Write Now...

I've started using Writely a lot. I'm beginning to think there are only very limited occasions that I will need to use anything else.

The Web application finally comes of age. Some of the cooler things that I still haven't had a chance to test out are RSS feeds for document changes and comprehensive collaboration and revisioning.

One thing that works perfectly, and is a joy to behold, is the integration with Blogger to publish documents to your blog. They have to take your Blogger password, but having done it, I wouldn't go back now.

Must try a post with a picture...

Please tell me Wi

The saga of WiMax standard ratification and roll-out might appear to be over, at least as far as defining the standard is concerned and getting the first certified products on the market, but there is a LOT of confusion around as to what WiMax is, what it will do and when it will be available in its various flavours.
I have attempted to get to the bottom of what's there and what isn't, and what the capabilities of Wimax are (or should be) today, i.e. now. I got some of this from the Wimax forum site, but it wasn't as informative as it should have been.

• There are several parts to the standard, much as with Wifi, 802.16a, 802.16-2004 and 802.16e
• The 802.16e (mobile Wimax) is a full cellular specification for Wimax and was approved by IEEE on 7th December 2005. Roll-out of 802.16e is still some way off!
  
• Current certified products are for 802.16-2004 , which is known as 'fixed/portable' WiMax
• Theoretical maximum throughput is 134Mbps/channel, but we're not going to get close to that (remember 3G and 2Mbps/channel?)
  
• Base station range is somewhere from 2km to 50km (talk about vague!) depending on conditions. In Non Line of Sight (NLOS) expect no more than 8km range and throughput of between 1 and 2MBps, though Intel etc claim much more. (Hey, why not set yourself up for a pleasant as opposed to unpleasant surprise!)
  
• 802.16-2004 works in the 2GHz - 11GHz range, i.e. public spectrum. Seems like it can also work up to 66GHz.

What really concerns me is the number of articles that claim that what we have now is some vestigial form of Wimax and that we really need to wait for Mobile Wimax before we can do anything really useful.
I'm not even sure that Mobile WiMax is relevant, as it doesn't seem to go beyond, or even match, say, Flarion Flash OFDM for data mobility and throughput (in worst case).

802.16-2004 seems to be pretty much 'Wide-Area WiFi', with around a 5km (average) cell size, for NLOS devices. Not quite as revolutionary as we were led to believe, or maybe I have taken the conservative view, but the key to its success is not how broadband (beyond 2MBps) it is or how mobile it is. The real key is making the customer device cheap enough to be included in all kinds of devices.

If you can buy an 802.16-2004 card for your laptop for $60 or get your PDA fitted out for a similar amount, then assuming the power requirements are not prohibitive, WiMax will be successful.
Current prices are around $5-10k for a Base Station and under $300 for the end user equipment (e.g. PC Card or 'modem') - I wouldn't mind being a WISP in BellSouth territory, when they start slowing down Google and Microsoft for not paying to use their pipes!

The beauty of Wireless is portability, not mobility. If I can't receive a movie while travelling at 70mph, I'll live with it. When your hotspot has a coverage area of around 80 sq km, then the ability to handover seamlessly has less urgency.
Mind you, I really can't remember the last time I had a mobile call drop on me while running down the street (ahem!), businesses demand reliability!

Losing Our Religion...

With the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony conference currently taking place in San Francisco, I thought it was about time to present my view of the Future of Telephony.
It seems to me that there are a number of important factors that are influencing the development of Telephony, but first thing to do is to define what I mean by Telephony. It is not merely having a voice conversation. We have to go back to the days before the Internet to determine the true scope of the term.
Telephony encompasses all conversations and conversations define relationships. Telephony will become the definintion of our relationships with others. A relationship mashup!

Let's explore the possibilities here a little.
How do we define ourselves in our day-to-day lives? We move through a number of different states as a day progresses and as situations arise.

• Early Morning - Family, and possibly friend, conversations. Intimate details of our state are passed to people we trust.
• Morning - Colleagues at work get to know our state as far as it relates to work, we share the relevant information and mask the rest.
• Lunch - Friends and close colleagues might get different information from that presented in the office. Your team may be allowed to know where you are, but your boss??
  
