Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology

‘Mission Impossible’ movies to be included on Samsung phones

That sounds nice right, until you note that each movie will be on a separate SD Card, so let's go through the pros and cons:

It's clever in a few ways:

• nowadays a 1 GB SD Card (that a DivX/MPEG4-coded video nicely fits in) is rather inexpensive, this is a showcase of how movies and TV shows could be distributed
• you can ship the content separate from the phone, which is the case here
• you can (probably) apply DRM easier this way; it doesn't say if DRM is used
• you could offer many different types of content this way, ordered based on customer interest, e.g. all Scrubs season episodes on one SD Card

but:

• digital media will be distributed as downloads in the future, not as memory cards
• it's still costly, and the whole distribution-warehouse-outlet setup is on the way out for that very reason; downloads take away the physical inventory issues completely
• they could have shipped the movies pre-stored on the phones, but for logistical reasons that might not have been possible in this case (bundle with vanilla phones)

The most interesting feature of this list is that none is a Motorola phone, considering how extremely popular the Razr was some time ago. Nokia and Sony Ericsson are not in the list either, which is a bit more logical, considering they don't do CDMA, but then again, neither does Apple.

By the numbers: Top 10 most popular U.S. handsets in December

As Sweden somehow has become the Mecca of digital piracy, not just because of Pirate Bay, but also due to lax laws, a strong lobby for piracy, and a broad preference of younger people to not have to pay for digitally transferred media, there might be need for a commentary on the lawsuit against the Pirate Bay owners.

I say owners, as Pirate Bay is a commercial entity, even though it's often wrongly seen as a political statement. Uploaders upload for personal gain (mainly for fame and "punishing the powers that be"; yes, it's the same morally challenged guys that hack web sites etc), downloaders download for free access to media. That's it. Don't make it more complicated than it is.

If the owners get convicted and Pirate Bay is torn down doesn't make Torrent sites go away, but might present a reason and a means to sue also other Torrent site owners. As new sites will pop up continuously, the media industry has its work cut out for it.

If the owners go free doesn't mean uploading and downloading digital media is legal. It's illegal in most countries already. Clearly, suing every downloader won't work, so it's the uploaders that need to be addressed.

Many people are likely to continue to think that media should be free (as in costing nothing) whatever happens with the lawsuit.

In a positive sense this will in any case force media companies to change their outdated and margin-fat business models to subscriptions and similar. Of course, media will increasingly go from purchased in shops to downloaded via the Web. Most of the media cost is in the distribution, so no one will really cry over that, except media store owners.

If all media was free there would be no media produced, except the user generated type that consists of people eating the spiciest pepper in the world, crazy dancing, and skateboarders breaking their legs, so that's not what we want.

In part the media industry has itself to blame, being late with good alternatives, and offering not what people want. What I had expected when media became downloadable was:

• More choice of media. E.g. all music and TV shows in the world including odd and old. Not so.
• More choice of media formats. E.g. anything from low-quality MP3s to high-quality CD-based FLACs and even 5.1 DVD Audio. Not so. Allofmp3 did it right format-wise, but even though it was legal in Russia it was considered a piracy site anywhere else, and was stopped through international power. So do it the legal way then...

Oddly now many TV shows are given away for free by the media owners. I'm wondering why. That's not the solution to piracy, as there's still no revenue. It could though be a brand builder: Users staying loyal with a company and a site to then buy newer content later.

Here's some more commentary on the subject:
How piracy paved the way in Sweden
Sweden to Introduce Controversial Anti-Piracy Law

Last day. Yipee!

It's interesting to see how so many people can achieve so ... nothing.

Editorial: Ten reasons why Windows Mobile 6.5 misses the mark

Isn't there anyone at Microsoft that dares to say that they need to get a grip? Kind of when one employee suggested Microsoft should give away their browser and that way effectively kill Netscape?

As pointed out earlier, Apple, Palm and Google aggressively address this market. Microsoft clearly doesn't.

Here's a complementing summary of Mobile World Congress so far from my viewpoint. Considering it's such a big exhibit and I haven't participated in the congress, I've surely missed a lot of things.

Internet and mobile application stores have been announced by many players, including traditional mobile phone manufacturers. I expect each and every application platform will have an application store during 2009. Not a far fetched guess. E.g. ClickApps already provides applications for most smartphone platform.

