“2008. There’s something in the air.” What does that slogan mean? On Tuesday, Steve Jobs will introduce whatever it is they have lurking in Cupertino.
Could it be movie rentals through iTunes? A revamped Apple TV with DVR? Yet another, better and cooler iPod?
Or perhaps, something innovative and game changing (yeah lame phrase, but bear with me).
With laptop sales eclipsing desktops, and iPods and iPhones leading to a perpetually mobile generation, wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to push connectivity everywhere?
What if Apple released a sub-notebook with the usual suspects and “one more thing” - WiMAX.
Paired with the 3G iPhone we will see in 2008 and Back to my Mac, it would be a powerful product to accelerate their growth in this powerful market segment.
What tea leaves am I reading to think this? A curious announcement timed for this coming Tuesday.
Sprint recently announced that the company is on track to begin offering their Xohm WiMax service in April of this year…the New York Times reported that the soft launch is set for this Tuesday.
(Via Sprint to Soft-Launch Xohm on Tuesday - dslreports.com.)
Sprint did a deal with Amazon for EVDO in the Kindle, why not Apple for a WiMAX enabled laptop?
Apple’s deal with AT&T certainly said nothing about WiFI or WiMAX, but may have locked them out of embedding EVDO.
With AT&T’s CEO blowing the lid on Apple’s 2008 iPhone plans it would be sweet revenge for Apple to work with Sprint.
Apple could build a strong relationship with Sprint, while fulfilling their obligations to AT&T.
One can dream and speculate. We will know on Tuesday.
Nothing like the Freetards (as coined by Fake Steve Jobs) to turn on a device that could popularize linux-based computing more than anyone could have guessed.
”Members of the Linux community have complained that the hot new sub-notebook from Asus, the eeePC, may have violated the spirit of the Linux General Public License. Some Linux advocates claim the eeePC has not included required source code with the installed Xandros Linux distribution and does not easily enable users to install another distro. However, there are indications that eeePC fans probably don’t care.”
(Via Asus eeePC Violates GPL Say Linux Stalwarts.)
This is why linux remains a hacker’s paradise and scares the masses away.
Most consumers will call tech support long before they delve into the bowels of the anything called source code, nor care about the utopian philosophical inspiration behind GPL.
Contact the company discreetly, resolve the issue through a future software update and help them ship a successful linux device to consumers, without scaring the bejeezus out of everyone.
What do you want? A soap box or market penetration?
By the way, how does it feel to eat your young?
”Technology Patents LLC may be the new champion for suing 131 companies worldwide—the list goes on and on, naming companies like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, Telstra, AT&T, Cincinnati Bell, Motorola, Microsoft, Helio, Taiwan Mobile, O2, Rogers Wireless, China Resources Peoples Telephone Company, Yahoo, Sprint, and everyone in between. The company and its founder, Aris Mardirossian, are suing over what he believes to be infringement on two of his patents that address international text messaging.”
(Via U R SUED: Patent holding company targets 131 companies over SMS patents.)
Text messaging, while wildly popular, is a complete mess here in the states.
Being a U.S. business or trying to send text messages to U.S networks is already an expensive proposition. If this lawsuit succeeds it will only get more expensive.
Luv me some mouse!
Seriously, I am perpetually trying out new mice.
This morning, while dropping by the Apple Store, they had a new bluetooth mouse from Razer. Known for gaming mice, which I love for their high resolution accuracy.
I picked one up, in black of course, and so far I have to say it is awesome!
The rubberized coating, coupled with the high resolution accuracy makes for quite an enjoyable experience.
Unlike the Apple Might Mouse, the Pro|Click doesn’t seem to have that laggy feel most bluetooth mice suffer from.
It also comes with a spiffy little bag to carry it around in.
Check it out
”What follows are instructions for building and installing MySQL 5 on Mac OS X. These instructions should work perfectly on both Tiger and Leopard.”
(Via Hivelogic - The Narrative - Installing MySQL on Mac OS X.)
The Android platform will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.”
(Via John Battelle’s Searchblog.)
Hopefully this leads to some compelling mobile devices. It is certainly less than consumers expected today.
By the second half of 2008, when they expect the first Android handsets to hit the market, we should have Nokia’s iPhone challenger and the second generation iPhone.
It will be interesting to see where the chips fall.
”the N95 8GB handset is what the original N95 should have been.”
