Headworx

I like smart design. One reason I liked the iPOD form the very start was its single firewire cable that was used both for charging and music download. And the iPOD's cable was elegantly thin. And its power supply was very small and nice, with its folding prongs. By the way power supplies are worth the story of their own. Thankfully they are passing away thanks to USB that morphed from Universal Serial Bus to Universal Supply Bus, as more and more mobile electronics gadgets can be powered and charged by a single mini-usb cable that plugs into either a notebook computer or a standalone USB power supply. But I still wonder why notebook manufacturers or the aftermarket power supply guys like Kensington or Targus do not provide USB sockets in their power supply units. Just to charge my phone or an iPOD I have to keep my notebook running at night.... O ne area the smart design is gone (or has never been there) is headphones. Many modern gadgets have sound output. To name a few: an iPOD,...

S haring files is what we very often want and need to do. Sharing started all the idea of computer networks. I remember back in the early 90's when I set up my first company, we were just a couple of people in two small rooms, everybody having their own, standalone PC. Floppy disks were the only way to share files. No recordable CDs (I remember our CEO had a CD ROM drive using a special caddy to house a CD, but nobody dreamed at that time of being able to record a CD at home...). No USB flash keys. And no network between us. So we used floppy disks, 1,44MB capacity to write and carry and read files among our machines. There were networks, but they were expensive. Novell had their Netware 2,20 and later 3,12, with servers written in assembly language, because the guy who wrote them could not remember if you placed a star on the left or the right in C++. But Netware was too expensive for a small startup like us. Fortunately for us Novell introduced Netware Lite, 99$ per PC and what w...

I n my October 2005 post I discussed the possibility of Google entering voice ads market. And so it has just happenned today. Google has yet to go after voice phone calls, but they are closing in - by taking over the radio ads first with the acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting Inc. , a company that connects advertisers with radio stations. The core asset of dMarc is an automated system for scheduling and ads delivery over the radio. T his move clearly confirms the direction Google is heading. They want to be The Place where you advertise. You no longer have to worry about media and channel, they will be picked up for you automatically, depending on the content and your target audience. Internet, TV, Newspapers, Radio, Telephones... Why should you decide? Let them pick the best for you. As I wrote in the Google: Life After Television . "Google is becoming a one stop shop for advertisers. You have a product or a service. You want to sell it. Let the world learn about it. So you go to...

O pera Software is one of the companies I admire the most. Back in the nineties, when the web browser titans were battling for dominance of Internet Explorer versus Netscape Navigator, hardly anyone could notice the alternative from Norway. Experts were saying there was no place for a third, small player on the internet browser market. How times have changed! Now we have Google - backed FireFox that has taken the Microsoft market share by storm, riding the wave of Redmond's fatal mistakes. FireFox has taken hearts of Microsoft community, promising good security and good features (like tabs, convenient zooming and RSS). In the meantime Opera has been working hard, below many of the big boy's radars, developing extremely polished web browser and extremely successful strategy. O pera has been the first to notice and understand the mobile phenomenon. While Microsoft has had troubles delivering a decent browser on their own Windows Mobile platform, Opera offers us a galaxy of choic...

T o end the current Skype saga, I wanted to tell you about the company that stands behind Skype. It's the Global IP Sound (GIPS), a small company from Sweden. They provide voice engines for both Skype and Google Talk. There must be something unusual about GIPS codecs, as the most successful VoIP company and the most successful Internet company, both use the GIPS technology in their products. I nteresting developments can be revealed when you look at the Newsroom section on the GIPS web site . On December 13th, 2005, they released the latest versions of the Voice Engine for both Pocket PC and Symbian 9 platforms. A couple of days later Skype released a new beta for Pocket PC (I believe the latest Skype is based on the latest GIPS engine). What is even more intriguing, GIPS claims they have Symbian version as well. Does that mean we should expect Skype on Nokia phones soon? That would be something, especially when there are plenty of Nokia models for UMTS, and it has already been pr...

T he long awaited Treo 700W has been released. Looks like it's a perfect match for the Skype for Pocket PC. The CPU in Treo is 312MHz (meets the minimum for the low_cpu version). The radio is CDMA EV-DO, so neither latency nor throughput should be a problem. Unless Verizon deliberately blocks Skype packets on their firewalls, everything should work. Treo also has a touchscreen, so the Pocket Controller hack, I described a week ago will no longer be necessary. U nfortunately Treo 700w is not available in Europe, and even if it was, there are not that many EV-DO networks (Eurotel in Czech Republic and Zapp in Romania, but both operate in the 450MHz band). So, hey my American friends, who will be the first to report if it works? Looking forward to your reports....

T wo weeks ago I posted some tests of Skype running on a UMTS Teleputer (i-mate JasJar). While the JasJar is definitely one of the smallest all-in-one computer equipped with 3G voice/data/video connectivity, it is a little too big and fragile to carry as a mobile phone replacement. Some of you will argue with that, but I just cannot imagine skiing or dancing with the JasJar in my pocket. And as I'm sure all the future voice communications will be carried in VoIP (Voice-over-IP) fashion (that means voice is converted to internet packets on the phone and is transmitted to the other party as ordinary data packets - like email or instant messenger conversations), I kept on searching for ways to do VoIP calls straight from my cell phone. If you are a faithful reader of mine, you probably know my primary phone is an HTC i-mate SP5m . SP5m is a wonderful device and the more I use it the more I like it. There are several features that make this phone stand apart from the competition, nota...