Revival of touch screens. Touch screens are obviously not new, but with the better capacitive solutions (don't need a stylus, not dimming the display, yet requires you to use your greasy fingers instead) and with multi-touch, the usage span has increased and the user experience can be better.

iPhone "clones". Again nothing new having displays that cover the whole front. Neither is it anything new with icon-based UIs etc. It's the way it's all being put together for a better user experience that is new. Not all have been called upon to do that though, with varying degrees of "intuitiveness". Of course all such phones will support application downloads, whether it's Java ME, Series 60, Windows Mobile, Android, LiMO, Access or whatever.

All say there are considerably less people this year, and that companies have been more careful with sending down (or up) people to the show.

It's interesting to see how many exhibitors visit other exhibitors' booths. Just look for the pink bands.

This photo and the previous were taken by a Sony Ericsson K850 (5 megapixels). Despite its "age" it has one of the best cameras I've encountered. Megapixels is not everything.

Last day tomorrow. Me and my feet are rather glad it's over, despite a quite successful lead hunt.

My feet hurts! I wonder how many kilometers I've walked. The mini bar prices suddenly look reasonable after a hard days walk.

All top tier phone brands have standardized on mini USB for charging phones. Yipee! One base requirement fulfilled.

I investigated some providers of wireless M2M equipment today, for the sake of Abiro and the Mobilizer concept. Interesting stuff indeed (yet boring to non-geeks), and seemingly easy to integrate into ones own designs. A big issue though: Each provider has its own programming language/platform:

• Telit: Python


• Wavecom: Open AT


• Cinterion (previosly Siemens): Java ME IMP (Information Module Profile)


• Sierra Wireless: ?

This makes changing module brand a bit difficult once a project has been launched. A conspiracy or just an implied general desire to make life miserable for application developers (compare with the plethora of Linux-based mobile platforms)? On the service side they could all work the same, as all support HTTP.

I read that Sierra Wireless intends to buy Wavecom. The proposal has expired, so I wonder what was the result.

LiMo Foundation hasn't decided on just one application platform and UI. Too bad for LiMo.

Sony Ericsson supposedly continues with 4 platforms: Windows Mobile, Series 60, Android and OSE. Too bad for Sony Ericsson.

Smartphones have evolved into very nice form factors even when they have full alphanumeric keypads. I figure business-oriented phones will continue to have a physical keypad, and during the show I really missed having for instance a Nokia N97, HTC G1 or SEMC X1 to write down all results from the booth storming. Instead I carried around a laptop that I thought I would use, but didn't.

One of the stranger things I saw today was a GSM phone (Jablocom GDP-04) looking like a fixed line office phone. It had a full keypad for SMS too. The same company is also selling a GSM surveillance camera. Rather advanced with motion detection and several methods for sending photos and videos. The question is, who's the buyer?

There's oddly enough still interest for mobile femto cells, even though I guess by now all operators offer virtual femto cells, by providing free use of company-local numbers, anywhere in the operator's network.

I noted that Tegic doesn't only deal with predictive text input anymore, but also speech control of phones, e.g. to start different applications etc.

What I didn't like: Ads showing babies holding mobile phones. I'm aware radiation damages have not been proven, but there are limits to cynical marketing.

Fira de Barcelona is a very nice spot in Barcelona, built in a style that looks much better than let's say Hannover exhibit halls or Tokyo Big Sight.

Supposedly considerably less people than last year. I need to get this verified before I say too much.

Almost all mobile phone manufacturers are in the same hall. Very good for lead hunting.

The lavish booths doesn't indicate any stagnation in the industry. Even some companies that I know don't have much money had rented VIP lounges outside the halls.

Creativity-wise not that much has surfaced yet, except a strive for all manufacturers to make "iPhone clones", or what I tend to call information-centric phones.

In HTC's booth the main interest was clearly for the G1 Android phone.

I believed NFC would be highlighted at the show, but not so.

Lots of LiMo Foundation partners were showing their membership via badges in their booths. Smart marketing stunt.

Surprisingly little "booth candy" (except the edible kind). Don't know if that's stipulated.

I will continue lead hunting tomorrow. What works best, hands down, is to walk around the place and visit the companies I want to talk to. Setting up meetings beforehand didn't work well though. Neither did waiting for visitors in the booth.

