Ged Carroll

Category: wireless | 無線 |무선 네트워크 | 無線

This blog came out of the crater of the dot com bust and wireless growth. Wi-Fi was transforming the way we used the internet at home. I used to have my Mac next to my router on top of a cupboard that contained the house fuse panel and the telephone line. Many people had an internet room and used a desktop computer like a Mac Mini or an all-in-one computer like an iMac. Often this would be in the ‘den’ or the ‘man cave’. Going on the internet to email, send instant messages or surf the internet was something you did with intent.

Wi-Fi arrived alongside broadband connections and the dot com boom. Wi-Fi capable computers came in at a relatively low price point with the first Apple iBook. I had the second generation design at the end of 2001 and using the internet changed. Free Wi-Fi became a way to attract people to use a coffee shop, as a freelancer it affected where I did meetings and how I worked.

I was travelling more for work at the time. While I preferred the reliability of an ethernet connection, Wi-Fi would meet my needs just as well. UMTS or 3G wireless data plans were still relatively expensive and slow. I would eventually send low resolution pictures to Flickr and even write a blog post or two. But most of the time I used it to clear my email box, or use Google Maps if I was desperate.

4G wireless services, started to make mobile data a bit more useful, even if the telephony wasn’t great

 

  • John Legere on T-Mobile

    John Legere knows how to work his crowd, a technology CEO channelling Lenny Bruce with a mix of common sense and expletive strewn humour. Beneath that showmanship is an interesting analysis from the inside of what its like to run a modern cellular carrier business.

    Outtakes from John Legere

    • Interesting the way he talks about his clash of personality personality with  his parent company as John Legere vs. T-Mobile
    • At the time T-Mobile was winning share from Sprint, AT&T and Verizon
    • The video is on YouTube so may not be available for all readers.
    • Historically acquisitions was about spectrum, it now seems to be about industry consolidation
    • Legere on the difference of Global Crossing and T-Mobile. He was looking to adapt as a personality to his younger tech savvy consumer base. CEOs are generally a monoculture.
    • He uses social media for insights on customer experience and brand health
    • Customer care calls gives him a lot of insight about customer experience
    • All of the ‘Uncarrier’ positioning and moves were inspired by customer service calls and the experiences that customers have in the interactive voice systems. Uncarrier started with ‘how you buy’ and then went on to ‘how you use’
    • T-Mobile benefitted from being able to move fast and their competitors reluctance to change their services
    • Apple iPhone 6 ‘Bendgate’. It wasn’t a real story according to Legere and hadn’t dented demand for the iPhone on T-Mobile
    • Legere felt that the tasks he needed to address going into T-Mobile were: improving the network, getting spectrum, reinvigorate the T-Mobile brand and get the iPhone on T-Mobile.  Store traffic was incomplete, customers wouldn’t go to a cellphone store unless they had the full range of devices.
    • Before Legere arrived people wouldn’t even mention T-Mobile in terms of the data capability & network speed
    • Apple drove a lot of quality focus on Wi-Fi and VoLTE calling
    • Amazon missed out on its Fire phone (and later tablets). The company didn’t think about it in terms of service bundling with all the other assets like Amazon Fresh and Amazon Prime
    • On Windows Mobile – stop the charade that cellular networks are OEM manufacturers. Legere would have liked Windows Mobile and Amazon to be successful if customers want them

    More mobile related content here.

  • Boycott Kakao Talk & more things

    South Koreans boycott Kakao Talk social media service after president’s rumour complaints – alleged movement towards Telegram due to its reputation for security. Kakao is too useful software for everyday life in Korea for a complete boycott. Boycott Kakao Talk is unlikely to get traction, despite Korean consumers reputation for serious boycotts of consumer brands that haven’t performed. More related content here.

    Building an RSS feed with ScraperWiki and Yahoo! Pipes | Magic Bean Lab – Mat pulled together an RSS feed from Facebook’s new research portal, more about it in this link.

    Hackers’ Attack Cracked 10 Financial Firms in Major Assault – NYTimes.com – major US banks exposed. It won’t be long before it

    New Mac Botnet Leverages Reddit | Dark Reading – interesting control mechanism

    How Did the FBI Find the Silk Road Servers, Anyway? | Motherboard – interesting allegations in the article. Which begs the question, can the FBI be tried for perjury, if the article is true?

    Communities Dominate Brands: Survey of Global Market Today for Mobile Wallets and Mobile Money – In aftermath of Apple Pay launch – some interesting examples of mobile wallets and mobile money.

    Editing images of ‘hell’, in close-up – Correspondent – really interesting piece on media content covering Middle East in terms of the editorial process that is used

    Facebook & Skype Revealed as Most Popular Smartphone Messaging Apps | Park Associates – US-only data. One of the reasons that Facebook bought WhatsApp was to gain out of US relevance in mobile messaging apps. Skype’s VoIP capabilities has been disruptive  in mobile voice services businesses. T-Mobile’s European business tried to block it; Three embraced it.

    Terms of Service; Didn’t Read – do this now. An effort to empower consumers by letting them know what they are actually signing up to. Your average consumer would be surprised with what is being done. This is what gives Apple its space to focus on privacy orientated services

  • On smart watches, I’ve decided to take the plunge

    I have long thought on smart watches as a possible useful device. So I have decided to take the plunge into wearables. My previous attempt with the Nike Fuelband didn’t go very well as I seemed to break them with frightening regularity and never really learned much from the experience apart from Nike can’t build hardware.

