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

 

  • Lean web development + more

    This is more of a wish list of what changes I’d like to see in technology and related areas in the next 12 months. This is based around a number of concepts, a few of which are lean web development, security, SSD pricing, better product design and service breakouts.

    Lean Web Development

    Lean web development. This have gotten ridiculous when the average size of a web page is now 1MB. It adversely affects page load times and assumes that bandwidth for the end audience is limitless, which is a fallacy when you have mobile broadband caps and telecoms providers looking to meter broadband use moving forwards. Lean web development recognises that wireless and wired networks don’t provide the kind of limitless low latency broadband technologists assume exists. It might be about turning the approach to web development on its head and developing for mobile devices first and then adding on content or features depending on the device rather than trying to hyper-mile existing web technologies.

    Security

    A more secure web. At the base level an increased awareness of security: why do companies store credit card details or personal information in unencrypted files? At an architectural level:

    • Re-secured DNS and SSL certificates
    • Secure VPNs over IP v.6 networks
    • Effective IP address and system configuration masking to protect from privacy intrusions and badly executed behavioural advertising

    SSD price decrease

    The price of solid state drives (SSDs) to fall so that they can be used on my MacBook Pro as the primary storage drive for my life. At the moment whilst devices like the MacBook Air are attractive. they don’t have enough storage capacity and act as an adjunct or special purpose personal computing device. At the present time that just isn’t possible. Cloud is interesting as an idea, but the reality of networks doesn’t make it as practical as people seem to think.

    Design

    An increased appreciation of ergonomics in device design. In the mid-90s I had an Apple PowerBook which came with legs that flipped around to angle the keyboard at an optimal angle for typing. My current MacBook Pro doesn’t have any kind of similar feature. My iPhone feels too wide in my hand as a phone and my iPad is awkward to hold. And I haven’t even started into a rant over the pictures under class interface and soft keyboard of the device with no haptic feedback.  Part of this is down to a size-zero aesthetic design obsession and interface designers per-occupation with the Tom Cruise film Minority Report – but its making designs that are not particularly human-friendly and leading to poorer product performance.

    A move away from general purpose technology hardware and smartphones to focused designs. Convergence has been a watchword in hardware and software design. A less positive spin on this is bloatware. In hardware that has meant personal computers and smartphones. The personal computer is currently being challenged for dominance by tablet devices which only use a fraction of the computing power available. Why is it that Microsoft Word only allows me to write as fast in the latest version for the Mac as Word 5.1 which was released two decades ago? It is ironic that smartphones like the Apple iPhone can do a range of great and trivial tasks, but are quite poor at being a phone. Dropped calls, poor call-quality and a form factor that still feels a bit too wide in my hand as I hold it to my ear – it is a great example of being a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. Whilst a Swiss army knife or Leatherman tool is useful at a pinch, you are still better off doing the job with the right tools if available. With software or digital services space and weight aren’t an issue, yet we have products that have overloaded awkward functionality that leads to a poor user experience. By all means get different things to talk to each other: iftt provides a great template for how that should look; but don’t try and do all of those things on the one user space. 37Signals ethos to become the norm, rather than the exception.

    Service break out

    One of the Chinese services like Sina.com’s Weibo crossing over and giving Twitter a run for its money. Sina.com have kept innovating with their product getting ahead of Twitter and innovating in terms of the user experience. A side benefit of compliance with Chinese government legislation has meant that they seem to do a good job on spam as well.

    Wireless choice

    A clear idea of what on earth is happening with Research in Motion | Intel | Sony in the mobile space and excellent differentiated products to bring some choice back into the wireless world rather than more of the same. The wireless device industry is starting to exhibit some of the dynamics of the PC industry: with ARM and Android being the Intel X86 and Microsoft Windows of the handset world, with Apple doing their own things. Costs are coming down but innovation only seems to look like what Apple does at the present time. There is a reduction on the types of form factor designs and interaction methods.

