Matt Croydon::Postneo

Category: Mobile

  • Connected Calendar Tipping Point

    It’s becoming quite obvious that the connected calendar is reaching a sort of tipping point. There have been all kinds of blips on the radar about calendars, calendar programs, calendar servers, calendar services, and just about anything that has to do with calendars. Frank lists the attributes of a perfect calendar in reaction to Jeremy Zawodny’s post on the subject. They’re both spot on. The world is in desperate need for calendars that sync to and on multiple paltforms, allow easy sharing, public and private events, access anywhere, and interop nicely. To put it bluntly we really need a calendaring system that doesn’t suck.

    There are a lot of calendars out there, many of them quite good. But when you get down to it they all suck in one regard or another. Some are paltform specific. Others work well as long as you stay within walls of their system. Others sync with half the platforms that you’d like but not the other half. Heck, I even hear that Hula is getting some people laid.

    I’ve looked at a lot of different calendaring systems and would rather not laundry list them. Some have been very close to being ideal. I set up calendar sharing over WebDav with Sunbird after its first public release. I tried Hula the day it came out. I tried unsuccessfully to compile and install Open-Xchange. Webcalendar is a solid webapp written in PHP, but it’s lacking in sync.

    Like I said, we’re at a tipping point. We could go over the edge if Google really is working on a rich-web UI calendaring system that rocks. I doubt that they would be able to work in the synchronization that I’d really kill to have, but you never know.

    Until the killer calendar comes along and slaps me in the face, I’ll be trying each one that has promise in hopes that it’s “the one.”

  • Is The Series 60 Brand Becoming too Diluted?

    The other week I was glued to the monitor during the first day of 3GSM. Lots and lots of stuff was going on. One of the highlights for me was the announcement of the Nokia 6680, 6681, and 6682. They are compact, state of the art Series 60 devices. There’s full-on UMTS for the parts of the world that do that sort of thing, and EDGE for us in the mobile backwater better known as the United States. Even better, the release date for the US variety should be sometime during 2H 2005.

    After the initial excitement I dove in to the tech specs a little bit. I then realized that Series 60 can mean quite a range of things. At the low end you’ve got the 7650 and my 3650 which I’ve never been able to clear out enough memory to actually run Opera. (I’ve managed to misplace my 3650 somewhere too and probably haven’t seen it in a few weeks.) On the other end of the spectrum we’ve got devies like the 6630 and now the 6680, with newer versions of Series 60 and with additional Feature Packs. Somewhere in the middle there are devices like the taco and 6600/6620.

    Yes, there’s a lowest common denominator in there somewhere that you can refer to when you say that something is Series 60. After that you have to think to yourself What version does that run? and Is that Feature Pack 2 or Feature Pack 3?

    At the same time I think that most of this confusion is inevitable. Series 60 has grown up quite a bit in the last few years, from the 7650 slider with no external memory capability to the latest devices with lots of on-board memory sporting the latest in low voltage RS-MMC cards.

    What really worries me is the confusion that will come when the Series 90 technology is rolled in to Series 60. Then Series 60 might mean anything from the classic 7650 to the latest bleeding edge stylus input or QWERTY device in addition to whatever the latest single-handed unit may be.

    What can be done about this brand dilution? Off the top of my head I can’ think of anything. Nokia could try sub-branding the different variants: Series 60 Classic for the old stuff, Series 60 One-Handed for the main stuff, Series 60 Stylus for pen-based stuff and Series 60 Keyboard for the QWERTY stuff. Of course that would probably just cause more confusion than If it looks like Series 60, walks like Series 60, and talks like Series 60, call it Series 60.

    *Sigh*

  • Nokia 6680, 6681, and 6682: Covering the Bases

    Nice. I don’t think that these are supposed to be live yet, but Symbian has links to details on the Nokia 6680 and Nokia 6681. The 6680 has it all: Tri-band, WCDMA, EDGE, etc. The 6681 is a gem. It’s pretty much a 6680 with UMTS stripped out. This is big news for us in the relative mobile backwater called The United States of America.

