Six long months...

...since I last posted here. And that's a really long time in the mobile industry. I've been thinking a lot about user generated content recently, and I remembered this article I read a couple of weeks ago in the Village Voice. It's a good article. Give it a read.

Anyway, the basic jist of it is that regular people are now practically demanding to be celebrities, and I'm not really sure that that's a good thing. With the advent of user generated content and popularity of media sharing sites soaring and now being all the rage, is it really what we need more of? More boredass teenagers cluttering up in the internet with vanilla exhibitionism with the same renditions of all the same crap?

Sometimes I think the Amish are lucky. They're free from this excess of boredom which brings us all to the lowest common denominator of humanity.

Links for today

Been kinda busy, so this will just be a brief collection of links. I will comment on some things later on today, hopefully.

First off, Google Spreadsheets! It's a funny thing that the article doesn't mention OpenOffice, which, as far as I know, offers the full MS Office Suite.

Next, after a year of waiting, the Nokia N91. Apparently pretty lack-luster, despite (or maybe because of) a year of hype.

Opera and eBay: together at last

What, weren't you waiting for it? You weren't? Oh. Well, that's okay. I wasn't, either.

Just a quickie update. Found this at, yes, The Register. Yummy, Opera's increasing its distribution by joining up with content providers, this time eBay.de.

I've been a fan of the Opera browser ever since it was first introduced to me like six years ago by a very technologically forward friend of mine (thanks, Thomas!). Now, I have both Firefox and Opera installed on every machine I use. (This is despite the fact that when Firefox first came out, I got very annoyed with it because it was (1) huge; (2) didn't work out of the "box" and crashed my machine during installation; (3) boldly and arrogantly claimed tabbed browsing was a new thing; (4) lacked mouse gestures...I could go on, but I won't. I'm over it. Really, I am. .. So over it.) Anyway, when OperaMini first started to show up on mobiles, I became very happy because I think it's an awesome product. I hope Opera Mini eBay does well because I want Opera to do well, although I think that the co-branding is rather cheesy. What they should do, or at least what I hope they'll do, is bundle the additions they're building into OperaeBay into a newer release of Mini and have it become the new mobile browsing standard.

On a side note, I will review the Nokia 770 soon (the browser loaded on that is also provided by Opera).

On another side note, find ComputerWorld's review and tour of Windows Vista (Beta2) here. To save you the suspense (and maybe whet your appetite), here's a tasty nugget:

"Where does Windows Vista fit among many of the PC-based operating systems of today and the last couple of decades? With Beta 2 running on multiple test units, I feel comfortable predicting that Windows Vista will not outpace Mac OS X Tiger for overall quality and usability. It's hard to beat Apple's top-notch GUI design grafted onto an implementation of Unix variant BSD. Mac OS X has excellent reliability, security and usability. That isn't to say that the user interface wouldn't gain if Apple adopted some other best ideas of the day, but Apple has the best operating system this year, last year and next year. It'll be interesting to see what the company delivers in its 10.5 Leopard version of Mac OS X."

Yummy.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

Now taking bets. The stakes are high, and there's no pointspread info yet, but the winner will likely take all:

QualSoft vs. NokiAppleTI.

Ahh, divisive battles in the war of convergent devices and technologies.

Get info (and lots of background) regarding Qualcomm and Microsoft alliance here.

Get info (and not so much background) regarding Nokia, Apple and TI (well, really just Nokia, but I like saying "NokiApple") here.

In the QualSoft corner, this snippet:

"Qualcomm and Microsoft have a lot in common, and not just intense scrutiny by anti-trust authorities and huge market influence. They share some key strategic goals, notably leadership of the emerging mobile content and media industry, and control of the device architectures for this sector. They are both venturing out of markets where their dominant position is almost unchallengeable in to new waters where they face different and powerful competitors.

This means they also share several common enemies, most importantly Nokia. So, while the close alliance hinted at by last week's announcement of a smartphone collaboration may be seen in parts of the wireless industry as the gathering of the forces of darkness, it is also highly pragmatic and shows the two giants huddling together for warmth as they face increasingly critical challenges in the world of ubiquitous connectivity and mobile multimedia."

And in the Nokia corner, this snippet:

"Nokia has been licensing Series 60, which runs on the Symbian smartphone operating system, to other vendors in a bid to create a de facto standard. This effort has gained importance as the competitive differentiation on high end handsets has shifted from the operating system itself to the higher layers, notably the user interface and browser.

Gaining multivendor support for Series 60 was the first step in the effort to take, on mobile devices, the role enjoyed by Microsoft on the PC – thereby mounting a major challenge to the Windows giant as enterprise and consumer activity shifts inexorably from the PC to mobile devices.

