September 30, 2003
vodafone and orange to resell o2 wi-fi in UK
the UK mobile market is different in so many ways from the market in north america. notably, you very rarely see marketing for "5000 anytime minutes" or any marketing regarding minutes at all. residents seem to go with the voice service that that has the best coverage at home, office, and on the tube - and differentiation is offered via the data services available. voice is just a commodity, and the coverage map is what it is, improved as much as possible over time.
it doesn't really surprise me that vodafone and orange have chosen for now to get into the wi-fi game by partnering up with BT as a way to get their subs access to wi-fi. this means they see wi-fi as a commodity for their subs and not a differentiator - and allows voda and orange to concentrate more on differentiating their 2.75/3G data offerings they'll certainly be launching in the near future.
i think rob price of t-mobile has a point though - offering premium wi-fi access at carefully planned business meeting spots might be a better strategy than offering it places where lower bandwidth access on the mobile will suffice, especially in a geographically concentrated area like london.
at any rate, it's fun watching this market develop!
mars volta tremulant [EP]
this is an older EP by this band, but it's worth mentioning as it's firmly seated in my playlist right now. the mars volta features omar rodriguez and cedric bixler from at the drive in, one of my absolute favorite bands from the emocore era. tremulant gives us a mix of atdi from the casino in/out days, with just enough tremolo to plant them firmly in the "space rock" genre, where you will find bands like 30 seconds to mars, and ziggy stardust era david bowie. spacecore? if you like atdi, you'll love this, if you don't like atdi, well, you probably won't.
September 29, 2003
going to vegas for CTIA?
this is a fast adrenaline driven read that i could not put down once i started - in fact i finished it all in one day. there are some great stories of what goes on for the high rollers in the strip casinos, most of which i have also heard from some relatives who work in the industry. this will definitely make you think twice about playing blackjack at casino odds, and make you feel even worse if you're a weekend card counter. this was the big time!
September 24, 2003
Airline phones to accept GSM SIM cards
i think this is a pretty brilliant solution offering by Altobridge, which allows airline passengers to use their existing SIM card for in-flight telecom services. I'm sure this will be billed at a much higher rate than a terrestrial call, but if it can later offer a wirless bridge to in-flight calling, i think that will be an appealing offering for some. personally, i don't see a lot of people using seatback phones, partly because it's awkward, partly because it's too expensive, and partly because if you've ever used one, it seems to take 2 or 3 tries to get your credit card to work.
the counterpoint to this service will be Wi-Fi availability on planes and the rollout of MoWLAN phones. all of this is in the future, and partly this will be driven by consumer preferences for voice vs data on the plane. i know i'd rather send a quiet email on the plane instead of bothering my fellow passengers, but there are always people that prefer to make that call.
September 19, 2003
a perfect circle thirteenth step
after mer de noms we all owe maynard james keenan a great big hug for giving us something we always wanted: a tool album we could play in the car with our wives or girlfriends riding shotgun without being asked to forward to the next disc in the changer, and for the lucky, a disc these significant others even liked. i'm not sure thirteenth step is going to satisfy that need. with eight songs over five minutes long, i dare you to find a track that will make its way onto the radio ("the noose" which might have had a shot comes in at 6:06). i can't complain about that, i don't listen to the radio - but my point is, although there's nothing offensive on this disc, without many repetitive listens, it will probably come off as a little boring. there are definitely some complex math rockers on thirteeth step, meaning i think these songs will be great for the long haul if you can get past the first ten listens. this disc most resembles the cure's disintegration, and i'm not saying that because it has a song called "lullaby" on it. a few songs, such as "the outsider" sound like they would be way more at home with tool than apc - dare i say it, it rocks, and not in a "Judith" type of way. if you are confused as to whether or not i am recommending this disc, so am i. but c'mon, you're a fan, go buy it. you gotta buy zooropa before you decide to stop listening to U2.
evanescence fallen
although "bring me to life" was the best thing about the movie daredevil (c'mon ben, you bagged on a kevin smith movie for that p.o.s.?), the linkin' park hook that's got that song so much radio airplay is there for only one hit. that said, there's a few other standout tracks on this disc, notably "tourniquet" that make it worth listening to. i hate to peg this as seether or puddle of mudd with a female singer, but, um, that's what it is.
saves the day in reverie
saves the day always has kind of walked that fine line between high school emo rock, and the power pop stage that often follows as young bands like this start to mature, and i'm not sure if it's because they are all dreamworked up on this disc, or if chistopher conley was getting laid on a regular basis during the writing of in reverie, but they've certainly moved on to a new stage. conley's vocals, almost always in a dreamy falsetto remind me more now of a young thom yorke than the young morrisey he used to remind me of, although i still see them tracking the smiths more than anything on the career path as they move between abums. there aren't many traces of princeton, nj emocore left here, that's for sure.
fountains of wayne welcome insterstate managers
i don't know how old the members of fow are, but their music would lead you to believe they are perpetually in high school. that's not bad, because it gives 90's power pop an immortal quality. their previous two relesases were about as catchy as they come, and managers delivers as well on their poppy brand of bridge and tunnel rock. "stacy's mom" is a tongue in cheek milf anthem you don't want to miss.
