will be much longer, as technology alone never wins in business environments. But there are clear signals we have already started the transition towards the world filled with femtocells.

Strolling along the crowded stands inside the MWC exhibition halls I had absolutely no problem using my broadband 3G connection. I think 2010 was the first year when connectivity was not a problem at all. Even when the halls were definitely more crowded with people with their always-on connected devices. I remember the past shows, when WiFi was falling apart, 3G was just not there and GSM data packets were on hold because all time slots were occupied by congested voice calls. This year was different. Despite the number of connected people and devices the throughput was there. Martin Sauter explained this scientifically in his blog post. What he described was not the ultimate femtocells world, but definitely something close to it. 300 narrowband carriers in the exhibition area.

Of course the topology must have been much more complicated, compared to Gau / Gilder vision. But I take it as a difference of real versus ideal worlds. And in my opinion things will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Even more. There will be more and more intelligence going into the very edge of the radio network. The wireless bandwidth will always be scarce, so there will be many decisions to be taken by the very edge network points, including the femtocells. We can be sure the wireless edge will be running full Layer 7 deep packet inspection, prioritizing the traffic based on many conditions, including customer - level service class. Quality Of Service, not the amount of data, is what we will be paying for. If I am a premium subscriber, in a very congested area, my voice and video packets will have maximum priority. Then there will be my web packets, with all the asynchronous services (like email) at the very end. And behind that will be packets generated by economy subscribers. Just exactly like on an overbooked flight. Business class goes first, followed by platinum and gold frequent fliers and only the remaining seats are distributed among a small number of lucky economy class passengers. On the other hand, when a flight is only half - sold, selected economy passengers are upgraded to business class at no cost.

The L7 DPI at the edge femtocell level has had a very strong presence at the 2010 MWC. PicoChip was the king of the hill, capturing most attention, but our well known L7 players like Cavium were present there. Of course the big ones, including Qualcomm are trying to close the gap.

Personal WiFi HotSpot

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:38:00 +0000

Over the years I have tried a number of cellular wireless modems. I remember my first one - the PCMCIA form factor Nokia so called "high speed" data card. It was before mobile networks started offering packet data. Sounds strange today... No packet data? Yes that is true... I made my first GPRS connection probably in 2001. I remember I used the Ericsson T39 to route packets from my laptop over Bluetooth and then over GPRS data connection, using the famous *99# dial string. But before the Ericsson and GPRS there was the Nokia HSCSD card, able to utilize up to four GSM time slots to make it 4*9600=38400 bits per second on a dedicated point - to - point connection. And then GPRS arrived, upgraded later on to EDGE and now to UMTS and its evolution standards. With UMTS I have used a USB - type modem most often. Purists often opt for integrated 3G module in their laptops, but somehow I have always felt USB gives me more freedom. I remember two years ago spending holidays in a very remote place. So remote there was no coverage. But in a strong need for connectivity I fixed the USB modem to a long pole I then sticked out of a roof window using an extension cord and I could connect. With a built-in modem module I would have had to do this with the entire laptop...

USB modem has also been giving me freedom to share the connection among the family members and friends - passing the modem around, everybody with own laptop could use it for a while. Last year I even bought a small WiFi router - one looking almost identical to the Apple Airport Express. It had an interesting feature - was able to use a USB cellular modem as a WAN port. I was using it successfully during holidays, with two or three laptops sharing the same 3G connection, by means of a local WiFi hot spot. But it required mains power supply and was difficult to put in a pocket (together with a USB modem sticking out).

Recently a new class of devices has arrived, pioneered by Novatel and Verizon under the MiFi name. The MiFi actually is a WiFi router, using 3G mobile network as a WAN interface. And it has its own battery. All that plus the fact it is the size of a credit card makes it a truly personal mobile hotspot. The first MiFi was made for Verizon, so was using CDMA EvDO, a standard not available in Europe. Later on Novatel introduced a GSM/UMTS variant. The UMTS version is a little thicker compared to the EvDO, but still has the width and height of a credit card. Perfect to slip in a pocket. Honestly I was about to get one for myself, but found a similar alternative. The Huawei E5830. Fractionally bigger, but the price I could get it for was half of the Novatel, so I decided to get it. You know all those gadgets have really limited lifespan, so it is good not to pay the absolute premium up front... I could get one with a contract too, but the point was to have a SIM-free version and to be able to use local prepaid SIM data cards when traveling abroad. Like the BOB in Austria. Immediately after the Huawei arrived I had an opportunity to test it both in Poland and in Austria.

