Wireless Week

There were two important wireless announcements last week. Both might have drowned in a sea of color handset faces or the remains of iPhone hype. First to the scene was Qualcomm with the announcement of EV-DO rev. B roadmap. While this sounds cryptic, the message is really clear: next generation mobile phones will reach 9Mbps downstream transfer rate. At least twice as fast as most DSL lines we use today. This really means a lot of new multimedia applications. Mobile YouTube is the first that comes to mind, followed by on-demand music downloads. With 9Mbps speeds many existing business models will fail. The first will be metered data plans. With HSDPA at 1,8Mbps in most networks, you are already capable of reaching 3$ per second transmission rate. If that rate was to stay, you could even pay 15$ per second at 9Mbps. This model will fail. Mobile networks will be forced by competition and by regulators to settle on flat rates for both voice and data. They will earn their dollars on VASes (Value Added Services) like voice mail, ringback tones, notification and presence services, location based services and other. Music stores will have to remember your content and stores will essentially morph into personal network attached storage. Your music and your movies, once purchased, will be ready for your multiple downloads. Hopefully services like eMusic will get the message and let me buy songs, download them to my Slimserver or iPod, but later the purchased music, with playlists and sets included, will be available on demand from my mobile phone over high speed data link. With fast data link your phone will be just a cache.

The second announcement I want to bring up front here is the Microsoft Deepfish mobile Web browser. Designed by Microsoft Live Labs team, Deepfish seems to be a good cure to the "Web on a phone" illness we suffer from. Deepfish is about panning and zooming the way it should be. It really shines on a touch screen displays and it would be lovely to have it on the iPhone (but I'm afraid this won't happen, although Apple may try to launch something similar). And it should shine with fast data connection (pity the iPhone is GPRS only).

Mobile Web is coming. And with fast speeds it will be pleasure to use. The only compromise to stay for a while will be between device size and screen size. At least until we have Microvision in every phone.

Google Notebook

Last week after a short chat with a customer I had to start research on a new subject. The thing came (as they usually do) during a short conversation in an elevator, but the subject itself seems to be interesting and innovative and potentially highly profitable. So what do you do when a bright product idea suddenly comes to your mind? I will tell you what I have done.

First, I check if somebody else is working on something similar. There is no point in engaging in a new investment project when others are already ahead or the idea is already very popular and for some reason it is only me being unaware of something everybody talks about. Second, I check if there were any known failures of the approach I am about to start. Third, when the environment for the new idea seems reasonable, it is time to start brainstorming with others to find all the pros and cons and polish the concept further out.

So how do you approach a task like that? Obviously not reading books or encyclopedia... Things morph too fast these days... Of course the starting point for most of us is http://www.google.com. We start searching for any trace of things similar to what has just enlightened us. Finding some links and articles and snippets of information scattered around our virtual planet. So how do you gather all this stuff? Is there a dedicated tool (an application) aimed at solving the "research" problem? Possibly yes. I used to use variety of applications to help in my Internet - assisted research. Take the Microsoft Word, open a new document and keep on pasting the information from web pages, then start the legacy collaboration process by attaching the document to an email addressed to your coworkers. Do we have anything better? There many tools dedicated to assist the so-called mind mapping process. I used to use the Mind Manager from MindJet. It is a very nice application but lags in terms of collaboration, as similarly to Word, you have to attach the mindmap file to an email and send it. Do not confuse email with a collaboration platform. For that reason I have recently switched to web based MindMeister. MindMeister is much simpler than Mind Manager, but it has one big advantage. The maps are hosted "somewhere" and your team can work with you online on them. No more email. Nice :) But mind mapping tools are still not flexible enough to support free form Web research.

So where do you turn when you there is a simple and popular process you want to have an application for and there is really no application that fits? http://labs.google.com of course! And there among many fantastic pieces of code (the Google browser sync for Firefox still holds my highest rank there and is the primary reason I have switched to Firefox) you can find the Google Notebook. The Notebook is just what I need to do a web-assisted research that enters a collaboration stage.

