Mobile Signs

Free Goods, Pricing

2010-06-02T11:34:00.001-07:00

One need not be a landlord to realize that offering free goods and services often leads to "tenancy risks" of one kind or another. This goes back to Oliver Williamson's basic notions of economic realism: "Opportunism" and "Bounded Rationality".

So, it is no surprise when AT&T finally pulled the plug on a free service that was actually being used by a significant, albeit small minority, to its promised limits. It stopped offering unlimited data plans for it mobile subscribers.

Number Portability Actually Works

2009-05-08T23:31:00.001-07:00

I originally wrote this entry on September 29, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.

I don't know how many of you have changed mobile operators, but I've done it quite regularly: PacBell, Verizon, AT&T Wireless, Cingular and now T-Mobile. Part of the reason is that I want to change mobile devices or try different operators while receiving the device discounts. Sometimes, I like a device or an operator and stay longer than usual. What matters to me most is that I can sign a 1-year contract.

In the past, when subscribers changed operators, they would end up losing their mobile number, partly because the Supreme Court kept admitting requests for delays in implementing the FCC-mandated number portability feature. The operators were asking for delays because, they argued, the systems had not been prepared adequately to make the process smooth.

In any case, now, the process seems to work like a clock. I put in my request last night. My new "mobile station" (to use GSM-ish language), which was originally attached to a temporary number, has been working with the transfered number since this morning. (For all I know it could have been operational right after my number transfer request last night. I didn't get time to check.) A Sun partner visiting our offices just called me to remind me of the time he was arriving. He called my old number, and I got him on my new phone.

Number portability actually works and is quick!

Should I go or should I not . . .

2009-05-08T23:23:00.005-07:00

I originally wrote this entry on September 26, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.

I was supposed to attend (as vice chair and participant) the Open Mobile Alliance - Mobile Web Services working group meeting in Orlando early next week but Hurricane Jeanne has closed the airport until Monday afternoon, and going through 15 hours of travel and airports (not including the delays) while ending up with the opportunity to attend (possibly) less than one day of a meeting is not my idea of resourcefulness. So, I think I'm going to have to cancel this trip. This will incur Sun some cost but the savings in time, energy and individual productivity outweigh the losses. So, Sunday morning when I wake up, my first move will be to put a cancellation order in motion. Missing the meeting will unfortunately mean that I will also miss what promises to be a great presentation on Fast Web Services by Paul Sandoz. (He seems to have gotten to Orlando, from France, just before the airport closure.)

Some have expressed curiosity regarding how the OMA board could have allowed the meeting to be arranged during a hurricane-prone season in Orlando? Can Mickey Mouse really produce such an irresistible pull for our European OMA colleagues? I doubt it very much.

Danger Gets Dangerous

2009-05-08T23:23:00.003-07:00

I originally wrote this entry on September 27, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.

I'd been waiting for more than a couple of years to get Danger's Sidekick.

No, this is certainly not like Enkidu, the sidekick to Gilgamesh, that primordial myth-model of heroism, from Mesopotamia, a land we now know better as Iraq.

Nevertheless, every hero needs a sidekick, even if it is to be a cyber-sidekick.

Gilgamesh had Enkidu, and I got my Sidekick at the Palo Alto T-Mobile outlet on University Avenue this Sunday. If I'm satisfied (and I get 14 days to decide), I will then have to see about number portability. I'm told it now takes a very short time to install. I will write about this more in a couple of days.

My criteria for the purchase of a sidekick had been a color screen and tri-band radio capabilities. Sidekick II meets both. Not only that, I now have IMAP/SSL accounts I can set up. I haven't had time to set up an IMAP account yet but I had enough time to take a picture of Roberto Chinnici. He visited me (or was it a visit to my Sidekick II) just a few moments ago. More about Roberto later.

Trying a "Mobile" Weblog

2009-05-08T23:23:00.001-07:00

I originally wrote this entry on September 27, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.

On my first day of owning a Sidekick II device, I've been able to start and manage a mobile weblog in less than 3 minutes, with great ease and directly from the mobile device itself. The device design and service integration are strikingly smooth. Many efficiencies are included.