• Afternoon - Conversations with suppliers, but you don't want them to know what your colleagues know, even if they're your friends.
• Evening - Family and Friends are welcome, only I want to prioritise close friends over acquaintances, and do I really want my Mum to know what film I'm watching?
• Midnight - If I like you and you've got a bloody good reason, then I might respond to your messages.

Presence is bigger; It's bigger than you, And you are not me. Presence is defining what we want to say, and to whom we want to say it. It is extremely personal and it ensures that our conversations are valuable because it defines (or is defined by) our relationships.
The idea of valuable conversation is like a marketing holy grail. If we can ensure that our conversations are valuable then we save time...and companies save money.

To a large extent we already have a lot of Presence out there on the Internet, but we are rarely in control of it. Cookies, access logs, subscriptions, blogs, email etc. Thankfully no-one is in a position to correlate it all together and come up with the big picture...so far!

So where does this leave Telephony, as we know it now? It's not going to be about minutes or bytes or bundles. It's like the old adage about quality, for the mass market the only quality level that matters is 'good enough'. In the case of Telephony, the only number of minutes or bytes that anyone cares about is 'enough to enable me to maintain my relationships'.

Telephony is a dying religion, Relationships and Conversation, made flesh through Presence, are the new Gods.

Or perhaps that was just a dream; Oh no, I've said too much!

The Power of Pre-approved

Skype is now allowing customers to set up Pre-approval on Paypal.
This is a pretty momentous leap forward.

In effect, they have joined Skype Ids and Paypal accounts. As it says in the the Share Skype announcement, "You can top up your Skype credit with 2 clicks".

The thing that keeps Skype ahead of the chasing pack, is it's ease of use, and this is another step.

I do have a few security concerns about it though, given that Skype send out plaintext passwords and allow multiple logins on the same account.
Would I feel safe giving carte blanche to anyone who gains access to my Skype account!!?

Ebay is taking a big risk with this step, and I hope they have considered the poor Skype business processes rather than just the transmission security!

Tiered Internet

I'm not against a tiered internet!

That might be a surprising statement for some of you to read, but let me explain.

If the premise behind tiering the internet is to improve the customer experience by optimising the routing of the bits to popular destinations (e.g. Google), then fine. So long as the actions are constructive as opposed to destructive, i.e. not hindering the flow of traffic to specific places.

I have long thought about why it can take upwards of 15 hops for me to get to Google:

C:\Documents and Settings\pj>tracert www.google.com

Tracing route to www.l.google.com [66.249.89.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 20 ms 19 ms 20 ms adsl-bkkct1.csloxinfo.net [210.1.48.??]
2 23 ms 22 ms 19 ms adsl-bkkct1.csloxinfo.net [210.1.48.??]
3 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms 203.170.???.???
4 22 ms 23 ms 23 ms 210.1.???.???
5 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms 202.47.254.???
6 23 ms 22 ms 23 ms 202.47.253.???
7 222 ms 221 ms 223 ms 202.47.253.???
8 227 ms 223 ms 223 ms if-1-0.bb3.LAA-LosAngeles.Teleglobe.net [209.58.
85.17]
9 238 ms 236 ms 238 ms if-6-0.core2.LAA-LosAngeles.Teleglobe.net [209.5
8.85.14]
10 229 ms 230 ms 228 ms if-1-1.mcore4.LAA-LosAngeles.teleglobe.net [66.1
98.112.30]
11 232 ms 234 ms 233 ms if-6-0.core1.SQN-SanJose.teleglobe.net [216.6.85
.22]
12 232 ms 242 ms 230 ms so-1-2-0.e1.SanJose1.Level3.net [65.59.88.201]
13 232 ms 231 ms 235 ms so-1-2-0.bbr1.SanJose1.Level3.net [209.244.3.137
]
14 232 ms 232 ms 234 ms ae-14-53.car4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.123.78]

15 367 ms 384 ms 388 ms unknown.Level3.net [64.152.102.62]
16 401 ms 425 ms 425 ms po1-0.cr2.nrt1.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.194]
17 422 ms 442 ms 415 ms gi1-0.gw1.nrt4.asianetcom.net [202.147.1.117]
18 235 ms * 235 ms GoogleInc.gw1.nrt4.asianetcom.net [203.192.131.7
0]
19 237 ms 249 ms 236 ms 216.239.47.54
20 233 ms 240 ms 234 ms 66.249.89.99

[N.B. I will accept pity for the abysmal routing from Thailand! ]

This is why using applications such as Google VPN can speed some things up! In effect it creates a tiered web specifically for Google and anything else that Google decides to efficiently route to. So, perhaps Google could create backbone and efficiently route from it's customers to it's servers. If you have a big customer base, why not connect directly to Google's backbone. Maybe Google would pay for it!

