The World is Analog

Three "Special Events" in Silicon Valley this week... and not an Apple in the bunch.

2010-08-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

While the Apple acolytes flock to the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco for another "Special Event" this coming Wednesday, Silicon Valley (which does not include San Francisco.. sorry) is the place to be for anyone interested in more than what the next iPod will look like.

Tuesday, August - 31: Samsung
On Tuesday, Samsung is hosting a Free the TV Developer Day at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose. Internet-connectable TVs were one of the big themes coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show this past January, and now Samsung is extending the app store concept from smartphones to the living room.

The lineup of guest speakers is especially interesting, including none other than the non-mock turtleneck wearing founder from Apple.. Steve Wozniak. Yes, the day before Apple's expected presentation of a reboot for the less than successful Apple TV, "the Woz" joins this lineup at "Free the TV":

Boo-Keun Yoon, President & General Manager, Visual Display Business Unit, Samsung Electronics Co., LTD
Tim Baxter, President, Consumer Business Division, Samsung Electronics America
Tim Westergren, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Pandora
Chuck Pagano, Executive Vice President – Technology, ESPN
Steve Wozniak, Chief Scientist, Fusion-io

Wednesday September - 1: Global Foundries
On Wednesday, Global Foundries will host their first Technology Conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Global Foundries has become a key player in the mobile wireless ecosystem with their participation in the Common Platform semiconductor manufacturing alliance along with Samsung and IBM. Other mobile chip companies participating in the Common Platform include ARM and Qualcomm.

Wednesday/Thursday September - 1/2: Set Top Box Conference 2010

As if the Woz's appearance at Samsung's event wasn't enough to overshadow the Apple event on September 1, the Set Top Box Conference 2010 opens at the Holiday Inn on N. First Street in San Jose on the same day. STB sponsors include a broad spectrum of logos across the connected-TV ecosystem; from semiconductor companies to networking equipment, traditional media companies to internet brands, and a new wave of contenders for the consumer's TV consumption device.

Don't think that Cupertino folks weren't cognizant of the STB 2010 schedule when they chose the date for their event. At the very same time as Steve Jobs is scheduled to take the stage, here's what will be on the agenda just 50 miles south:

10:00 - 11:00

Executive Panel Discussion:
TV in the Internet Era: The Intersection of Broadband and Broadcast

Panelist: Marty Roberts, Vice President of Sales and Marketing - thePlatform
Panelist: Vern Smith, SVP Business Development and GM of ViP-TV - EchoStar
Panelist: Larry Yang, Lead Platform Project Manager Google TV - Google
Panelist: Vivek Khemka, Vice President for Customer Technology - DISH Network
Panelist: Mark Barao - Ernst & Young

Also, in a session later on that day, interactive TV company itaas will present on "GoogleTV: Changing TV As We Know It".

It's looking like quite a busy week leading up to the Labor Day holiday. There's no doubt that whatever Apple announces (in their highly controlled & orchestrated forum) will be live-tweeted & blogged ad nauseam, so I'll be looking forward to really connecting with the companies driving next generation digital media technology... right here in Silicon Valley.

Mobile Monday, "So Many App Stores…Now what?"

2010-08-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

I've learned that the mobile industry is a very sociable lot. Besides the big industry trade shows like CTIA Wireless and Mobile World Congress, here in Silicon Valley you can probably find some sort of meetup related to mobile technology at least once a week. With all these groups and associations to choose from, Mobile Monday stands out for its global reach (100 chapters worldwide) and longevity (10 years and running).

The "Silicon Valley" (must have annexed San Francisco) Mobile Monday chapter recently put together a panel for its monthly meeting on the topic of "So Many App Stores…Now what?", to address questions such as "What makes a successful app?", and "How do developers to actually get paid?"

The panelists included two representatives of manufacturer-owned app stores:

RIM: Ian McDonald - Manager, Developer Programs
Nokia OVI: Michael Bergen - Senior Manager, Developer Relations & Partnerships

Independent, multi-platform app store Getjar: Chris Dury - VP Products, and app review website Chomp: Ben Keighran - CEO/Founder.

The panel offered opinions and advice on a number of questions near and dear to the hearts of most app developers, posed by moderator Jessica Dolcourt - Sr Associate Editor at CNET/CBS Interactive.

Here are my edited notes from the discussion:

What about discovery & payment, these are major issues for developers?

OVI: don’t rely on app stores. Use co-marketing. Talk to stores to get marketing exposure.
Chomp: on their site apps are ranked by user ratings. To increase downloads, use AdMob, Tapjoy.
GetJar: designed to solve the problem, focus on how to monetize.
RIM: work with small app marketing shops, generate PR to get attention from media.

Strategies for monetization?

GetJar: most app stores are horrible for monetization. Itunes average ~$20/user. Payments are extremely hard.
Chomp: iPhone is now easier than ever to monetize.
RIM: (App World) an “open ecosystem” with option for selling apps, partner closely with carrier partners, preloads, use GetJar, Blackberry ad service to supplement revenue, can aggregate ad vendors.
OVI: doing carrier billing is a pain. In markets where credit card billing and carrier billing are available (88 operators in 26 countries), have found up to 13X with carrier billing.

What are OVI, RIM doing to incentive developers?

RIM: 46M subscribers, common misconception - enterprise Blackberry users are only 50%, investment in new 6.0 platform, have 250K registered developers.
OVI: Nokia incentive is global reach, Forum Nokia.
GetJar: get featured, get viral, get downloaded/targeted. Developers should build a mobile website. It's not possible to rely totally on viral. Fragmentation will go on. To get targeted - address a segment, virtual goods. Productivity - antivirus is a good good category, top 10 on GetJar.

How to overcome bad reviews?

Chomp: app will be removed if review is bad. No 2nd chance!
RIM: From a VisionMobile report: the #1 source for feedback is friends. Use Mob4Hire to get feedback in a closed environment first. Problem with not testing in global markets, use DeviceAnywhere, Perfecto Mobile, incorporate localization.
GetJar: Developers always have a 2nd chance. GetJar believes that developers power the ecosystem, highlight the latest reviews.

Billing - preference for credit cards, PayPal, operator billing?

Chomp: people will buy if app is good. Price point on iPhone is $0.99. People spending ~$10/mo
OVI: all about ease of saying yes. Easy, secure & safe. Operator billing is a pain but easiest for consumers, and is important in developing countries where no credit cards.
GetJar: open billing solutions, PayPal and credit cards in U.S. Using credit cards for payment misses game users because of teen market. The design of app stores is limiting pricing. Suggests looking at the Facebook model, they have a smaller number of developers but higher revenue, higher engagement.
Chomp: users are now consuming apps like music. Many users discovering new apps are “addicted” to consuming and shopping for the latest. There have been 17B searches across Yahoo, Google and Bing.
RIM: Why not a target making a good app vs. churn? Highly integrated apps are more sticky (LBS, address book, etc.)

How do developers use ads in apps?

GetJar: only iAd has enough penetration to be sustainable. Virtual goods model of Facebook, Tapjoy.

How many users needed to sustain a business?

GetJar: similar to music, $1/user, need to get to $10k-$25k level,
OVI: don’t skim on QA costs.
RIM: advised catching defects early, follow standard manufacturing/quality processes.
Chomp: start as early as possible talking to users. “What are you using now”? User-centric design for mobile apps.

Here are questions posed from the audience:

Comment/opinion from a developer: $35k average developer cost for good app + $20K marketing cost, +$10K / iteration? Is average cost $80K? Claimed that $1800 is average revenue for paid apps.

GetJar: tough on iPhone for developers. Apple wants a lot of apps, but doesn’t care about how many make $$. Repeated point-of-view on strong advocates of mobile web for apps.
RIM: Advised using app as a launcher, widgets, code in HTML-5 with Java script launcher.

What % of developers are actually making money?

Audience member: < 5%
GetJar: activity now in apps as a marketing channel, trend for big web properties.
Chomp: (Mobile apps) like web in 90s, space is just starting to grow, still early.
RIM: comes down to the business model. Need to build an app not just a feature, the whole value proposition.

Are developers clamoring for better app stores or better tools and platforms?

OVI: Qt (used to was develop Google Earth), can port to MeeGo and Symbian. Importance of mobile web: Qt has SDK, and Mobile web SDK.
RIM: it’s both, widget tool kits, Blackberry App World 2.

So.. still want to be an app developer? It's become quite a gold rush, especially here in Silicon Valley. My observation is that developers are very much in demand, so the ROI is much more in your potential employability to one of the bigger mobile companies (or a startup) than in the money you are likely to make from making that 1-of-100,00 apps.

Regardless... Get out. Get social. Join a mobile meetup group. It's lots of fun and you never know who you might meet.

Oracle's patent infringement claims against Google

2010-08-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

A search of the U.S. patent database finds that there are nearly 2000 patents related to Java. If you are interested in digging into the seven patents that Oracle has accused Google of infringing in Android here is the list:

6,125,447 Protection domains to provide security in a computer system
6,192,476 Controlling access to a resource
5,966,702 Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging class files
7,426,720 System and method for dynamic preloading of classes through memory space cloning of a master runtime system process
RE38,104 Method and apparatus for resolving data references in generated code
6,910,205 Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine instructions
6,061,520 Method and system for performing static initialization

Hide in Plain Sight? Rumors that really aren't.