As I'm leaving on Sunday I started thinking about what I expect from the show. Of course the main purpose is to do business there, but there are also a few technology areas and market phenomena of special interest this year that I will investigate. Here are just a few tidbits. I haven't fully set my schedule and mind set yet.

Mobile platforms

I counted approximately 20 platform providers. Not all barebones platforms, but also frameworks for MIDlets, and anything from simple RTOS-based systems for basic voice-centric phones to advanced platforms for information-centric phones. This year there are at least 5 companies showing Linux based platforms.

M2M (or Machine-to-Machine, or Telematics/Telemetry)

A technology area that's always fascinated me: The sheer fun of monitoring and controlling stuff on remote, and when using GSM as bearer, very far away (even across the world).

I'm not talking blowing stuff up (if your crazy mind though that), but e.g. have solar-powered weather stations tell the weather without any cable in sight (at all; weather stations could even move around if they had GPS), containers, trucks, cars, trains, boats, etc could tell where they are, and where it would be possible to disable a vehicle if it's stolen.

I know there are such devices for babies, dogs and elderly, but that will not become the bulk. Rather it's more mundane uses like those mentioned above that will generate the volume and revenue. There's also opportunities in the M2M service market, providing Web-based services aggregating monitoring and control of many M2M points.

I'm investigating this market more thoroughly now, for matters of business, so I might be writing more about this down the road.

No Apple in sight

Apple will not exhibit. How audacious/arrogant/ignorant (your choice) is that? Others have already written about this, so it didn't go unnoticed.

No Microsoft in sight?

I didn't find any Microsoft booth except for Microsoft Fitchlive. Strange.

Congress vs exhibit

MWC is a rather expensive event for visitors. Hotels in Barcelona are double the price the whole week. Exhibit entrance is clearly not for the man on the street (unless you're invited) and the congress is clearly priced for senior management.

Not that the congress is any good in my opinion, unless you as an industry player wants to get assured that you are on the right track, especially if you are on the wrong track. The only time I was there (2003?) the most clear impression I got back was that operators had no clue what people want from mobile technology, and were just talking ARPU and other "for lack of anything substantial to say" terms. I sense that's changed, as the operator-controlled application standardization has more or less disappeared.

At the time IM was thought of as a competitor to SMS. Beginning the year after the IM market was taken over by independent providers, despite Wireless Village, IMS and GSMA's IM effort.

IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem)

IMS will not be hyped this year. It will be used though, a lot, as equipment providers switch to data-network-like protocols across their product offerings, transferring voice etc as IP packets.

NFC/RFID

Clear signal from media this is coming now, yet it will still take years. The chip makers should be ready though. The phone makers are not, and the service providers are definitely not, but I still expect NFC to be showing real sign of life this year. I believe NFC will be integrated in the mobile radio chips, so there's no cost for providing NFC in phones.

GPS

Almost all phones with GPS will support A-GPS for two reasons:

• It's needed to get fast enough locking
• It's possible via the data link (as opposed to dedicated GPS navigators)

Larger displays will mean higher user comfort (from a level of terrible ditto, if you use a phone as a navigator in a car).

Using YouTube for showing off

I put videos of the demos shown in TAT's booths on YouTube, and also linked to them from Mobile Labs' news page. This means you can even view the recordings of the mobile text rendering demos on your mobile. Not in high quality, but it should work.

Final words

I will try to write something clever each day while at the show. I might add a few photos too.

I'm not on any booth schedule, so I will have all the time to move around the exhibit area and have meetings.

If you want to meet, just send me an SMS with contact info (preferably a real contact from the phonebook, not just text) at +46 70 522 76 44. I promise I'll get back to you. You might find me in or beside booth 2J40, but not often. The people there can get hold of me though.

See you there.

Today I was called by a telemarketer that wanted to convince me to switch to another operator. Nothing new of course, it happens every week. That was easily handled by the now instinctive split second "I don't need this. Sorry. Thank you. Bye."

Then when I went to the shop to get some afternoon snacks (not that I need any extra pounds, believe me...) young people representing an operator were harrassing me in the entrance, asking what phone I had etc. Again the instinctive response.

Why are mobile operators allowed to behave like this? Isn't it enough with TV, magazine and Internet advertizing? Already that is suffocating.

