Headworx

The iWatch 2.0 was a sure thing on my list of predictions for 2012. But it has not happened. Do you know why? I know, at least one part of the story. As I explained a week ago and two weeks ago , there is one technology that is absolutely central to the emergence of smart watches. It is the Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE. BLE is probably the wireless technology with the most potential in the consumer electronics space. It will be huge and everywhere. In future. Because it is not ready for the mass market yet. And you will hear a lot about BLE in 2013. But it will not be until the Q4 of 2013 until we will ride the BLE wave. The reason is, it is not supported by the Android OS yet. BLE links peripherals (various sensors and gadgets) to a central device (a mobile phone or a computer in most cases). On the peripheral side it is just the BLE (a single mode Bluetooth Low Energy radio) chip. On the central side it is usually the Bluetooth 4.0 (a dual mode Classic / LE radio) chip, so th...

The Sony Smart Watch fits into the recently started Bluetooth theme. As a matter of fact I predicted the year 2012 would be the year of the Smart Watch . And as I still stand by my thesis that smart watches will rule the world, my prediction has failed. The timing was all wrong. Apple has not released a smart watch. Google has not released an integrated Android smart watch API. The Kickstarter Pebble Watch project I backed personally is delayed again. No smart watch for me this Christmas. Or may be? Here comes Sony to wipe the tears. Actually the Sony watch is a surprise. Or a couple of surprises. The first surprise is it works out of the box with ANY Android phone. Yes you read this right. It is not tied to Sony platform. It works with my Samsung Note and there is no reason why it would not work with just about any other Android device. All it requires is the Sony application installed. The second surprise is it uses the Bluetooth classic, not the Low Energy. Why - I will pos...

The recent weeks I have been investigating the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology. Honestly I can say there has probably been no other wireless technology designed so well and complete as BLE is. On the other hand BLE is the most confusing and most miscommunicated standard I can remember. The reason for this post is to clear the fog a little. So first, what is the purpose of BLE and why we need yet another standard for wireless communications? Bluetooth has always been about interconnectivity in PAN or Personal Area Network. Interconnectivity means various devices from different vendors can connect and talk to each other. Most typical use case is the wireless headset connecting to a phone. Or wireless mouse connecting to a computer (sans dongle). PAN means the target scenarios are about devices in the close proximity. Like all the gadgets you wear or carry. Your personal cloud, usually with a radius of  one meter (can go up to around ten meters). Bluetooth (the classic Bluet...

Speaking of phones, the Samsung Galaxy Note was a game changer for me. I have stopped using any tablets since I bought the Note I a year ago. As a matter of fact the game changer was the Note's display - 5 inch high resolution amoled, the biggest that fits in a jeans pocket and the densest an eye can handle. Today I am using the Note II and I do not think of any other phone form factor. The Note simply defines a smartphone today. The decision to stop using tablets after adopting the Note was not deliberate. But just after a couple of weeks with the Note I realized my original iPad 1 was discharged and collected a lot of dust. Meaning nobody touched it for a while. Later I truly admired the iPad 3 when it came out. The retina display is fantastic. But I found the 3 too heavy and too difficult to hold one handed to become the house "sofa" computer (or media / reader). Also, for a sofa tablet, support for multiple user accounts is vital (each family member wants their so...

Energy consumption is now probably the most important problem whenever technology is being considered. We scream at oil prices. We cry at our dead batteries. And we love to be unplugged. Last week I had an interesting discussion on the future of Intel and ARM and my last statement was "would you trade half of the performance of your latest smartphone for doubling the battery life?". Ask the question yourself. Would you? I would. Many would. All of us would. We have arrived at the point where the average performance of an average electronics gadget (a smartphone, a tablet, a computer) is more than an average consumer needs. Again - is your laptop too slow? Or does the battery last too short? But leaving the CPU (Intel vs ARM) wars aside, let me focus on the new important trend that starts emerging. The energy harvesting. We, at wiho.me , are doing a lot of ultra low power wireless communications. Wireless communications is an enormous freedom. No need to explain that....