2010-08-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

Two headlines caught my eye in the Business + Technology section of this morning's San Jose Mercury News. Both stories were sourced from Bloomberg News.

I think that some technology writers are now so eager to break the next lost iPhone story that they don't bother checking the background facts. While both of these "revelations" were credited to unnamed "people familiar with the matter", neither story is a secret.

First, let's take PayPal "talking with Google". As you can see from the graphic at the top of my post, eBay was one of the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, the group that Google established to develop the Android system. As you probably know, eBay owns PayPal. So, yeah... I think they've probably been talking to Google for quite a while. In fact, a representative from PayPal spoke at the May-26 Meetup of the Silicon Valley Android Developer's Group, about how to incorporate their payment mechanisms in Android applications.

Now let's take a look at the "news" that nVidia is going to challenge Intel in the tablet market. This was announced way back in January, at the Consumer Electronics Show. The headline of an nVIDIA press release from January, 7 2010 read New NVIDIA Tegra Processor Powers The Tablet Revolution.

I wonder how long Bloomberg worked to find "two people familiar with the matter"?

In the image above, you can see the setup from a picture I took at Verizon's LTE demo at CES. The placard clearly shows the nVIDIA logo. Although the Android-based tablet is often mistakenly referred to as a Motorola tablet (mixing rumors), it was in fact manufactured with the nVIDIA Tegra processor by Innovative Converged Devices. Motorola is likely working on an Android tablet as well, but Motorola's role in the CES demo was only to show an LTE modem.

A Variety of Location-Based Apps from WCA's "Locationpolooza"

2010-08-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

This is a followup to my earlier post on the recent WCA Location-based Services (LBS) SIG event, dubbed "Locationpolozza". Links to videos of the presentations have also now been posted at the WCA website.

The five companies presenting at the WCA event showed how location data can be put to use in a variety of applications; from the very serious reality of civil emergency response, to augmented reality in shopping experiences, to enhancing your ability to "hookup" and flirt on the go (this might also turn out to be augmented reality.. you never really know till you meetup in person do you?).

CiviGuard showed how their application is able to communicate location-specific emergency alerts to up to 1M people in less than two minutes. The app is currently available on iOS and Android. Besides speed, an advantage of CiviGuard is the ability to facilitate two-way communication with civilians, potentially to crowd-source responses as an aid to help direct resources where needed.

As an interesting side note, CiviGuard traces its origins to the Singularity University, which Chris O'Brien wrote about in today's San Jose Mercury News. As Chris describes it, the central point of the Singularity Movement is that:

The pace of change in technology and science is accelerating so rapidly that the world is completely unprepared to deal with the consequences. And the message from the people who champion Singularity: We need to prepare.

Google is one of the primary sponsors of Singularity University. I'll leave you to read the Mercury News article for more details on this "movement".

ZOS Communications complemented the emergency notification theme of CiviGuard, but as a middleware provider rather than an end-user application. ZOS has developed "relevance filters" to avoid information overload, by using location data to more narrowly target messaging. ZOS serves applications such as the Amber alert system, but also expands the concept beyond emergencies to "lifestyle" alerts for situations such as park closings, or notification of public events.

Skout is touting their application as "the future of dating". Think real time location-based Match.com on a mobile device. Their service has more than 1 million users, and claims to be adding 10,00 per day, not surprisingly - mostly 20 to 30 year-olds. The app can notify users when a match comes into the vicinity. An attempt is made to protect user's privacy, by not revealing the specific location. Skout also has a separate app called "Boy Ahoy" for the gay community.

In order to monetize their app, Skout allows users (i.e. males I'm sure) to spend virtual currency in order to enhance their rankings. As an attendee remarked "does this mean a rich sleazy guy gets rated higher"? It's worth noting that a customer survey conducted by Skout found that 20% of their users employ the app to cheat on their partners!

MotiveCast is an application that employs augmented reality for "engagement marketing". The idea is to use hyper-local data that would be specific to a given store, so that shoppers could engage in games or contests as part of their shopping experience. Personally, I try to minimize my time spent shopping, but I'm sure I'm not their target demographic. This might go over well with mom's handing ther iPhones off to their kids to keep them amused.

With the increased adoption of smartphones, you may have already seen oblivious pedestrians looking at their handhelds in a crosswalk when they should be checking for traffic. I'm imagining oblivious shoppers running MotiveCast and banging their carts into each other, or into merchandise. That could bring a whole new element to shopping! Kind of like bumper cars.

Finally, Geodelic presented their offerings for consumers and enterprises. For consumers, the Geodelic app enables location discovery, i.e. a location browser that is more interactive and adds real time information as an improvement to something like the static, list-oriented Yelp or the checkin-based Foursquare. Feeds from Yelp, Wikipedia, etc. are added to the database of location information.

For businesses, Geodelic provides a platform for creating site-specific location guides, such as in airports or amusement parks. The company is also developing a a web-based authoring toolkit that could be used by consumers and businesses alike to create and publish personalized location guides. By incorporating advertising, and the ability to make purchases directly from the location browser, Geodelic has the opportunity to generate revenue from a number of different channels.

The last two location-based services, MotiveCast and Geodelic, show how LBS is much more than GPS. Hyper-localization will rely on enhancing GPS through WiFi, both to pinpoint location much more narrowly and satisfy the bandwidth requirements for rich media experiences.

My Interview with Fortune Magazine: Building Your Personal Brand

2010-08-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

The concept of establishing a personal brand existed long before the emergence of social media and the internet, but there's no question that online tools have made the process much easier. If you're on Facebook, have a blog or use Twitter, you are establishing your personal brand with every message. Career counselors advise job seekers to develop a strong personal brand, but it is important to also be aware of the potential pitfalls along the way.

If you are new to "personal branding" I recommend my presentation on Developing your personal brand through blogging as a starting point. You might also want to read my blog post - More on "Developing Your Personal Brand".

Businesses of all kinds now have no choice but to adopt social media in order to remain competitive. As more employees are now engaged in blogging or tweeting for their company, the intersection of the corporate brand and the personal brand has increasingly become a perilous area.

During a recent online Tweetup that I participated in (see The Impact of Social on the Analyst Industry), one of the comments that stood out for me was this:

the purpose of social media is to have conversations, and corporations don't have conversations... people do.

It is vital for companies to have real, credible (and brandable) personalities who can conduct these conversations. Anonymous or ghost-written messaging is greatly diminished in value, in my opinion. The challenge then is to ensure that the intersection of the personal and corporate brands is mutually beneficial, i.e. symbiotic and not parasitic.

This is the subject that Fortune Magazine's Josh Hyatt tackled in Building your brand (and keeping your job), in the July 30 online edition of the magazine. His lead-off sentence dives right into the parasitic or symbiotic issue:

Scott Monty's personal brand doesn't take a back seat to anyone else's -- not even that of Ford Motor Co., his employer. "I'm not somebody who can be accused of using Ford's brand to benefit my own," says Monty, the car giant's first global digital and multimedia communications manager. "If anything, the opposite is true."

This suggests a case where an individual brings the value of an established personal brand to his employer, potentially enhancing the company's brand. The opposite situation occurs as well. Social media provides new opportunities for companies to develop their employees, by encouraging them to communicate through their work.

I discovered that Josh was exploring this topic when he sent out a request for stories of workplace conflict arising from the use of social media. (See Symbiotic or Parasitic: the intersection (collision?) of personal and corporate brands for more on my experience with a previous employer). He and I ended up talking for a couple hours over multiple phone calls. You can find his summary of those conversations in Case study No. 5: Be sensitive to changing priorities.

From my past experiences working with journalists, who typically spend much less time on a story than Josh Hyatt did, I expect that what goes to "press" can differ considerably from what I tried to convey. This can be due more to the editor than the writer, or my own lack of clarity, but it is always difficult to distill a long conversation into just a few paragraphs. Fortunately, I can use this social medium to clarify some of the points in the the published version of my Fortune Magazine interview.

Three years ago Mike Demler was a senior staff product marketing manager at Synopsys, a $1.3 billion maker of tools used to produce integrated circuits. When the company asked if anyone wanted to blog, Demler enthusiastically volunteered. The now 55-year-old had earned his MBA a year earlier, and decided that for his career and the company's strategy "it was critical for me to become a recognized expert."

As a former integrated circuit designer, as well as a published author of one engineering textbook, numerous trade press articles and conference presentations, my personal brand in this field was already long-established. One of the reasons I volunteered to become a corporate blogger was to lend the voice of my expertise, to establish some 'cred' with customers in an area that was not a company strength. In this regard I was perhaps in a somewhat similar situation to Mr. Monty at Ford. But companies often fail to understand how an employee's personal brand can work to their benefit.

... His direct manager told him that a VP said he "was wasting time blogging." Still, he carried on—often in his off-hours—partly because he had seen so many reorganizations in the past three years that he expected priorities to shift.

I could tell, from my conversations with him, that Josh was struggling to understand why I kept on blogging after my group's VP said it was a waste of time. The issue here is perhaps the challenge of working in a matrixed organization. In a matrix there are multiple lines of reporting, and multiple internal "customers" to satisfy.