It has three buttons to turn on and off power, wifi and mobile data connection. It also has a mini-USB port (a micro USB would be more welcome here as it becomed bot mandatory and de facto standard). The USB can be used for charging and for configuration. The unit I have does not support web - based configuration, relying on a Windows - based application instead. Shame, as it cannot be reconfigured from an iPhone or iPad. Fortunately there seems to be an alternative firmware that supports web - based configuration (I have not tested this yet...). The unit has to be reconfigured when you change SIM cards, as each local MNO uses different APN and network settings (stupid but true!). The famous *99# dial string remains the same, but APNs, users, password are different.

Entering Austria I set it up for the BOB breitband SIM card I had with me. It connected promptly and we were able to connect to the Internet using the three laptops we had in the car (the driver was only using his iPhone). First things first I went over to the speedtest.net to see how fast the connection was. The feeling was it was fast, but I wanted the numbers. And the numbers just blew me. Over 5Mbps downlink and over 1Mbps uplink. All that from a device the size of a box of matches with a SIM card offering 1GB worth of data for just 4 Euros. Wow... Actually this was the fastest personal Internet connection I have ever had. Suffice to say we were able to watch the olympics live via EuroSport streaming to our laptops, traveling at 100 miles per hour down the freeway. I also succeeded connecting my Blackberry via the same connection using the UMA feature. It was working flawlessly. The battery lasted some four hours, but in a car this was not a problem as we connected the thing to a charger. The next day when we went skiing I dropped the Huawei in my pocket and this way I was carrying a personal WiFi cloud spread around me. My friends with their iPhones could enjoy their WiFi connections (avoiding data roaming charges) as we were riding the chairlifts together.

After two weeks of testing I am very happy with this Huawei personal 3G-to-WiFi router. It works flawlessly, never hanged or freezed. The startup time is about 15 seconds (including logging on to the mobile network and setting up the 3G connection). The only complaint I have is it does not charge from the USB port on my Kensigton universal laptop power supply. And we tried three car chargers until it started charging, ultimately the Blackberry branded one proved to be successful. May be they fixed this already in the new release (there is a new model coming out with an LCD display instead of the five LEDs in the current one).

My last wish would be the unit supported USSD messaging, as this is the default way prepaid SIM cards are topped up. Today it does not, so I have to plug the SIM in my phone just to issue the *101*chargingcode# command... But life is never perfect... is it?

Take-offs From Barcelona

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:05:00 +0000

The 2010 GSMA MWC show was smaller than it used to be in the previous years. And there were not many surprises either. Shows are no longer calendar marking events for vendors, rather get-together places to meet and discuss. With two exceptions, most of the already present trends continue to evolve. Let me expand the most important ones a little.

There seems to be no more money and innovation in voice. People use voice to talk and want to do everything else mobile using the data channel. Yes, Orange + Ericsson were running live HD Voice - a business class service based on wideband AMR-WB codec. But MNOs generally do not want this service. First it consumes more resources on their networks oversubscribed with data packets. And second - their marketing departments have no clue how to sell this service as most of them claim to have the best call quality already... So they are afraid of competitors pointing fingers at them "you see - to have a quality conversation you have to pay more"... So for the moment we are stuck with Bell (Alexander Graham that is...) - like quality of conversation...

