Headworx

A week ago I was contemplating whether the shutdown of the Internet would mean the shutdown of the human civilization. And even if not today, we are rapidly approaching the point of no return. Our assets, achievements, wealth, power, love, joy, entertainment - you name it - come in a form of bits, not atoms. A bit is a state of information. It does not exist in a physical world. It has no mass, no energy, no dimensions. It only carries and represents information. We have come to the era where the value of information (bits) is exceeding the combined value of all other physical items (atoms). To me the milestone we have passed in 2010 was the discovery of the Stuxnet virus. The discovery, as the Stuxnet was created much earlier, probably in 2009 or even 2008. The Stuxnet is a weapon. It is the first weapon in the history of mankind that does not have a physical form. The Stuxnet is just an organized group of bits, a piece of information. With immense power to destroy the targets it was

I am reading the Brian Clegg's Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction . In chapter seven the author envisions information meltdown as one of possible reasons of mass destruction of human race. At first this idea seems stretched a little too far for me. Is bringing down the Internet really going to wipe our civilization? I have been contemplating a long lasting failure of electric supply grid as a very serious threat. Theoretically there is such danger. A severe solar eruption can induce enough energy in power transmission lines (acting as huge antennas) to burn many transformers simultaneously. Recovery from such accident world wide may last several months. In the meantime nothing would work. It would not be just dark. Everything would stop. Factories. Agriculture. Transport. Communication systems. The loss of power can be devastating. But the Internet? Most of us are on the Internet for fun. At least partially. We could certainly survive without the Facebook. At least

I am tempted to buy the new MacBook Air. And install Windows 7 on it (of course). But there are two issues that keep me from finalizing the transaction. First - there is no built-in WAN 3G option. Before owning the Nokia Booklet 3G , I had considered the 3G WAN not necessary. But later I started appreciating having the 3G modem built into the computer and being able to connect anytime and anywhere, without the need to plug any external "dongles" or booting up a personal WiFi cloud . It is just so difficult to understand the rationale behind the decision of not including the 3G option in the Air. The iPhone has it. The iPad has it. The Air does not. But in the end I decided I could live with it, returning to regular use of the Huawei 3G/WiFi router. Second - the more important issue - is the lack of any hardware - based security. In the PC/Windows world the TPM or Trusted Platform Module has been available for years, tightening the platform security. I have been using TPM-base

In the beginning there were NTSC and PAL. Two incompatible TV systems, one originated in the USA, the other in Europe. Handling the differences between the two was not a big problem for consumers, as usually they were physically buying or renting compatible content at physical stores in areas where they intended to consume that content. VCRs were not portable and Amazon did not exist. It seemed things got simplified with the introduction of the unified standard of DVDs but then it occurred the worldwide compatibility of content was a bad thing. So we were immediately back to the complicated state with the introduction of regions and region codes. And again content (a disc) purchased in America could not be played in Europe (and vice versa of course). In today's global village the idea of not compatible content is present even stronger. I have a Kindle. Or two - to be precise. A friend of mine who lives on the other side of the Atlantic recommended me a book. I took my Kindle, ente

Last week has brought us some positive developments of mobile data roaming prices. From my own backyard. Orange Poland started offering the Travel Data Daily package. It is activated by sending an SMS message AKT TRAVEL to 573 and gives 2MB worth of data in the Eurozone for 8PLN (~2EUR). While 2MB is a ridiculously small package by today standards, the price is an order of magnitude lower compared to standard data roaming. Interestingly, I found 2MB enough for a day with my BlackBerry Torch , having emails, Facebook and moderate Web browsing. Probably the compression BlackBerry servers do helps here. At the same time Vodafone UK announced even better offer . For 2GBP a day they allow to "take the home data plan abroad", which means one could have a couple of gigabytes worth of roaming data. 2EUR or 2GBP a day is an expense most of us smartphone users would afford when traveling. Vodafone has probably figured out smartphone users are smart (surprise!) and turn off data when r

There was a rumor recently about Apple trying to force a concept of a software SIM card in the new iPhone design. This concept was reportedly rejected by the GSMA, the organization representing carriers, or mobile network operators (MNOs) worldwide. SIM card is considered the central asset of every MNO. Technically it contains some cryptographic information that allows a GSM phone to identify itself and register on the network. No SIM equals no access. And of course SIM determines the associated account, whether it is prepaid or postpaid and how much credit it has and what services it can use and so on. But after 20 or more years the SIM becomes more and more obsolete. Take a look at just about any Web service you pay for. Like Skype for example. The email address and password usually determine the associated account. How much credit it has and what services it can use and so on. Like SIM, but nothing physical. SIM cards used to be associated with phone numbers. But the phone numbers