My assignment as a corporate blogger began literally days before the fourth VP in three years took over the group. While priority changes did occur, the real reason that I carried on blogging was because it was successful, and it fulfilled a commitment I had made. The launch of an online "community" and blogs was backed up by the top management of the company, above the level of the VP that criticized the effort, backed up by an extensive advertising campaign. Bloggers were treated like would-be celebrities at industry events, with a special booth to "meet the bloggers". So, there was a lot of positive feedback and encouragement along with the negativity. Unfortunately, while many managers are typically involved with who is hired, it usually only takes one to lay someone off.

Summary lessons

The advice offered in the Fortune piece is "Be sensitive to changing priorities". That is always good advice in a politically-charged corporate world, but here are a few things to think about specifically regarding the use of social media in your career:

Take care to keep your personal and professional social networks separate. This is easier said than done. For example - I have decided that friends are OK for Facebook, while colleagues are restricted to LinkedIn. It's tough, but I really try not to mix the two. (So, sorry if I didn't accept your friend request).
It should go without saying - Never criticize your employer online.
If you are going to employ social media in your job, don't do it unless the managers that signoff on your reviews, and can decide to lay you off, strongly endorse the activity.
Work with your social media teams to adopt policies and guidelines for best practices. Many companies are still learning on the run, but there is no point in re-learning lessons that others have already gone through.

A busy day for mobile in Silicon Valley: WCA and IEEE-CES

2010-07-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

It's a busy day for discussions of new mobile technology here in Silicon Valley - from applications of location based services to semiconductors.

At 3:30 this afternoon, I'll be heading up to Palo Alto for the Wireless Communication Alliance's LBS SIG presentation of Locationpolooza! The event is described as an opportunity for the "best and brightest" location applications to show why users should be excited about downloading them.

I have not used any of these apps myself, so I'll be interested to hear about the offerings from these presenters:

Skout -using location information to help find other nearby "singles" for flirting, chatting and potential dates. (In case my wife is reading.. I won't be using this one myself ;-)

Geodelic - looks like a personalized Yelp, combining location information with a personal preference profile to filter searches of nearby places of interest.

MotiveCast - the website shows a company in stealth mode, but I did find a YouTube video that said something about "motivating purchase behavior". There is also an online job listing for an Android developer to work on "the intersection of mobile gaming and augmented reality"

CiviGuard – a platform for crisis communications, targeted at local government emergency management agencies.

ZOS – a platform to create an "industry standard for communicating location information in the Location-Based Service (LBS) ecosystem".

From the WCA meeting, I'll immediately be going to the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Consumer Electronics Society meeting on Serial Port Memory Technology (SPMT). SPMT is a "new memory interface standard for mobile and consumer electronics devices". The technology is being developed by a consortium of companies, including ARM, Hynix, LG, Marvell, Samsung, and Silicon Image. SPMT is intended to address the need for higher bandwidth, low power memory. This was one of the challenges described by Greg Delagi, Senior VP at Texas Instrument, during his keynote at the International Solid State Circuits Conference earlier this year.

It should be an interesting set of discussions. Watch this space for a follow-up report.

A gift then, and a gift now. My introduction to electronics.

2010-07-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

In a blog post earlier this week, I shared the story of my very first introduction to electronics - way back when I was maybe eight or nine years old. I had been referring to that distant memory in my sidebar bio here on The World is Analog from the beginning, since the project that my Dad helped me build back then - a "foxhole radio" - was the spark that fired my interest in the technology that I still enjoy so much today.

By inspiring me while I was such a young boy, my Dad unknowingly paved the way to a career that quite literally changed my life. From the Rust Belt to Silicon Valley. What a great trip it's been! That 1st project, along with all the Gilbert Scientific kits and construction sets, were gifts that kept on giving.

I ended that blog post on "Antennas at War", with this postscript:

p.s. if you happen to come across an original edition of All About Radio and Television, you can imagine how much I'd love to put my hands on one.

Well..my awesome wife apparently read that. I was left speechless today when the book by Jack Gould somehow appeared on my desk. "Honey, could you show me something on your computer?", she said. And there it was, like a time machine taking me back to that day in the cottage where I lived as a kid... at 15 ¹⁄₂ Garner Ave. in Buffalo NY.

I couldn't wait to find the chapter on the foxhole radio. What a strange feeling it was to realize that this was exactly the set of instructions we followed, each image recalling a vivid memory from the past.

It was a great gift then, and an awesome gift now! Thanks to my Dad, and thanks to my lovely wife.

Google's Chrome Strategy: Browser + OS + HTML5 = Apps in the Cloud.

2010-07-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

Recent market share gains for Android smartphones have been well publicized, as devices based on Google's mobile OS now challenge for 3rd place behind RIM's Blackberry and Apple's iPhones. At the same time, less well known (outside the techie community) is that another operating system for mobile devices is about to emerge from Google's development Labs - the Chrome OS.

Like Android, Google is developing Chrome as an "open source" project.
Also, like Android, Google is promoting an app store model for Chrome.
Unlike Android, Chrome is targeted not at smartphones but at netbooks (and tablets?).
Also, unlike Android, Chrome's apps are hosted on the web, i.e. "in the cloud" through the Chrome browser.
Android apps = Java
Chrome apps = HTML5

Now the Chrome browser might be familiar to many of you, since it also has achieved a 3rd place position (passing Safari), but what is the purpose of another OS?

And, how will Chrome impact mobile computing?
Oh, and what's with another app store?

I had the opportunity to discuss some of these questions with two members of Google's Chrome development team at a Silicon Valley Meetup earlier this week. It was clear, from the lively discussions at the meeting, that the developer community is also unclear on how the dual efforts on Android and Chrome fit together in the grand scheme of things.

You can watch a video on the Chrome Web Store concept from Google I/O, but here are what I see as the key assumptions in Google's thinking:

Tabbed browsing has led to clutter, "why have multiple tabs for the same site"?
There is "no inherent discoverability on the web".
Too many sites ask for permission, and this will get worse with HTML5 features.
The taxonomy of the web will develop into two branches: rich media HTML5 "applications", and more standard web "pages".
It is hard for developers to monetize these applications on the web.

Tab clutter is a subjective issue. I myself apparently abuse browsers well past their capacity, as evidenced by frequent crashes or freezing up of my PC. But I like having separate tabs.

On discoverability, I'm not sure that Technorati, digg, StumbleUpon, or a number of other social website sharing services would quite agree. Google is going up against Facebook on this issue.

Regarding monetization, Google's Chrome Web Apps do provide a benefit over the mobile app store model. Developers will get 100% of the revenue.

Since the Chrome browser runs on multiple platforms, the Chrome Web Store will also facilitate access to web apps that can be run on PCs, Macs, etc. However, underlying Google's strategy are the advantages envisioned for cloud computing, especially for mobile devices.

Google Chrome OS will make your netbook more secure, even disposable. You don't have to worry about it being lost or stolen, since there won't be any data or applications stored on it.
Faster boot times, since Chrome OS requires a solid-state drive.
Cheaper computers, i.e. no OS "tax". Just like Android, the Chrome OS will be free.

Developers in attendance had many questions, many no doubt influenced by the current Android fragmentation issues, that the Chrome strategy appears to repeat if not exacerbate.

I was asked about Chrome versus Android during my presentation at the Netbook Summit back in May. As you can see in that presentation, there are already Android netbooks on the market, though not so much in the U.S. as in other regions of the world. Many Android tablets are in development as well. My answer then was that I could envision a convergence, offering a choice of browser-based vs. native apps. While the distinctions between Android and Chrome appear to be (excuse the pun) a bit cloudy, in my discussion this week with the Google representatives it was made clear that Google sees the two OS development efforts as "completely orthogonal".

While a technically sound argument might be made for that, the issue I have is that success in the consumer market - which this effort targets - is very dependent on making the user's life simple. While Google's culture of experimentation is a great one for driving innovation, as we saw with the Nexus-1, "build it and they will come" is not a prescription for market success. As an engineer turned marketer myself, I have seen this many times.

I wonder if Google has run any focus groups on prototype Chrome devices? Understanding the end-consumer is a key differentiating strength that Apple possesses. It's all too common in engineering-driven organizations to take the approach of "who needs marketing"?

Here are some issues that I see, and some thoughts on why a converged Android-Chrome strategy should be considered:

The Chrome Web App store is based on Google Checkout, which has been a limiting factor in deriving revenue from Android apps. Relatively few people have Google Checkout accounts, and many people don't want to register on another pay site. The Chrome App solution is to redirect to the application's host site for alternate payment mechanisms, such as PayPal. A user should be able to register their own preferred payment mechanism once on the market site.
As was announced at Google I/O, the Android Market is finally going to get desktop browsing capability. Why not make one unified Google Market? The Android Market already knows everything about my device when I login, and I fail to see the benefit of creating multiple shopping sites. Since web sites can be turned into a Chrome Web App, will we see Android Market apps in the Chrome Web App store? Confusing!
This will get worse with the introduction of Google-TV and a growing number of non-smartphone applications for Android.
Or maybe better yet, why not hand off the whole app store to a 3rd party that has more consumer-facing expertise and brand identity (e.g. Amazon)?
While the Android browser is, currently at least, not Chrome - wouldn't it make sense to give Android devices the same access and user experience for Web apps? This is going to be critical to the success of Android tablets, especially with Google's emphasis on HTML5 rich media applications.