    Nokia have definitely played their cards right. They have a bleedng-edge Series 60 device that can debut almost simultaneously around the world. The Euros can get their true 3G handset while at the same time we can get the same tech in our hands using EDGE. This is A Good Thing, since we don’t have to wait for the technology to trickle down or wait for lethargic carriers to update their infrastructure before a phone is deemed approrpiate for our market.

    Nokia is also able to please the entire US market by releasing the 6681 and 6682. The 6681 will be good for T-Mobile (tho they lack EDGE so will probably not pick it up) that use the 900 frequency. Cingular will (hopefully) eat up the 6882 which runs on 850. Both units are tri-band so they’ll also do 1800 and 1900.

    Here’s the timeline:

    • Nokia 6680: March 2005
    • Nokia 6681: April 2005
    • Nokia 6682: Q2 2005

    Now that’s a way to launch a phone! It looks like the US version will be a bit behind the others, but should be much less behind than usual. Go Nokia!

    More information:

    Update: The 6680 is small, but the 6681/6682 is even smaller, as in the smallest Series 60 device to date.

  • 3GSM Roundup

  • Research and Development

    I was joking with a friend about Fortran Server Pages and how silly that would be the other day. A quick google search didn’t reveal anything, although it did unearth some Fortran CGI from the FCC (with source code). While investigating further, I found myself arriving at the R&D sections of a few different companies. I thought I’d collect my findings for you:

    This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, but there are a lot of amazing research projects, downloadable software, and amazing papers on the other end of those links. If you have some free time, you should look around a few of them.

  • Sony PSP Launch Details

    Slashdot just pointed to a Yahoo News article with pricing and launch details for Sony’s PSP.

    The value pack retails for 24,800 Yen, so we’re not getting screwed too bad. I’m still hoping that there will be a barebones version on store shelves for $199, as the 19,800 Yen price point would suggest.

    Mobile gaming geeks (at least the ones that don’t already own a PSP) should set their calendars for March 24, the PSP’s official launch date in the US.

  • Taco and Podcast Use Case: Killing Time Before Class

    The one thing that has always bugged me about podcasting is that I never seem to have the time for it. There’s a lot of great content out there, but the vast majority of my typical day is spent either at home or at work, with a short 20 minute commute in between. I usually end up listening to WAMU, my local NPR station. If I sleep in just enough I can catch the Marketplace morning report.

    A 20 minute ride each way just doesn’t seem like enough time for listening to a podcast. The other thing that SUCKS is having to download an mp3, burn it to an audio CD, and then pop it in to my CD changer. That’s just too much work, and depending on the lengh of the podcast you’re lucky to fit one or two podcasts on a CD. That burns me up because you can usually hear how low the bitrate is, but raw audio is still raw audio.

    All of that changed on Monday when classes started again. Now not only do I have another 30-40 minutes commute to school from work and home from school, but I’ve got time to kill before class. Because of timing and the fact that I still needed o pick up a book that the campus bookstore didn’t have in stock last week, I arrived on campus well before class. After snagging my book and grabbing a bite to eat I still had a good hour or so to kill.

    Luckily it was 6pm and time for Markplace. I found a seat and whipped out my Taco, tuned the radio to WAMU, and picked up the Asphalt: Urban GT race I had started the day before. It’s situations like this that make me glad that I picked up an original taco used. There are only a handful of mobile phones that also have radio tuners and MP3 players, and I’m very glad that I have one of them.

    Over time my time before class will have to be much more productive, but for now I’ve found a viable use case for podcasting and my taco. Even if I just have the 10 minute walk to and from my car and 20-30 minutes before class, I should still be able to get through a podcast. I will probably have to save up for a larger MMC (my 256meg one is just full) or an iPod shuffle if I want to keep this up, but for now I’ll just try to throw a podcast on a spare 32 meg MMC. Of course I should really tie this together with the universal feed parser, some transcoding, and some scripted bluetooth sending. All in due time.

  • Snakes for the N-Gage Released

    Snakes for the N-Gage is almost go for launch.