Data is on the rise. But MNOs will not benefit much from that. Despite talking a lot, there are not many signs of them being successful smart pipes. Pay by use mobile navigation is probably the only application based on the smart pipe / DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) approach. Other than that everybody wants them to be dumb pipes. Albeit good. You see and hear the LTE (the "even faster" mobile data) everywhere. Along with LTE comes EPC or Evolved Packet Core, where Cisco with its recent acquisition of Starent becomes a leader. After all Cisco was always an IP company and now everything goes IP. On the personal front this is music to my ears. I am significantly invested in EzChip Semiconductor, the leading vendor of wirespeed (up to 100G) network processors. The new Cisco boxes, with the flagship ASR9000 are based on the EzChip NPUs and so are Starent (now renamed as Cisco) products. This has been somehow cryptically, but unambiguously confirmed by EzChip's CEO during the Q3'2009 earnings conference call:

"Several of the recent acquisitions in the carrier Ethernet market included our customers that were acquired by our tier1 customers, this too, in turn further expand our business with our tier-1 customer base as this acquires companies to become additional business unit.".

You have to learn how to read these NDA-bound conference call statements... The one above says "Starent has been a customer of EzChip and will continue to be after being acquired by Cisco". It just means the wireless backhaul / core driven by LTE upgrades will be a significant market for NPUs in general and for EzChip in particular. LTE and exploding mobile data consumption will be a driver to other complementing NPU vendors... like the NetLogic. MNOs will be differentiating mobile data service class based on variety of rules... customer status... local congestion... destination of packets... content... Put simply, rich Layer 7 packet processing will be done at every base station.

Snapdragons are everywhere. Qualcomm, with the current 1GHz chip finally is the platform of choice for phone and netbook (sorry: smartbook) manufacturers. Microsoft says "we worked with Qualcomm on Windows Phone 7". And even Nokia, the fiercest enemy of Qualcomm prepares to launch a Snapdragon - based phone. This speaks for itself... The chip must be way ahead of anything else on the market.

And speaking of Microsoft... The empire strikes back. Windows Phone 7 Series has been a real surprise to me... like the Fenix from ashes...! BTW: they should take that Windows Phone 7 (what a narrow minded name!), sit it on the upcoming new dual core 1.5GHz Snapdragon (the QSD8672), and kill the iPad for good. I tell you - I see the Windows Phone 7 mPad powered by the dual core Snapdragon in my mind's eyes. It is the iPad killer. It unbelievable how the not yet shipping iPad is already sooo passee...

The second surprise was the absence of both Nokia and Intel. They only had a press conference announcing joining forces on mobile Linux distribution. Nokia seems to be searching for a new direction, while Intel plays a catch-up with Arm, especially in the light of the Qualcomm's Snapdragon pervasiveness... Both X86 and WiMax, the cown jewels of Intel are fading in the light of continuously rising powers of Arm - based Qualcomm CPUs and Qualcomm - driven 4G standards known as LTE.

The third surprise was Verizon announcing partnership with Skype to allow subscribers make VoIP calls on their network. What a change of direction! But somehow in line with what others have been doing too... Think JahJah was acquired by O2... Probably they will install some preference DPI policies to make the legitimate VoIP traffic higher priority for a fee...

Garmin has finally dropped their old software base and selected Android for the Nuvi Phone. But then there is a question - where is Garmin's value in the chain? Asus makes the hardware... Google the OS... Navteq supplies maps... And all that when all major software platform suppliers (Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft) say navigation is built in the platform at no extra cost... There surely will be a meltdown among the incumbent personal navigation vendors... In the years to come personal GPS units will give way to smartphones... and companies adding value between map providers and phone / OS vendors, like Navigon, will thrive. Navigon makes probably the best software navigation suite, very popular on iPhone. It seems somehow constrained by the lack of multitasking on the iPhone, but surely will shine on other platforms (Android, Windows) too... These guys are thinking forward - opening their API. I talked to Garmin asking "how can I make an addon to your software?" and they just said "you can't".