Here is the planned rollout schedule for Chrome Web Apps:

mid-August: developer-facing launch.
October: consumer-facing launch. Sellers in U.S only at launch, in USD
Other countries and currencies to be added later.

Stay tuned. Innovation never sleeps!

Antennas at war.

2010-07-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

No not THAT antenna!

If you've read the little blurb in the sidebar of my blog, you know that the first electronics project I ever worked on was a radio that my father helped me build when I was about 8 years old. As I recall it, there was a book on electronics for boys (ok - they were sexist back then) that had the project in it. The radio was based on building an antenna from a coil of wire wound around a cardboard toilet paper tube.

Now, before you assume that I am making some sarcastic allusions to another antenna story that's been all over the news recently... I assure you that is not why I write this today. (Although I have to admit that more iPhone-4 jokes do come to mind).

Here's the story.

I was looking for some wire to use in order to hang yellow jacket traps today, when I recalled that I had a spool that's been in my toolbox as long as I can remember. I've used this wire for similar purposes many times in the past, although never (that I can remember) for its intended electrical application.

Except for one time.

Suddenly it struck me. This was the very same wire that my Dad bought for the antenna coil in that radio project so many years ago. I don't know why it never really struck me so vividly before today (faulty memory). My wife likes to tease me about holding on to things, but this has to be some sort of record for me. With my memory jogged I can even see my Dad taking me to the electronics parts store on Vulcan Street in Buffalo. I looked it up, and I think it's still there... Radio Equipment Corp.! How cool is that?!

View Larger Map

So, I had to do a web search to see if I could find that book. I physically looked for the book a few years ago shortly after my Dad died. I had the somber task of closing up my Dad's house when it was severely damaged after a burst water pipe went undetected in the middle of winter. Regrettably, the book was not to be found.

However, Google did find something that looked just like the image in my now rejuvenated memory, the "foxhole radio". According to my internet search, the origin of my first electronics project (and 1st experience in the world is analog) was "How to Build a 'Foxhole Radio' ", from All About Radio and Television by Jack Gould, Random House, 1958.

That's a little bit different than my memory of a book on electronics for boys, but it could make sense because my Dad did some part time TV repair when I was growing up. Google books also came up with a reference to a guide to books for school libraries, so maybe my memory is correct as well. Perhaps the article was copied in other forms.

As the story goes according to my internet search, soldiers in WWII were not allowed to have radios, for fear of detection by the enemy. So they improvised with this simple - unpowered - design. I may just have to go see if I can re-create one now.

In any event, I thought this was a great way to cap off the week that brought us "Antennagate". It also serves as a great reminder. Yes, The World is Analog!

p.s. if you happen to come across an original edition of All About Radio and Television, you can imagine how much I'd love to put my hands on one.

Here's why AT&T iPhone-4 customers don't just return it.

2010-07-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

With all the ongoing controversy regarding the iPhone-4 antenna design flaw (yes, that's what it is), not to mention the absurd PR disaster, some pundits have blithely suggested that it's much ado about nothing... customers must be happy or they would just return the phone.

After reading this morning's San Jose Mercury News, I was struck by the thought myself.. "why don't customers just return the iPhone-4"? According to the story by John Boudreau...

The antenna problem is upsetting iPhone 4 owners like Ceci, a 40-year-old nurse from San Jose who would give only her first name when approached at the Apple Store at Valley Fair mall. She said she has had reception problems with her new iPhone and that if she weren't already locked into a contract with AT&T, she would buy some other smartphone.

Since the iPhone-4 was released less than 30 days ago, couldn't Ceci just return it for another AT&T smartphone.. like say the HTC Aria? Is she confused about being "locked in"?

I think cell phone contracts are very confusing, so I decided to check out what would happen if I wanted to return a new iPhone-4. I had a little chat with one of AT&Ts online customer support agents.

Here's how that conversation went.

Chat Information> You are now chatting with 'Kelly'

Kelly: Welcome to AT&T Premier online sales. How may I assist you with placing your order today?
Mike: Hi.. I just have a question regarding return/exchange policy on a new iPhone-4.

Kelly: I will be happy to help you with this. What can I do for you?
Mike: with all the problems people are talking about.. if I get an iPhone-4 and want to return/exchange.. what is the policy?

Kelly: For the 30-day, risk-free trial, if you are not completely satisfied you can return your undamaged phone for a refund in the first 30-days and pay only for airtime and usage charges; prorated monthly service charges apply.
Mike: I see.. and then I could switch to another smartphone.. like the HTC Aria, at no extra charge?

Kelly: There would be a restocking fee, and if there is a price difference you would have to pay that but there would not be a second activation fee.
Mike: and what happens after 30 days?

Kelly: Then you are bound to the service agreement.
Mike: ok.. so with the 30-day risk-free trial.. I would be better off canceling my AT&T service altogether?

Kelly: Do you mean if you don't like the phone?
Mike: Yes, assuming I got a new iPhone-4 and wanted to return it within 30 days.. I have to pay restocking fee to switch but nothing if I quit?

Kelly: Correct. You just walk away if you are completely displeased with us.
Mike: Does that seem odd to you? I need to pay to stay?

Kelly: For the restocking fee you mean?
Mike: Yes

Kelly: I wish that could be waived but it is policy that I have no control over.
Mike: OK, thank you very much for explaining your policy.

Kelly: I'm sorry that I can't waive that. I had to pay it myself. But I love the coverage and the phones we have!
Mike: Great! You have been very helpful. Thanks.

Kelly: Can I do any more for you today?
Mike: That answers all my questions. I appreciate your help.

Kelly: It was my pleasure.
Kelly: Thank you for choosing AT&T! We appreciate your business.

OK, so a new AT&T customer could just switch to Verizon if they are not happy within the 1st 30 days of their contract. But it could be that, with all the legalese in these contracts, consumers are intimidated by these 2-year commitments.

Then there is the issue of bundled discounts. How many consumers are taking advantage of 2-way home/mobile phone service discounts, or 3-way home/mobile/TV (as my wife and I have)? This can create further disincentive to switch. Would AT&T really rather have customers leave their service altogether than provide a free exchange?

It will be very interesting to see if this comes up at the Apple press conference on Friday.

4G Applications: notes from the WiMAX Developer's Symposium at Stanford (part 2)

2010-07-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

In Part 1 of my report from the WiMAX Developer's Symposium at Stanford, I reviewed the opening presentations from Clearwire and Sprint, the two companies that are currently rolling out a nationwide WiMAX network in the U.S. In this post I will review some of the presentations from the Applications Showcase, where entrepreneurs (and some established companies) described how they could take advantage of the increased capacity and speed of a 4G network. I found that a number of the presentations were not particularly 4G-oriented, so I will highlight a few of the applications that in my opinion best-fit the theme.

Triage-4G
It should be no surprise that video applications are generally expected to drive demand for 4G wireless services. I predicted as much in my report on The Emerging 4G Wireless Landscape in the U.S., in which I showed how the higher capacity required to meet consumer demand was creating a disruptive event in the industry... one that Sprint/Clearwire was well positioned to exploit over the next two years.

The WiMAX Applications Showcase at Stanford demonstrated how the use of mobile video in non-consumer market segments also presents many new opportunities. In recent years the wireless industry has increased their focus on mobile health (or telemedicine), which was the topic of this presentation on Crisis Telediagnosis - Emergency Response.

The idea in this presentation was to build an application that can link first responders on emergency calls with a network of remote medical specialists, to aid in "on the spot" triage. The first responder would use text tags transmitted via SMS to a server to describe a patient's condition, so that an appropriate physician could be notified. The physician would then log into the system to access a live video feed to continue the diagnosis with their own eyes.

I'm far from a medical expert, but I'm skeptical on how much value a physician can add to a trained paramedic in such instances. In a true emergency time is of the essence, and I am guessing that video would not necessarily be as valuable as a live streaming data feed from wireless medical instrumentation. Also, liability and insurance issues being what they are, I suspect this would only be practical between emergency teams affiliated with local hospitals.

Embedding diagnostic medical instruments in mobile devices is an actively growing field. Industry collaborations such as the West Wireless Health Institute, which includes Qualcomm, GE and Cisco amongst its sponsors, are working on developing new innovations in this area.

4G Video Surveillance
This presentation of using video over WiMAX comes not from a startup or a student project, but from the Moog Videolarm company that has been in business since 1976. The company, which is headquartered in Atlanta, has installed 200 of their Liberty Series 3G/4G cameras in a city-wide network there. I have to say that it felt a little creepy to be watching unsuspecting pedestrians on the streets of Atlanta while sitting in an auditorium at Stanford - 2500 miles away.

The Liberty Dome provides a built-in modem for the Sprint-Clearwire network, enabling (secure) IP connections for H264-compression cameras. (We were told that the streaming video we were watching was only accessible with a password for that IP address).

Besides the obvious privacy concerns, the point that struck me was that the cameras use an upload stream that consumes 500Kbps of data 24-7. I wished that the scene in Atlanta had included some citizen walking into the scene with a new HTC EVO 4G smartphone, to see what effect it would have. The Clear WiMAX service is currently capped at a maximum of 1Mbps in the upload direction, and in my experience with the service in Las Vegas, each camera is equivalent to the average data rate that I achieved.