(Via Mobilewhack.com.)
I almost bought the new Nokia N95-3 (aka the US 3G model) last week, but Nokia’s seemingly erratic release cycle has me putting down my credit card and backing away from my web browser.
In the next few years any elected official not broadcasting their actions, intentions and gestures on systems like Twitter and Jaiku, will be considered irrelevant dinosaurs.
It will be impossible to be re-elected without these and other communities within a decade.
Technorati Tags:
Democracy, Twitter, Jaiku
I am so excited, SideSale, one of my personal projects has finally come to life!
My partnership in MailTank keeps me busy, but I just had to take an hour tonight to put SideSale to work here on my blog. Sort of kick the tires, eat my own dog food, → insert web 2.0 speak here - you get the point.
Anyway, SideSale is a service designed to help website publishers, bloggers or just about anyone producing content sell things on their sites.
SideSale is not an affiliate e-commerce service that provides products to sell. It does one thing, it inserts a “sale” into web sites using a single line of code, very similar to how Google Adsense works. The products or services sold are up to the site owner - whatever they want to sell is up to them.
SideSale supports Paypal for payment processing, though once the doors are open I will probably add Google Checkout.
When I said SideSale does only one thing, well that is not 100% accurate. There is a roadmap that includes a few surprise twists on the traditional e-commerce system. The first is already evident in the pricing structure for this service - SideSale will have a simple per month flat price - say goodbye to commission-based pricing.
Anyway, you should see I am selling a used MacBook Pro using SideSale right now, so act fast I only have one for sale! In the next couple weeks I will be adding a few more products.
Let me know what you think or if you run into any problems with my site because of SideSale.
For those curious, SideSale is hosted using Amazon EC2 and S3, with Google Gmail for Domains providing email service.
If you are interested in trying out SideSale, leave a comment or drop me a line at lon@sidesale.com.
Technorati Tags:
ecommerce, google checkout, web design, google adsense, blog, marketing, paypal
Why have we fallen behind in the broadband deployment in the US - again?
The US fell from 23rd to 25th place in worldwide broadband penetration in the last half of 2006, according to a recent survey by Point Topic. An OECD study confirms the slowdown, with US broadband growth falling below the OECD average. Meanwhile, US broadband penetration grew 0.65 percentage points to 80.81% among active Internet users in March 2007.
Source: websiteoptimization.com
Technorati Tags:
Broadband
VoIP on mobile devices is such killer app for mobile phones. Here in the states, the carriers seem petrified by the threat. But that is not stopping agile startups from making headway.
After getting the new Nokia N95, I spent some time loading different VoIP clients. The Nokia came with Gizmo, which I have used on the desktop with some success.
Research and testing lead me to Truphone and Fring.
Truphone is a complete VoIP solution offering slick integration with the N95. Fring is a hybrid solution combining proxy-like support for Skype, Google Talk or MSN, and true SIP functionality.
After 24 hours of playing, Truphone has the lead. The quality is great, integration with Nokia is smooth and the cost to get started is low, they even include a dial-in number to allow you to receive calls in the US and UK.
This week I am going to spend with Truphone to see how it performs on WIFI and the Cingular data network.
Next week I will pound on Fring, which also looks to be an excellent solution.
Why no Gizmo or Skype?
Gizmo got the boot for now due to reports of poor call quality when not using WIFI and problems receiving calls. Native Skype support is MIA, since Skype themselves have to build a useable client the S60 platform, which is rumored to be coming.
Luckily, I can access both Gizmo and Skype accounts through Fring.
Time to talk a bunch.
Technorati Tags:
iPhone, Nokia, N95, VoIP, Skype
My N95 arrived today and I am very impressed. It is perhaps the best S60 phone I have experienced. The interface and built-in themes have a much more refined feel than previous devices, and the speed of the OS is noticeably improved over older devices.
As mentioned in yesterday post, I wanted to share why I pay extra to get unlocked phones from Europe and other markets.
The main reason is freedom. As they say freedom has a price, and in the mobile phone market the freedom you get is to enjoy the full experience the manufacturer intended.
Take the Nokia E61/62 for example. If you paid extra and got an unlocked E61, in addition to a great phone with email, you enjoyed VoIP and Wifi access.
The U.S market got the E62, Cingular had the E61 on a starvation diet. No VoIP or WIFI.