So what exactly is the Notebook? It is a client application sitting in the status bar of your browser (below the rendered page, clever). How it works? Just highlight something on a web page and hit "Add note". Things get copied to the Notebook. You can organize notes in folders, each note is "clickable", taking you to the source page. And then behind the Notebook there is a web page, so you can go from anywhere to http://www.google.com/notebook and find your stuff. There are many other options, of course there is sharing. Add any number of email addresses of people you want to invite to your Notebook or even make the Notebook public. Coooool!!! (and free) Just what I needed. I must confess I started using the Notebook a long time ago, but at that time it had some troubles supporting multi-tabbed browsers (probably there was just a version for IE6). Today the Notebook is one of the applications I use very frequently, close to web search and Gmail. Go and get it, you'll like it, I promise :)

Civilization Of Upgrades

Today it is not going to be optimistic. I am tired. My WiFi works. The Squeezeboxes keep on pumping music from the Slimserver. And my laptop that was dying for several days feels fresh. But I am tired. Have spent last couple of days trying to put several things together, and yesterday at 2am I realized I upgraded almost everything I touched. Do we have a gadget or a piece of equipment that does not require upgrading? Possibly my Nixie clock, it keeps on going. And does not require new functionality and improved performance. No, I do not want a clock that runs faster. No, I am not worried it draws too much electricity.

Last Friday I met our Admin working on a PC of one of our colleagues. He seemed frustrated, showing me 100% CPU utilization and a white screen of a machine that tried to upgrade itself. We have Windows Automatic Upgrades turned on via active directory policies. This seemed natural, the world is evil, Windows has holes, so at least have the mandatory patches installed automatically to prevent some disaster (the last one hitting us, the Slammer, was back in early 2003). Since then the automatic updates worked ore or less OK, at least no second event at that scale has happened. And automatic updates started to show in other applications. But what happened last week was something that eventually must have happened. Microsoft patched us with a bug. Serious enough to bog down the machines, with one process eating all the available resources. I had this symptom for a while. I _think_ it must have started back when I ranted about IBM Thinkpad battery meter eating my CPU and my batteries. So I kept on killing the SVCHOST process to free the CPU, but yesterday the symptoms doubled, there were TWO SVCHOST processes fighting for CPU. One was the IBM Power meter, the other was probably the new, improved Windows Upgrade, resulting from former "upgrade". The laptop was so overloaded I could not even google for solution, fortunately I have a few other machines at home, so I left the dying machine and found the solution on the other. If you need it, it is so called KB927891, described on the Microsoft website.

During the weekend two of my Squeezeboxes upgraded their firmware automatically. After sorting out the Windows bug, I connected my iPod to my laptop. iTunes fired up and reported there was a newer version and I should upgrade. When I went to www.itunes.com to see what had changed, Firefox reported there was a new 2.0.0.2 version ready for upgrade and shut down. After upgrading Firefox and iTunes, I found out the firmware on my iPod Photo was outdated as well, so an upgrade was needed. Same with recently purchased 8GB iPod Nano - 3 weeks old and an upgrade is waiting. Civilization of upgrades. Google is not different, but they even don't ask. I see my Picasa has some new features, the Google Reader has just traded some blue underlined links for white buttons (that is what I can see, I have no idea what new dynamite features are beneath the changed GUI). What comes down to us in form of an upgrade is absolutely out of our control. We simply trust (or do not care) the manufacturers and their devices. When Windows pops up a balloon saying I should upgrade, I have no chance to verify whether it is safe. I have to trust. But all the other devices can potentially download some crap code from the Net and stay dead after reset. Sometimes it is better not to think that way.

A year ago when I was offered an upgrade to business class on a transatlantic Lufthansa flight, I thought I would be nice to have a wider seat for a long flight. The pity was my seat was not working. It was not moving / reclining / whatsoever. I was instructed by a flight attendant to use two strings to unlock some latches and recline the seat. But later they found out there was some problem with the software running the seat. They ended up resetting the seat and all the headrests, footrests, started moving, reacting to the commands from the seat remote controller.

But this time, I am tired. And when offered again an upgrade I will probably say thank you and will stay in coach. Remember... some upgrades can be deadly.

iPhone, gPhone, hyPhone

The iPhone buzz is still around. It has been around for the last two years or so. I was a little shocked to hear David Yoffie from Harvard calculated the iPhone hype brought $400 million to Apple in publicity. "It's unprecedented", he said. Well... Apple knows how to build tension, utilize viral marketing and grow hype. All the modern marketing tools are mastered to perfection by Steve Jobs and his team. Hype, when properly used, is an extremely strong tool.