In the earlier presentation from Sprint, the theoretical capacity of each WiMAX tower was spec'ed at 420Mbps. This assumes the (unrealistic) availability of the entire 150MHz of spectrum at an individual base station. So let's divide by 5, since Clearwire uses 3X10Mhz deployments currently. That gives us a maximum capacity of 84Mbps per tower. Now divide that by 3, to get a capacity per sector of 28Mbps.

Finally, divide by 4 because the TDD spectrum is allocated in a 3:1 download:upload ratio. The result, by my calculations, is an upload capacity in an individual sector of only 7Mbps.

Forget privacy for the moment. The question then is: How many surveillance cameras per sector? And.. what effect do they have on the consumer experience?

Geogad - using social media for travel guides
Geogad is described as "Your own personal mobile tour guide". The name Geogad is explained as:

A combination of two words, geo, which means Earth or world, and gad, which means to roam or wander.

Geogad allows users to build a customized tour of their destination by downloading audio-video recordings that describe a desired set of stops. The videos I sampled were slide shows, but one can imagine more rich content in the future as befits a 4G application. The tour can be run on a smartphone, and Geogad has released an Android application for this purpose.

The tours can be from amateur travelers or professionals, and that's where the social aspect comes in. Users can also upload their own favorite tour stops to share with other users. It's sort of like a multimedia version of FourSquare or Yelp, but the idea of mixing & matching a set of tour stops is a novel one. Geogad was awarded one of the awards for best app at the Symposium.

Android in the enterprise: Cisco introduces the Cius business tablet

2010-06-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

The Android ecosystem expanded in a new direction today at the annual Cisco Live! event in Las Vegas, as Cisco announced a "F irst-of-its- kind HD Video-Capable Business Tablet" based on the Android operating system.

Cisco Cius business tablet in its docking station
Originally uploaded by Cisco Pics

While Apple has been promoting the iPad for use in the enterprise, the new Cisco Cius leverages the high penetration of Cisco^® Unified Communications for business. The company has installed "more than 23 million" of their IP phones at 85% of Fortune 500 companies.

The Cius is smaller than the iPad at 7" versus 9.7", allowing docking with a desktop phone stand. One of the interesting features is that the Cius will employ an Intel Atom 1.6-Ghz processor with 32-GB of flash memory. This is the second big announcement of an Intel-based Android device in a little over a month, following on the announcement of Google TV.

Also interesting is the list of connectivity modes listed for the Cius: 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3G/4G data and Bluetooth 3. Cisco has been active in WiMAX network development with Clearwire and was recently a sponsor of the 4G WiMAX Symposium at Stanford University.

For application developers, this expansion of Android into the enterprise will provide new opportunities, as an SDK for Cius will be released:

Cisco will help expand Android developed applications for business by offering Cisco Collaboration Application Protocol Interfaces (API's) to developers through a Software Developer's Kit (SDK).

Other interesting features of the Cius:

Make a voice or high-definition video call at the desktop or remotely.
A front-mounted 720p HD camera which refreshes at up to 30 frames per second
5-megapixel rear facing camera that can transmit streaming VGA quality video and capture still images, and dual noise-cancelling microphones for audio conferencing.
Join or initiate an audio, web, or Cisco TelePresence solution conference (not sure why WiFi only, with 4G built-in).
Create, edit, and share files and videos.
Browse the web with an integrated Firefox browser. (And, I would assume, support for Adobe Flash).
Support for cloud computing through desktop virtualization. "The tablet will come standard with a virtual desktop client application, so it can act as a thin client on your Cisco Collaboration Architecture".

At Cisco Live! the Cius was demonstrated for use in an academic setting, and applications were also discussed for other other markets such as retail and medical. Will we also see a consumer version, migrating the Cius technology to the Cisco Fli p brand?

"Cisco Cius Mobile Collaboration Business Tablet by Cisco Pics, on Flickr"

Are we ready for the "mobile revolution"?

2010-06-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

According to Chris O'Brien in this morning's edition of the San Jose Mercury News, "We're not ready for the mobile revolution". In the aftermath of this week's iPhone-4 hysteria, Chris raises a number of important red flags. It's a good summary of some issues that will impact deployment and adoption of mobile broadband services in the U.S., but I found that some of the points were perhaps overstated while others are a bit more serious than described. Here are the points raised in the Mercury News article, along with my comments and analysis.

Competition: Or I should say, the lack of it. In late May, the FCC released its annual report on the state of competition in mobile and wireless markets. The news is not good. Consolidation has accelerated to the point that we are all but living in a duopoly controlled by AT&T and Verizon Wireless.At the end of 2009, those two companies controlled 60 percent of the wireless market...

The numbers used for this calculation took into account all cellular subscribers, not just the minority that are currently using 3G data services. When you break down 3G market share, as in the illustration below, you see that in actuality AT&T and Verizon Wireless account for approximately 75% of the market. I based this data on the most recent numbers reported in Q1, except for Sprint where I had to estimate from other data such as reported ARPU and number of post-paid subscribers. Regardless, the iPhone has definitely been a great benefit to AT&T in the 3G market, as they reported "3G Postpaid Devices" totaled 26.8 million in Q1-2010. Verizon Wireless reported that 30% of their 92.8M subscribers have 3G devices, equivalent to approximately 15.8 million. With the iPhone-4 introduction coming at the same time as the new DROID-X, it will be interesting to see how this plays out next quarter.

Investment: AT&T and Verizon boasted about the money they are spending on their wireless networks. "We've spent $59 billion on our network since Verizon Wireless was formed, about $5.5 billion a year, every year," said Nicola Palmer, vice president for networks at Verizon. Britton said AT&T has spent almost $55 billion over the past three years. But according to the FCC report, because the number of subscribers has exploded, this spending has actually fallen as a percentage of revenue, from 20 percent to 14 percent between 2005 and 2008.

I'd like to see this data presented at CTIA Wireless the next time FCC Chairman Genachowski shares the same stage with Ralph de la Vega (President and CEO-AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets), who is this year's Chairman of the CTIA organization.

Exclusive handset deals: These deals are making the bottleneck worse in two ways. First, all the iPhone traffic gets carried by one company's network, rather than being distributed over several networks. And second, exclusive deals allow carriers to compete on the availability of handsets rather than the quality of service. "If consumers could get an iPad and put it on any network, they would," said Chris Riley, policy counsel at Free Press, a consumer advocacy group. "And it would drive AT&T to invest more."

I don't totally agree on this issue. First, the media often ignore the fact that there is no one wireless communication standard in the U.S. Handsets do not become exclusive purely through business agreements. To be totally portable across any operator network requires support for all the 2G and 3G bands (CDMA/EVDO and GSM/HSPA). This might be doable, but it adds cost.

Second, if the purpose was to roam, say from AT&T to Verizon to fill gaps in coverage, battery consumption (from redundant radio operation) would suffer as well. (Not to mention all the other data network handover issues, which are non-trivial, and associated business issues).

Do consumers really suffer from these exclusive deals?
The iPhone is no longer as dominant as it was at introduction. Companies such as HTC are making multiple versions of their Android phones that provide a very competitive alternative, along with choice of service. The smartphone market is intensely competitive in the U.S., and I would argue that consumers do benefit when the operators and manufacturers need to fight for differentiation. Some may raise the concern for Android "fragmentation", but look how much innovation has occurred in just a little more than a year and a half since the G-1 was introduced!

Spectrum: Here's one that everyone does agree on. "We have been suggesting that there is a crisis brewing and there needs to be a focus on bringing spectrum to the market," said Chris Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association.

Well, maybe not everybody. Of course CTIA wants as much spectrum as they can get their hands on for their members. It's a critical resource. But, is the issue really more spectrum or better coverage? Once again, it is the iPhone problem on AT&T's network that everyone seems to focus on.

As I pointed out in my report on The Emerging 4G Wireless Landscape in the U.S. the generalization does not hold true for all the operators. Sprint and Clearwire hold a significant advantage with the capacity of their 2.5GHz WiMAX spectrum licenses.

In the press release for my 4G report I stated that the "Explosive Growth in Mobile Video Shifts Advantage to WiMAX Providers Until 2012". I stand by that prediction today. With Verizon and AT&T accounting for 75% of the current 3G market, it should come as no surprise that the "spectrum crisis" gets as much attention as it does. Sprint, which has been trailing badly in 3rd position, has a real lead in deploying 4G technology. Regardless of arguments of what is really 4G in terms of speed, the capacity advantage is clear (no pun intended) and quantifiable.

More is always better when it comes to spectrum, but inevitably we do need to look at how we use what we have more efficiently. Conservation is also good. See my report on Next-Generation ICs for Mobile Devices - Innovations in Wireless Design for a glimpse at how future cell phones may take advantage of software-defined (SDR) and cognitive radios.

notes from the 4G WiMAX Developer's Symposium at Stanford (part 1)

2010-06-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

The 4G WiMAX Developer's Symposium at Stanford on June 15th provided a full day of presentations on Clearwire/Sprint's growing 4G network, including demonstrations from several startups on how they intend to exploit the increased mobile broadband capacity, followed by a review of ongoing trends and visions of future developments. For the full agenda, see my earlier post.

The opening keynotes were:

10:30 – 11:00am	Keynote: 4G Growth & Momentum	Terese Elder: Clearwire President of Wholesale
11:00 – 11:30am	Keynote: Exciting Times in BB wireless	Bob Azzi: Sprint Senior Vice President, Network

In her presentation, Clearwire's Terese Elder covered the current status of the WiMAX service (covering 34 markets today), while reiterating the target for 120M pops by the end of 2010.