The next stage is to go fully open source, with the aim of accelerating uptake and creating a major developer community – always Microsoft's trump card in any battle against Windows and the .Net software architecture."

Yummy. Agi has the Nokia 770 (the wi-fi tablet that's NOT a phone, referenced in the article), by the way, and it's awesome. I might review that at some point.

I really hope it goes Nokia's way--they're so much more innovative, I find, and I'm tired of Microsoft, and Qualcomm's BREW, while cool, is very restrictive even from a user's perspective. As the article mentions, QualSoft's alliance is a gathering of dark forces in the mobile industry.

Beat that horse so it don't get lamer!

Found here. Virgin Mobile will give away free minutes in return for watching commercials on your phone and then answering questions about them, at the rate of one free minute per 30 second commercial. Yes. One minute. Color me underwhelmed.

Dude. I thought this would happen with the advent of mobile TV, since commercials on TV (and now at movies before previews) are something that people have gotten used to. I guess it's a kind of trade off, no matter how much I hate it, because data rates in the US are so high for streaming media-rich content that commercials could be a viable way to cut that cost and pass "savings" onto the consumer. What about those of us who want ad-free mobi-TV, ad-free mobi-anything? I guess we'll just have to pay a premium.

It's suprising to me that after all the talk about advertising on mobile screens, Virgin is the one playing around with it. I guess all the big carriers are waiting to see what happens with the youthful subscribers at Virgin before they risk irritating their own older, generally more affluent customer bases.

Sony Ericsson w810i REVIEW UPDATE

Curious about how the camera works on this already reviewed device? Look no further. Get a glimpse at this baby's pix below.

In the review, I said that the camera didn't seem like it took pictures that looked as good as the photos taken with our old Nokia 6230i. I think that's because the photos we experimented with were all taken indoors (in a hospital, no less, with more fluorescent lighting than you can shake a stick at), and the color balance seemed WAY off on the SE (but, again, in hindsight that was probably due to hospital lighting). Here are some outdoor shots taken by the w810i. (I'm new to the whole reviewing thing, so I'll note taking comparison shots both indoors and outdoors for the next review.) Something else to note is that on the w810, you can choose and set how much light you want to capture in the shot (missing on the Nokia), rather like an F-stop on a traditional camera.

Up at a building;
Up at corporate art;
Building against another;
Wall Street sharks just hanging out.

Pretty impressive built-in camera, I'd say.

Team Monk: Mobile Smut Force

(Another mini weekend entry)

I've been reading a lot of stuff on The Register, and that's where I found this. Cambodia is locking down on mobile porn on 3G handsets by banning the use of 3G devices altogether. Yummy. I remember reading somewhere once that you can judge how well an industry is doing by checking to see if porn has invaded it. If it has, the industry's not only mature, but very alive and kicking. Apparently, even though only a very few can afford it in Cambodia, it's ready.

But why did he announce the clampdown to an assembly of monks? I wonder if it's because he thinks these very holy, celibate people would be most tempted by mobile smut? (Chinese Shaolin monks use cell phones regularly, and have $25 given to them as monthly spending money. Yeah, random, right?) Or maybe it's because he figures pronouncing that before the holy people would ease that niggling feeling in the back of his mind that maybe he's a tyrant?

Either way, someone needs to hand Hun Sen a copy of AbFab, so that Edina can enlighten him to the fact that "By the way sweetie, people have it off"...

It never ceases to amaze me that with all these advances in technology, the most basic, familiar, and ubiquitous images of sex are the ones that persist enough that we can gauge an industry's ripeness by it. What sad, simple little creatures we are.

Brazil has it rough out there, man...

(Mini-weekend entry)

Poor Brazil is experiencing a lot of woes recently with the mobile phone. In addition to the PCC staging riots using them, there's also this mess. According to the article, five devices (all Motorola) in the last two months have exploded--literally exploded. Motorola claims the use of cheap, third party batteries caused them.

"Will someone please think of the children?"

There's a little snippet located at The Register that cites some stats regarding kids/teens and all-night text messaging. It states,

"A survey of Australian children found 42 per cent of boys and 40 per cent of girls were tired enough that their concentration was impaired at school because of late-night texting.

Research in the US found up to 28 per cent of school kids admitting falling asleep in class at least once a week."

How amusing. I remember those nights quite well, myself. The difference is late-night chatting in bed was a lot more uncomfortable ten years ago, as laptops were still pretty sizeable, and I had to make sure that I didn't strain the cable attaching my modem to my phone line. (Especially not when that little plastic tab thing snapped off and refused to anchor into its jack.)

I firmly believe in parents teaching their kids about trust and technology and proper use of it. It's not like texting is this new monster that will threaten kids' safety. When will people see that staying up past their bedtimes is something that children will do because they're children and don't want to go to sleep if something more interesting than "those little slices of death" captures their attention?