BlackBerry announced the new WebKit - based browser. It is about time, as their current browser is very weak. "This time we've made it right" - surely yes, by acquiring the Torch Mobile. Speaking of BlackBerry - you see them everywhere. People talk about iPhones and Androids and Windows and buy BlackBerries. Mr Lazaridis, the CEO, claims in Q4 2009 alone they captured 42% share of smartphones in the USA, leaving Apple in dust with only 24%. Another bold (pun intended) move by BlackBerry has been to start offering the Enterprise Server Expreess for free (available as a download in April). Now think of all those small and medium businesses running Microsoft Exchange. Suddenly they will go out and buy BlackBerries! BlackBerry can be perceived as a meta - carrier for messaging and notifications. Notifications is what MNOs in their vision of becoming smart pipes should be offering to customers and 3rd party application vendors for a fee. Now that potential lunch is being quickly eaten by Blackberry...

Finally something that probably went unnoticed to most of the audience following the Mobile World Congress. Toshiba announced the TG02, an upgraded version of the original TG01 Windows - based, Snapdragon - powered smartphone. Among other features, there were focusing on innovation aspects, with "Regza" LCD control being one of them. LCD control dynamically adjusts contrast mapping of graphic content displayed on the device, depending on lighting conditions. This improves readability in sunlight and reduces battery drain. This really sounds like what Apical has been doing for years. Considering that the TG02 is based on the Snapdragon, it really sounds and smells like there is a QuickLogic CSSP chip inside implementing the Apical algorithms. It is great Toshiba finally speaks up loud about the necessity of clever LCD control. This technology really should be present in every smartphone. May be Microsoft will have it in the reference Phone 7 Series design? After all the QuickLogic chip that implements this functionality costs less than $5, improving both readability and battery life... At the same time it may add other benefits like accelerated storage access with the SideLoading technology...

Tired Consumers

noreply@blogger.com (Headworx) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:30:00 +0000

A friend of mine pointed me to the recent article at MSNBC about the meh reaction. It is true our reactions to the continuous stream of new products and services crying for our attention is muted. The article points to weak economy as one of the reasons that we are not that much excited about replacing the aging stuff with new toys. In my opinion the reasons are somehow different. It is not money but time and skills we invest most. And putting it simply we expect a good return on our investments. In the continuous paradigm shift every new device or service we have to learn how to use it. And the pace of changes is so fast, we almost never fully learn before a new one comes. And at this point it is no longer funny, as we get tired trying to catch up.

There is plethora of examples. The very recent one is the Google Buzz referred to in the before mentioned article. The Buzz was introduced last week and after reading the news I was expecting it to arrive on my Gmail desktop. And just after it arrived my first thought was "why do we need just another way to share information?". Does not Google know Facebook is the place to electronically interact with friends in a non binding way? Yes I know Google does not own Facebook, but the Buzz move seems rather stupid. I am already on Facebook and I am not willing to spend my time learning how the Buzz works, how to set up its privacy settings (and what do they mean) and in the end spend time setting a content replication between Buzz and Facebook (as I have set up between Twitter and Facebook).

Similar thoughts I have about the iPad. Friends keep on asking me if I will be using one. I simply don't know. I mean I will probably buy it. But there is no guarantee it will not fall in the bin already full of gadgets poised to improve the quality of life. I do not want another device to carry with me when traveling. At the moment I have one - the laptop, that is very universal. I can do banking and stock trading on it. I can import pictures and post them online using Picasa client. I can read news and I can respond to emails and post to my blogs using a keyboard. I can VPN to my home to check webcams and telemetry. I can keep a backup of my phone contacts in Outlook. And even all those tons of funny flash based crap people forward around via email play fine. Not sure all that can be done with comparable ease on the iPad. And carrying two computers on a trip with two power supplies and cables is pointless. No to mention monetary expense and the learning curve needed. At the moment I do not see the iPad delivering so much better experience on the go. So may be I will just have the basic WiFi-only for home use on the sofa or in the bathroom or in the kitchen...

And speaking of the iPad and portable computing, currently hardware - wise the Lenovo SkyLight is my favorite. It is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon, I called almost four years ago. I had it in my hand at CES, what surprised me was how light it was. If the battery holds the 10-hours promise, it may be a traveler's choice. I only wish it had a mainstream OS, like Android... But you never can have everything in life, can you? Anyway, in 2010 we will see a lot of Snapdragon / Android based designs - smartbooks and tablets.