SIP capabilities, a good introduction

2009-03-17T22:01:00.001-07:00

I wrote this entry, originally, on July 5, 2004.

If you are looking for a good introduction to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), you can find one titled "The Future of Communication using SIP" in the Ericsson Review, No. 1, 2002.

You might want to start by reading the section titled "Capabilities supported by SIP." These are on pages 31 - 32 and give you an ideal perspective on (the technical) environments where SIP would be useful.

Mobility and Single Sign-On

2009-03-17T21:58:00.001-07:00

I wrote this entry, originally, on July 3, 2004.

For mobile telecommunications operators, single sign-on (SSO) is not just a cool technology. It is increasingly an economic necessity.

One may argue that mobile telecommunications operators already have a form of single sign-on operating under the covers.

As the "mobile station" (the technical, GSM term for the mobile phone) moves, it needs constantly to access distinct resources (or services).

When a mobile station moves, the cellular tower giving it access to the public land mobile network (PLMN) will eventually hand off to the next cellular tower. The radio network server will use signal strength comparisons between the towers as an indication of when and where hand-off needs to occur.

However, single sign-on to network resources and services is a truly general concept in need of a more broad treatment. In fact, the Liberty Alliance, a standards organization has addressed the problem of single sign-on in its ID-FF (identity federation framework) set of specs.

So, where does the economic necessity come from?

Mobile telecommunications providers are focused in providing connectivity, access, identity and other voice and data services to their customers. From their point of view, a service is a kind of network interaction for which the subscriber is willing to pay. However, as we move to the a mobile age filled with perviously unimagined forms of voice and data communications, various "services" will need to be composed to provide the required features in a sophisticated and billable service.

A simple example may help.

Let's say you're a network operator serving 15 million people, offering them Multi-media Messaging Service (MMS) capabilities. Your subscribers are carrying mobile stations that can take pictures, which they can send to others through MMS or other means. Your subscribers also receive multi-media messages, say pictures or video clips, from friends, family or other services (e.g. sports, whether, etc.) to which they have subscribed.

What if your subscriber wants to maintain an album for all these in-coming and out-going multi-media messages? Should you be providing that service or should you be "outsourcing" it to another business that specializes in maintaining large multi-media albums and libraries? You'll probably choose the latter course because the business of providing digital albums for multi-media content is not within your core competency. The album business is a separate business. In fact, your subscribers will want to access their albums in multiple ways and will probably want to preserve a distinct identity with their album provider.

This example simply shows that the decision to host a broad SSO solution can be an economically rational decision for the mobile telecommunications operators simply because economics of sophisticated services will push them to "sub-contract" or "outsource" many of the "services" which they will have to compose into a billable service.

In the presence of sophisticated service composition, one would need a very good SSO and identity model. Hence, the advent of the Liberty Alliance.

Joobin Mobile Phone Software for Persian Speakers

2009-02-04T21:23:00.001-08:00

Joobin has some amazing software to install on mobile phone. These are primarily for Persian speakers. (Some call the language "Farsi," although "Farsi" is the word Persian's use to refer to the language of Persian.)

The variety of software is certainly worth a good try.

Mobile Phone Concepts

2008-10-01T16:46:00.001-07:00

Check out the new mobile phone concepts, particularly the multi-layer phone from KDDI--the Ply.

SIP capabilities, a good introduction

2008-07-11T22:19:00.003-07:00

If you are looking for a good introduction to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), you can find one titled "The Future of Communication using SIP" in the Ericsson Review, No. 1, 2002.

Mobility and Single Sign-On

2008-07-11T22:19:00.001-07:00

For mobile telecommunications operators, single sign-on (SSO) is not just a cool technology. It is increasingly an economic necessity.

One may argue that mobile telecommunications operators already have a form of single sign-on operating under the covers.

As the "mobile station" (the technical, GSM term for the mobile phone) moves, it needs constantly to access distinct resources (or services).

So, where does the economic necessity come from?

A simple example may help.