September 18, 2003
t-mobile rolls out wi-fi at kinkos
wi-fi net news is reporting T-Mobile Rolls out Kinko's Stores, Discusses Roaming which i think is pretty big news. i think tmo gets bashed a lot for not opening up their wi-fi network, but i'm going to defend them. we'd all like to take our wi-fi card and have it work wherever there is a commercial hotspot, and have roaming charges billed back to whomever we bought our plan from - but in these days of the wi-fi wild west, t-mobile is very carefully building a wi-fi brand by making exclusive deals with top notch wi-fi necessary hang outs. borders, starbucks, and now kinkos.
i've been doing a lot of meetings in starbucks these days, and i am amazed at the number of people working or holding meetings in sbux using wi-fi. the other day, at the "streets of woodfield" starbucks, a large mall suburbia near chicago, i counted 10 separate meetings where at least one person was using wi-fi, and in a few cases, two or three. the borders cafe near where i live is crammed with students studying/IMing or whatever from their wi-fi laptops.
kinkos is the logical next step - knowing you can access anything from your home/business network if you needed to in case you forgot something. what's next? a few more key exclusives, and then a key roaming partner.
openness and roaming will come. tmo knows they have to roam, but right now the costs of customer service i'm guessing would way outweigh any roaming revenues...and if their customers had bad experiences roaming on other wi-fi networks, who would they blame? most customers don't understand the network infrastructure of roaming! they'd blame tmo and change to to another provider. it's a war for subs, and tmo is playing it smart here. pete thompson wants more subs on his network, not fewer, but he certainly doesn't want to lose anyone yet. everyone knows cross-carrier services are good for everyone - but you have to look at it at a point in time: right now.
as an aside, tmo's GSM/GPRS network is perhaps the most open of any of the big six national carriers. they allow messaging and roaming capabilities that none the others allow and even purposefully block. in my experience, it is far easier to develop an enterprise app using t-mobile than any of the others right now - so it's hard to attack them for running a closed network; i think it's just the contrary.
tmo's voice network...yeah, they got some work to do there.
comparison of UIQ phones
"unofficial club sony ericsson" has a good side by side comparison of the existing symbian 7 UIQ phones on the market. it will be interesting to see how sony ericsson fills the gaps with the upcoming p801/p900. my only three gripes with this line of phone is that
a) it's a little thick
b) memory stick duo. a 1 gig SD would be a lot more useful!
c) put a joystick and some buttons somewhere
otherwise, it's about as close as it gets to an all in one.
specs for the sony ericsson Z600
sony ericsson has released some details on the soon to be released Z600 - which will be their first clamshell design. also included will be a MD-TFD screen which will hope to correct the problems that have plagued the t610 in being able to see the screen outdoors in the sunlight. it looks pretty similar to the t610 otherwise - can't wait to try this one out!
does sun finally get it with project rave?
only time will tell, but the marketing sounds good to me. sun announced project rave yesterday, which seems to be their foray into providing an integrated development environment for the java language and j2ee platform.
i've managed development teams who used both j2ee and .NET, and the one thing that has always stood out about microsoft's approach is the integration of the toolset and the language. they owned and developed both, so there was never a lag between language features and the tools that supported them. on the j2ee side of things, there was always a choice of which environment to use, to the point where it was hard to find two developers using the same toolset. this is neither good nor bad, as long as developers were productive, and we didn't have to waste time or money discussing such things.
of course, there also aren't many (any?) third party IDEs for .NET, so it remains to be seen whether this will hurt vendors like Borland, whose JBuilder offering has been one of the best games in town for large development teams who do choose to standardize on an IDE.
if anyone gets early access to project rave, or have your own opinions, feel free to comment here!
September 17, 2003
Short and Sweet Movie Reviews
just a plug for "the last" don chartier's self describing "short and sweet movie reviews". the don sees a lot of movies, and personally i don't want to know more than he writes about a movie before seeing it. more often than not, i find myself clicking on the netflix link to throw it in my queue.
btw, does anyone know that walmart also rents dvds by mail? didn't think so. it's cheaper than netflix, but netflix just works too well for me to switch.
