NTP is the New SCO
Business July 9th, 2010
NTP, the shell company whose only business is to extract ransom from real businesses does not sit on the $600 they extorted from RIM. They are now suing just about all the smartphone industry: Apple, Google, HTC, Microsoft, LG and Motorola.
Is NTP the new SCO?
Related posts:
- NTP Sues Apple, Google, Microsoft And Others Over Wireless Email Patents
- Google, Apple, Others Sued for Email Patent Infringement
- ??? (On patent issues my two favorite sources are Techdirt and Brad Feld, but they have not chimed in yet…)
Tags: Apple, cellular, CloudAve, extortion, Google, htc, Intellectual Property, IP, lawsuit, lg, microsoft, mobile market, motorola, ntp, patent troll, patents, sco, smartphones, wireless
Your Own (Almost) Ad-Hoc HotSpot
Technology June 23rd, 2010
If you’re a frequent traveler, you’re likely better off buying a MiFi or using your late-model cell-phone’s HotSpot capability than paying those outrageous hotel surcharges. If you’re a frequent conference-goer, you’ve already learned they all fail to provide reliable connection(Web 2.0, LeWeb, Gnomedex, Microsoft PDC, Google I/O, just to name a few recent examples), so the only solution is BYOW – Bring Your Own WiFi (and the chaos it creates.)
But what if you rarely venture to un-connected areas, say a few times a year? Paying $30-$60 a month does not look like a great value.. Now you can (almost) have your own ad-hoc service, without the monthly subscription plan – after you plunk down $149 for Virgin Mobile’s new MiFi device. You can pay anywhere between $10 for 100MB to $60 for 5G of usage.
There’s only one problem with the plan – spot it yourself:
Yes, all these plans expire in an unreasonably short time. Given the these limitations, if I were an infrequent user (less then once a month), I would probably buy the $10 plan just a few days in preparation for specific events. But let’s be real, this s*cks. The proper solution for the ad-hoc user would be consumption-based plans with no expiry, with fill-up option.
Tags: byow, cellular, CloudAve, conferences, hotspot, mifi, mobility, travel, wi-fi, wireless
US Air Force Forced to Play – by Sony
Humor, Technology May 13th, 2010
My new HTC Incredible phone has a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor in it. That’s faster than laptop computers were just a few years ago. That, and reading the US Air Force story (you have to wait for that a little longer…) reminded me of an interesting conversation with Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu two years ago:
Given how mobile phones pack a whole lot of functionality in a tiny package, I have wondered if the ideal server farm is just tens of thousands of mobile phones packed together. It seems to me that the semiconductor technology behind mobile devices is far, far more power efficient than the stuff that goes in servers. Partly it is a backwards compatibility issue, with servers having to run code written all the way back to 1980s, while mobile phones simply didn’t exist that far back. Partly, it is also a function of how traditional client-server applications were architectural monoliths, compared to the deeply distributed “service-oriented architecture” that is common in web applications today.
With mobile phones approaching very respectable CPU & memory capacity, packaging them together as a server cluster makes a lot of sense. Linux can run on almost all of the modern CPUs common in cell-phones, and the mobile version of Java seems actually well-suited for server use, particularly for deeply partitioned, distributed applications. Lightweightness is actually an advantage in server software, just as it is in mobile software.
While I don’t know if anyone has implemented the idea, there are other experiments with using cheap but powerful hardware in non-traditional ways – most notably the US Air Force which concluded that Sony PS3 consoles running Linux provide powerful and dirt cheap computing power.
The above cluster contains 1,700 160GB PS3 units, and is a great example of cheap computing – except for a small glitch. A few month later Sony issued a firmware update that kills the ability to install Linux on the PS3. This won’t immediately turn the cluster into dumb game consoles, since the Air Force is not hooked into Sony’s network. Isolated from further patches the machines can still work as Linux computers – but swapping them out and repairs become increasingly difficult. Unless Sony reverses the decision (which is not out of question, given there are several lawsuits on the matter), the Air Force eventually ends up with a bunch of Game Consoles.
Which is not the end of the world – there’s an abundance of Flight Simulators for the PS3 
(Full story @ Ars Technica)
Tags: air force, cellular, cheap computing, CloudAve, cluster, data center, linux, playstation, ps3, sony, sridhar vembu, zoho
From my vantage point even dropped calls would be a luxury – meaning you can get a strong enough signal to place calls in the first place. Apparently I live at the end of the World. Sometimes I tell friends if Friedman is right and the World is really flat, this is where you fall off the edge.