That's not the way the telcos envisage things working though. They have heard that content is where the money is, they have assumed they were going to get a cut of it. But they sat back and did nothing, waiting for the money to roll in. Divine Right!?
They are beginning to realise that in the new world, the global corporation rules, the days of kingdoms are over.

In the mix...

There are a lot of Jabber services around, but one that caught my eye was MXit, a South African company that are selling their service as a replacement for SMS. I've tried Trillian and basically abandoned it - didn't work out of the box!
Bonus is that it has presence too. MXit recently switched from jabberd2 to ejabberd, which seems to be a jabbering trend.
They have around 1/3 million users and their client software works primarily on Nokia, but some others too. 3G or GPRS.

Mix in a little libjingle and Santa could come very early to South Africa!

I really must get a new Nokia phone and try this thing out. I get the feeling though, that when something takes off like this, it's generally well packaged.
The old saying about 'one satisfied customer, leads to 20 more, and one disatisfied customer means 20 closed doors' seems to particularly hold true in the free, downloadable software market.

It's about time that SMS services were shown for what they are.
More later.

We be burnin'

Like many others on the blogosphere, I am feeling tired and inert (I was looking for a midpoint between creative and destructive!). Are bloggers starting to suffer burnout? I seem to be noticing a slowdown generally in the number of posts on the blogs I read, with some notable exceptions

Anyway, rather than stop posting to the blog (let's face it, I don't suffer from over-blogging!), I would make a bit more of an effort to organise my time, and see if I could determine any pattern for how these guys do it.
First stop; make a to-do list! I found a very simple web-based tool called voo2do, it's missing a few things - like dependencies - but it does the job fairly well.
Second, reduce the size of my posts; just take a story and say in 20 words what I might ordinarily say in 200. This is proving difficult... :)
Third, JFP; Roughly translated, this means don't spend too long thinking about how you want to say something. Just say it, clear and simple. Somewhat related to the point above.
Fourth, spend more time with the family; There's nothing worse than trying to spend more time in the office to get things done. Go home! The more time you spend there the less anguished you will feel about being in the office, and surprisingly, you might end up getting more done. The French are apparently the most productive people in the world; their secret? They work so little that it's a wonder anything gets done at all!
I used to say to people I managed who would be working till 11 at night or later to finish some work that they should have done during the day, "Go home, if you don't do this tonight who is going to die? You're not a surgeon, you're a programmer for a telecom billing application"

PS. I bet Om never got round to "Clean my office, catalog all the paper" - that's just one of those placeholders that eventually gets ticked when you move office - catalog under 'trash'!

Ofcom gets confused about content

In the big debate about who is in control, and of what, Ofcom waded in with a particularly screwed up set of logic. To pre-empt any leaping to conclusions about where I stand, let's say that I don't know the full answer, but I think I know the conclusion (Kant again!).

The makers of 'Cats in Bags' are in dispute with bag makers in many different countries as it appears that the bag makers have payed large amounts of cash for exclusive rights(read license) to put cats such as Ginger Toms in their bags. Ginger Toms only come in Spiffy Bags in the UK and no-one else can put a Ginger Tom in any other kind of bag.
The makers (breeders? I knew this analogy was going to get me in trouble!) of Cats are now saying that as soon as a cat is available the public can buy it 'off the shelf' at the global "Cats'r'us" store, however the bag makers say that in their country, the cats must all be sold 'in their bags'!

Ofcom has said that the bag makers will now be in control of the cats sold in their country at Cats'r'us.
They will be able to make modifications to the bag to restrict the movement of the hind legs for a period of time. In this way, Cats will not be fully available in Cats'r'us until the bag makers have had an opportunity to sell cat bags where the cat is able to leave the bag immediately.