Three years ago I posed a note criticizing the practices by hardware PC vendors of installing a lot of unwanted software on their brand new computers . These practices peaked - I think - with Windows Vista and are now declining. Or at least this is my impression. Most of my new computers, with the exception of the Nokia Booklet 3G laptop , happen to be iMacs. The iMacs come very clean, with no third party trial versions at all (may be too many MacOS applications installed). As I am not very productive with the MacOS, I install Windows 7 on all of them. And Because I use genuine install distributions from Microsoft, I do not get any third party glut either. But even with the Nokia laptop, things have not been bad. It came preloaded with Windows 7 Starter, later on I was upgrading it to SSD storage and I upgraded the OS to a higher version. But it definitely was not populated with unwanted applications, bogging down the machine. What was even more striking with the Nokia, was the absenc

Why the phone networks, and especially the MNOs (Mobile Network Operators), are losing the battle with Internet rivals, who did not even exist a few years ago? Look at your own MNO. What does it provide? Voice. SMS. Data. The same services that were available 10 years ago. And there are hundreds of MNOs worldwide. They all provide the same three services. And practically nothing more. Ah yes. There are so called VASes (Value Added Services). Voice mail (who uses that nowadays?), ringback tones, and a bunch of other services difficult to explain to an average subscriber. But VASes are really marginal. I do not know the exact numbers, but percentage - wise, they probably account for some low single digits of revenue. Now look at Google. Or Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Yahoo. And try to count the services majority of us are using. The number is high. And growing. This is an interesting phenomena. MNOs, who were displacing the fixed line operators, used to be the richest companies. They genera

I really cannot remember how many devices accessing the Web I have had over the years. Many of them could have been classified as "mobile" or "tablet". I think I first accessed the Web on a mobile device sometime in 1994... Using the HP 200LX palmtop equipped with an analog cellular modem hooked to an analog NMT-450 Nokia phone. The 200LX - as far as I remember - was running Lynx - a text mode Web browser. There was not much I could do with this setup at that time, but still it was an interesting experiment. Moving forward I have very warm memories of the SimPad . It must have been some ten years ago. The SimPad was a Windows CE - powered touch tablet, with resistive touch screen and 800x600 display, quite capable machine. I used it equipped with a WiFi card to wirelessly browse the Internet at home. After some software upgrades it was running the Internet Explorer 4 - the state of the art browser at that time. Unfortunately The IE4 was quickly becoming not too li

Over the years, probably many of you have experienced failures of consumer electronic devices. Power supplies, internet routers, game consoles and personal computers. During the last 12 months I have had an unusual number of such failures. Two satellite receivers ( Kathrein UFS-910 ). Three plug computers ( Sheeva Plug Development Kits ). Three wireless routers ( ZyXel Ethernet-Over-Powerline ). That is eight devices in one year. Pretty unusual statistics. Enough to trigger my curiosity to conduct a forensic investigation. All those failures obviously had an number of things in common. Firstly, all failures were at power supplies circuits. Bam, and all of the sudden the electronics were not receiving the regulated supply voltage. I quickly recalled the failed devices were running quite hot prior to the failures. After opening the cases I found burst electrolytic capacitors. And replacing the capacitors fixed the problems. First - I thought - bad design. Electrolytic capacitors are quit

My old and faithful BlackBerry Curve 8900 gave up the ghost a week ago. My fault. I have been dropping it on a concrete floor too many times. It was in a really poor physical condition. But such is a life of gadgets being used on continuous basis. So time for a new one. Two years since I last shopped for a mobile phone. I have build a checklist of must - haves. Ended up with a short one - just two items: Support for UMA (connecting to the mobile network via WiFi). It is a must have for me, as where I live, there is no coverage. So I can either sit on top of the roof (which is difficult and not an option in Winter), use a femtocell (none of the MNOs in Poland offers them yet) or use UMA to tunnel my cellphone calls via my private WiFi and DSL line. More on UMA for techies on my tech.slupik.com blog . WebKit - based Web Browser. WebKit is the best Web rendering technology on the market. It is a foundation for many top - performing browsers, including the Chrome, Safari, Android and oth