Talking about startups, in the entrepreneurship series I covered five aspects so far: The mindset of the entrepreneur The importance of the team The risks and how to mitigate them The focus on quality Research / development and support as an alternative to marketing and sales Today I want to talk about a vision. Looking at the list above, it should have probably been before the number 1. Because very often even before the entrepreneur makes the "go" decision, there is a vision she / he has. The vision has to be radical. Stretching far into the future. The further it reaches, the more time you have to make the "go" decision, to assemble the right team, to address the risks, to have time to focus on quality and build proper support structures. A far reaching vision can be identified when you tell it to people and they keep on saying "there is no market for this". I love that moment. Because this means there is not much competition. Yet. And we...

The debate among users of the leading mobile operating systems seems to revolve around what is not the real center of gravity. Everybody talks about apps and application ecosystems. iOS has this and Android has that and Blackberry is falling behind and Microsoft... Apps are important. But far more important is the Cloud behind them. Users of the iOS 6 Apple Maps learned this hard way. And when I think "the Cloud behind", the winner is obvious. Google's strength is exposed to the limits in the Google Now app, which is a standard component of the "Jelly Bean" Android 4.1. The Now seems innocent, or even invisible, in the beginning. And then in a very subtle, yet jaw-dropping style it starts augmenting the mobile moments. My Google Now arrived with the Galaxy Note II a few weeks ago. I have got used to the traffic jam notifications and ETA (estimated time of arrival) Google Now offers me every morning and every afternoon. But this week I went on a short on...

Today the blog is about R&D versus marketing and the advantage of creating technology versus creating a product. The classic startup school says: build a product and plan a decent marketing budget. You will be judged by the conversion rate and the number of returning customers. Well. This is true. But there are alternative ways to be successful. We have, at wiho.me , opted to stay invisible. No web site (just the teaser). No marketing budget. 90% costs in R&D. And support. We do not make apps. We even do not make products. We make our customers' products better. We were not sure about this strategy at the beginning, but now it shapes very effective. Access to the market is very expensive for startups. Because the market is crowded and you have to pay a lot to be seen or heard. On the other hand there are many big market players whose products are aging. Well known and established brands with no wildcards left in their pockets. Do you know why big companies rarely ...

It has been only 10 months since I became a proud owner of the Samsung Galaxy Note . The Note has been a mobile breakthrough for me, as I stopped using any tablets and I stopped complaining on mobile phones. The Note had it all. It has been my only everyday computing device beside the faithful Lenovo laptop. I still have a number of iPads, iPhones, Nexuses and other mobile computing gadgets, but they are for professional reasons, mainly to test the concepts and applications we develop at wiho.me. I was not sure I wanted to upgrade to the just released Note II. But then I saw this video , which gave me no room to negotiate. So I upgraded. It has been only a few days now with the II and I've yet to use the multiview and pen. But the upgrade has proven to be worth every cent. There are two reasons for that: one is the new hardware from Samsung and second is the Android 4.1 from Google. I even have the version 4.1.1, which has all the features of the 4.2 , except the Photo Sphere cam...

The Microsoft's empire peaked a couple of years ago, but last week it has started collapsing. Windows 8 together with the Windows RT and the glorified Surface tablets are the evidence. It is unbelievable, but the bundle is a complete self-ingited disaster. For consumers the reason to stay with Windows has been the backwards compatibility. Which has just been broken now. Windows 8 is no longer compatible with the previous versions of Windows. Whoever is presented with the Windows 8 start screen is immediately lost and confused. No desktop. Just tiles. And when they find the "desktop" tile, they get the desktop without the Start button. Try it for yourself and experience the feeling. For many Windows users it is now easier to move to MacOS or ChromeOS than to move to the Windows 8. Or even better to stay with Windows 7. Which is the reason consumers will reject the 8. Windows RT goes even further in breaking the backwards compatibility. Nothing works there. Literal...

