Tech Planet 3

Whole New Mind

2009-07-28T18:11:00.002-04:00

One of my current reads is Daniel Pink's Book "A Whole New Mind" ( http://www.danpink.com/wnm.html ) which describes a shift from analytical, left-brained thinking (which can be out-sourced) to intuitive, emotional, right-brained thinking. It's an easy read, thought-provoking, and provides an interesting perspective as well as practical, fun things you can do to develop your right-brained behaviors. I think of myself as balanced, but it would be fun and rewarding to develop the right-brain side. Personally, I'm interested in taking an improv boston course (http://www.improvboston.com/training/improv.html)--because after all, what is life and career but improvisation? Combined with hard work, intellect, and all the rest, of course.

Mobile Advertising - Not If, But When

2008-04-14T12:15:00.002-04:00

For years now mobile has been generating a lot of buzz. Despite all the hype and anticipation, until recently most people have looked at their phones as just that -- devices for calling people. Texting and ring tones, of course, have been big for awhile, but as a mobile data device phones were lacking. That has changed for people who bought smart phones and data plans, and the iPhone has popularized it. But what's left to get mobile to the next level - ubiquitous use of the web for data?

The things that have been missing are:

1.) Cheap data plans
2.) Powerful-enough low-cost devices
3.) 'Killer apps'

As with the Internet, advertising will be the killer-app for mobile, specifically location-aware advertising and search. The development of the Google phone will accelerate this trend and push it to the fore-front. Imagine the power of location-aware advertisements telling you where the best local restaurants are, based on your preferences, clothing sales that would interest you, people you want to meet, etc.. Advertisers will pay for the opportunity and many people will gladly trade a little privacy for cheaper data and better phones. Within 6 months to a year you will be able to buy data plans cheaply, with advertising part of the package.

Growth in Linux on Mobile Phones

2008-04-08T07:13:00.002-04:00

Behind the scenes Linux has become entrenched in mobile phones. The iPhone itself runs a slimmed down version of Mac OS X Leopard, and the upcoming Google phone will run Linux (perhaps Ubuntu, based on the popularity of the OS at Google).

But the list doesn't stop there. Linux Devices has a long list of phones running Linux, many of them only available outside the U.S. There are an increasing number of companies offering Linux environments on handsets including Limo, and Canonical's Ubuntu Mobile for MID devices. TuxMobil offers instructions for do-it-yourself Linux installation on mobile devices.

The real test of an operating system is what you can run on it, and here the Apple iPhone and the Google phone have a chance to shine. The mobile network providers have closed off the phone APIs for a long time, but with Apple's clout they convinced AT&T to make the phone an open device. The G-phone has the same promise, but it may be awhile before all (or most) devices are open.

The phone companies have long been afraid of being the pipe provider only, and have kept devices closed as a result. That model is now starting to show some cracks. Going forward, expect the trickle of open phones to increase until we get a flood of open devices.

Linux kernel community

2008-04-07T17:49:00.002-04:00

There are more indications this month of the continuing growth of Linux. A new report from the Linux Foundation reports that roughly 3,700 developers from more than 200 companies have contributed to the kernel since 2005. The top 10 coders have contributed nearly 15% of the total submissions and the top 30 coders nearly 30 percent. Al Viro logged a whopping 1,571 submissions to the kernel, the most of any developer.

Breaking down the numbers further, 13.9% of developers were determined to be working on their own time, 12.9% of developers affiliation was 'unknown', and the remainder were split up among a large number of companies, including Red Hat at 11.2%.

Open IT World has a good overview of the report.

Mobile development on Linux appears to be growing rapidly as well. More on that tomorrow.

Mobile Internet Devices

2008-04-07T07:10:00.005-04:00

There's a new class of mobile devices out there - not laptops or cell phones, but a little bit of both. Think iPhone with more computing power and a larger screen and real keyboard, and you've got the idea. They're called Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and they are part of an Ultra-Mobile PC initiative pushed by Intel.

We've seen such devices for some time now, starting with the early PDAs such as Apple's ill-fated Newton. Recently we've seen more capable devices based on Linux including Nokia's 770 and more recent N800 (both based on Debian and using ARM instead of Intel chips). Nokia, slow to embrace open source because of their commitment to Symbian, have started an open source mobile community. They're saying the right things but it's too much to expect them to embrace Linux over Symbian.

Intel is hoping to create a whole new class of device using the MID standard. Powered by Linux, they aim to be ultra low-powered with battery charges lasting 24 hours or more, and with the usefulness of a PC. They demonstrated an iPhone like device last year, and companies are actively using the new standard to create new devices. This is Intel's chance to make some significant inroads in the mobile market. A move to handsets and lower-end devices is probably in the works.

Long viewed as just another mobile OS, Linux is being embraced by leading devices like the iPhone and the upcoming Google phone as well as the MID devices. It's looking like there's room for perhaps 3-4 significant mobile OSs: Symbian, Linux Mobile Windows, and perhaps an upstart. The opening up of phone APIs embraced by Google and Apple will only accelerate the move to open systems, resulting in lots of commercial as well as open source apps. Nokia would be will advised to make its Symbian mobile development easier and more open source friendly, and in a hurry.

To me, things will get really interesting when Linux is scaled down to work on cheaper handsets. That would really open up the market for mobile device applications, but the proprietary OSs will be with us for awhile until the low end devices get more CPU and memory without driving up the price.