  • The Taco Lives: N-Gage Spam

    For all the naysayers out there, I present proof that the taco is not dead. I mean really, if someone out there is sending spam featuring an N-Gage QD alongside a Nintendo DS, it can’t possibly be “dead” can it?

  • Emerging Gift-Giving Technology

    It has arrived. I’m referring to the Apple Store gift card that was arranged rather quickly days before Russ’ birthday. Looking back at it, I’m pretty amazed that a group of friends scattered throughout the world with a common love of mobile technology brought together by a guy named Russ was able to pull it off.

    To tell you the truth it would not have been possible without the use of traditional and non-traditional technology:

    • IRC: Much of the organization took place using IRC in #mobitopia and various backchannels and private messages. IRC was probably the most-used technology in getting things organized. Because we’re a bunch of mobile geeks, much of the IRCing was done on the run using WirelessIRC.
    • Wiki: Once we realized that more than a few people were going to be involed, I put up a wiki page on one of my secondary or tertiary wikis. The wiki page was called DonTTellRuss. This was crucial in keeping track of who had pledged, who had confirmed, and who had paid, as well as keeping general information about the status of the project.
    • Email: While email is a little old skool, it did play a role in bringing everyone together once the ad-hoc organization was complete. Email is still “old reliable” even though it’s not as timely or reliable as it used to be.
    • Transcontinental and Transatlantic SMS: International SMS messaging is one of those things that I’m glad “just works” most of the time. SMS messages were especially useful in keeping in touch with TomH who’s not an IRC regular. Costs associated with this were negligable: 15 cents or so for a SMS to the UK.
    • Paypal: Though I have misigivngs about PayPal and some of their draconian practices, it’s just the only way to move a little bit of cash worldwide in an instant. We would not have been able to pull this off if we were not able to pool money from Germany, the UK, Sweden, and America together in a timely manner. I love their emails: “You’ve got Cash!”
    • Jabber/Instant Messaging: This was especially useful in keeping everyone in touch during organization when we were at work and couldn’t be on IRC. Some of us used a Jabber gateway to Yahoo! and IRC. I used Gaim on windows to keep in touch wtih Martin via Yahoo! and others via AIM.
    • Next Day Shipping: We take it for granted, but getting everything organized around the world in a matter of days would not have been possible if we were not able to pick up a gift card in Virginia on Wednesday and have it arrive in San Francisco on Thursday. The original plan was to send it US Postal next day (so it could have been shoved in Russ’ mailbox), but we got a few inches of snow in DC and traffic was so bad that if I had waited to get to a post office in Maryland it would have been closed. It went FedEx and unfortunately arrived while Russ was at work. No worries though, because he got it Friday before the crucial Mac min purchase.
    • Voice on Mobiles: Believe it or not we do occasionally use our mobile phones to make voice calls. This was particularly useful in keeping in touch with Erik while he and I were on the road.

    Thanks again to everyone who participated. I’m glad that I was able to help facilitate the efforts of a bunch of mobile geeks in getting the guy that brought us together a birthday present.

  • Debunking Dave: McDonalds and Wi-Fi

    I’m not going to venture a guess on most of Dave Winer’s 2005 predictions. I agree with some and disagree with others. I am however going to debunk his prediction #12:

    12. There will be a wifi signal at the top of the Empire State Building and in every truck stop in the US. Also in every Best Buy. McDonald’s won’t embrace the Internet.

    I had Wi-Fi in a Palo Alto McDonalds over a year ago. It was during their initial launch period, so I didn’t even pay for it, they handed me a coupon for free access when I inquired how much the service was and how I could pay for it and log on.

    Of course this McDonalds is across the street from the original Frys in the heart of Silicon Valley. Maybe that was a bad example.

    Let’s look at the big picture then. McDonalds Wireless Site is down for maintenece right now “to help you find Wi-Fi enabled McDonald’s more quickly and easily.” I intepret that to mean that they just can’t keep up with the addition of new locations and need to revamp their site. The original site was just a bit map of the US with little blips in Chicago, New York, and a few other cities.

