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

 

  • Dopplr death & more news

    Dopplr

    The slow death of Dopplr | guardian.co.uk – on its own the death of Dopplr is not really news, the interesting timing  of this article by The Guardian put out this evisceration of Nokia’s web service ambitions. I’m not saying that Jemima Kiss got it wrong, but the timing was interesting: published last Friday – right on the eve of Nokia World. Dopplr is similar to other startups that have gotten lost after having been acquired. Dopplr allowed users to create itineraries of their travel plans and spot correlations with their contacts’ travel plans in order to arrange meetings at any point on their journey. It was known for the quality of its user experience design in comparison to other apps.

    China

    String of Holidays in China Bring Time Off, With Complications – NYTimes.com – complex yes, but I can’t help feeling for the bureaucrats who came up with this who thought that they were doing the best they could for the people and now must be as popular as tax collectors

    Economics

    Inflation in China Is Rising at a Fast Pace – NYTimes.com – the downside of continual double digit growth

    Environment

    MIT: We’ve Got Plenty of Uranium | Fast Company – nuclear power not the washout environment naysayers think

    FMCG

    Deal Profile: Unilever to Buy Alberto-Culver for $3.7 Billion – WSJ – interesting move that strengthens Unilever by taking out a competitor. It does make me wonder about all the brands that Unilever sold a few years ago though

    Japan

    Japan Surrenders – The Atlantic – interesting though very American focused article on changes in Japanese society over the past three decades

    Marketing

    Some of Sharecare.com’s Health Advice Will Be From Advertisers – NYTimes.com – this was where I thought Hunch and Yahoo! Answers could have done more. Ideal opportunity for branded content as trusted brands are experts in some areas and expertise could help imbue trust in a new brand

    Media

    Jason Calacanis: Revenge is a new editorial project to rival TechCrunch | guardian.co.uk – interesting that he is going down an email newsletter route. It potentially cuts social sharing a la Twitter and Facebook as well as social bookmarking off at the knees

    The real cost of free | guardian.co.uk – Cory Doctorow in praise of free and dealing with ill-informed critics

    Online

    Yahoo: Is Carol Bartz in the process of being replaced? – Quora – insightful answer. Possibly yes as part of a process to take Yahoo! private. The critique of Bartz is telling:

    • She has not articulated a coherent product or vision for the company
    • She wasted over $120M on an ad campaign (no material impact on any user engagement metric)
    • She promoted executives like Hillary Schneider after failing miserably with APT (Yahoo ad exchange system).
    • Yahoo left between $500M to $1B of value on the table as part of the search agreement with Microsoft (Carol made Hillary the POC for the Yahoo deal team – lets just say that Microsoft had their way with the Yahoo deal team)
    • She used odd (my gentle way of saying they didn’t work) PR tactics to recast Yahoo in the tech and business community

    Alibaba and Yahoo quagmire: a battle of the wills | FT.com – the FT is very slow to this story. I suspect that this isn’t only about corporate wills, but also about Ma pleasing the Chinese government as well and if he manages to get even richer by doing so: win-win

    Combing Your Friends’ Tastes, Not the Whole Web’s – NYTimes.com – social search market analysis

    Software

    N900 plug-in for OSX iSync – makes Nokia N900 into a a viable option

    Technology

    China Catching India As Asia’s Service Provider? – WSJ – China’s technology service industry catching up with India

    Web of no web

    DOCOMO and University of Tokyo to Conduct Joint Research for Urban Planning Based on Mobile Spatial Statistics | Press Center | NTT DOCOMO Global – really interesting work here, kind of reminds me of The Dark Knight were Batman maps out the building in Hong Kong using mobile phone signals and captures mafia money man Lau

    Wireless

    Nokia’s problem – QuirksBlog – interesting thoughts on Nokia from a software developer

  • BlackBerry PlayBook

    My friend David asked me what I thought of the BlackBerry Playbook. I wanted to give my ideas time to percolate before jotting them down:

    • Sack the marketers – what does ‘professional-grade’ mean in with regards to a BlackBerry Playbook tablet? It’s the kind of weak nebulous marketing speak like ‘leading’, ‘best-of-breed’ and ‘solutions provider’. I thought that we’d left all that back in the 20th century? Obviously the memo got dropped somewhere outside Waterloo, Ontario. Whilst we are on about flaunting its professional-grade awesomeness, why was there no idea of what the BlackBerry Playbook battery life would be? There wasn’t even the usual over-optimistic numbers that manufacturers try and spin – this looks shady
    • The name – I know that business people like to use sporting analogies to try and imbue themselves with the kind of sporting prowess they have in fact lost as a desk jockey more used to putting away expense-paid lunches than points on the scoreboard; but BlackBerry PlayBook smacks more of of a kindergarden or Friday Night Lights, lineament, jock straps and sweaty changing rooms than the board room
    • Sack the industrial designer – Whilst Darth Vader black may be hip in the losers end of the college dorm, maglite black might be hip for the career shopping mall security guard or 80s black may be an ironic design nod to black ash flat pack furniture; the packaging of the BlackBerry PlayBook didn’t impress me at all. Colour ironically could have been a great way to differentiate the design from the Apple iPad. How about differentiation through the tactile experience of the device? It would be nice to have a tablet that didn’t feel as slippery as a bar of soap in the shower
    • Memories of the Palm Foleo – One of the most interesting aspects of the BlackBerry PlayBook was the tethering relationship with its older BlackBerry messaging  device siblings. There seems to be a degree of integration BlackBerry applications as well, this reminded me of the Palm Foleo project that Ed Corrigan killed off some three years ago. I will be curious to know whether RIM would also allow carriers to pair the device with a 4G modem like Sprint have done for the iPad in the US, or if the PlayBook is a giant BlackBerry messaging device accessory? This subtle differentiation is key as on its own, positioning-wise, the PlayBook reminds me of a slightly larger version of Nokia’s N900 but with no keyboard or mobile connectivity – its a clumsy communicator device
    • Finally an upgrade for my 3Com Audrey – back in 2000, I worked agencyside on the Palm account and some of my colleagues were working on 3Com. I was bricking myself because 3Com had their smarts together and partnered with a software company called QNX to create a hot new internet device. In comparison, Palm had some products that were ok electronic address books and a technology roadmap that you could have flossed your teeth with. Fortunately the 3Com industrial design team went for a kitchen appliance versus the Jetsons look and the 3Com Audrey became probably the most under-appreciated device in tech history. Move forward ten years and RIM has managed to capture the software goodness of QNX (with a polished front end) into a mobile device at last. Whilst the industrial design sucks, the underpinnings of QNX’ real-time OS is a geek wonder to behold. More gadget related content here.

  • Nozoe Kuniaki & more news

    Nozoe Kuniaki

    Former CEO of Fujitsu Nozoe Kuniaki (野副州旦) – blackmail forced his resignation | Japan: Stippy – interesting story of boardroom intrigue. Nozoe Kuniaki was originally said to have resigned due to ill health. The FT reported that Nozoe Kuniaki was really forced to resign by Fujitsu. Apparently Nozoe Kuniaki was forced to resign over links to a company of “unfavourable reputation”. The FT hints the roots of this palace putsch: apparently Nozoe Kuniaki was opposed by colleagues due to his drive to refocus the group on IT services at the expense of unprofitable electronics divisions, including its hard disk drive business.

    China

    FT.com / China – China faces shortages of migrant workers – this is more about structural change than an economic problem, the demographic bomb hasn’t kicked in yet. Shenzhen and similar areas will go to higher value products and industry permeate deeper into the country FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Labour shortage hits China export recovery

    Consumer behaviour

    When Trying to Preserve the Planet Strains the Relationship – NYTimes.com – environmentalism causing maritial strife

    Culture

    Axe Cop – genius: a 5 year-old script writer and a 29 year-old illustrator create an awesome comic

    From Quantic Dream, a Child Killer and a Tormented Dad – NYTimes.com – interesting new direction in gaming. In some ways it reminds me of Myst and the vision that Philips had for the CD-i platform

    Economics

    Economists Urge Government to Stop War on Piracy | TorrentFreak – Digital Economy Bill-type measures don’t make economic sense according to Spanish economists

    Innovation

    Op-Ed Contributor – Microsoft’s Creative Destruction – NYTimes.com – “Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?” and “Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever.”

    Chinese Premier Talks Up Internet of Things – NYTimes.com – interesting stuff here, however we need to move to IPv6 addresses fast in order to take advantage of it

    Ireland

    RTÉ News: ‘Guerrilla street’ hurling in US capital

    Japan

    Grads return to watches as job-hunter prop | The Japan Times Online – watches used to give the impression of being well-organised

    Tech Lawyers Say ‘Uh Oh’ as Microsoft Outsources Legal Work to India

    Google and antitrust: Searching questions | The Economist

    Slapdash Bill will damage Britain’s digital economy – The Irish Times – Fri, Nov 27, 2009 – external perspective on the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill

    Media

    Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking UK copyright – Boing Boing – WTF. The BPI-authored changes the effect of which was that “the security services concerns were not being met” and then goes on to talk about the irony that the Open Rights Group and the Security Services being on the same side as if it validates his standpoint

    ivi.ru — смотрите фильмы и сериалы с комфортом! – Russian answer to Hulu and iPlayer. Really nicely designed.

