Mobile @ Home

Social Networks are on the rise. Actually they are going ballistic... with Facebook leading the pack with 300M visitors... And a lot of activity happens from their mobile applications. Facebook on iPhone, Facebook on BlackBerry... Twitter would not make much sense if it was accessible only from laptop or desktop computers. They are about the beat... A status an hour old is... well... old :). The Web is now real-time.

So in your opinion - where are people using their mobile social applications? Driving a car? Shopping? Last week we had an interesting presentation by Edward Kershaw from Nielsen at Mobile Monday Poland. The meeting was revolving around mobile usage trends and of course Nielsen is the one you turn to for answers :). What Edward pointed out as striking, as illustrated on Page 16, was more than 50% users use their mobile Internet at home. Surprised? You should not be... Even at home most of us have our almighty mobiles in our pockets. There are applications popping out letting us control home A/V equipment from mobile handsets. We are sitting on a sofa, watching tv (or cruising channels), with mobiles in our hands... and what...? Obviously texting, chatting, checking weather and news and stocks, commenting, posting status messages - social Internet activities (Social Networking 2.0 ?). Suddenly mobile Internet has become the preferred feedback return channel from a living room. And it looks like this channel will be owned neither by MNO's nor by cable / IPTV operators. It will be owned by Facebooks and Twitters. And this is the way it should be. Content and conduit separated.

An OS Or A Browser?

Rumors of the finally upcoming Mac Tablet (or whatever it will be called) have been aloud all week. To be honest this is no the iTablet itself anymore that draws my attention. I wonder if Apple will once again try to redefine the way we use Internet devices (from desktops to laptops to MID's).

A couple of months ago I posted a short review of the Lenovo X10S I got myself as a temporary replacement machine. There was a list of applications installed locally:

• Wireless driver for my Canon IP5200R printer
• USB driver for the Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner
• Primo PDF virtual PDF printer (to be able to create PDF documents from any application)
• Google Talk and Skype messengers
• WWAN driver for my GSM/HSDPA USB modem

Today I went through what is installed on my Vista - based Lenovo X200s and the list is not that very much longer. There are a few more applications, and it looks like almost all of them are used to manage transfer of data to other devices:

• iTunes (to manage music on an iPod, a SlimServer and a BlackBerry)
• Garmin MapSource (to manage maps on Garmin GPS devices)
• Picasa (to manage pictures taken with a digital camera)

And there is the Microsoft Office 2007 suite. So yes, it looks like all but one set of applications are used to handle various I/O functions. Connect to the Internet over cellular network, print something, scan something, send content to a device or receive content from a device. The rest is done inside the browser. Except what is done using Microsoft Office :). Yes the king is still alive. There have been many attempts to dethrone it. But there is still one reason or another to use a local Office application. Online document suites are good for desktops. But at the same time when people started getting ready to move from local to cloud - based document editing, they moved from desktops to laptops. Desktops are all always connected today, with a broadband fixed pipe to the Internet. Not so with laptops. We tend to use them in many places. Not all of them connected. Trains, planes, hotels... There are still many scenarios when high speed connectivity is not available. And local application is needed. I travel by train very frequently and I spend time editing Word documents of PowerPoint presentations. While I am connected using my cellular modem and while there are alternatives - not to mention Google Documents, but fabulous online tools like the SlideRocket, they are risky and difficult to use with poor connectivity.

As you see after this short confession of mine... We are probably still not ready to move to browser - only environment. Before that happens, our companion devices will need to roll out broad sense of autonomous Internet connectivity. We need Eye-Fi in every camera, self updating GPSes, and iPhones that do not require local iTunes hosts to help them get up and running every time a new SIM card is popped in...). And we probably need an alternative to Office, able to function fully off-line in our on-line world. Before that happens we will still not be able to fully live inside a browser.

Just Landed...

Last week we had country - level finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition and again I was one of the judges. Our work starts much earlier, as in April we have to select 10 teams that will be competing during May finals. When I was working through this year's set of submitted projects, my first impression was 2009 students show less of the "imagination factor" than they used to in previous years. However, when the general level seems to be lower, there are still some diamonds hidden and our job (as a jury) is to find them.