Apple iPhone SDK

2008-03-06T07:13:00.003-05:00

Yesterday Steve Jobs commented that the Flash media player would not be supported on the iPhone. Jobs said the PC version was too slow for a mobile device, while the mobile version was too limited in functionality.

The comments come a day before Apple is set to introduce the company's plan for iPhone SDK, the software developers kit which will allow third-party developers to create applications that can work in conjunction with the popular handheld device. There's an SDK launch party in Boston at the Cambridgeside Galleria Apple store on March 24.

Microsoft meanwhile, is taking the wraps off Silverlight, its competing Flash technology. Every time I'm on the Microsoft website it seems I'm getting another offer to test the beta. While it's no surprise that Microsoft will support Silverlight in its handsets, what caught my eye is that Nokia will support Silverlight on both its Symbian (S60) high-end phones, as well as on its S40 phones.

Nokia and Microsoft have been competing on phones for some time now, with Nokia fearing that Microsoft hand-helds would take a large part of the market. That hasn't happened for a variety of reasons, including word of mouth that says Microsoft handhelds crash. It's interesting to see that Nokia will support Silverlight, and especially impressive that it will run on S40 phones the cheaper, less powerful phones that run Nokia's internally used OS.

Maybe Silverlight really is leaner and meaner. Time will tell, but expect it to make a significant impact in the months ahead, if only because it's going from zero market share to something larger than zero. The legions of Microsoft shops and programmers wll be sure to jump on the bandwagon.

Security flaws in Vista Home Premium

2007-10-17T22:26:00.001-04:00

At work I use mostly Debian Linux, but when I built home computer recently (see the Hardware Guys forum if you're thinking of doing it) I installed Vista. My experience has been mostly positive. Reliability has been good except for occasional Windows Explorer crashes, which are detected and restart the process automatically. Most things just work, and work easier. The Windows Aero interface is an improvement, but with my video RAM on board the mother board, it's slow. For now it's disabled, and will be re enabled when I add a graphics board.

There are a few glaring problems, however, notably in the area of security. Surprised? I certainly was. With all the negative publicity Microsoft has had for poor security, you'd think they wouldn't make simple mistakes. Simply put, some of the security defaults are questionable and they left a few security features out of Vista Home Basic and Premium that are in the business versions, but are equally important to home users:

By default the power-off icon on the Start Menu puts the computer into sleep mode instead of completely powering off. After powering up the computer it goes directly to the user's last screen, bypassing the login and password prompts. The next user has free access to all your data and files - especially catastrophic if you have Administrator's privileges. This can be fixed using Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Power Options->System Settings but it's not easy to find, and for me at least, hasn't worked so far.
Home Basic and Premium are missing the Advanced User Management snapin to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). It sounds like you wouldn't miss Advanced User Management on a home computer, but think again - by default passwords are set to expire after 42 days. Vista prompts you 10 days before this, but Basic and Premium give you no easy way to reset the maximum password age. There's two ways to access the AUM snapin in the business versions, through the Control Panel or by running the lusrmgr.msc program (the link says the program is available in the Home versions; don't believe it). Home users, however, must use the following steps:
1. Click the Start Button
2. Click All Programs followed by Accessories
3. From the Accessories menu, right click on the Command Prompt option
4. From the drop down menu, select the Run As Administrator option
5. The User Account Control (UAC) will prompt you for permission to open the Local Security Settings. If you are the administrator then press Continue to give your permission. If you are not the administrator, you will require the administrator user name and password before you can continue.
6. From the Command Prompt window, type net accounts /maxpwage:N where N is the number of days before expiration, and press the Enter key. Use 0 (zero) or the special value unlimited to allow passwords to never expire.

The Vista Home password expiration procedure is difficult enough that questions about how to do it are all over the web. Put together, these two problems are security flaws for most home users: 1.) if you're not careful any user can power on your computer and get access to your files; and 2.) it's so difficult to reset the password maximum age that most users will give up and go without passwords. Basically, it's easy to setup your computer with no security, and if you set your browser to remember your usernames and passwords anybody can access your online data.

What was Microsoft thinking? The default for power-off and restart should be to require a password, and there are lots of ways to differentiate Vista Home from Vista Business without making password expiration management so hard. I'm surprised there hasn't been more attention paid to these serious (and easy for Microsoft to fix) security flaws.

Welcome to Tech Planet 3

2007-10-17T08:03:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Tech Planet 3, a technology blog with an emphasis on mobile devices and audio/video computing. My background is in computer software but technology is much more than that, so I will also touch on other emerging areas including green technologies and biotech.

The blog name, incidentally, is taken from the Arthur C. Clarke book Report on Planet 3, a collection of speculative essays published in 1982. In the book Clarke accurately predicts satellite communications (for which he is generally given credit) and the Internet. My copy is long gone and the book is out of print but it’s worth a read even today. You can pickup a used copy on Amazon. In addition to tracking the state of the industry and in keeping with the spirit of Clarke’s book, the blog will track not just where we are but where we are going, and the impacts it is having and will have.

If you're in the Boston area, use the blog to check for interesting events in a number of a organizations including Mobile Monday Boston and the Massachusetts Network Communications Council. If you’re outside the area, come here for insight into the industry in general and Boston tech in particular. Some of the good stuff coming up includes Emerging IPTV Trends: IPTV Enables Everyone to Become a Media Company! at Mass Net Comms this Thursday, Oct 18th, and the Fall VON IP Communications Conference in Boston from Oct 29-Nov 1st, where Mass Net Comms and Boston Mobile Monday will be holding meetings.