    When using open source makes you an enemy of the state | Technology | guardian.co.uk – interesting evidence against MPAA and RIAA of trying to incite unilateral US government actions against Indonesia because it uses open source software

    Online

    U.K. Kids Start Social Networking Way Under the Age Limit | Fast Company

    Philippines

    Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord – NYTimes.com – My Way correlates with karaoke-related killings in the Philippines. Fascinating bit of newspaper anthropology

    Retailing

    FT.com / Comment / Analysis – China: The jailed salesman – background on the Gome business

    Security

    China PLA officer urges new Internet control agency | Reuters – People’s Liberation Army Major General Huang Yongyin ‘For national security, the Internet has already become a new battlefield without gunpowder’

    Google Case Highlights Gaps in Computer Security – NYTimes.com – interesting take on security

    Software

    The best health apps for your iPhone | The Guardian

    Wireless

    FT.com / Telecoms – Students power BlackBerry growth – I can completely understand this, I miss a proper keyboard a la the Nokia Communicator

    Motorola’s First-Quarter Forecast Hurts Shares – NYTimes.com – Android failing to save Motorola’s bacon

  • Palm troubles

    First of all some disclosure: I worked on the Palm account at my agency some ten years ago now and got to work with some of the smartest people in mobile device technology, notably the company’s chief competitive officer Michael Mace as an occasional media spokesperson back when his pictures had him with a Magnum PI-style moustache.

    At the time I worked on the account the company was riding high on the PDA boom, but the seeds of its current problems were sown back then.

    Even after working on the Palm account, I was a Palm customer. I had a Palm Vx which I used to death (quite literally) and spent a fortune on accessories including a Rhinoskin titanium slider hard case and a ThinkOutside portable keyboard. After that  I had a number of other Palm devices: a m515, a Tungsten3, a Treo 600 and a Treo 650.

    The last device left such a bad taste in my mouth because of an address book full of duplicates and corrupted data that I migrated to Nokia E-series devices, which provided a superior experience to the Treo 650 despite serious software stability issues.

    The company has been buffeted by critics over the years, many of them well-meaning.

    With the arrival of Jon Rubenstein to give it flare and product smarts and a matching injection of new money into the company, there was every chance that Palm could reinvent itself.

    Unfortunately it didn’t, and the company is now reaping the fruits of mediocre labours.

    To be honest the signs where there that the new product line wasn’t great and I wasn’t surprised:

    The communications-related signs are particularly damning as they indicate that at least some insiders at the company may have realised that the product despite the hoopla was not ready for primetime.

    Palm Pre

    The second good sign of a bad device is when after a decent amount of time virtually no one that you know owns one. I only know one person: the fashion-forward Rise co-founder Paul Allen; however on this occasion the Palm Pre has turned out not to be a fashion classic and more like a gadget equivalent of MC Hammer’s parachute pants.

    Interestingly, in his letter to Palm employees, Rubenstein puts much of the weight of corrective action on working short-term tactics with carrier partners to create demand push with no clue about what execution improvements in terms of product redesigns and quality improvements (if any) would be coming to shore up a poor customer experience. More gadget related content can be found here.

  • The Playful World by Mark Pesce

    The Playful World was written by Mark Pesce. Pesce was an early pioneer of the web. He was instrumental in bringing a 3d interface to the web through a standard called VRML. This was an early attempt to provide the kind of immersive ‘matrix’ experience envisaged by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson in cyberpunk literature. Were a digital double of the real world (or more likely a more attenuated digital version) provides for interactions in the virtual realm.

    Since then he has been applying his ingenuity and enterprise to academia  and futurism for the past decade and a half.

    The Playful World was written about a decade ago, yet was very prescient of today’s cutting-edge web and related technology trends:

    • Augmented web – the web provided a data overlay of the real world with applications like locative digital art and turn by turn directions for navigation. Putting this inside glasses rather than on a screen would mirror some of the human computer interaction work done since the 1960s for fighter pilots.
    • The web of things – items become intrinsically linked to the web with all the security risks that entails as well.
    • Custom manufacturing – smaller production runs, intellectual property becomes more important than manufacturing scale. Globalisation gets transformed. Waste could be reduced, though that would be affected by the kind of prototyping one goes through printing items in 3D printing from an existing file.
    • Gaming – lean forward entertainment becomes more immersive, though a lot of the growth in gaming has already happened

    Pesce knits his experiences together into an engaging narrative that would brings all of it together for the reader. If you want to get where things are going I recommend you have a read of Pesce’s book. You can find more book reviews here. More related content here.