    Media

    The return of Geek Monthly. This was a US publication that I came across in Hong Kong. It’s publisher filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, but it got picked up by a new firm looking to get it back on the road. Hopefully they’ll succeed. This Current TV programme should give you an idea of what to expect:

  • I like: Samsung Galaxy Y DUOS

    I currently have two mobile phones, an iPhone 3GS for all that stuff that smart phones do and texting. My second phone is a Samsung B5702 DUOS phone that does my voice calls. My Samsung B5702 DUOS is a predecessor of the new Sony Galaxy Y DUOS. Its a great feature phone with a week long battery life and a space for two SIMs.
    Samsung GALAXY Y DUOS Product Image (4)
    With the Samsung Galaxy Y DUOS, it looks like I’ve been finally given a reason to upgrade. On the specifications the phone is a basic Android smartphone. And that’s fine, I wouldn’t be interested in any of its Android features. Where the Samsung Galaxy Y DUOS excels is that unlike the vast majority of dual SIM feature phones and smartphones available it supports UMTS networks.  This provides you with yet more options when you are roaming abroad on networks.

    It should be available early next year, but you will need to trawl Google and Amazon (I’d advise Amazon Germany) to find it as your mobile phone carriers won’t like it. Mobile carriers tend not to like dual SIM phones. In domestic markets they would allow you to change your call routine based on the call plans of your two times, while still receiving calls.

    So you might do calls out on one SIM to take advantage of its free evening calls, will using a cheaper SIM for daytime calls. This means that the carrier doesn’t get to maximise the revenue from you as a customer.

    Consequently, distribution of these devices in western mobile markets will be limited. However I imagine them being very popular in the likes of Hong Kong where taxi-drivers usually have a bank of phones on their dashboard to handle customer orders.

    More information on Samsung’s press room – the press release doesn’t give an exhaustive breakdown of the technical specifications and too much meaningless marketing platitudes.

    You can find more device related opinions and reviews here. And more wireless related content here.

  • iPhone pragmatism

    Despite working as a digital strategist and creative thinker (whatever the hell that means) agencyside, I have a very pragmatic relationship with technology both past and present from the iPhone to my original Mac. I have had Macs since 1989, primarily because they were the closest thing I found to a computer that just worked.

    I had analogue mobile phones from my time DJing and having friends who worked in cell phone service centres. My first phone that I had to buy was digital, the mobile phone was a Motorola; mainly because One2One (now Everything Everywhere) sold a package where you paid just over 100 pounds and had a phone for 12 months, with a small amount of inbuilt local call time. At the time I used it as a more reliable version of my pager. Even back then SMS proved to be more reliable than the pager that I had used previously

    I went from Motorola to Ericsson, mostly because Ericsson handsets were really well made and then moved to Nokia when Ericsson merged its handset business with Sony. I moved from Nokia to the Apple iPhone and a Samsung feature phone for two reasons:

    • Apple had an address book that worked. My address book didn’t brick the phone. I haven’t had that bad problems with data corruption and it syncs with my computer. It has all the productivity applications I enjoyed on my Nokia phones like MetrO and QuickOffice. The iPhone also has major flaws. For instance, the browser isn’t great, but I put up with it because I can sync my bookmarks for it across from the Safari browser on my Mac. The biggest think that I miss was the Nokia keyboard and laptop layout on the Nokia E90 Communicator
    • My Samsung phone could take two SIMs which is a boon for traveling. This is something that most phone manufacturers don’t provide for markets outside the developing world

    My iPhone was also expensive, like the price of a cheap laptop kind of expensive, which means that I look at it in a different way to previous smartphones. Instead of getting rid of my phone every 18 months, I am thinking closer to three years, just like my laptop.  An additional factor  is that whilst the first iPhones were a radical leap forward,  the iPhone 4 and 4S don’t have sufficient must-have value for me to move on until my current phone dies or the next iteration of the iPhone comes out.

    Now I wouldn’t say that I am an everyman for the iPhone using population; but this has to have some effect on sales. For every iPad that Apple sells there maybe at least a few iPhone upgrades put on hold as an opportunity cost.