But as the iPhone is partly behind us (we already know it is there and more or less what to expect), there are rumors emerging about the Google Phone (or gPhone if you like). The first ones surfaced two years ago when Google bought Android, including Andy Rubin, who had previous track record starting Danger and letting out the Sidekick. The Sidekick aimed at reshaping mobile Internet. And what is more important to Google now? After capturing our PCs and browsers, Google's next target has to be the mobile communicators.

The Android acquisition was as silent as possible and the entire company is operating under the covers. But rumors are alive and after the Apple iPhone everybody silently expects a breakthrough device from "G". The buzz went up last week when the new Google mobile phone patent was discovered. The patented idea is to use as many hints as possible to aid users and anticipate what they are about to do with the device, simplifying the information entry process (that is very cumbersome on a handheld device).

The scenario described by mad4mobilephones goes like that.

Imagine that you are planning a night out in London. At 6pm Google could predict you are looking for a restaurant and, given your history of looking for directions to Chinese restaurants every week, would select an array of suitable places for you to eat. At 9pm you would turn your phone on again and Google would know you wanted bars near the restaurant. At 11pm Google again predicts you need a list of local taxi firms.

Very googly indeed... So who knows? Is this going to be one of applications available on the iPhone when it ships or are we to wait for the real gPhone to arrive? Anyway... let the rumors out and earn some dollars :P

Multiroom Audio

Squeezeboxes were covered here several times. But they are worth another story, as I have just installed a second one. And it is a fantastic synchronized experience. Multiroom audio distribution has been my favorite hobby for years. But it has never been fully solved, until recently. My first multiroom system was set up in 1993. It was all about the idea of having one centralized music source and being able to play it in every room in a house and being able to control it from every room in a house. So I gathered a couple of Sony 300-CD carousel changers (fortunately it was possible to cascade a couple of them), a good multi-input / multi-output sound processing preamplifier (TA-E200oESD, a masterpiece at that time, with full digital signal path inside) and a bunch of power amplifiers, one for each room. Then the house was wired with long (and very expensive) high quality speaker cables. With this setup I was able to have speakers in (almost) every room playing the music stored on several hundred CDs. The Sony changers had TV output, so actually I could see on a TV screen the GUI interface used to navigate the CD library. Then was the control problem, solved by placing a number of wireless infrared extenders (a bunch IR sensors / transmitters and one receiver / beamer controlling the audio center). It worked. But the amount of work required to set the whole thing up was enormous and still navigating the CD library from other rooms was difficult. And the system had one compulsory feature - it was virtually impossible to play different music in separate rooms, as the entire content path, from a CD via the preamplifier was single - lane. The player could not play two CDs simultaneously.

Now back to the Squeezeboxes. A Squeezebox is a digital network player. This means it gets the music content over IP network (wired Ethernet or wireless 802.11b/g). It is operated by a standard remote controller and has a couple of audio outputs (standard line out, headphones, digital coax, digital optical). So all you need is an amplifier and a pair of speakers and you are all set. The music source can be an Internet radio station (like the Pandora). Or it can be a local server, a PC or a Mac running the Slimserver software. The Slimserver even used to run on a network attached storage devices like the NSLU2 (a "slug"). Slimserver has many nice features working in tandem with Squeezeboxes. Normally each Squeezebox works independently. This means you turn each and every of them individually and you control them individually. Is is perfectly natural when you have just one Squeezebox. But when you get a second one, sometimes you miss the feature of having them both "in sync", playing exactly the same synchronized music, when moving from one room to another. Actually this is one nice feature of the Slimserver software. It enables you to group together a couple of players. Once done, the music can be controlled from each player (the other players react in sync), the only feature that works independently is volume control. And of course you can group / ungroup / regroup the players on the fly (from a Web interface or using a remote controller). That is really how multiroom system should work.

So instead of having a complicated and limited system, there finally is a clean architecture to handle multiroom sound systems. Instead of miles of cables there is a WiFi cloud covering the music library server (in a basement) and all players (in rooms). Rooms can be synchronized or independent, setup and especially using the system is very simple and intuitive.

And finally, although the Squeezebox itself is a very nice looking gadget, I have been able to mod it a little to match my rustic house :) (see the photo).