But it’s not really the “end of the world” – Pleasanton is (was) was hometown to software giants like PeopleSoft, Commerce One, Oracle, Workday, or to name a few more traditional businesses, grocery chain giant Safeway, or mega-HMO Kaiser Permanente. Yet this is what AT&T’s coverage map looks like:
Ad no, we’re not even talking about 3G data, this is for voice calls. Now, being in the “good” (on the boundary of moderate) zone may not look so bad, until we look at how At&T defines good voice coverage:
Should be sufficient for on-street or in-the-open coverage, most in-vehicle coverage and possibly some in-building coverage. This AT&T owned network provides GSM, GPRS, and EDGE service
Possibly some in-building coverage? Calling that good? How pathetic. But let’s look at other carriers’ definition of “Good”. T-Mobile:
You will likely be able to place calls outdoors, in a car, and occasionally indoors.
Occasionally? What are they smoking calling this “good” coverage? Hm, let’s check Sprint, home to the uber-super HTC EVO 4GS and the superfast Overdrive 4G hotspot:
You should generally receive a signal strength sufficient to make calls outdoors, in a car and in some buildings.
How Pathetic. All these companies must speak a different version of English, where “good” means “no can do” in most buildings. Insanity.
That only leaves Verizon, which has solid red (best coverage) in my entire area. Which makes my choice easy: all those comparative reviews of the iPhone 3G and 4G, HTC Incredible, Nexus One, HTC EVO 4G are so irrelevant, if I can’t get a signal. HTC Incredible (Android) and Verizon, here I come. By default.
Tags: at&t, cellular, CloudAve, htc, htc incredible, iPhone, mobility, smartphones, sprint, t-mobile, verizon
I Stole the HTC Incredible for $99. OMG.
Technology April 30th, 2010
Wow, talk about luck, apparently I caught a discount that barely existed for hours. I’ve long waited for a decent smartphone available @ Verizon, be it the iPhone, Nexus One or whatever else … so raving reviews of the HTC Incredible certainly did not leave me cold. Still somewhat hesitating, I started to look for deals. Verizon offers the new superphone for $199 with a two-year contract, but I’ve quickly quickly found some outlets selling it for $149. Then it occurred to me I should check my new default shopping destination, Amazon. Bingo!
I could not resist the $99 price, so I quickly ordered it. This morning I wondered why people are saying Amazon sells it for $149 … a quick check on the pricing:
Wow – was the $99 an introductory promotion ( not that they needed it, the first shipment sold out in hours), or an honest mistake by Amazon? I don’t know, but am certainly happy that I grabbed it while it lasted
Now, if only HTC had a better name for it: saying HTC Droid Incredible is quite a mouthful – compared to the elegant simplicity (simple elegance?) of just saying iPHone. Perhaps they should follow this advice:
If you have the audacity to name your new smartphone Incredible, it had darn well better live up to its name. Based on the reviews from CNET, LAPTOP magazine, PC Magazine, and PC World, the new HTC Droid Incredible does just that. In fact, the Android 2.1-based Verizon phone ($200 with two-year contract) could just as well be named Awesome. Stupefying. Maybe even OMG.
OMG. I like it. Now, please, Holy Amazon, just ship it soon.
Tags: amazon, android, cellular, CloudAve, droid, htc, htc incredible, iPhone, mobility, Nexus One, smartphones
Nokia? Forget it …Kim Basinger’s Lifeline Would be an iPhone Today.
Technology December 1st, 2008
The 2004 thriller Cellular features three stars: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, and a Nokia 6660 video-phone. The kidnapped school-teacher played by Kim Basinger pieces together a broken phone and reaches a random dude, Ryan (Chris Evans) on cell-phone – this call literally becomes her lifeline.
Ryan effortlessly uses his Nokia miracle-phone in the middle of a wild race in his (stolen) Porsche, even produces the video evidence that will put the bad guys away at the Happy End.
But are Nokia phones really so easy to use in real life? Read on to find out…
Tags: blackberry, cellular, competition, design, innovation, iPhone, mobile phones, mobility, nokia, touch screen
iPhone Battery Power: Worthless Comparisons.