She also cited a number of statistics from Morgan Stanley:

Projected 10B mobile devices 2010-2020.
More than just phones, there will be 10X more mobile connected devices than fixed.
Mobile users will exceed desktop in 5 yrs.
Smartphones will out ship notebooks + netbooks 2010, and global PC market in 2012.
Market opportunity: 36% growth in mobile broadband subscribers, 24% growth in revenue ($3B-$10B) (2014)

Her comment that "it will be interesting to see what happens with VOIP, Skype" is noteworthy. While voice revenues are declining, the future LTE operators continue to debate how to integrate voic e and data in their 4G plans.

Will voice continue to be treated as a separate service (at an additional fee), or will the voice bits be bundled along with the rest of 4G data in an all-IP network? Clearwire supported the Skype app previously on the Samsung Mondi, the 1st WiMAX MID which was introduced last year. According to Ms. Elder, "Skype has more registered users than any carrier in the world".

Looking beyond VOIP and video, this was her list of "killer" 4G apps:

cloud computing goes mobile.
users spending more time on social networking than email
business content for the enterprise

In his presentation Bob Azzi, Senior VP Networks at Sprint, picked up on the plans for WiMAX rollout, stating that "San Francisco and San Jose are on the list for 2010". Clearwire's Silicon Valley WiMAX Innovation Network currently includes base stations on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, at Intel in Santa Clara, and at Google in Mountain View.

While pointing to the recent introduction of the HTC EVO, Mr. Azzi gave his description of the "4G experience" and how subscribers are making use of WiMAX:

2-way video conferencing (QIK)
unified communications
WiFi enablement (i.e. the hotspot feature of the EVO, and the Sprint Overdrive)
network redundancy for landlines
media content adds hidef, full length video
live video surveillance
simultaneous app viewing

Sprint's Azzi also reviewed the advantages offered by Clearwire's spectrum position (120-150 MHz at 2.5GHz), comparing it to the 12-46 MHz of 700 MHz and AWS spectrum that competitors such as Verizon Wireless will deploy for LTE. This is a topic I covered thoroughly last year in my report on "The Emerging 4G Wireless Landscape in the U.S.".

In order to make his point regarding the spectrum-capacity advantage, Mr. Azzi showed a chart something like the one I have reproduced above. This graph is based on a claimed capacity for Sprint 4G of 420Mbps per tower, compared to an LTE competitor's (read Verizon Wireless LTE here) of 100 Mbps per tower.

This chart is somewhat deceptive, since Clearwire currently deploys their WiMAX spectrum in three 10MHz sectors per tower. With less spectrum for LTE, Verizon is expected to deploy one sector per tower (paired: 10 MHz uplink, and 10 MHz downlink). When asked, Mr. Azzi said this difference is based on deploying all 150 MHz of capacity at each tower (which is not likely).

If we break down the numbers then,we should divide the Clearwire Mbps/user by a factor of 5. The result is that the projected speeds that users can expect from Clearwire and Verizon are just about identical. This is much more in line with actual reported results.

One more caveat though: this only applies to the downlink. Clearwire is currently capping the upload date rate to 1Mbps. As I have reported in the past, this is an issue with the promotion of video conferencing as a "killer app" for WiMAX. In upload, Verizon's LTE has a potential advantage due to the FDD vs. TDD nature of the spectrum resource. In response to my question after his presentation, Mr. Azzi said they are continuing to watch this, but any adjustment will require trading off download for upload speed.

In video conferencing the lower resolution 1.3Mpixel front-side camera of the HTC EVO does produce much less of a load on the network than the 8 Mpixel back-side camera, but upload streaming apps could definitely suffer. This is also exactly why the (over-hyped ) iPhone 4 "FaceTime" app will be WiFi only.

Finally, in regards to the spectrum comparison, Mr. Azzi also pointed out that they have 800Mhz and 1900 Mhz spectrum that can be re-deployed in the future. For enhancing coverage, he also made the statement that Sprint will "evolve femto cells from 3G to 4G".

-Mike

Follow me on Twitter: MikeDemler

4G WiMAX Developers Symposium at Stanford University

2010-06-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

I am looking forward to attending the 4G WiMAX Symposium at Stanford University tomorrow. As you can see from the agenda below, Clearwire and their investors (Sprint, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable) will be well represented. This looks to be an interesting follow up to the Clear 4G Innovation Network Workshop held earlier this year at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Look for my follow up report in the next few days.

Stanford Center for Professional Development

4-G WiMAX Developers Symposium

Event Agenda 4-G WiMAX Developers Symposium

9:00 – 10:00am	Check-in & Coffee
10:10 – 10:25am	Event Kick Off	Curt Frank: Stanford University School of Engineering Senior Associate Dean
10:30 – 11:00am	Keynote: 4G Growth & Momentum	Teresa Elder: Clearwire President of Wholesale
11:00 – 11:30am	Keynote: Exciting Times in BB wireless	Bob Azzi: Sprint Senior Vice President, Network
11:40- 12:25	New Developments in 4G	Dow Draper: Clearwire VP Product Development and Innovation
		Nathan Smith: Sprint Application Developer Program Manager
	Lunch
1:00 – 2:45pm	Application Showcases & Quick Pitches Featuring Demonstrations from: Stanford Univ., Carnegie Mellon Univ., Whatamap, QIK, Mobi, Moog, Livecast, News360, MS Futures Group, Mingleverse, Jim Baker	*Moderator:* *Guru Parulkar,* Stanford University Consulting Professor in Electrical Engineering Panel: Lisa Garza, Cisco, Service Provider Marketing Brian Mullen, Clearwire, Business Development Evan Koch, Comcast, Business Development Brian Coughlin, TW Cable, Wireless Platform
3:00 – 3:40pm	Marketing and Distribution for 4G Apps	Dow Draper: Clearwire, VP Product Development and Innovation
		Nathan Smith: Sprint, Application Developer Program Director
		Russ Beutler: Intel, Atom Developer Program
3:50 - 4:20pm	Mobile BB: Vision of the Future	Dr. Paulraj Arogyaswami: Stanford University Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus
4:30– 4:55pm	Mobile Internet Trends	Simon Aspinall, Cisco Senior Director, Service Provider Marketing
5:00pm	Closing remarks & reception

Another spin on the #EDA 360 wheel: Synopsys acquires Virage Logic

2010-06-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

On June 10, 2010 Synopsys Inc. announced their intent to acquire Virage Logic Corporation, a provider of compilers for embedded memory IP. The acquisition comes a little less than one month after Cadence announced their acquisition of Denali Software Inc. - a provider of memory models and verification IP. It seems that the respective M&A teams are saving money by sharing calculators.

Purchase price for Virage Logic: $315 M. Last year's revenue = $47.4 M
Purchase price for Denali Software Inc.: $315 M. Estimated annual revenue = $43 M

Those similarities aside, I don't expect this latest acquisition to be quite as controversial as the Cadence-Denali purchase. Virage is more a semiconductor company than an EDA company, and is much less visible to the DAC partying crowd, many of whom bemoaned the loss of the independent Denali. This is interesting in a different way since Synopsys is purchasing one of their customers, which leads to a bit of "closing the circle" irony.

Virage was a key early customer and partner in the development of Nassda Corporation, whose HSIM product was specifically architected to increase simulation efficiency by exploiting redundancy (i.e. multiple copies of the same circuit) - a perfect match for memory blocks. The CEOs of the two companies sat on each other's board of directors; Sang Wang at Virage and Adam Kablanian at Nassda. Nassda quickly became very successful in dominating the memory market, enabling the company to complete an IPO in December 2001, just two and a half years after first licensing the software.

The success of Nassda, whose founders had come from Synopsys, led the latter company to pursue a lengthy and bitter lawsuit wherein they accused Nassda of launching the company through misappropriation of trade secrets. After several years of battling the lawsuit, Nassda gave up the fight and agreed to be purchased by Synopsys in December, 2004.

So here we are just about ten years after Nassda began, both tool provider and key customer now acquired by Synopsys. Startup.. innovate.. get acquired. (Try to avoid being sued).

That's the real EDA-360.

Since I ran a poll on Cadence's purchase of Denali, it's only fair to do the same this time around. To express your opinion on the Synopsys-Virage acquisition, click here.

AT&T's new data plans. Convincing consumers that less is more?

2010-06-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

Today ATT announced the end of their $30 unlimited data plan, a major factor that drove adoption of the iPhone. (But with the unintended consequence of overloading their network).

ATT Announces New Lower-Priced Wireless Data Plans to Make Mobile Internet More Affordable to More People

Here's how the new plan breaks down:

For $15 per month consumers can get up to 200 megabytes (MB) of data per month.
If you have this "DataPlus" plan and exceed 200 MB in a month, you will be automatically charged an additional $15 for another 200 MB.
ATT claims that "Currently, 65 percent of ATT smartphone customers use less than 200 MB of data per month on average".
For $25 per month, you can buy up to 2 gigabytes (GB) of data per month.
If you subscribe to this "DataPro" plan and exceed the 2 GB limit, you will automatically be charged an additional $10 another 1 GB of data.