Catbaggers Union has supported the bag makers and demanded that there be no redundancies in the cat-bagging industry, due to the new methods.

Tom Schrodinger, from the consumer assocation, said that the public is still likely to favour Cats'r'us as they can see what they're getting in advance. "How can you tell if it's a live cat or a dead cat in the bag? Seems to me it's 50/50" he said.

Steve Jabs, CEO of Cats'r'us commented: "The cat's already out of the bag!"
Here, here.

Build your own hardware

I'm not much of a hardware person, having just a basic understanding of the components that go together to make a PC.
It was therefore with some trepidation and not a little recourse to Tom's Hardware, that I set off to one of the PC malls in Bangkok where people go to get their PCs.
In Thailand there is a culture of buying the individual pieces and then having someone put them together for you.
I had had a bit of trouble in the past, where the components I chose decided not to work together all the time (hard crash every time I tried to answer a call in Skype).
This time I was going for an expandable system, but powerful enough to run all my bloated MS software, while my old system becomes my Linux server.
I also like the odd game every now and then, so it had to be reasonable on the graphic front.
I went for the following components:

• MSI K8N Platinum SLI socket 939 AMD Motherboard with SATA RAID, Gigabit ethernet, sound, etc
• Winfast Nvidia PX6600 GT/TDH 128MB
• AMD Athlon 64 bit 3000+ Clawhammer processor
• 1GB Kingston PC3200 400 RAM
• 80GB Seagate 7200 SATA drive

Works fantastic!
Everything flies along, and I got the minimum processor!
I can upgrade to a Dual Core on the 939 socket, and several GB RAM, add another Graphic card using the SLI bridge and I can get 4 drives in a RAID configuration using the hardware RAID controller (e.g. 4 x 250GB SATA drives, giving 0.5 terrabytes of RAID 1+0).
Total cost: 28000 THB, or $700!

I already bought my 19" LCD (Phillips) almost a year ago for $500 (now $350).

Of course, in Thailand, quality seals are invariably broken and packages look like the dog ate them, but somehow it generally works. I've lost count of the number of times when you go to a shop in Thailand and they only have the display model left - there are no discounts for wear or damaged packaging, but then again, they will usually take things back in an obviously used state!

So, no more excuses for lack of blogging or calling people on Skype (or Gtalk or Gizmo or Yahoo or MSN)...except...

The unfortunate side effect is that the PC is powerful enough to run Civ4, and what with the new baby, Civ4 and trying to develop code/presentations etc, sleep and blogging are coming quite low down the priority list!

I'd post a photo, but it's too horrible!

Netgearing up for the future?

Netgear announced their Skype WiFi phone at CES and they have a sparsely populated information page on their site to give us more details.
The phone itself looks ok, not flashy, but reasonably inoffensive. I read the FAQ, but it certainly wasn't the most frequently asked questions of anyone I knew!
The really interesting questions (except for price, which they didn't answer anyway and had better be under $100, or it's not going anywhere) are:

1. What is the IM interface? like SMS, with autocomplete?
2. How does the phone detect and sign in to WiFi networks?
3. Does it have a browser built in?
4. What connectivity/ports does the phone have?
5. What operating system does it run?
6. Why do the keys look really tacky?
7. Are you trying to look like an iPod? If so, does that mean it can store and play MP3s?
8. What about Flash memory - SD cards? Skype File Transfer?
9. How long does the battery last?

and now the big question, that I was discussing with Jan a couple of days ago...

10. Who is going to provide support for it? And don't say Skype, cos we know what their 'support' is like!

I'll still probably buy one and try it out on Bangkok's many and totally unintegrated WiFi hotspots, but I can't help thinking that either Marketing missed the potential of this, or it just isn't designed for 'roaming' use away from your home network.
The limited information and FAQ would have had a different flavour if it had been.

I was sure I'd blogged that Skype was going after the mobile market, but I can't find it anywhere. Must have been a comment on some other blog! Anyway, they are, and they can start to make inroads with the new crop of WiFi enabled phones.