I have been especially impressed by one project, submitted by the Nosoi Fighters team. What they do is complex network modeling, simulation and prognosis of various factors. Based on the underlying knowledge and technology they presented the CARE application. The primary goal of the CARE is to predict how various diseases are going to spread, and then to estimate vaccination strategy, including distribution of vaccines, how much and where will be needed and so on.

I have never been before to network modeling, but I really like the idea. Of course the theoretical model of a social network is one thing and real world connections between people are something different. And the real difficulty of bringing the model as close to reality as possible is to gather enough real world data. While one could crawl Facebook for network of connections, this would not get us anywhere. Facebook represents virtual connections. I may have many friends there I have never met in person. And for viral diseases we still (fortunately!) have to be physically at least in a proximity to infected people to catch an infection. Twitter's "follow me" model does not help her either.

But both Facebook and Twitter have something else we may use as an input to the model. Statuses. What are you doing now? "Just landed in Chicago..." Are you getting the message? Analyzing status updates we can start building a model of people traveling across the globe. Both Facebook and Twitter have home town properties. A point to start. And then following the posted status updates we may reflect the way people move in geo coordinates. I started digging around the idea and found this simulation: http://vimeo.com/4587178 by Jer Thorp. Based on the very analysis of Twitter livestream filtered to start with "Just landed" Jer proved he could implement a proof of concept model of air travel. Surely this is just a starting point, as for certain scenarios we may look for "I feel sick" or similar sentences or better build a semantic model trying to understand the meanings of status updates.

As I wrote before, Twitter (and it's value) is not understood by many. But there is a reason Google and others offer sums in excess of a 1 Billion dollars for a platform that lets users enter 140 - character micro messages. To me the value of course is in Twitter having reached critical mass with its popularity skyrocketing in recent weeks / months. But it is also in the idea of making everything entered there public. Nobody will ever legally read your emails, but with Twitter you agree you have no rights to whatever you put in... So the information can be then propagated to various third party systems thriving on it.

Complex networks modeling of course has many other applications. Epidemics is just one area, but similar models and techniques can be applied in marketing or fault detection / propagation or many other areas. Bartosz Lipinski of the Nosoi Fighters promised me they would run a simulation based on Twitter's data. I will be checking their web site.

Solar Chargers

Green is in. And solar energy has always been green. It used to be expensive and thus not very popular. And we did not have too many things to power with solar. They were not portable enough or consumed too much energy.

Today I can buy a small garden lamp for $2 retail. This is a small lantern, with white LED inside. It also contains a small rechargeable battery and a solar cell. It charges during a day and stays lit during a night. $2 retail means it has to cost virtually nothing to manufacture. Are solar cells that cheap now? Yes and no the answer is, it all depends, especially on the expected efficiency. But if you are fine with just an average, something you would call a value solar cell - it is cheap. There are many technologies promising to make solar cells even cheaper. Like ink jet printing them. Or using polymers instead of silicon. We have plenty of surface. Why an LCD cover in a laptop could not be covered with solar cells? Or my jacket... it should be constantly recharging my cellphone... why not? Seems we are not that far off this vision...

Recently I noticed many products based on solar cells... Saturn for example sells little two - way radios with solar built in. Great idea. Gear like that is usually used outdoors, when hiking or sailing or kayaking we want to stay in touch with the rest of the group. Sometimes we do not have electrical outlet for several days and having solar keeping the gear running is great. Especially as it does not really add to the final price. If a solar garden lantern is $2 retail, than solar walkie - talkie cannot be more than a dollar more expensive compared to non - solar one. Say $42 instead of $41. Do you care? Which one would you buy?

I did some tests recently, just to estimate how good or bad the consumer / gadget solar products are. I started on eBay purchasing a pure solar panel. Something like 5-by-8 inch board you can strap to your backpack. Consists of nothing but solar cells and has an USB port. Yes... USB, or as I used to call it Universal Supply Bus rules! What a great idea... a solar panel with USB socket, so I can directly plug in any device (iPod, Blackberry...) and see if it charges. Unfortunately it does not. I soon discovered I need some middleware between the solar panel and the device to be charged. A middleware, to medate :). Solar panels output voltage varies depending on the amount of light that shines on it. And it looks like most of the current gadgets expect fairly constatn charging voltage on their inputs. That is why a stabilizer / buffer between is needed.