Qualcomm is one of my top favorite companies. I got infected by it more than ten years ago by George Gilder. Today I tried to check what I have written about Qualcomm over the five years this blog is active. The search returns four pages of results. For years Qualcomm has been "all mobile". It obviously started with CDMA, the wireless data transmission technology used today in various incarnations (including HSPA) by all MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) across the Globe. Qualcomm pioneered the technology and has always been the largest supplier of baseband chips used both in base stations and mobile handsets. Over time mobile phones evolved to be more computers than just phones. A need for mobile application processors was born. Qualcomm answered the trend launching the most successful mobile application processor to date - the Snapdragon. Snapdragon today powers the entire line of the latest Windows Phone 7 handsets. It is also in the heart of virtually every phone manufactu

I have to be honest the subject of touchless input , has been keeping my mind busy for several weeks now. I talked on the subject with several friends of mine. And everybody's reaction was showing some angst. Are the machines really going to read our minds? Well... This is a problem. We don't want to lose the privacy of our thoughts. A couple a weeks ago I pointed to the article describing the joint work of Intel and Carnegie Mellon University, quoting Justin Rattner, the CTO of Intel saying "Mind reading is the ultimate user interface." . I did not object then. But I do now. Justin, I do not agree! I still stand by my vision of directly coupling computers to our brains. But there will be no machines READING our minds. It will be the other way around. We will be CONTROLLING the machines with our brains. Let me explain. Your hand. Your very hand. It does everything you want. It obeys the orders of your brain. But can you say your hand READS your mind? Never... It is yo

We have not touched base on the iPad for quite a while. When it was launched in January, I thought I would buy at least two. Eventually I bought one and I still have mixed feelings. Sometimes I like it. Today is one of these days. Sunday recovery session, with lazy time passing by, I have been sitting on a sofa by my big window overlooking the garden with yellow leaves already dancing in the wind. I have read two technology / investment forums I participate in, browsed through some 200 new items in the Google Reader and read some ten articles. Content snicking. This is what can be done very well on the iPad. But when I wanted to continue with my current book - The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century , I reached for the Kindle. One of the background tasks running in my head was still processing the puzzle I was offered on the Domino forum, when suddenly it interrupted my reading with the Eureka! To offer the solution to the puzzle, I had to check some stuff on the Internet

What do you think is one of the problems we will not solve for good before 2020? It is power consumption (yes, I have said this a number of times already...). Thirty years ago when I was starting my lifetime adventure with computers, nobody cared about power consumption. The problem number one was speed. And today? Theoretically we can have almost as much speed as we want, provided we have enough power to supply to a computer and are able to dissipate the heat it converts to. Things are not that bad as long as our machines are plugged to a power plant. But get orders of magnitude more complicated once we want to cut the power cords and be mobile. Today all mobile devices have one problem in common. Battery life. From mobile phones to portable game consoles, to music players and portable computers, their batteries last too short. And even if they in some rare occasions last long enough, it is because we limit the battery life cutting down on speed or because we install excessively big b

After several weeks of heavy artillery, today I offer something on a lighter note. After months of searching I have finally found a really universal USB charger. Why do I consider this significant? Look. Depending on a trip, I usually take more than one USB powered gadget with me. I have a phone (Blackberry), mobile speakers (iHome IHM79), a mobile WiFi router ( Huawei E5830 ), an eBook Reader (Kindle), a music player (iPod Nano) and sometimes a tablet (iPad). There are two fundamental reasons this one is like no other: It has two USB ports. I always have at least two USB powered gadgets with me. Or more. Having two ports I can spare another charger. It is the only one that charges all my gadgets. It had been a tough puzzle before. Because the Huawei router can only be charged with the Kindle charger. But the Kindle charger does not charge the iPad. And the iPad's charger does not charge the Blackberry. And both blackberry and Huawei have bulky and heavy chargers. Now there are no

We are so excited about the pace of technology progress. Every problem seems to be just a temporary problem, with a solution already on the horizon. Faster connection speeds. Faster processors. Smarter algorithms. Stronger materials. All those inventions make possible things that were not possible just a while ago. But there are certain fundamental technology problems, which will not be solved. At least not before the end of the current decade. One such problem is supply of power to mobile devices. Before we even start thinking about mobile devices, let us realize the power problem has become the biggest problem in the non-mobile computing world. Fulfilling the Moore's Law, we are able to scale down the geometries and scale up densities. The concentration of raw computing power per physical volume is skyrocketing. And so is the power draw. And still all the power consumed by electronic circuitry is turned into heat, which has to be dissipated. To dissipate the heat, we use even mor