    I haven’t gone with Samsung wrist watch, or the better looking Sony one. I will not be rocking a pre-release device from Apple. Instead I have relied on smart watches pioneer Casio, who gave us the Data Bank in the 1980s.
    blue G-shock
    Casio has built a low power Bluetooth module into a G-Shock that gets up to two years on a lithium battery and is still water resistant to 200 metres. Realistically I would be happy if I got 12 months out of it. It uses its Bluetooth skills to give you basic notifications around email, incoming calls and alerts across Facebook, Twitter and Weibo.

    At the mid-point in the price of G-Shock watches, it means that the upgrade path isn’t exactly painful. The G-Shock strikes the right balance between robust hardware and disposability required for technology improvements.  In fact, I’ve worn a G-Shock before when travelling to span timezones and as a timepiece that I won’t get too attached to if it gets stolen – the smart watch G-Shock has the advantage of my phone being on view less often, ideal for the crime-filled streets of Shepherds Bush or Shenzhen.

    I think the smartest thing about the watch is it’s deliberately limited scope to provide notifications. I don’t think that Casio has it perfect, in fact I can see how the power-saving function on the Bluetooth module is likely to miss messages; but I think that they are on to something with this approach – and so I am willing to give it a try.

    I am surprised that these watches aren’t being sold in Apple stores around the world given G-Shock’s brand presence in the street wear community. Maybe Casio hasn’t got their act together, or Apple aren’t particularly keen on the competition.

    Oh and I won’t look-or-feel like a complete dick wearing it.

    More information

    “Generation 2 Engine” Bluetooth® v4.0 Enabled G-SHOCK | Casio – yes their marketing sucks with a naming structure only a Microsoft product manager could love
    Comparison Chart of Mobile Link Functions – Casio

  • Keybase + more news

    Keybase – ‘Keybase is a website, but it’s also an open source command line program’ – outlines one of the key problems with encryption right there for widespread consumer adoption. (Note:  Keybase ended up being acquired by Zoom in 2020). More security related content here.

    FMCG

    What Chinese brands know that MNCs don’t – Campaign Asia – marketers targeting too small a segment of Chinese middle class. Don’t really get Chinese middle class dynamics (paywall)

    Hong Kong

    One in five Hongkongers may emigrate over political reform ruling | SCMP – no they won’t and the people who feel the most strongly about this are in the least good position to leave

    Ideas

    LOOK Google gamifies search with Google Mo Lang | Marketing Interactive – interesting Google tactic to increase usage

    Luxury

    Luxury brands in a quandary as China’s wealthy young develop resistance to bling | The Observer – picking Wendi Deng as an ambassador won’t do anything for their appeal to a Chinese market and they could have got more contemporary than Gong Li (gorgeous as she is)

    Media

    Facebook Earns 10% of Digital Ad Dollars, More Than Any Other Online Platform | Adweek – a third of global social spend is in APAC

    VML China acquires Teein, fills hole in social media capability – Campaign Asia – really interesting that IM2.0 didn’t already have social and used to outsource it. VML in China is formidable

    Online

    Line temporarily cancels its IPO | Techinasia – avoiding the kerfuffle around Alibaba

    Quality

    iPhone 6 Is the Most Durable iPhone Yet, Says Insurer – WSJ – you would need to do a larger sample of phones for statistically significant sampling

    Security

    MIT Students Battle State’s Demand for Their Bitcoin Miner’s Source Code | WIRED – it’s all a bit weird

    The free wifi war’s security edge in China | WantChinaTimes – interesting that Chinese internet companies are rolling out free wi-fi. Where does this leave the likes of China Mobile?

    The Athens Affair – IEEE Spectrum – anatomy of the Vodafone Greece hack. Very Snowden-esque

    Microsoft no longer Trustworthy | The Register – interesting that it is getting shut down, I suspect integrated is a better way of looking at it

    Wireless

    Apple – Press Info – First Weekend iPhone Sales Top 10 Million, Set New Record – take this with a pinch of salt may have something to do with not all markets being address which has driven demand and scarcity

  • Flightdecks & things from last week

    Virgin Atlantic’s forthcoming Flightdecks on board a plane being managed by Cake rather reminded me of the KLM Fly2Miami campaign done some three years ago. Both were about turning the cabin into an inpromptu night club with live DJ sets. 

    Apparently Virgin will be live streaming their event. The line up includes Gorgon City and Rudimental. It just goes to show that an idea like Flightdecks can run and run. 

    The World Economic Forum held another event in China this year and there was a rare opportunity to hear Chinese policy makers talk about the web. In short, the libertarian values of the web that we all know and love which came from the 1960s counterculture movement is likely to be reined in globally because the one thing governments can agree on is that more regulation and power is something they rather like.

    It included Lu Wei the minister of cyberspace administration from the Chinese government. It is impressive that they take it so seriously when the internet was largely seen as a joke by UK politicians prior to Edward Snowden’s embarrassing disclosures. But then China spends three times as much on internal security as it does on defence. Internet companies like Alibaba have broadened the marketplace into rural ‘TaoBao villages’ as rural enterprises.

    The only technology vendor / service provider represented was Qualcomm which felt unbalanced.

    SmartInsights had a great set of examples of digital experiential marketing using VR headsets like the Oculus Rift.

    iOS 8 rolled out the other day, my iPhone toting counterparts in the office are happy with it. I am giving it until after the weekend to ensure that any vagaries with carrier settings are ironed out before upgrading my phone. More iOS related content here.

    Liam Neeson’s A Walk Among The Tombstones is actually based on a novel rather than a darker remake of the Taken series of films but the trailer looks epic.