And why do operators let telemarketer companies sell for them, and even let them claim they are from the operator when they are clearly not?

There are several reasons why operators do this:

• First and foremost, they are allowed to, and they profit from it.
• As Western markets are saturated, the only way to get many new subscribers is to sway people to move from their existing operator.
• A new mobile phone is used as a bait, but the point is of course to get the person over to a new long term sub (18 months or more), as they are very profitable.
• They gladly pay a telemarketing company a cut if it means they don't need to do the grunt work themselves, and they get a few new subs.

Admittedly, I was cheated into a new sub by a telemarketer once, as the sales guy promised that my specified requirements would be fully satisfied. It was everything but (flat-rate voice rather than flat-rate data that I needed, and the most expensive "megabyte" fee of any operator at the time). They obviously refused to cancel the sub when I complained, so I consulted a lawyer to scare them a little. That helped, but I lost $300 and also some self-respect as I let myself be cheated this way. Never again.

Here are two articles about emerging future technologies:

HowStuffWorks: Top 5 Emerging Phone Technologies

Gartner identifies eight key mobile technologies

My own 10 cents:

Except for even faster mobile radio systems (that are inevitable), I believe NFC/RFID will (finally) start to be used, but it will not go fast enough (it will take years) to make credit cards useless in the short term, as mobile phones, POS terminals (and similar) and services need to be adopted to make use of this technology and in a very secure way.

What I also hope for is that GPS works better on phones. A-GPS is a necessity and GPS antennas need to be better for this to work reliably. There's also need for a positioning technology that works in-doors. Cell and Wi-Fi based positioning fixes this in part, but obviously with way less precision than GPS.

I also hope wireless broadband (as in wireless technologies that are focused on data transfer rather than voice, as voice can also be treated as data provided the performance, latency etc is good enough) will be the norm, but admittedly 3G is developing faster than expected, making e.g. WiMAX no longer an obvious choice instead of HSxPA variants.

All medium-priced phones will have (if they don't, shame on those manufacturers):

• at least QVGA displays for high text, photo, video, gaming fidelity; higher doesn't make sense on small featurephone displays, but some smartphones will have even higher resolutions
• many more phones will use the display/touchscreen-only information-centric paradigm, instead of the voice-centric paradigm during 2009, but business-focused phones with mechanical alphanumeric keypads will continue to exist, yet in relatively speaking very small volumes; I'm not altogether positive about this, as a tactile keypad is a clear benefit, but the trend seems to be set, as most users don't need a real alphanumeric keypad and they make the phones more clumsy or takes away area for the display; maybe application-configurable tactile touchscreens would be a solution
• ergonomically instead of just aesthetically designed keypads (if they have mechanical keypads at all); all manufacturers suck at this; why? perception is not everything
• accelorometers (low cost, lots of uses)
• cameras for high quality photography and full-rate video recording
• memory slots to balance purchase cost and flexibility; but also memory at shipping will be GB size as Flash memories are now rather inexpensive
• standard USB connectors instead of proprietary ports for PC and periphery communication as well as power
• standard audio plugs instead of proprietary ports
• standard car kits; we are very far from this today
• NFC/RFID
• Bluetooth 3.0
• fully-featured Web browsers and e-mail clients
• support for all popular chat, social network, blogging services
• very simple application purchase and installation (this goes for MIDlets too!)
• idle/main screen for showing any application(s), not just a wallpaper (that's another application)
• integrated SMS, MMS, e-mail, chat inboxes and alerts

Precise positioning (read: GPS) will continue to be an option for years to come. Hopefully a new technology will be invented that is not such a power hog and that works in-doors, but I'm sceptical due to the enormous investments and lead time involved.

Also Wi-Fi will be an option, but almost all information-centric phones will have it during 2009. It's unfortunately also a power hog,

Warning: U.S. bias, especially on carrier information.

About carriers
Gives a sense of increasing market ignorance/alienation/confusion by carriers. Probably the good old "we don't want to be pipes, but we are" situation.

About handsets
Hinting at continued overall troubles, but that information-centric phones will thrive (at least relatively speaking).

About technology
Trend towards LTE (Long-Term Evolution; all is data (also voice) and data rates are much higher than today).

About applications
Not surprising: App stores.
Hints Windows Mobile will lose out (see my previous 2009, the year of information-centric phones and (profitable) mobile services).