The motivations are obvious, complete control and lock-in of their customers to their data and voice service.
Based on experience, when Cingular or TMobile get the U.S. N95 (perhaps called the N96), it will most likely be missing features, such as WIFI and VoIP.
I would love to be optimistic, and suggest that with Apple’s iPhone having WIFI, Cingular would not demand a neutered version of the N95. But, then again, they may want to drives sales of the iPhone and not have too much competition.
Technorati Tags:
iPhone, Nokia, N95
A lot pundits are spouting about the imminent doom or sweeping success of Apple’s upcoming iPhone.
While I am what could be called a fan of the products Apple designs, I am more of a fan of whatever makes work easier.
This is why, I am passing on version 1.0 of the iPhone.
Over the last few years, I have searched for the optimal mobile solution, and keep ending up with the same company’s products - Nokia.
Motorola, Samsung and LG all make quite usable mobile phones, but lack the platform appeal to draw 3rd party developers.
Sony Ericcson’s offerings while highly attractive and usable, seem more focused on purely consumer oriented devices.
Palm’s Treo is fairly ubiquitous, but the Palm OS platform is beyond long in the tooth. I had more crashes of Treos than any other mobile device.
Blackberry’s are by far the most email friendly mobile platforms. But web browsing and 3rd party applications are ridiculously encumbered by proxy gateways, signing and deployment procedures. While the email client is wonderfully efficient, having to pass all email through a 3rd party server is unacceptable to me.
This bring me to Nokia. While their interface could use some polish, the core of the S60/80 platforms are deserving of the label platform. There is a thriving 3rd party community, Nokia has been embracing an open platform strategy with their 770/800 internet tablets, and is pushing the envelope with the convergence of photography, video, music and VoIP on their latest devices.
This is why I just spent my iPhone fund on a Nokia N95. The convergence of Video, Photograpy, GPS, VoIP, WIFI, Internet and Voice are an outstanding value.
It is more expensive than the iPhone, unless you consider the contractual requirement that Cingular may enforce to get one. But the functionality is incredible when compared side by side.
When Apple truly opens up the iPhone to 3rd party developers I would get one. But not until they offer unencumbered access to the platform. I would not pay a license fee or endure some lengthy approval process to gain access to the distribution pipeline.
I expect version 2.0 to be the real shining star of Apple’s mobile effort. By then they should implement HSDPA, 4MP+ photography and video, open the platform and perhaps offer VoIP options like Skype or Gizmo.
Tomorrow: Why I didn’t wait for the official U.S. version of the N95.
Technorati Tags:
iPhone, Nokia, N95, N93
Sorry, things have been quiet here for awhile. I have been hard at work on MailTank, which has been getting more attention and customers! Woohoo!
Lately my real fun has been playing with Amazon AWS. I signed up late last year, but just didn’t find time to kick the tires until now.
Last month I spent a couple days getting some EC2 instances running, learning to configure things and save images. This lead me to migrate F8P.com from Mediatemple.net’s Grid Service to an EC2 server running Fedora Core 6.
So far, I am very impressed, though nervous. You see EC2 requires you to think about servers differently. They are 100% virtual servers including the 160GB of “storage”. This has caused a lot of tension in the AWS forums.
My nervousness is subsiding as I grapple with the realty most developers dread - man down! a server has crashed!
When a server crashes in a normal data center, you have a chance of recovering data from a hard drive assuming it is not the source of the crash. If an EC2 server crashes or “goes away”, you loose everything on that server. It is GONE for good.
A lot of developers are writing EC2 off because of this design constraint. After much consideration and experimentation I don’t think there is anything different from the old tried and true way of doing things.
Using multiple instances and frequent backups there is no reason that you can not mitigate the risk EC2’s constraints impose.
Over the coming months I am going to be pushing more EC2 and S3 services into our daily production infrastructure. We expect to double or triple our existing capacity while reducing costs substantially.
It is going to be a wild ride for certain!
Hmm. Now if only I could run Mac OS X on an EC2 instance. That would be very interesting indeed.
Technorati Tags:
Amazon, EC2, S3, AWS
Apple’s latest, the Macbook and 24” iMac are great machines, imho.
I just traded out the MacBook Pro and 30” Cinema Display for them. After 48 hours, can only say I am impressed.
So booya! Twice the computing power for less!
Happy, happy. Joy, joy!