My previous posts on startups were focused on people and the organization. Now let us move towards the products. Creating a startup always is about creating a better product. And again it can be a better iPhone or just a better corner grocery store. The scale does not matter, but the goal is to find customers willing to spend money. Therefore what is delivered must appeal to them either on a global or a local base. So how do we create a better product? Of course it starts with an idea. Which again does not have to be revolutionary. A corner shop almost never is revolutionary but can be very successful. When? When it delivers to the customers a value they are willing to pay for. And not just once. Customers must be willing to return. Or recommend you to the others. This is possible only when they see a true value in your product. So how do you create a product that has value? It starts with a mindset. Your own and the mindset of the team. The mindset to create, build and deliver s...

The Web vs Apps dilemma keeps on rolling. It started with the iPhone1, which opened the idea of an "App", as we understand it today. Then we started comparing platforms by counting the number of available apps: iOS had this and Android had that and Blackberry had only this... Then HTML5 has come along and many (including myself) believed Apps were going to die because they would soon be replaced by new powerful Web technologies. Then Facebook announced the HTML5 decision was the worst they ever made. So where is the future? In the Web or in Apps? Here is my opinion based on the work we have done at WiHo.me : Apps will die and will be replaced by the Web technologies known as HTML5. And at the same time Apps will live and will not be replaced by the Web technologies known as HTML5. Confused? Keep on reading. The first statement: Apps will die and will be replaced by HTML5 applies to desktop computing. There are less and less dedicated, so called "rich client"...

Resuming today the entrepreneurship season (which will be interlacing with other topics from now on), let's briefly recap the two previous posts. The first one was about the entrepreneur and the three personal traits: passion, courage and perseverance, being a prerequisite to a success. In the second one I named the team as the most important piece of the puzzle, placing the team before the ideas, the products and the business models. Today I want to write about the risks. The risks of the entrepreneur, he is willing to take with his courage and mitigate with his passion and perseverance. I am using a plural form, but in fact there is just one risk. The risk of failure. The risk of failure has many faces. Some are afraid they will be subject of jokes in the community. You should not. The act of engaging and creating a startup is itself the act of courage. After all you might have had a hot job and a chance to spend the bank loan on a new house. You left the job to starve, ...

I closed my Facebook account two months ago. The reason was the “ value for time ” of Facebook had been declining for me continuously and the interest graph offered by Twitter fits my much better than the social graph offered by Facebook. The other reason was I felt Facebook has peaked. As a company and as a service. It has peaked because I am not alone in my decision. There are many like me. Including some well-known members of FB’s board . May be they have not closed their accounts but will soon. And for me it was time to move on. The nature of mine is to abort declining trends and to embrace rising ones. The reason number three was to learn if life without a Facebook account would be possible. It certainly is and I miss nothing. Apple has peaked too. Yes I know I called Apple peak back when the stock was $300 (I posted this on Facebook at that time, so cannot give you the link, sorry). Way too early, two years ago. Or maybe just in time? It was two years ago when Apple...

Last week I named passion, courage and perseverance the three personal traits one should have to create a successful startup. But I have not precisely defined what makes a startup successful. I think Rafal Han did this in our upriser.pl video: when a startup becomes a business. It is very important to note it does not have to be a leading, global, world - changing business. A small grocery store can be a successful startup. And a good business too. I have always admired people delivering good value, especially when it is being delivered continuously. Today, in the digital age of networked intelligence, value is scrutinized as never before. So continuous delivery of a good value is a bar set very high. You have to cross this bar. The world is still full of lackluster enthusiasm, shortcuts and crap. When somebody gets rich by riding a wave of impulse selling of million copies of an iPhone application, which is deleted by most users the day after they download it, this is not a busin...

In recent days and weeks I have had a number of discussions on startups, entrepreneurship, seed funding and everything related to creating a successful company. The discussions have helped me sharpen my own, partly rough thoughts on the subject and I have decided to share them here for others to benefit. Or at least to give some food for thoughts. I feel I do have some credibility talking about successful startups, as there are two already behind me (one - CDN - started from scratch in 1991 and the other - Wind Mobile - started from ashes in 2006). Both are now grown up and doing very well on their own, which gives me this great feeling of satisfaction of "job well done" and "mission completed". Today I am deeply involved as a founder and CEO of the third one - HomerSoft , which is shaping up to be an order of magnitude bigger (of course time will tell...). A few weeks ago when we were filming the teaser for the Upriser initiative, I was asked about three ...