In the presence of sophisticated service composition, one would need a very good SSO and identity model. Hence, the advent of the Liberty Alliance.

Multi-core performance on Solaris

2008-05-22T12:35:00.001-07:00

Jignesh Shaw presents @ PGCon on multi core performance of Postgresql on Solaris.

What Postgresql can learn from MySQL

2008-05-22T11:19:00.001-07:00

Susanne Ebrecht presents @ PG Con 2008...

PGCon 2008

2008-05-22T11:16:00.001-07:00

PGCon 2008

2008-05-22T06:50:00.001-07:00

Mobile Device Sales Decline in the U.S.

2008-05-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Not every child seems to need a mobile phone when the economy is not doing well.

Sara Silver of The Wall Street Journal reports:

U.S. purchases of new cellphones declined in the first quarter for the first time in several years, signaling that worries about an economic slowdown are hurting the handset market, according to two new studies.

The drop was concentrated among poorer customers using prepaid plans and among households earning $75,000 to $99,000 a year. The upper end of the cellphone market -- phones featuring full keyboards for email and text messaging, and extra features for music downloads and video viewing -- continued to see growth.

The overall decline in handset sales also comes amid finds that growth in wireless-service subscriptions is slowing as the market reaches saturation, with 83% of the U.S. population owning a cellphone now.
...
This trend benefits makers of feature-rich handsets such as Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Co., BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. and iPhone maker Apple Inc. Motorola has struggled to add high-end phones and has lost market share as a result.

At the end of the first quarter, Motorola held 25% of the U.S. cellphone market, compared to 34% at the end of the first quarter of 2006, according to Strategy Analytics. During the same period, Korean competitors Samsung had increased its share of the U.S. market to 22% from 15% and LG rose to 21% from 16%. RIM's BlackBerry devices comprised 8% of the market, enabling the company to take the No. 4 slot from Nokia Corp., the global market leader.

JavaOne

2008-05-08T14:44:00.001-07:00

Soft phones in Java !

2008-05-03T23:20:00.001-07:00

I remember the days when people were wondering about Java's survival.

Today it is used in some of the coolest, most disruptive telecommunications technologies.

VoIP-info.org has a list of these technologies which include some soft phones in Java. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has tried them. Some samples are: Ubiquity's SIP User Agent, NIST's JsPhone and iptel.org's BonePhone.

Has any of you used any of these phones?

SIP Roles and Activities

2008-05-03T23:19:00.001-07:00

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) specification (RFC 3261) describes four main types of roles. The user agent client (UAC), the user agent server (UAS), the redirect servers and proxies. There are also many activities defined such as registration, querying for capabilities, dialogs, initiation of a session, modification of an existing session and termination of a session.

Many commercial and non-commercial operating systems are now embedding the SIP protocol stack. These are often accompanies by APIs to implement any one of the various roles in any one of the activities described in RFC 3261. The trick then becomes to conceive of applications. Many of the authors of RFC 3261 have done exactly that. For example, you can take a look at Henning Schulzrinne's many papers in this area, describing various use models explored in his labs at Columbia University.

SIP is about to become the de facto session initiation and control signaling protocol dominating the converged world of Internet-based communications technologies and services such as VoIP. (On the related subject of VoIP, see the recent post by Richard Giles on VoIP on Java. There's of course much more that can be said about VoIP and SIP.)

In the JCP, there are several SIP-related JSRs. These are JSR 32 (JAIN SIP API Specification), JSR 116 (SIP Servlet API) and JSR 125 (JAIN SIP Lite).

SIP -- Main Purpose

2008-04-07T00:05:00.001-07:00

The main purpose behind RFC 3261, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), is to to set up, modify and tear down multi-media communications sessions on the internet.

An important feature of SIP is its addressing model:


To: E. Schroedinger <sip:schro@quantum-heaven.com>
From: Werner Heisenberg <sip:heisi@uncertainty-zone.com>

This addressing model is opaque for internet routing and direct access to user end-points. (If they were just e-mail addresses, we sould know how to address the SMTP servers.) Somehow SIP addresses need to be associated with actual end-point addresses on the network. IP addresses of users need to be obtained. That's where the rest of SIP comes in. Once you have these features, we can start talking about the use of SIP in VoIP, IP mobility, IMS and more.