And I found a good one. The Solio H1000 hybrid charger looked like a good fit. Hybrid means it has solar cells of its own and also an internal rechargeable battery. So you just hang it out to catch some sunshine and it recharges itself. Later you can use it as a power source to charge almost any gadget. I found my pure vanilla solar panel with USB output can be attached to the Solio to boost its recharging efficiency. The Solio has - what is common among hybrid solar chargers - the ability to be charged from wall socket (or any power source). It even comes with an USB cable, that I plugged to the panel, and this way my Solio was recharging with twice the speed (or more) as originally. Once the Solio is charged (charge status can be checked by pressing a button), you connect it to just about any device and the charge flows.

The Solio works really well, but unfortunately they wanted to be a little too smart designing the cables. They introduced a system of power tips, to match almost any device. Too complicated. They should just have a standard USB port. Today virtually all gadgets come with USB charging cables, with iPods / iPhones leading the pack. Then they should have a mini - USB input for charge boosting. As any USB "client" device. Today they offer you a proprietary cable for that. And they should attach a short USB - to - mini-USB cable. To be used either to boost - charge the Solio or to charge a mini-USB device. Simple as that. But cable optimizations aside, the Solio just works. Today I used it to recharge my Nokia N800. Worked as advertised.

Real Time Web

We have not touched base on Google here for a while... It has become a commodity. Really, people take it for granted. It seems like the Internet has always been indexed and searchable. And barely somebody really realizes how much of an effort it has taken. All the Web without search and indexes would not be worth even half of what it is today.

We take many things for granted. Calling somebody's mobile on the other side of the Planet for few cents. Flying close to the speed of sound with a chair at 30 thousand feet for less than a hundred dollars. Using a personal GPS and digital maps to navigate to the nearest sushi bar...

Speaking of GPSes. I love the one in my BlackBerry, together with Google maps. First, there is no maps to install - they are downloaded on demand. Second, the so - called time to fix (time needed for a GPS to acquire necessary satellite signals and calculate position) is very fast, thanks to A-GPS (Assisted GPS) functionality. A-GPS uses cell ID to deliver coarse location coordinates (usually within a radius of a mile or less) and then feeds this as a hint to the real GPS engine. Sounds little complicated, but the end result is coarse location in 1-2 seconds and precision location (accuracy below 10 meters) in 10-15 seconds. Then I go [Search Map] and enter whatever is relevant at the moment - like "Sushi" and again in a matter of a few seconds a list of nearby Japanese restaurants is displayed, then I pick one from the list, select "Get Directions" and off it guides me to the table. You better not try to enumerate all the technologies involved: GPS, A-GPS, LCD, GSM, GPRS/EDGE, 3G, Digital Maps, WWW, Internet, TCP/IP, Web Indexing, Location based search... The end result is plain and simple: a personal teleputer guiding you to the destination.

There is one catch in the above. The information you rely on is static. It may be enough to navigate to a sushi bar, as they do not change their locations that frequently. But there are other scenarios where Google and static Web are not enough. The Web is becoming more and more real time. There used to be blogs - millions of individuals contributing content to the Web. With new entries everyday. Or even several times a day. But now we have microblogs, with Twitter unquestionably leading the pack.

Twitter is not understood by many. True it may seem weird, when you look at it purely as a human - to - human communications engine. There are millions of Twitter addicts, who find it funny to post personal 140-character "statuses". But you may look at Twitter from a different angle. Leave all those individuals posting their messages. And span a business intelligence analytics engine over its entire database. Do symantic clustering and gather statistics. Suddenly you may learn a lot. And I do mean a lot. There is the already famous story of Comcast customer service monitoring Twitter streams. You have never been more in the center as a customer - no need to submit a formal complaint. Just shout and you will be heard. For service companies Twitter streams may bring more important information than their operating centers gather from OSS platforms they have in place. SAP introduces Twitter interfaces to their ERP line of business applications. Others will follow. Martin Sauter has recently found another real time application of Twitter - presentation feedback.

The Web used to be a set of linked documents. Document was a static piece of information. Now the Web is more of an expression of momentary state of our emotions. Absolutely real time, heat of the moment. I believe this poses another set of challenges to the current incumbent Web search providers. Let the ball rolling...