September 13, 2003
okay, now i'm starting believe in VoWLAN breaking out soon
seems like the last 4-5 years were all promised to be "the year of Voice over IP (VoIP)". now there is just too much momentum and too many investment dollars being poured into the problem for this not to happen in 2004. well funded companies like kineto wireless as well as existing pushes by cisco means that some large companies will start biting off on this tech starting late this year.
even though wi-fi is proliferating more in the home than in enterprises, MoWLAN will flourish first in the enterprise because of the cost of equipment and support, and move to the home sometime after. we still think that cable companies have the biggest opportunity right now to package this for home use, as their IP penetration grows every day.
a good synopsis of the state of the market can be found in infoworld. and no, we didn't steal the subtitle.
September 09, 2003
Motorola and 3 unveil new Symbian UIQ device
yesterday, motorola and 3 announced a new addition to phones available for Hutchison's 3G service in the UK which will run the Symbian 7.0 pen based interface, which has been dubbed the Motorola A920, and will support the video messaging service that has been launched by 3 that will feature premiership highlights.
3 is under a lot of pressure from it's investors to increase subscribers, so prehaps this will help. it's widely rumored that with the returns not coming fast enough, that Vodafone or T-Mobile will snap up 3 to further their own 3G efforts. 3 currently has only 155,000 subscribers, and shooting to get to 1 million by the end of the year, so hopefully this will include some aggressive pricing. the residents of london i have talked to have said the handsets are just way too expensive to take the plunge, and the service isn't cheap either.
Interestingly enough, it's reported that Motorola is also in talks to sell it's share of Symbian to Nokia and Psion. Psion is looking to buy a 4.8% share while nokia is looking to buy an additional 13% share of $471 million USD company. What's behind this move is anyone's guess but motorola says it still plans to license symbian for it's phones, so perhaps they are just wanting to spend more time on their handset offerings and applications, and less time on the operating system.
UPDATE
seems like guy kewney has the answer to why motorola is doing this. see here.
September 08, 2003
good news for wi-fi on mobile devices
with all the hype surrounding deployment of wi-fi as a competitor to 3G services, the one thing that has always stood in the way is wi-fi chip power consumption and the lack of exponential innovation in battery life. on most consumer devices employing embedded wi-fi chips, battery life has been pathetic. the ipaq 545X series pocket pc devices last maybe 2 hours with wi-fi turned on, the palm tungsten C a little longer as it turns it on and off as you are using the device - but to get a combo wi-fi phone device to be palatable to the market, we will need to see a usable battery life of 24 hours at least.
if wi-fi has 1/100th the power output of a GSM transmitter, this physics would seem to work out - but up until now, most wi-fi circuitry has been engineered for the laptop profile, where bigger, mightier battieries exist and AC power is part of the equation of use.
that's why i'm excited to see announcements such as this announcement from broadcom and philips as well as similar announcements made by texas instruments earlier in the year. we might just see those usable 3G/combo devices sooner than we had hoped.
September 05, 2003
review: lg vx6000
last month, verizon claimed their subscribers sent one million picture messages in the first month of service. as part of that launch, they introduced their flagship camera phone, the LG vx6000 -
made by korean manufacturer lg.
In this launch, verizon is selling much more than the device, but rather a packaging of data services that are supported by the phone, under the moniker get it NOW, there are services such as getPIX (picture messaging), getGames and getGOING (BREW apps), getBROWSING (WAP browser), and getALERTS (text message msn alerts). the vx6000 supports all these services and more, including verizon's CDMA 1XRTT 2.5G "express network". to some extent, i'll be commenting on the total package, and not just the device, because they are pretty intertwined.
the vx6000 is a clamshell phone, very similar to earlier models vx4400, as well as fellow korean manufacturer samsung models like the V205. it has a built in camera on the "top of the clam" as well as a color status screen, which with the tap of a button will give you the time, battery level, signal strength, 1x reception, and message status. included next to the camera lens is a mirror, used for taking those "here i am look at me" shots - when your face shows up in the mirror - you are in the frame. strike a pose and snap. the screen on roof of the clam's mouth is about as bright as you are going to find, although the resolution is nothing to write home about. it has a dedicated camera button, two softkeys, and a joypad with a center selection button. it uses the clear ( CLR) key as the back button, a feature i'll never get used to.