    If you head on over to the Wayport locations page, you’ll count some 40 or so states that have Wi-Fi McDonalds locations. I did a quick check on Maryland and found 13 locations with Wi-Fi statewide. There are 3 in Baltimore. The one down the street has wireless. There are 9 other Wi-Fi McDonalds locations throughout the state, though they are mostly in urban and suburban areas. What about other states? Texas has over 100. California has more than I’m willing to count.

    I think it’s a little too late to say that McDonalds won’t embrace Wi-Fi and the wireless internet. They already have.

  • Mobile Data Conundrum

    I’m between a rock and a hard place.

    T-Mobile is my mobile service provider. I love them to death. Their customer support can’t be beat, the people in the retail stores are actually plesant, they actually honor the warranty on phones, and they just generally rule.

    But man, their data plans are killing me.

    Here’s a bit of history for you. I’ve had T-Mobile service for almost two years now (eff Sprint) and love them. When I activated the service on my 3650 through Amazon I added their $9.99/mo T-Zones Pro plan. That got me unlimited on-phone data (plain old http port 80, WAP/WAP 2.0, IRC, etc) and even allowed me to surf via a bluetooth connection on my laptop even though I wasn’t supposed to be able to. For awhile I upgraded to the $19.99/mo unlimited GPRS plan because I was traveling and wanted full access to everything via GPRS over Bluetooth. After a few months I went back to the $9.99 plan because I just wasn’t using GPRS often enough (think T-Mobile hotspots).

    All was fine and well for a long time. I used email (outgoing) all the time, hopped on IRC via WirelessIRC when I was out and about, and was generally happy. Somewhere along the line I picked up a used taco for $60 at Gamestop and swapped my main T-Mobile SIM back and forth, using Opera on the taco and WirelessIRC, Services, and mail on the 3650.

    Then things came to a grinding halt. All of a sudden I couldn’t use WirelssIRC any more. That’s a big bummer, as WirelssIRC is probably my personal Series 60 killer app. It’s frugal on data usage, communication is instant, and I can talk to my online mobitopian family anytime anywhere.

    It turns out that I should have been paying $19.99 for access to anything other than web and email ports the whole time, on phone and off. T-Mobile realized this some time back in November/December and silently started blocking ports.

    This brings me to my conundrum. What’s a geek supposed to do in a situation like this? Did I mention how painfully slow a GPRS connection is in a Wi-Fi, EDGE, and 3G world? It’s pretty pathetic actually. It’s like when I was still using my 1200bps modem when all the cool kids had 9600’s. GPRS is slow, but it’s been very useful over the years. Until I couldn’t do something basic like hop on IRC from the phone for any less than $19.99 a month I was quite happy with it.

    I just can’t justify $20 a month for a slow connection that I’m just going to use to connect to IRC a few times a month. That’s just absurd. So I started looking at my options.

    My only real option (being a GSM guy that likes his phones to work places other than the US) was to look at the giant behemoth that is ATT+Cingular. Before being snatched, AT&T Wireless seemed like the wireless carrier with the best strategy for mobile data. EDGE is rolled out nationwide and true 3G service is available in several metropolitan areas. Before the merger, going with AT&T would be a no-brainer.

    The thing that scares the crap out of me is that Cingular appears to be so stupid when it comes to mobile data. Russ has been urging me to go out right now and pick up an EDGE or UMTS phone at an AT&T Wireless store (you know, the ones with the Cingular banners over the AT&T logo) before they go away. Why’s that you ask? Because Cingular is stupid about mobile data. Russ has an unlimited EDGE data plan tacked on to his AT&T Wireless account for $24.95 a month. Now we’re talking. EDGE is significantly faster and would be quite usable via a Bluetooth teather. If I were on an EDGE plan I could skip the hunt for a starbucks and just connect my laptop to the internet anywhere anytime. I’ve done so via vanilla GPRS and it’s just not a happy thing.

    Why am I not running out right now and picking up an AT&T phone right now? Well, because Cingular is stupid about data. The other reason that I am cautious about switching to etiher carrier right now is that they’re in the process of merging their billing systems, accounting systems, support, and infrastructure. I’d like to avoid that potential mess if I can.