  • iPhone 4S

    I read through the Apple press materials following the iPhone 4S and iCloud services launch the other day. There was a lot of disappointment out there when the phone revealed wasn’t a massive step-change forward which is probably massively unfair for example Carnegie Mellon University professor or computer science David Farber posted the following message on his Interesting People mailing list:

    After yesterday’s announcement by apple I decided to   explore changing phones and/or carriers. I am specifically interested in the most advanced smartphone with “4G” capability.

    Any suggestions?

    Having done my own research, I ended up coming away with questions rather than forming opinions.

    Firstly, iCloud; I read and saw nothing that altered my initial perceptions and concerns when I wrote about the service back in June. So rather than repeating myself it is easier to link out to my earlier post.

    As for the iPhone 4S itself; the updates to the device compared to the iPhone 4, felt as much about feature catch-up as about innovation. The improved camera matched features in top of the line Nokia and Samsung phones. The much-lauded speech recognition application Siri was as much about matching the voice activated features in Android software.

    Unlike many online who were looking for a new thinner form factor, I was glad that the new phone kept the iPhone 4 size as there is already an unhealthy focus on size zero design at the expense of battery life, product performance  and ergonomic design.

    When Steve Jobs talked about the transition to Intel processors for the Macintosh product range, the rationale was mostly around a new focus on processors moving from computing power to computing power per Watt. I’d like to know what effect that Apple’s new electronics design for the iPhone 4S has on power consumption and battery life. Does the faster video transitions come at the expense of usability due to declining battery life?

    Only time will tell if the aerial changes and new electronics have improved the iPhone performance in areas such as call quality and dropped calls. After the initial rush to buy from completists and early adopters the word-of-mouth around these issues are going to be important for iPhone sales. More information about the iPhone.

  • Asian woman & more news

    Asian woman observations

    Marketing to the modern Asian woman: Trends to watch by Vic Corsi, Landor – WPP – “Shopping is a social activity and the goal is not necessarily to make a purchase. Group shopping is one of an Asian woman’s main hobbies—over 20 percent of Asian women go shopping every weekend with no expectation of purchasing. While she peruses the malls contemplating what to buy—either now or on some future shopping mission—the Asian woman is looking for brands to convince and entertain.” – the author is writing from a Singapore perspective, but still great content. The big challenge is that the asian woman as a demographic isn’t homogeneous. Shopping is an activity, partly because of air conditioning, which occurs in certain markets like Singapore or Hong Kong. But many asian women are very value orientated. A classic example of this Asian woman would be in lower tier Chinese cities, Indonesia or the Philippines where is the a huge difference in incomes. I suspect that the modern asian woman of the title is code for wealthy and relatively young.

    Consumer behaviour

    Report: Workers in China and India Most Likely to Play Hooky – WSJ

    Design

    JNKsystem.com　 : NEIGHBORHOOD C.W.P. ALT.Zippo – I love the way Neighbourhood puts pocket wear and tear on these to provide authenticity

    Ethics

    A VC: Following Facebook Down The Wrong Path – interesting post on Facebook privacy

    Ideas

    Text of Steve Jobs’ Commencement address (2005)

    Talking To The Future Humans – Bruce Sterling | VICE

    Japan

    Japanese manufacturers see positive signs – FT.com

    Media

    Irish Post bought as going concern – RTÉ News – this is potentially good news

    UK Labour Party wants journalism licenses, will prohibit “journalism” by people who are “struck off” the register of licensed journalists – Boing Boing – this sounds very suspect

    Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value – NYTimes.com – e-education doesn’t necessarily work: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning

    Online

    Questions Arise Over Yahoo’s Value as Buyers Weigh Bids – NYTimes.com

    Facebook: Sharing it all | The Economist – Facebook the sociopathic network

    Software

    Communities Dominate Brands: Analysis of Smartphone Wars and 3 Big News last week or so: Part 1 of 3: Intel + Samung – Nokia = Tizen (not MeeGo)

    Technology

    Why do some people really hate Apple | guardian.co.uk

    Michael Dell Advises Hewlett-Packard – NYTimes.com – its about scale in other areas rather than margins

    Wireless

    Sony Ericsson CEO: We Should Have Taken The iPhone More Seriously | TechCrunch

    Chinese phone systems ‘no threat’ to Google – FT.com – yeah right