 |  |
| the LG VX6000 compared to Samsung V205, and SE T610 | |
the phone itself is pretty average, it's a phone. verizon's voice network is great and the coverage so far is about the best i've seen. the contact list allows for multiple email and phone numbers, which is key when it comes to emailing pictures. i find i tend to fully utilize a contact list such as this on CDMA phones, and not so much on GSM phones (since the SIM holds the lowest common denominator info) so i'm glad to see that here. absent is a speakerphone, which seems like an easy addition these days given the sensititivy of microphones, and the loudness of the earpiece anyway.
the camera itself is probably one of the best on the market today (that can be found on a phone, in north america). although it only shoots at 330K pixels (VGA), it comes with a zoom in and out, contrast, lighting, and some fun frames, where you can put a picture of your head on the body of a hulking body, for example. after snapping the picture, you can send immediately to another verizon subscriber at their number, email it to any email address, or save to the supplied photo album at vzwpix.com. although not a full blown moblog, you can send and receive pics from the website and share them via albums. you can add text and voice to your pictures - but beware, this is not true MMS. the audio format is the qualcomm "qcelp" (can you at least create an acronym we can pronounce?) and the pictures aren't framed in SMIL documents when send from the phone. i was able to send cross-carrier to MMS capable phones on GSM networks by setting up the Now SMS MMS gateway, but because of the lack of standards conformance, pictures came in as attachments, and the audio files could not be converted to WAV or AMR as is the MMS standard.
to test the quality, i took some pictures using some other best of breed cameras on phones, the sony ericsson p800, and the nokia 3650 so i could see the comparison. all 3 pics were taken with my feet in the same place, with same center of focus attempted. i think my eyes saw the colors of the p800 photo, and the details of the VX6000. i think some of the indoor photos showed up even better than this one. note that no camera phone on the market today is a replacement for a standalone digital camera - they are good for taking pictures about the size you see here, but not good enough for printing 5x7s at shutterfly or ofoto.
 |  |  |
| LG VX6000 | Sony Ericsson P800 | Nokia 3650 |
nevertheless, this service makes picture messaging E-Z, which is what has to happen to make this launch a success. eventually, they'll need to figure out how to make it as easy to send to non-verizon subs - a topic of another entry.
the vx6000's thin-client platform of choice is BREW which promises and in my opinion delivers here a compelling model for data interaction over using the wap browser. with one touch you can go to the "get it NOW" screen which allows you to run or browse the catalog of brew applications, which can be downloaded (for both purchase or trial) over the air to the phone, and then run. most of the apps are between $3-5 and some are subscription based. most of the productivity apps are excellent, such as soda-pop email client, vindigo, and accuweather - enough so that you'll never want to use a WAP browser again. all 3 of these apps get right to the task, communicating with the network as needed, with totally acceptable speed. enter a zip code into the accuweather app and 2 seconds later you can browse forecasts, sattelite and radar maps. the same task on a WAP browser would probably take a couple minutes, if you succeeded at all. interestingly - BREW apps use the 1X data connection, the WAP browser does not, it just uses circuit switched data. the 1X data for BREW is snappy - definitely a little more so than GPRS, mostly because of the reduced connection time. picture messaging also uses the 1X connection.
BREW also doubles as the gaming platform for the vx6000 - and here i wasn't especially impressed. the FIFA soccer game ended up being nothing more than penalty kicks, which is lame compared to marcel desailly soccer that is a full field match on the likes of the nokia 3650. a few of the games are good time passers, but i just wasn't blown away by anything. perhaps the content is just not there yet.
the obvious value that becomes apparent with BREW is that it's a total solution for operators to deploy - the vending machine is built into the infrastructure so operators don't have to roll their own solution, and you don't have to navigate through WAP to get to the what might be better content, a la mMode. it's super simple to try and purchase apps, which is an important part of the equation. it's also good that there is a "check for upgrade" feature built in. of course, the control brings a lack of openness, and it's unclear how you could get your ownn apps into this environment.
back to the phone. the lack of out of the box accessories is a bit of a bother. the only provided charger is a desktop cradle and a wall brick charger, niether of which you could comfortably take on a business trip. i'd love to see more out of the box USB chargers. there's also no provided headset, so you'd have to go purchase one of those as well. it does come with a belt clip however, if you are so inclined. i didn't test the 1X data connection to my laptop, as these cables are not included, and there is no infrared or bluetooth.
the battery life seems a little better than the similar samsung phone. after the inital charge, with investigative use, i only had to charge it after 3 days, which is above average for the features the phone has. this probably has something to do with verizon's strong signal - as the phone can operate at much lower power.