My thoughts are still circling around the general user interface issues, and especially around the input methods people use to interact with computers. "Computers" here has a very broad meaning. Today anything is a computer. Be it a car A/C control or a house thermostat or a video recorder (referred today as a PVR - personal Video Recorder, as if the former ones weren't personal...). Humans are analog by design. Computers are digital. Back in 1970's when the first digital systems were emerging there was a huge drive and demand for everything digital, especially as an input and output. The first digital, LED based watches. The first VCR's. The first massive failures. The VCR era, that lasted during the 80's and the 90's can be very accurately identified by any time traveler by blinking [12:00] clocks in the living rooms. Guess why... The users simply did not know how to use the digital remotes to set up their digital clocks. Even if they managed to do this

Last week I have had plenty of time to think, during the long walks along the empty sand beaches of the Hel peninsula . Walking is so relaxing. I can go for hours and hours, sometimes listening to some music, sometimes to an audiobook, and sometimes just doing nothing but walking. And thinking. Unfortunately after a couple of days it gets somehow boring. At the seashore you can go either eastwards, or westwards. And the landscape, although beautiful and unique, does not change much when you walk. So on the third of forth day I felt like doing something more while walking along the beech. I had Internet with me. Everyone has it these days. In a mobile phone in a pocket. The trouble is, it is really hard to interactively operate a mobile Internet device, while walking. One thing is the screen. No way to look at the screen and walk. Sooner or later you will hit a tree this way. And equally difficult to use keyboard. Oh how I was missing the screen-less, keyboard-less system I envisioned i

Mobile Internet occupies the headlines. No wonder. The 2001-2010 decade was ruled by desktop Internet, aka Web 2.0. Starting sometime around the year 2000, sitting at the desktop computer, we started our transition from humans to super-humans. Armed with a keyboard, a mouse and a screen, with fast broadband connectivity each one of us could win the "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" show. Courtesy of Google. Things are different in the Mobile Internet decade 2011-2020. Broadband is either already here or is coming. But to mobilize our super - humanity, we need to break free from screens and keyboards. Screens and keyboards form cages keeping us from the real mobile freedom. Any screen you take is both too large (when you have to carry it) or too small (when you look at it). Ditto keyboard. Both screens and keyboards are dead ends in the evolution of human - machine interfaces. Imagine a powerful, connected mobile computer. One you can communicate with freely, without having to

The avalanche of posts mentioning the Gingerbread (aka Android 3.0) is running at a full speed now. The most intriguing news however point to Sony working on a PlayStation Phone . It will run the Android 3.0 on a Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor. Finally. It has taken them five years since my October 2005 call . Better late then never... Anyway the PSP platform is holding pretty well... Six years on the market... The UMD micro optical drives are gone and replaced by silicon, but the platform still sells well. As Mr Jfieb points out on our Domino Research Forum , the Sony / Android news can be paired with the recent Qualcomm's announcement of shipping the long awaited QSD8672 dual core 1.5 GHz Snapdragons. Most importantly, as I posted a week ago, during their last conference call QuickLogic mentioned Qualcomm about to ship 3000 reference design kits to OEMs Worldwide. There should be no doubt the kits are promoting the full capabilities of the latest Qualcomm processors. It is a

Last week has brought us a number of news on the foldable displays. First, and probably the most important is the US patent application 20100064244 , submitted by Qualcomm. A multi-fold mobile device with a configurable interface is disclosed. In a particular embodiment, a method includes detecting a hardware configuration change from a first configuration to a second configuration at an electronic device that includes at least a first panel having a first display surface and a second panel having a second display surface. The hardware configuration change includes a change in a relative orientation of the first display panel to the second display panel. The method also includes automatically modifying a graphical user interface displayed at the first display surface and the second display surface at least partially based on the second configuration. In parallel there was the very interesting quarterly conference call by QuickLogic . During the Q&A session, there was an interesting

It arrived last friday. And my impressions are far better than the last time with the first international edition Kindle . Small things first, when ordering it from Amazon.com, the description stated clear the international version was offered without a power supply, only with a USB cable. Fair enough. I added the EU power supply to the order and there was no disappointment. I decided to order the DX model for a reason. Or actually for two reasons. The first - I found out after a firmware upgrade, the Web browser built into the Kindle works quite well for text Web pages, including JavaScript. What surprises me though, at the moment Amazon offers 3G Internet connectivity at no cost. Worldwide. I've browsed the agreements and terms and conditions of the service and have not found any specific information. They say they may charge for data usage. They say they will charge for over-the-air delivery of personal documents to the device at $0.99 per MB. But the Web just works (remember, I