    Why is Cingular so stupid about data? Take a look at their web site and look at their data plans. $30 for 10 megs, unlimited for $80? No thank you. I’d much prefer unlimited EDGE for $25, thank you. I looked at addons for their voice plans and didn’t see anything intelligent there either. Actually, I saw more stupidity. A 2MB GPRS addon called “MEdia Net” for $9.99 a month. Wow, that’s lame.

    That brings me back to my conundrum. I’ve got several options, but they all seem to suck in one way or another.

    Option 1 is to stay with T-Mobile even though they’re not going to get serious about 3G until at least 2007 and they’ve made absolutely no mention of EDGE. They’re also going to be way behind the pack of ATT/Cingular, Verizon, and Sprint/Nextel. I don’t know how long I can stick with option 1 even though I love T-Mobile.

    Option 2 would be to wait for the ATT/Cingular merger to settle down a bit and switch to Cingular once the billing kinks get worked out and all that. The problem with option 2 is that Cingular is dumb about data, and I honestly don’t think that any of their data plans come even close to fitting me or my budget.

    Option 3 is to run to my local AT&T Wireless store, pick up a Nokia 6620, and get on an unlimited EDGE plan while it’s still available. The thing that worries me most about option 3 is that I’m setting myself up to get screwed. At least there’s a lot of potential for me to get screwed. What happens if my only option in 6 months is to go on one of Cingular’s stupid data plans? What if Cingular screws up the momentum on EDGE and 3G that AT&T has been building up for years? There are a lot of questions that have not yet been answered.

    I’ve been thinking about my options for some time now and just haven’t been able to come up with a good answer. What should I do? What would you do?

  • Python for Series 60 Wiki

    It has been mentioned other places but not here. Several people have been keeping track of links, news, and information about Python for Series 60 on the Python for Series 60 Wiki. It’s running on the same semi-old MoinMoin install that houses the official LOAF wiki.

  • Delorme Bluelogger: Bluetooth GPS for $149?

    Earlier today Christopher Schmidt was looking for a cheap Bluetooth GPS receiver on #mobitopia. I think he stumbled upon a hidden gem: the Delorme Bluerunner. It looks like a no-frills but useful and usable receiver that would be perfect for GPS applications on mobile phones and PDAs. The truly best part about it is the price point: $149.

    There are tons of GPS units out there. There are tons of cheap but good GPS units out there. However, I think this is the first case of a good cheap GPS unit that also works over Bluetooth. Here’s a roundup of information about the Delorme Bluelogger:

    I’m pretty sure that this is a fairly new product, but I’m suprised that a compact inexpensive bluetooth GPS reciever such as this seems to be flying under the rader. A quick check of Technorati and Feedster comes up pretty short. I would have thought that people would be all over this. Am I missing something? Is this too good to be true? $149 seems to be a new price point for a decent Bluetooth GPS receiver.

  • Extending Python for Series 60

    This morning Jim pointed me to some extension modules for Series 60 Python by the Personal Distributed Information Store project. While I’m very excited to see Series 60 Python specific releases, you don’t have to go to that much trouble to get a working xml parser. There’s a perfectly good xml parser built right in to Python 2.2.2.

    You’ll probably not find this written anywhere obvious, but here’s what works quite well for getting a much more complete Python environment on your Series 60 device:

    1. Grab the Python 2.2.2 source tarball.
    2. tar xzvf or do whatever it takes to decompress the file.
    3. Insert your MMC to a card reader or plug in your taco via USB.
    4. Drag the boatload of .py files and subfolders in lib to E:SYSTEMLIBS (you did install to the MMC, right?) making sure not to overwrite any existing files.
    5. Import xml.dom.minidom or whatever library you need.

    I’m sure there are modules that just plain won’t work. Nokia have already included a lot of the basics (thank you thank you thank you for getting urllib working!). If the public release is anything like the pre-release software, the xml parsers and a few other things should work just fine. I spot-cheked a few examples from Dive Into Python on the prerelease and the xml-related stuff worked fine.

    Update: In the comments attached to this post, effbot clarifies:

    Adding the xml python package won’t help you if you don’t have an XML parser; pyexpat adds exactly that.