all in all, if you like the clamshell and a great voice and data network while on the north american continent - this is a great camera phone - perfect for moblogging, talking, and accessing remote data via 1X. the get it NOW BREW apps are great examples of how to get at mobile data from a phone profile, provided there is an app that does what you need. in addition, verizon's web services packaged around the phone provide a good direction for other operators on how to sell the total solution, not just a phone.
ratings
phone: 7
texting: 5
mms: 3
email: 6 (with optional brew client $2.99)
browser: 5
pda features: 5
camera: 9
battery: 8
usability: 7
durability: 8
stability: 9
gameplay potential: 7
third party apps: 8
fashion: 8
out-of-box accessories: 4
September 01, 2003
are operators ready for MMS interworking?
for the most part, we've all gotten use to texting to people we know who are subscribers on networks other than our own; in fact, in many cases we never know what network the receiver of our message is on, nor should we. just like a voice call, right?
unfortunately, this is not the case for MMS. right now, in order for me to send an MMS to another person's phone i have to a) know they are on the same network b) know they have an MMS capable phone and c) know they've signed up for the service. "c" is especially annoying. as i do carry a camera phone on most occaisions, i have tried more than once to snap a picture and send it to a friend who i know is carrying a sony ericsson t68i, capable or receiving MMS, but i get an SMS back saying "the subscriber you are sending this message to is not capable of receiving the message, it will appear as text". 2 minutes later i get an SMS back with "what was that"? and sending MMS from, say t-mobile to an att wireless GSM MMS capable phone, fogettaboutit.
this is all revenue being left on the table and operators know it. even in the in-network case i reference above...the target subscriber should be given a taste of MMS (say they get 5 for free) and then be texted a link from which they can provision themselves over a wap connection or by replying to the SMS or MMS. at very least, the MMS should be routed to their webmail inbox automatically for viewing, with an SMS notification sent.
in Hong Kong, when cross carrier SMS messaging was allowed between the six carriers at one time, Hutchison alone claimed its SMS traffic increased by 5X off the bat and is still increasing. with MMS currently drawing higher margin revenues than SMS, this is definitely a case where operators working together will benefit the whole, and the quicker intercarrier MMS is implemented, the sooner we all can enjoy the benefits.
inter-carrier MMS has been demonstrated before, in both GSM-GSM and GSM-CDMA scenarios. there have been standard high-level messaging protocols (MM1, MM3, MM4, MM7 ) definined by the OMA and referenced by 3GPP that have made this possible, although i know from working with the myriad MMSC vendors that the production availability of these protocols has been on a "Just In Time" basis, often with development teams scrambling in the background to meet an implementaion deadline or lab test.
now, the GSM Association has published their MMS Interworking Guidelines, which as the title suggests are the preferred mechanisms for operators to get this working in a secure and efficient manner. the thing that stands out to me after reading this document is, this is not trivial!
that is, MM4 in itself is pretty trivial, and one would probably have little trouble getting 2 MMSCs with ESMTP provisioned to pass MMS messages between themselves, but when you impose the carrier environments on top of this, some of the complications start to become apparent.
first all the carriers have to be connected somehow, and in a secure manner. Security of messages is not a primary concern. Spam is a primary concern. the easiest ways in which MMSCs can be setup to communicate also make it easier for spam MMS to get propogated on the network, and in this case, the end user would to pay for receiving the unwanted mail, which in addition to being a nusiance causes all sorts of billing problems. GSM recommends that instead of setting up new VPNs between carriers, they instead use the existing GPRS Roaming Exchanges, which would require an upgrade, but make the task much easier. The fallback is to create secure VPNs, which would seem to be necessary for GSM-CDMA messaging.
the second thing that complicates things is Mobile Number Portability. They highly discourage keeping static tables of which numbers belong where, as it simply doesn't scale - so they suggest some other ways to deal with how to route the message either by phone number or email address as subs start to move around from network to network.
finally, as different operators have different billing models for MMS ( some charge per message, some charge for the bandwidth consumed, some both! ) there's no clear way to settle intercarrier message costs. my guess is that some 3rd parties will pop up to connect the carriers and settle the bills, all for a well deserved chunk of the pie.
one thing is clear - with only 2 percent of the deployed handsets being MMS capable, operators need to come up with some creative ways to tease users into upgrading, with usability of MMS->SMS being key. there are definitely transcoding techniques such as using wap push i've seen that can help convert some of these users, as well as using combinations of SMS and web based email to get people interested. This uptake has to happen in parallel with internetworking of MMS for operators to get the ROI they've put into their MMS infrastructures.
as a shameless plug, our consulting company offers services in helping operators sort out MMS issues such as this.