Earlier this year, Consumer Reports commissioned a study of iPhone users that was conducted by the Validas (see the histogram above). According to the Validas study of more than 1,000 iPhone users, the average data consumption is 273 MBs per month.

Do the math. What will this cost the average iPhone user under the new ATT data plan? Yup.. $30! So how many customers do you think will go for this new "DataPlus" plan?

On the other hand, you can subscribe to the "DataPro" plan for $25, a $5 per month saving over the current unlimited plan. Validas found that

"another 12 percent of iPhone users use at least 500 MBs per month".

My bet is that the vast majority of iPhone customers will go for the 2GB plan.

But what about the new 4th (c'mon.. it's not 4G wireless) generation iPhone expected to be announced at next week's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference? According to the now infamous Redwood City bar room lost & found incident, it will include a front-side camera for video chat, like the HTC EVO 4G. The big difference here is that the EVO can take advantage of the Clearwire-Sprint WiMAX network, and an unlimited data plan. Then there's the iPad, which is intended primarily as a media consumption device.

In my report on The Emerging 4G Wireless Landscape, I analyzed the impact that mobile video will have in driving adoption of 4G WiMAX and LTE services. At the CTIA Wireless more than one year ago, Motorola showed the set of projected 2011 mobile user profiles in the slide above. As you can see, it doesn't take much to exceed 2GB per month.

I think that this latest move by AT&T will serve to further drive users to Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Android smartphones already exceed the capabilities of even the forthcoming next-generation iPhone. Sprint will continue their WiMAX rollout, Verizon will begin LTE deployment, and T-Mobile will expand on HSPA+.

Do you think it's a coincidence that ATT's new plan goes into effect on June 7, 2010.. the exact same day as the opening of Apple's Developer Conference? Who says that less is more?

The Next Android Invasion - Tablets

2010-05-28T15:51:00.000-07:00

It took only 18 months for Android to overtake the iPhone in the smartphone market, at least according to some reports, and now several events in the past week foretell a similar invasion about to take place in the emerging tablet market:

Marvell got a lot of attention in the blogosphere and in twitterville when they showed their prototype for an Android-based Moby tablet at the Netbook Summit on May 25th. Apparently reporters from Engadget had missed the earlier presentation of this device at the CTIA Wireless Show in March. I took the picture above at Pepcom's Mobile Focus event for press and analysts on March 23. The Netbook Summit discussion was followed by the news that the "One Laptop Per Child" project would be adopting the Moby tablet, which has a targeted cost of less than $100.

During an investor conference with Barclay Capital, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha hinted at a "7 to 10 inch" Android tablet that could be forthcoming as part of their relationship with Verizon Wireless and their DROID campaign.The tablet above, from Innovative Converged Devices (ICD) was shown in Verizon's demo of LTE technology at this past January's Consumer Electronics Show. This device is based on NVIDIA's Tegra processor. Since the tablet was shown in a display connected with a Motorola LTE modem, Fierce Wireless has attributed the ICD tablet to Motorola.
Pre-announcements are out for next week's Computex Show in Taiwan. I expect numerous Android devices to be on display there. VIA Technologies, and their subsidiary WonderMedia have sent out announcements of a gallery of five Android tablets that they will be showing, including the Eken M001 and M003:

The wave of Android tablets should hit the U.S. market later this year. To be successful, the Android Market must be opened up to allow non-smartphone apps. Google has presented just that at the Google I/O Developer's Conference last week. Along with the development of Google TV and the release of Android 2.2 (Froyo), the presentation included an early peek at the ability to browse the Android Market from the desktop - with over-the-air download of applications and content.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Android's Impact on Netbooks

2010-05-25T21:05:00.001-07:00

This is a Slidecast of my presentation from the Netbook Summit, May-24th, 2010.

I have attached the audio so that you can now listen to the presentation as it was delivered, including Q&A.

Android in Netbooks

View more webinars from Mike Demler.

#EDA Poll on Cadence's purchase of Denali. How the rest of the world voted.

2010-05-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

This concludes the results of my small survey of the EDA community regarding the question:

Do you think that Cadence's purchase of Denali will provide a benefit for designers?

In my previous post, I showed that a number of early votes came in from the participants in the acquisition, but (perhaps surprisingly) they were not exactly 100% positive.

Cadence 5 - YES, 1 - NO
Denali 1 - YES
EDA Competitors 2 - NO

After eliminating the votes from companies that have the greatest vested interest in the acquisition (i.e. the participants and their most direct competitors) a total of 43 votes represented the worldwide EDA respondents.

Although the sample may be small and unscientific, the map above shows that it truly was a worldwide response.

Countries represented:

U.S.
Canada
Taiwan
India
UK
Germany
France

~~Over the one week period that results were collected, the NO votes just edged out the YES votes... well by a NOse... 22-to-21.~~

(Edited on May-24, 2010 to correct error in transferring votes from survey)

After this post, I found an error in my original tally. The actual result is 23-NO and 20-YES.

While many of the votes came from unidentifiable locations, it is perhaps interesting to note that two of the NO votes originated from top tier semiconductor companies; one a company "in the Top 10" by 2009 revenue, and another from a company in the "Top 25". There was one identifiable semi company on the YES side, and that company currently ranks well outside the Top 25.

CONCLUSIONS

This obviously wasn't intended as a rigorous exercise in statistical polling, but more of a "taking of the pulse" to gauge EDA community opinion in the aftermath of Cadence's purchase of long-independent Denali. While participants were self-selected, that means (I think) that they represent people who really care.

What conclusions can be drawn? I'd say that the split vote speaks for itself. Not all bad.. and not all good. The respondents clearly don't see this as something revolutionary or different than other EDA acquisitions, but they also don't see it as all overwhelmingly bad either.

#EDA Poll on Cadence's purchase of Denali. How the EDA vendors voted.

2010-05-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

On May 13, 2010 Cadence Design Systems announced their intention to purchase Denali Software Inc. for $315M.

The history of the EDA industry is replete with acquisitions, and the most significant innovations have generally come from the startups. This acquisition is noteworthy for several reasons:

The purchase price, $315 million for a company with $43 million in revenue, is large as these purchases go. As a comparison, in 2005 Synopsys purchased Nassda, which had similar revenue, for an "aggregate consideration" of approximately $192 million. (With a net that was much less since Nassda reported cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $101.4 million).When Synopsys purchased Synplicity in 2008, for $188M, the company more than $70M of revenue. I'm sure you can find many other examples as well.
Denali has long been held up as the model of a "profitable independent company" in the EDA industry.
The EDA industry obsession with the infamous annual Denali Party at DAC. If you do a search on Twitter, you'll find that many more tweets about the party than about the acquisition. Apparently there has been a bit of a concern that the party would not happen now.

I launched an online poll shortly after the announcement of the acquisition. The two parties involved in the acquisition were quick to respond, and competitors and users soon followed. I'd like to invite more users to take the survey, which you can find my clicking here. The poll is anonymous, except for IP addresses.

The survey asks just 1 simple question: Do you think that Cadence's purchase of Denali will provide a benefit for designers?

As you can see, 6 votes came in from Cadence IP addresses, with 5 YES but 1 NO! In fact, the 1 NO vote came in before all the others. One Denali employee also voted YES. Two competitors of Cadence-Denali, who will remain nameless, also voted NO.

My experience with surveys in general is that they are difficult to get response to, so the small number's don't surprise me. This acquisition doesn't seem to have a very long tail in the twitter/blogosphere but if you have an opinion I invite you to add your vote.

Cadence's purchase of Denali, a survey of #EDA users

2010-05-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

Quick survey
Do you think that Cadence's purchase of Denali will provide a benefit for designers?

Android vs. MeeGo: two approaches to competitively leveraging "open source"

2010-05-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

The SDForum recently sponsored a presentation on MeeGo, the Intel-Nokia collaboration to develop (yet another) Linux-based open source operating system for mobile devices. In this case, it's a merger of "the best of" Intel's Moblin with Nokia's Maemo platforms that was announced at the Mobile World Congress in February.

While Google's (and the Open Handset Alliance's) Android is coming on strong in challenging mobile OS incumbents, already surpassing the iPhone by some estimates, there seems to be no end to these efforts to launch new OS platforms - some "open" and some proprietary. A few additional examples:

Open: LiMo, Symbian

Closed:(Samsung) Bada, (Motorola) Azingo

Though there are many questions to explore in all of this, I thought it would be interesting to start with a high-level comparison of the MeeGo and Android architectures, to see what differences and/or similarities exist. Maybe we can then surmise a why to go with the what.

Starting at the bottom, both MeeGo and Android developed modifications to the Linux kernel. Google added drivers for handset applications, while also optimizing the power management and IPC "Binder" to support devices with limited CPU and memory resources. While Android's focus has been on porting to the ARM-based CPUs that dominate mobile devices, with an OHA membership that includes MIPS, Qualcomm, TI, Nvidia, Freescale, etc. (as well as Intel), the list of supported processors continues to grow.

One of the differences in MeeGo is that it is an open source project "managed" by the three year old Linux Foundation. Though the Linux Foundation includes many of the same members as OHA, it should come as no surprise that there are currently no other processor or semiconductor companies publicly supporting MeeGo. However, in a presentation at the recent Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, Intel claimed that MeeGo supports ARM architectures while at the same time stating that:

"Silicon vendors are responsible for providing the hardware adaptation software"

(the gray wrapper that you can see in the MeeGo architecture diagram), and noting that "Intel provides the complete solution for Atom-based platforms".