[Names for addresses are inspired by examples in "SIP: Understanding the session initiation protocol" by Alan B. Johnson]

SSO, Single-Sign-On

2008-04-07T00:04:00.001-07:00

Just finished reading an interesting article on Single Sign-On in GSM / UMTS environments . . . The article focuses on Single Sign-On protocols a la Liberty Alliance in GSM and UMTS environments. It provides the details of two protocols, one for GSM and one for UMTS. Both of these use a secret key, say Ki, stored in the SIM card and shared with the Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) operator:

A. Pashalidis and C. J. Mitchell, "Using GSM/UMTS for single sign-on". in: Proceedings of SympoTIC '03, Joint IST Workshop on Mobile Future and Symposium on Trends in Communications, Bratislava, Slovakia, October 2003, IEEE Press, 2003, pp. 138-145.

A Dream of Wideband Mobility

2008-03-15T21:05:00.001-07:00

Here's Samsung's dream of wideband mobile applications.

Intel Demo (2003) of WiMax

2008-03-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

At the Coit Tower

2008-02-18T10:38:00.001-08:00

Negin took this photo using my P1i.

Mobile World Congress - Barcelona

2008-02-12T00:54:00.000-08:00

Mobile World Congress, 2008, Barcelona brings a great deal of news.

Financial Times has a special in-depth section devoted to it.

How much fits in a Prius

2008-02-06T16:49:00.001-08:00

This one has large bookcases from IKEA.

P1i and m.youtub.com.

2008-02-04T00:22:00.001-08:00

They work fine together. See here.

Where is this?

2008-02-01T00:10:00.001-08:00

A picture with the P1i.

iSkoot on P1i

2008-01-30T21:25:00.001-08:00

Just installed iSkoot (a Skype client) on this Sony Ericsson P1i and tested it with iSkoot's echo service using my home's Netgear WLAN router for VoIP data connection. (That wireless router at my home is now exactly 6 years old and it works perfectly well for my needs!)

A First Entry From P1i

2008-01-30T20:04:00.001-08:00

This picture was taken with a Sony Ericsson P1i.

I later browsed this blog entry on the same device using the Opera 8.65 for Symbian OS ("598"), and used the Opera browser on my iMac desktop at home to create the links and this last paragraph.

Cellphone and their uses in the US

2007-10-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

From a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, it seems that text messaging has finally caught on in the U.S.:

iPhone's Greatest Downside

2007-10-22T23:38:00.000-07:00

Apple iPhone's greatest upside is its fun user interface. Its greatest downside for some is its lack of an open development environment. Apple says they are going to fix this in the coming months.

The Orange iPhone

2007-10-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

For Apple's iPhone, it is AT&T in the U.S., T-Mobile in Germany and Orange in France--going with national leaders in each geography!

iPhone Review

2007-10-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

Best iPhone review I've seen this year is this creative video from David Pogue, New York Times' technology reviewer and author of many Apple books:

Moving from Sidekick II to P1i

2007-10-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

I'm moving from Danger's Sidekick II to Sony-Ericsson P1i. Here are some steps I took to make the move useful to my needs.

Read reviews on P1i. Watched some YouTube reviews of P1i. Read P1i specifications and technical white papers. Compared with iPhone and P1i in Sony Style and Apple shops. (6 hours)
Ordered P1i from Amazon. (1/2 hour)
P1i arrived well and ready. (7 days)
Transfered phone contacts' phone numbers from Sidekick II internal memory to SIM card. Each contact's phone number has to be transfered individually. Only phone numbers could be transfered. (25 minutes)
Removed SIM card from Sidekick II and placed it into P1i. (1 minutes)
Placed battery into P1i. (10 seconds)
Started P1i. (1 minute)
Made first call to a contact on P1i. (5 seconds)
Browsed the P1i manual. (15 minutes)
Connected P1i to home W-LAN (WiFi) system after a simple scan of all W-LAN's available within range. (30 seconds)
Browsed the web. (1 minute)
Configured and tested for my corporate e-mail at Sun Microsystems Inc. (4 minutes)
Downloaded first batch of 75 e-mails from corporate e-mail account using the W-LAN. (7 minutes)
Wrote and sent first e-mail reply. (3 minutes)
Started Bluetooth (P1i carries 2.0 version) and synchronized, through Handsfree, the P1i mobile device with our Toyota Prius phone/navigation system. Transfered phone book. (2 minutes)
Dialed a number from the Prius. (5 seconds)
Received and responded to a call from the Prius. (2 seconds)