I hopped on IRC during the wee hours of the night, and soon thereafter, my brother had his incessant late-night NexTel chirps to talk about absolutely nothing. We both did that just because we could, and we felt like we were getting away with something.

"Telecoms provider ACE-COMM says UK telcos could do more to help parents," says the article. I agree that carriers ought to take some measures keep kids out of where they ought not be (Disney is famous for their precautions and their ability to allow parents to control what kids can access on their mobiles), but ultimately the responsibility rests with parents. If a parent comes crying to a carrier about how they've racked up a gazillion dollars in text messaging charges and that their kid is failing in school because of rampant texting, whose fault is that? What does that say about the parent and his ability to raise his own kid?

Again, Disney has adopted that "we're totally family-friendly" (i.e. "we're big brother with a mickey mouse smile") stance, but their service is aimed at a younger crowd. If a 16 or 17 year old can't tell that failing all his classes because of late-night texting is a bad thing, then, jeebus, he deserves to fail.

It's so simple: moderation, folks, and I don't mean looking over your kids' shoulders to study their MySpace profiles to make sure they're squeaky clean.

The iTrip...in a phone.

Yes, you heard right. Have music you want to share with others using more than just your phone's built-in speakers? Broadcast it to the nearest radio or car stereo. Meet the LG LX550 (marketed and launched on Sprint as the "Fusic").

I'll have to see how I like it once it's in hand, but I'm not too crazy about it right now. It's an mp3 phone that with a stupid name, external playback keys that have been ripped right off the iPod, a shape and design that's remarkably like the Samsung A900 (or the "Blade," as it's marketed) and carries a built-in iTrip.

Despite the less-than-glowing initial impression, I think the iTrip bit is a cool concept for a phone, and convenient, even if it's not the ideal way of sharing music. I had an iTrip for a while and dealt with poor sound quality until the girlfriend decided to hook me up with a new car stereo that used an iPod dock connector. (Thanks! I still love it!) Unless you have a stereo with a jack that's iPod ready, there isn't an easier way to get your music on your car or stereo.

I don't really expect anyone to be lining up at a Sprint store to get it on Sunday, but if anyone does, let me know what you think.

"I think I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so!"

I love the Japanese. I'm a big fan of the Japanese. I'm Chinese myself, but can hobble along in their language, even. I will be the first to say that I love a lot of what those wacky Japanese do. From their anime and manga, their strict culture and language (some of it originally ripped off from the Chinese, and it might piss off some Japanese to read that, but it's true), the weird culture (including their bizarre fashions), their oh-so-drool-worthy tech...the list goes on.

This article shows just how far behind the Japanese we are, at least in terms of how people are comfortable using their phones. The article highlights how the ubiquitous mobile devices of the Japanese have become eWallets and have lessened the need to carry cash and/or credit cards. This is not really news. The article is dated April, 2006, but it started way before that.

My question is actually not about the technology, but why the same usefulness isn't embraced by the American public...it's not like the technology isn't there (if we wanted to implement it, we could just copy the Japanese), and it's not like the technology hasn't been here. Nokia and 2Scoot first introduced their "mobile cashless payments" technology in 2001. 2001! Why didn't it ever take off?

As for barcode readers, no one really hypes this, but there have been Samsung phones that shipped to the US with built in scanning capabilities for the specific purpose of reading barcodes! In 2003! (A later model, as the article points out, was shipped with OCR software to capture and read text.) Why isn't it used more frequently? Why isn't it advertised?

Apparently, we have to let the Japanese put two and two together for us before we move toward a newer way of using existing technology...and then we'll adopt it like two years later. And once the Japanese put those elements together, tweak some things, and show us the pretty packaging they've wrapped so delicately around it, we'll "ooh" and "ahh" and glomp onto it like it's the best thing since the VCR (which, incidentally, was not invented by the Japanese; they only made it better and gave it global popularity). I suppose it's what they're good at--after all, just look at their language. ^_^

In my opinion, the American tendency to accept most things Japanese is why the prevalent English word to describe the pictographs in both Chinese and Japanese are called "kanji" (Japanese specific) as opposed to "characters" (more general, but usually understood as referring to Chinese), but's another post altogether, and it's 12:30 am, and I'm sleepy.

"This must be why they call it a cell block"

The above post title was taken from an article on Reuters located here. I found the following line particularly interesting: "Godofredo Bittencourt, chief of the anti-organized crime police unit, said the mobile phone has become 'deadlier than the gun' in Brazilian prisons."

It brings to mind another line, by Ani DiFranco this time: "Every tool is a weapon when you hold it right."

The PCC is an interesting bunch, reminding me of corrupt modern day unions.