World of Websites

I often dream about having a small(ish) house with a white picket fence, on a quiet street, lined with cherry trees.
There would be some small shops within walking distance, where I could get all my essentials, and my neighbours would be my friends and colleagues.
The pub at the end of the road would be a meeting point and the hub of the community. There would be a school, a clinic, a gallery, a music venue and a sports field. My favourite gadget store would have an outlet on the corner (they asked me if they could open there!)
My office would be in the business district of the nearby metropolis, right next to the offices of all our suppliers and partners.
The thing is, when I walk into one of our suppliers offices and see the world through his eyes, it's different. His neighbours are his suppliers and partners, his house is near mine, but his neighbours are different, and the road is narrower!
But it's ok, if I tire of him, I can move him further away, perhaps round the corner. He'll never know.
I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I have a door in my house, that when I go through it, I end up in an area of town where all the shops sell alcohol! Hundreds of wines, beers, whiskies, any drink I can possibly think of! It's delivery only, so you don't see a lot of drunks there, but it's good to get recommendations from other customers as you're browsing.
I'm really thinking that one of these days I should build my own mall, I heard shops sometimes pay for a place in them, if you get enough visitors...

Strategy, what Strategy?

It's been said that companies don't have time for strategy now, that the prime strategy to follow is grow quickly or die.
I don't subscribe to that point of view, because it forces the business to focus merely on what it is doing now, rather than what it might be doing next year.
The shorter timescales from strategy to concept to release have forced companies to make hard decisions quicker and with less certainty than before.
Empiricism has become a luxury that few industries can afford, least of all Telecom and the Internet. Kant is the poster-boy for strategy in the e-world.
Our minds must be flexible; just because you do it like that, doesn't mean it should be done like that.
The internet is reinventing the way we do things on a daily basis - don't get comfortable!
To quote from De Niro in 'Heat': "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner."

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably going to eat your bread!

Router Skype

The Linksys WRT54G is the 'hobbyist' WiFi Router and for a long time now you have been able to replace the firmware with your own version of Linux, which is what it runs anyway.
This has spawned a project called OpenWRT, which is now able to run on several WiFi routers.
I have been thinking for a while that it would be better if my Skype installation ran on my router. It is usually on 24 hours a day and sits next to my phone line.
The Linksys WRT54G has a USB port, so what would be the possibility to connect the IPEVO USB Skype phone to it and make and receive Skype calls??

UPDATE: The WRT54G does NOT have a USB port (doh!), the WRTSL54GS does, however it is not supported on OpenWRT yet. Asus make a Wifi router called the WL-500g Deluxe which has 2 USB ports and is supported by OpenWRT. As in all things, there's no such thing as a new idea! Hat tip JDepew at Linksysinfo.org

Ok, so there's going to be some changes that would have to be made to the OpenWRT USB device drivers (probably), but it's Linux, and Skype runs on Linux.
UPDATE: I found this link for installing Asterisk on OpenWRT, which is equally interesting, but nothing for Skype!

You have to think that Linksys could do this in a minute, if they wanted to...

Now, I could probably get a patent on this if I don't publish it first...oops, hit the wrong button! There goes another million bucks!

Fairy Obvious?

I loved this comment by Alex on the news story about Multiverse launch; a platform for building MMOGs.

Those who can write – let us just write the story and build games bottom-up ;) How about (grand?)-parents developing storytelling applications for their and other kids and visualising them in an open web scripting environment (XML+ x3d?) – and who said we need zillion of simultaneous users?

AND we can well have an internal market in there too – why not...

I am thinking more “3d – game – blogs” – maybe EVEN in normal, not fairytale setting (let us let elves and monsters rest for a while)

This is the kind of creativity we need more often.
The Multiverse tool would have to be bloody good if there was ANY chance of my father creating a story scenario for his granddaughters (he has trouble with Christmas Cards!), but I applaud the sentiment.
Perhaps it's more likely that my daughter will create a scenario for her grandfather to show him the things that happened in her life!

Of course, I am not altruistically giving Alex applause, as I have had even more radical ideas for MMOGs since the mid-1990s... :)

Those of you who were in Malmo in 95 over several Stor Starks, will remember the discussion! (and they said it was Carlsberg that refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach! - advertising Long tail there!)