2007-10-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Nokia has acquired world's largest digital map content provider, report Robert Anderson and Paul Taylor of Financial Times:

Nokia, the world's largest mobile telephone manufacturer, is to take a giant step into the fast-growing mobile content and services market by acquiring Navteq, the leading provider of digital map information, for $8.1bn (€5.7bn) in cash.
Nokia, which is trying both to diversify away from handsets and offer customers more reasons to buy its handsets, will pay $78 in cash for each Navteq share, a 34 per cent premium to the price a month ago when takeover speculation started to push the shares higher.
The deal is the biggest in Nokia's recent spending spree. In recent months, the Finnish handset maker has announced plans to acquire Loudeye, a digital music company, for $60m, Twango, a social networking community, for a reported $100m, and Enpocket, a mobile marketing company, for an undisclosed sum.
Analysts suggested the price was expensive, given that TomTom, the market leader in car navigation devices, recently agreed to pay €1.8bn for Tele Atlas, the number two in the digital map market.

Coupons on Cellphones

2007-09-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

I discussed the use of coupons on cellphones with a bunch of Stanford business graduates, some ex-colleagues from work and some Stanford professors back in 2004 - 2005. Now, WSJ reports how coupons on taking off on cell phone. Cellfire's model is a far cry from some original ideas, which some friends and I formulated, but it does take an important step in a very lucrative direction.

Nokia acquires Mobile Ads Company

2007-09-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

Nokia will acquire mobile ads company Enpocket in October.

The iPhone and the Midas Touch

2007-09-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

Some say that the problem with the iPhone was its high introductory price or its play in a dangerous and crowded market infused with break-neck innovation. I would have conjectured that its UI choice (the HMI of a touchscreen) relied on a dumbing down of that most sensitive of all senses—the touch. (To be fair, the screen actions remain superb.) The iPod, in its original models, remembered this sensitivity.

Social Networking onto the Physical World

2007-08-16T23:13:00.001-07:00

A clever new use of Bluetooth connects the social physical world to the cyber social networking.

Nodes have been set up in Bath, University College London, the University of California in San Diego, with more nodes going online in Sweden, Hong Kong and Sydney.
He added: "When you return to Facebook you will see a list of all the devices you were near and the link to profiles of people who have tagged themselves on Cityware."
The Facebook tool is part of a wider project looking at issues around pervasive computing - connected devices in the environment.
"We are interested in understanding how cities work, how people move around. More recently we have been looking at how viruses spread in cities - biological and digital viruses."

WiFi Radar on Toshiba Tecra M5 w/ Ubuntu 7.04

2007-07-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

I've a Toshiba Tecra M5 running Ubuntu 7.04 and the wireless radar works beautifully, finding all the WiFi network within range. A simple network configuration through a GUI. Simply fix the WiFi properties through "System | Administration | Network" menu item, choosing the right wireless network from a drop down that contains icon for all networks within range and their respective signal strengths.

Mobility, Geolocation, Identity and Privacy

2007-05-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

April 26 edition of The Economist carries a 14-page insert on the evolving wireless revolution, focusing on wireless sensors and gadgets, their military and civilian applications. Presumably, connecting things without wires will bring greater communications and deployment efficiencies and versatility.

As machines talk to other machines, they may uncover facts and relationships that are not apparent to people. That may enable factories to “learn” and find ways to become more efficient. What happens on the factory floor will make its way, in a different form, to office buildings and homes. The next step is for wireless technology to enter human beings themselves.