I don't have much else to say about this...just thought it was interesting.

REVIEW: Sony Ericsson w810i

In my opinion, this is one of the best phones ever released for the US market. More and more mobile devices are moving towards convergence, and Sony Ericsson (aside from being one of my favorite mobile device manufacturers right after Nokia) is getting it totally right with this device.

Before I begin, I will say that I'm currently using the SE w600...which I hate, but I use because it's orange. Form-factor on the w600 is an unassisted, springless swivel which takes some getting used to. It carries 256mb of built-in memory, and NO slot for additional Memory Sticks. That's a teensy amount of memory for a device that calls itself a "Walkman Phone."

In terms of styling, the w810i phone is hot. It's very close to the design of the w800i (the orange colored candybar, released only for Europe, and which I'd been lusting after since its release last August) but carries a number of improvements. Firstly, the joystick has been replaced with a directional pad with a center "OK" button, like the w900 had. Second, the screen is larger on the 810. Lastly, the buttons have been redesigned on the 810 to include a "Shortcut" key so you can "jump" immediately to another function. Compared to the only other Walkman phone to hit the US, the w810 is a huge leap forward in quality over the 600.

The following things scored big with me:

- improved D-pad and number keys.

- it ships with a 512 mb card, which is enough memory to replace the baby Shuffles, and with the 4 gig Memory Sticks that are out, you could easily replace your Nano.

- with the sound quality that it carries, and with functions like stereo widening, basic equalizer with Mega Bass (tm), it sounds good enough that you really could replace your iPod and not notice the difference.

- it's really easy to load your music collections up onto your Memory Stick and play them on your phone, as the device supports playlist functions as well as organizing stuff by artist and track.

- the included earbuds are of good sound quality, and very like what you'd expect from Sony (they're a lot like the EX71 buds I have on my iPod). And because the earbuds also act as your headset for picking up calls, the cord is split into two: the base is an SE-specific connector that goes into the bottom of your phone and at the other end is a little remote for picking up calls, into which you plug standard 3.5mm headphones, whether they're SE, Sony, or Shure, or whatever else you audiophiles insist on using.

- it's quad-band.

- improved reception, microphone and speaker.

- feels really nice in your hand: solid without being too hefty.

- corrects one of the most annoying things about the w600, which is a keylock that makes no sense. The w600 has a "convenient" side slide lock: when you wanna lock your keypad, just give that sucker a little slide, and voila! At least, that's the theory. The problem I keep having with my 600 is that the slide gets nudged in my bag, and it unlocks...and it gets nudged again, and the Walkman function (also located along the side) activates itself. And I find myself standing in quiet places when I discover that my phone is singing to me. "Whatever Lola wants...!" Ultimately, I had to disable the side Walkman button by using a workaround, since I can't turn it off from a main menu. With the 810, there's no side lock slide, so there's no problem. Voila!

Of course, the navigation is simple, intuitive, and beautiful. And with its great resolution, bright screen, you don't have problems viewing screens and menus in the sun. Of course, it comes with BlueTooth (and not the literally lame version that Verizon's trying to force onto everyone), and, of course, it comes with an FM radio (which apparently wasn't included as a feature in the original press release). At this point, I've come to expect these things as standard on all Sony Ericssons. My only (admittedly minor) gripe is that (1) there's no lens cover for the camera the way there is on the w800i, and (2) though the w810 comes with a 2mp camera, it doesn't take pictures as good as our previous 1.3 mp Nokia...but then, SE doesn't generally incorporate Carl Zeiss optics into their devices the way Nokia does. The 800 does, however, have an LED light that also functions as an emergency strobe. Convergence, indeed!

All in all, I love the 810. I just wish it were orange.

Global release date for this phone was March 30, 2006; expect it from Cingular during the 3rd quarter of this year.

SE's got a new baby coming out soon: the w950i. It promises to be just as hot with an added touchscreen...only no camera? I guess that's not surprising, considering SE's moving more and more into co-branded products, and since the "Cybershot" line of phones are coming out. We'll just have to wait and see.

My first real Blogger post

After playing with advanced settings in Blogger and realizing that it allows much greater flexibility even as a free account as compared to livejournal (which is where I've been keeping track of goings-on for the past year or so), I decided to move over here. Hopefully this transition, with its new look and management of content and appearance, will help spur some greater productivity on my end. Working in the mobile industry has allowed me some time to percolate opinions of where we are now, and generate ideas about where we're going with mobile technology. With any luck, I'll actually begin to embark on something I've been meaning to do for a long while: reviews of mobile devices, with the first one being the girlfriend's brand-spankin'-new Sony Ericsson w810i.

Let's see if I have the ability to follow through with this endeavor. For now, thanks for reading, and welcome.

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