I don't think it's to stick my chin out too much to say that we've finally left the "phones must have (useless by design) numeric keypads, hard-to-use applications and application downloads and crappy web browsers" paradigm, at least mentally, and all manufacturers will have to provide phones that also satisfy the information users (and by that I don't just mean information workers; we're all information users).

Sadly though Microsoft (somehow having a mental lead by dominating on the PC side) will simply lose out on this, as rather iPhone, Android, Series 60 and maybe Palm will take the lead, being more aggressive in their marketing and technology development. Also RIM will lose out.

The question is what will happen to all the other Linux-based mobile platforms like OpenMoko, Access Linux Platform, LiMO, etc, when the commercial power of Apple and Google comes to full fruition. My guess, not very much.

myMobile Ergonomics in India has invented a new way of handling "quicker than multitap" input on voice-centric phones called CleverTexting.

In principal it works by showing the most likely letters mapped to each key (0 to 9, * and #), and for each letter you enter, you see the now most likely letters, etc. If the letter you want is outside the first table you can show the second most likely letters and so on.

There's no word database, but there's knowledge about letter statistics at the outset, yet it supposedly also learns your writing habits.

It's actually very quick to learn and certainly faster than multitap, but whether it can outcompete dictionary-based predictive input is another thing. Maybe for certain languages, noting that many (most?) young people don't use predictive at all.

For instance Indic scripts have so many letters that they don't fit printed on or beside the keys. In that case this takes away the need to have different keypads per language and solves the letter-plethora problem as well.

As Juniper is focused on telecom and media, this blog is primarily about the mobile market. It's worth a look: AnalystXpress

I've also found Juniper's free whitepapers to be quite useful.

Update: I figure this is a good time to "RTFM" :). It should be noted that the VB editor makes changes as soon as a line has been completed, and structure-correct copying with CTRL-C/V etc, without need for batch reformatting, so it's still more convenient than NetBeans' editor.

------- Additional comments from joshis Mon Feb 2 23:14:09 +0000 2009 -------
Sorry, maybe I didn't understand something, but:
- whitespace removal at the eoln is already implemented in 6.5 - whitespaces are removed on save (also, see "Tools>Options>Keymap, Other>Remove Trailing Spaces" - you can bind a shortcut there).
- you can paste code using Ctrl+Shift+V and code is formatted automatically (see main menu: "Edit>Paste Formatted"). Also, pressing Shift+Alt+F invokes reformat action (see main menu: "Source>Format").
- spaces in statements are configurable (in "tools>options>editor>formatting"), re-formatting is done using above mentioned shortcut (Shift+Alt+F)
So basically everything you request is already there (in 6.5)? What functionality do you exactly request?


After having used VB.NET in another project, and now looking at Python (for controlling GSM modules), going back to editing Java and PHP in NetBeans' editor (or any other "normal" editor) was a step back productivity-wise. I explain why below. I posted this to NetBeans problem report database as an enhancement, slightly differently written.

It's esoterical to anyone not into programming, NetBeans etc, so feel free to ignore (as if you didn't ignore my other notes :) ).

Regarding Enable whitespace for diff in NetBeans, that I think completely misses the point:

Isn't it time to add an automatic whitespace removal feature to the NetBeans editor? I've posted this request before and the argument against it that time was that it affects version control negatively. Rather the opposite: If trailing whitespace is removed and all tabs are automatically converted to spaces even on non-edited lines, it actually makes version control look at the relevant changes rather than the completely irrelevant ones.

Also, when lines are copied I tend to get a bunch of whitespace at the end of the lines that need to be manually removed. The editor should do that for me.

I also would like indentation to be automatic: If I copy lines of text to a place that is deeper in the hierarchy the editor should align the lines to the indentation level there, not retain the old one.

Of course this should be optional, but I would have applauded this functionality.

Remember, it's the logic that's important to retain, not the exact formatting, and anything that makes the developer be able to focus on the logic rather than the actual editing, the better. Programming is about building logic and function, like writing a book is about telling a story, not text editing per se.

Many frown at VB.NET (considering it a toy system) but it has the best editor I know:

• Automatic whitespace removal
• Automatic indentation to the right level
• Automatic modification of statements like "a=2" to "a = 2"
• etc.

VB also has other advantages, but that's language-specific rather than formatting-specific.