In an earlier blog entry, I wrote of an intelligent scaffoldings that a super mobile-and-wired network mesh can create infused with self-connecting wireless devices and drawing on a service-rich network infrastructure.

Some concers about this type of technology linger. Here's Economist's rendition of one of these concerns.

A greater concern in the long term is privacy. Today's laws often assume that privacy is guaranteed by a pact between consumer and company, or citizen and state. In a world where many networks interconnect on the fly and information is widely shared, that will not work. At a minimum, wireless networks should let users know when they are being monitored.

Yes, privacy matters when a lot of in-formation is available about certain individuals while similar information about others is fully hidden. (In a real village, everyone knows similar things about everyone else, and any privacy stops at one's door, if there.)

When it comes to sensors, the question is how privacy-valuable is the information regarding a person's body temperature, place in the world and the acceleration by which they are moving. (Yes, this data can be used maliciously but I'm certainly willing to carry a SunSpot if that makes someone happy.)

This type of argument does not get into the heart of the matter. For example, this type of information can hardly reveal how willing I might be to go visit a friend, watch a particular movie or stay put. This type of information may, on the other hand, give some useful clues to my doctors, for example, if I suffer from some malignant disease or if I'm a rare, endangered species of tiger. (Yes, all tigers are endangered these days.)

So, I think the privacy issue may be a bit exaggerated, and I think we have to be aware that in-formation about someone does not necessarily mean any real knowledge about that person.

Mobile Search

2007-04-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

Technologies are developing fast enough to make the mobile an ever better platform to mine the web for bits and pieces of information. Here's a bit from Reuters report by Daisuke Wakabayashi: "Mobile phones represent next frontier for search"

Improved voice-recognition technology and the inclusion of global positioning system chips into mobile phones open the door for new applications to help users find relevant information wherever they find themselves.
In addition, improvements in handset technology make today's cell phone capable of doing almost as much as computers of a decade ago.
Last month, Yahoo introduced a new Internet search system to deliver locally relevant answers to mobile phone users' questions in fewer steps than Google. Subjects include news headlines, business listings, local weather and links to other Web sites.
Yahoo has signed deals to feature its software on four of the world's top five mobile handset makers.

Tellme Chief Executive Mike McCue said the pace of innovations on the mobile phone was five to 10 times faster than the computer.
... Microsoft bought Tellme in a deal sources say is valued at more than $800 million, its largest acquisition in five years.

At the heart of Tellme's appeal is a voice-recognition database that allows the company to predict what information callers are seeking and decipher many different accents and dialects.
Earlier this month, Google also began offering voice-activated directory assistance. At the time, O'Reilly speculated in his blog that Google started the free service at least in part to build its own speech database.
Earlier this month, Google also began offering voice-activated directory assistance. At the time, O'Reilly speculated in his blog that Google started the free service at least in part to build its own speech database.
Industry watchers and company executives recognize the inherent difference between search on a computer and on a mobile phone. Search on a computer can be a browsing activity for research, while mobile search is more about finding information and then acting on it.
... The business model of search on a mobile phone will also differ from the pay-per-click model of a computer, he said. Users may be willing to be billed for a subscription for unlimited search.

News Media and Mobile Naming Convention

2007-04-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

Sources of news media are beginning to use a similar naming convention for their mobile editions:

mobile.reuters.com
mobile.washingtonpost.com
mobile.iht.com

These are no-nonsense text editions that are easy to load and read.

Mobile RSS Readers

2007-04-11T22:13:00.001-07:00

Mobile RSS Readers have come of age.
For a list, see here.

International Herald Tribune's Mobile Interfaces

2007-04-11T22:02:00.000-07:00

International Herald Tribune's mobile version is updated every 15 minutes, at least at the time of writing this blog.

Reuters' Mobile Interface

2007-04-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

Reuters has a great mobile web interface.

A Mobile Java News Reader for Financial Times

2007-04-09T11:49:00.001-07:00

Try it out, starting here and comment below how you like it. Leiki, the company behind it, works out of Helsinki.

iPod Market Dominance

2007-04-09T11:45:00.000-07:00