2005 has given a glimpse of the power of community; the need to be a social animal, even in cyberspace.
The standard browser is like living in solitary confinement, with a friend (the internet) on the other side of the wall, that feeds you information in response to questions.

The big question on all our minds, and one that began to be answered in 2005 is: Who are in the other cells?

Transcript of Google patent infringement trial

RTI Lawyer: Your Honour, Google has flagrantly and knowingly infringed on the patents of RTI, we ask that you award my client huge sums of money in compensation. In fact we heard that Google had pots of cash so make a big one, please.
Judge O.N.Theball: It says here in your complaint that Google's actions have damaged RTI's reputation and that of its products? What products do you make, exactly?
RTI Lawyer: Well, we don't actually make any products.
Judge O.N.Theball: And your reputation in the market? How do others perceive you?
RTI Lawyer: We are known as the company who invented Least Cost Routing to minimize the cost of a call by choosing a different operator.
Judge O.N.Theball: Not as a patent troll, then? So, how much do Google actually charge for their calls?
RTI Lawyer: Ummm...
Google Lawyer: Let me help out here; we don't charge anything for calls.
Judge O.N.Theball: RTI Lawyer, what exactly is the basis for your complaint?
RTI Lawyer: Ummm...
Judge O.N.Theball: Case dismissed, stop wasting my time!
RTI Lawyer: Ummm...
Google Lawyer: See ya!

[ I'm not going to go into the real arguments for why a patent on Least Cost Routing should not go beyond the device that sits between a phone and the network.
RTI may have a case for going after the manufacturers of USB splitters that allow calls to come through to normal phones. Good Luck suing them! At a network level it would be ludicrous to claim dominion over the concept of routing a call over the least expensive route.
But enough said, this doesn't even merit the attention it has received so far!]

Save the RIAA kids!

Another article on the increasingly insane actions of the RIAA to protect ever-dwindling CD sales.
The Register believes that the RIAA will continue it's fight for a long time yet and that applications like Pandora will come and go, and consumers will be sued for misusing products that they purchased in good faith.
It has to stop. I can't believe that the public or the artists will allow the RIAA to continue this folly.
The seeds of the revolution must be sown by the artists themselves. The big labels are middlemen who control the mainstream play of artists that they have decided will appeal to the mass market (hands up who's sick of that James Blunt song blaring out every 5 minutes!). The rise of the Podcasts provides the vehicle that the artists need to bypass the labels. Shows such as the Tartan Podcast play independent Scottish music (I haven't heard a single bagpipe), and is available on iTunes too.
I suspect that the groups sending their music to be played on independent podcasts would like nothing better than to be signed up by a major label, but that could all change very quickly. After all, the record companies don't always give bands the creative freedom they crave.
Mariah Carey recently said the following in an interview in the Financial Times:

Her colleagues say Carey chafed at her early marketing as a white, ballad-singing diva, and was one of the first mainstream artists to record hip-hop versions of her singles for the club scene. Carey does not blame Mottola alone for her early pop positioning but argues that most music company executives are out of touch. “When I first got my record deal I was so surprised. I was, like, why are all these older people trying to tell me what’s going to sell to people my age?”

If some of the big name artists went solo, so to speak, then it might well be the crack that breaks the dam.

The problem is, being with a big label means you don't have to work so hard to maintain or create your superstar status. Their marketing and airtime blitzes on your new release will virtually guarantee success, regardless of how mediocre the content. So the big names have an incentive to stay where they are.

We are not at the tipping point yet, and it remains to be seen if podcasts will be available free in the long term at iTunes. However, if podcasts are promoting independent music, outside RIAA control, and kids with iPods start listening to them with greater frequency and then buying the songs through iTunes from the independent artists....you get the idea!

The RIAA is going to have to learn the hard way that they don't have the market battened down, and no amount of lawsuits and prosecution of customers is going to raise their business(duh)! How desperate do they think we are to listen to James Blunt???
Factory Joe wants war, and I think it may have already begun.

Spare a thought for the children of the RIAA policy makers, they are obviously genetically challenged, and need all of our help to avoid becoming the bumbling fools that their parents are. Someone in the file sharing business should start a trust to help them, after all, the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children.