Technology July 14th, 2008
PC World, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac, Mobility Site , jkOnTheRun and probably a bunch of others happily report that while the iPhone 3g battery life can’t be compared to the first-gen one, it’s still better than any other 3G phones on the market today.
This is a worthless comparison without adding the important fact that other phones have replaceable batteries. C’mon, spare batteries are so slim, you can easily carry one, and use your phone without any interruption – except on the iPhone: when it’s gone, in about 5 hours, you’re dead.
Related articles by Zemanta
- iPhone 3G battery pack to trickle out in August
- iPhone 3G Battery Life Beats the Competition, Apple’s Own Tests [Apple]
- 3G iPhone proves that battery life is a problem for everyone!
- Apple Explains How To Extend Battery Life on the iPhone 3G
Tags: 3G, battery life, cellular, iPhone, iphone battery, mobility
The Cell-Phone Aware PC May Be a PC-less PC
SaaS, Technology March 8th, 2008
Mike Egan @ Computerworld makes the case for PC’s to be smarter, with improved awareness of cell-phones, which means of their owners.
PCs would benefit greatly from awareness about the location of the user. Is she sitting in front of me? Is she out of the building? Imagine if your PC performed routine maintenance, or kicked into security mode when it knew you weren’t around. Since we take them wherever we go, cell phones are ideal devices to inform our PCs whether we’re in the room or not.
We like to set up our PCs just so, with color schemes and specific files and applications we like to use. Imagine if our phones could carry sets of configurations around and magically transform any PC we happen to be using into one set up just like the computer at home or in the office.
We work on documents, then go home and work on them some more. Why don’t phones automatically carry the latest version and upload it to whichever PC we’re using? Why do most of us still use e-mail for this?
A recent Gartner study discusses similar concepts named “Portable Personality Solutions.” Whether the media is thumb drives as in the Gartner study, or cell phones as in Egan’s vision, the core idea is the same: your preferences, your “digital personality” is always with you in your device, and is uploaded and downloaded wirelessly and automatically to whatever computer you want to use.
I like the concept, but it involves unnecessary steps: far too many uploads and downloads, a sure sign that it’s based on today’s computing model, instead of tomorrow’s. I laid out a similar but more far-reaching concept last year:
- the mobile phone brings the connectivity, browser and some personalization
- the actual work devices are the cheap displays, keyboards easily found anywhere.
- the apps and data are on the Net
Can you spot the key difference? There is no computer. Yes, the PC is gone, the display and keyboard are there for convenience reasons (who doesn’t like large displays?) the mobile device can do the minimal processing I need since the heavy workload is carried in the Cloud. Granted this is not the solution for 3-D Modeling, Video Editing and the like, just for regular productivity work, which is what most of us use computers for anyway.
Now, to be fair, this is not really my concept, I was just interpreting Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu’s personal computing nirvana vision. Recently he developed his vision a step further (actually, it’s not him dreaming further, it’s the technology that advances fast):
Given how mobile phones pack a whole lot of functionality in a tiny package, I have wondered if the ideal server farm is just tens of thousands of mobile phones packed together. It seems to me that the semiconductor technology behind mobile devices is far, far more power efficient than the stuff that goes in servers. Partly it is a backwards compatibility issue, with servers having to run code written all the way back to 1980s, while mobile phones simply didn’t exist that far back. Partly, it is also a function of how traditional client-server applications were architectural monoliths, compared to the deeply distributed “service-oriented architecture” that is common in web applications today.
With mobile phones approaching very respectable CPU & memory capacity, packaging them together as a server cluster makes a lot of sense. Linux can run on almost all of the modern CPUs common in cell-phones, and the mobile version of Java seems actually well-suited for server use, particularly for deeply partitioned, distributed applications. Lightweightness is actually an advantage in server software, just as it is in mobile software.
I wonder how far-fetched this vision is, but have to say this former Qualcomm engineer who just spent a few millions of dollars to create two data centers which will soon provide automatic failover might just know what he is talking about… 
Update: “Spanning Sync” Charlie is thinking along similar lines: Will Your Next PC be an iPhone?
Update (4/13): Is it Time For a Portable Dumb Terminal?
Tags: cellular, cloud computing, digital personality, location awareness, mobile awareness, mobility, portability, portable personality, SaaS, server farm, servers, synchronization, Web Applications, zoho
Zoli Erdos