So, at this point it's not clear exactly where that ARM support is going to come from.

Looking at the middleware of the two software stacks, as one might expect - there is a lot of functional similarity between the Android libraries with their hardware abstraction layer and the MeeGo Services components. In fact, some of the exact same components are used; such as the WebKit for browsers, the Bluetooth connectivity manager, OpenGL support, etc. Differences start to stand out when we move over to the runtime layer.

Android employs their Dalvik virtual machine, with application code compiled from Java. A Native Development Kit (NDK) is also offered for high-performance applications that must use C++, such as games. The MeeGo operating system is primarily based on Nokia's Qt platform and the Qt Creator, with applications written in C++. Secondary support for Web runtime development in HTML and Java script is also described. Qt is Nokia's cross-platform development environment (IDE), which purports to enable porting code across platforms that span Linux, Mac OS X, Windows CE, Symbian and now MeeGo.

Whereas Android development will primarily be done in the open source Eclipse IDE, it's important to note that Qt requires a commercial developer's license for any application where you don't want to give away the source code.

The Qt Commercial Developer License is the appropriate version to use for the development of proprietary and/or commercial software. This version is for developers who do not want to share the source code with others or otherwise comply with the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or GNU GPL version 3.0.

This is no small difference. A license for one developer to use on one OS is priced at $3,695!

Moving up to the top of the stack, we can compare the Android application layer to the MeeGo "User Experiences" (UX). MeeGo is designed from the outset with pre-packed reference platforms that go beyond smartphones - targeting netbooks, handheld, in-vehicle, connected TV, and media phone applications.

The Android ecosystem has rapidly expanded into all these spaces independently of Google's efforts. These vertical market packages stem from Intel's strategy to develop embedded applications for their processors.

In Android, every built-in application can be replaced. In MeeGo, developers are prohibited from doing so. MeeGo allows the UX to be customized, but with the following restrictions:

MeeGo stack must be provided in its entirety.

All packages based on MeeGo sources.

Components can be added on top of MeeGo stack.

Must include UI framework and user interaction model per profile.

MeeGo is designed to prohibit fragmentation and ensure application compatibility to any MeeGo-based device. Use of the MeeGo brand will be based on meeting the specifications of the MeeGo compatibility program.

The first open source version of Android (1.5) was released concurrently with the availability of the first Android phone - the T-Mobile G1. There are also unlocked developer phones available. With MeeGo, the effort is currently focused on adapting the Nokia N900 from Maemo to MeeGo.

Finally, there is the issue of governance. Much has been said and written about Google's control of Android. While OHA participants contributed to Android, the release timeline and content is completely controlled by Google. MeeGo implies more "openness" by operating under the auspices of the Linux Foundation.

MeeGo™ is an open source project created by merging the Moblin and Maemo software platforms, and is led by the MeeGo Technical Steering Group (TSG). The governance model is based on the principles of simplicity, efficiency, and transparent collaboration.

However, while MeeGo is open to other contributors,

Much like most open source projects governed by a benevolent dictator, the MeeGo project will be led Imad Sousou (Intel) and Valtteri Halla (Nokia).

SUMMARY

It would appear that "OPEN" has become quite a loosely defined (and promiscuously used) 4-letter word!

On the one hand - Android is so open that it has been modified, fragmented (or diversified if you prefer), and spun off into eBook readers, tablets, set-top boxes, connected TVs, home media phones, and more. Much of this has happened outside of Google's control, in a span of just about eighteen months since first release. The total number of applications in the Android Market is reported to now exceed 50,000. The Android ecosystem - beyond membership in the Open Handset Alliance, now encompasses a growing diversity of semiconductor manufacturers, wireless operators, software and "commercialization" companies, consumer electronics manufacturers and innumerable application developers. OHA has spawned the OESF, or Open Embedded Software Foundation.

It is very interesting to contrast these two approaches to leveraging "open source". I think that the comparison raises numerous questions to explore further. Amongst the questions:

Does an "open" ecosystem require diversity?
Or... can "open" co-exist with conformity that is enforced by 'benevolent dictators'?
Is fragmentation/diversification a bad thing?
Can any commercial ecosystem be truly open?
Philosophical arguments aside, since we are not talking about philanthropic ventures, which is the more successful model?

Clearly, Android is a huge success. Perhaps we should just stop abusing the word "open" when it comes to these industry efforts, and just describe them by what they are based on - "free source". That is certainly more accurate I think. Both Android and MeeGo have their origins in "freesources".

At the SDFourm event, Jim Zemlin - Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, said that the #1 reason that industry has turned to Linux is because it is free. This is important he said, to address the "rising cost of innovation, while developing compelling user experiences".

Jim went on to define these requirements for success in "Open Source" industry collaborations:

Must be able to be custom branded
Must have lightweight neutral governance
Span multiple architectures
Friendly to operator business models
Tools must be open source
Strong set of uniform APIs

I would add to this list that the initiative must be capable of exciting and growing an ecosystem. Critical mass is involved. With Google's lead, I think that Android comes with a strong built-in attraction to follow the lead of the world's #1 internet company, to take advantage of the shift to mobile connectivity. Though both "Open Source" initiatives have their shortcomings, today I would say that Android gets a higher grade on this checklist than MeeGo does.

More questions:

Is there a similar attraction to participate with the #1 (worldwide market share) cell phone company - Nokia, and the #1 semiconductor company - Intel?
Would the two companies be better off by simply adopting Android?
Is Nokia cannibalizing Symbian?

It will be interesting to watch further developments.

contact me: mike.demler@digdia.com

Follow me on Twitter: MikeDemler

Symbiotic or Parasitic: the intersection (collision?) of personal and corporate brands

2010-04-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

As a long-time author and early adopter of social media, I remain fascinated by times when independent events seem to converge to shape a story that simply must be written. I'm sure that my fellow writers know exactly what I mean.

This is one of those times, and though the story may not be directly related to the technology issues I normally cover, I think it presents an important cautionary tale for individuals and companies alike. Let's just say that I'm putting my marketing hat back on for this one, since the central topic here is the value of a brand in the new era of social media.

Imagine that you've created a body of written work, let's say a blog, and you go online one day to see that the little author's bio you had posted for presentation alongside each article has been replaced with a description of somebody else. Or perhaps even several somebody "elses". In other words, your blog has been hijacked!

That is exactly what happened to me this past week. Apparently my former employer has decided to launch a new blog (with new authors) on top of the one I had created, leaving my old articles (61 in total) but deleting my bio. They were surprised that WordPress informed me of the work in progress. By the way, the word hijack is not mine, it's the description of the planned takeover that was given to me by the Marcomm Director who is overseeing this project. (Oh.. with a little smiley emoticon).

The explanation also included something about following a "social media ethos of maintaining long-tail availability". Worthy as that may be, I'm not sure what it has to do with deleting my bio... but there you go.

So this is where the convergence of events was interesting. More than one year ago, I created a presentation on Developing Your Personal Brand Through Blogging. At the time, I posted the slides here, which you can view by clicking on the link. The topic has proven to be very popular, and the slides have been viewed nearly two thousand times on SlideShar e. Counselors advise job seekers that developing a personal brand is a key component of managing your career. A blog is an easy way to do that.

I had also posted the slides on my LinkedIn profile, using box.ne t, but that "long tail" had gone quiet for months so that I had forgotten that I made them available for download. What a coincidence then that I was notified of several new downloads in just the last week.

With many companies still just beginning to experiment with social media, the challenge of balancing personal versus corporate branding presents a whole new set of issues. This became a topic for discussion at this year's DesignCon in Santa Clara. My friend and social media guru Michael Brito, who was on that panel, has also touched on this topic in a video from a social media event that he has posted on his site: The intersection of personal and corporate brands. It was interesting to hear one of the panelists from Social Media Club say that it comes down to whether "you have a parasitic relationship with your business, or a symbiotic relationship". That goes both ways, for the corporation and the individual.

The dilemma is that while companies may see the value in using employees to promote the company brand through corporate blogs, those blogs are only of value when the individual is able to convey their personal credibility, knowledge and integrity... i.e. their personal brand. To encourage employee participation the relationship must be mutually beneficial, it must be symbiotic.

But what happens when the company and the individual separate, whether voluntarily or involuntarily? What to do with the blog? Shut it down, maintain it while hiding (or not) the fact that the author is no longer employed.. or something else, say a "hijacking"?

My opinion and experience is that internet content has a long life, so keeping the blog as it was makes sense as long as both parties are agreeable. That way, both the company and the individual continue to benefit from the value of the brand they created together. It's like the many articles I have published in online trade magazines. They live on with descriptions of my title/position as it was at the time the article was written. Of course, the value of maintaining could change if an individual goes on to represent a competitor, but even there the judgment shouldn't be too hasty.

So that brings me to the last coincidental piece that informs this posting. I read an article last week at Forbes online, titled "Keep Ex-Employees Brand Loyal, Making sure former employees remain fans can be good for a brand". I quote from the article by James Kelly:

The manner in which companies part ways with their employees has a potent and lasting effect on the former employee, employees who remain, and the brand.

I think it comes down to simple common sense, like the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself. In the long run, nobody benefits by being a parasite.

-Mike
Follow me on Twitter: MikeDemler