Let Me Be Mobile

I ran across this “cool” promotion from the CoolSW site.  It’s a user-centric software bundle at LetMeBeMobile.com.  

I did a quick search on the site and 3 of the 4 participating companies were submitted onto CoolSW and it looks like they all got together in a marketing campaign to promote mobile applications and a possibility to win a Zune (30 GB). 

The partners are:

1. Jajah lets you make ultra low-cost global calls right off your existing phone. No contract, no headset, no computer or Internet connection needed, just big savings. Simply receive a local number for each of your international contacts – dial local and talk global. More information found HERE.
2. ElephantDrive provides easy-to-use, simple click-to-start online storage and backup capabilities. Get all enterprise-level benefits at a fraction of the cost. Delivering effective and continuous data protections tools for online backup and synchronization, you can keep your stuff within reach anywhere, anytime. More information found HERE. 
3. Tazti, a free, Web 2.0 style speech recognition application that lets you talk to your PC to navigate Facebook, Myspace & iTunes, search the Internet, create your own speech commands and so much more! For XP, Vista, and Mac via Parallels. More information found HERE.
4. Talkhouse takes speech recognition for searching to a whole new level. It’s mySpeak voice search engine lets you search by keywords and phrases, just like in routine internet searches. Our next generation voice-activated music player provides users with this easy, intuitive search function. More information found HERE.

The members are part of a Software Partner Program which drives increased business and yadda, yadda, yadda…to use the Seinfeld phrase from the 153rd episode.

It’s no iPod, but check out the promotion LetMeBeMobile.com and win that Zune!

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Randy Newman and Steve Job’s Keynote at MacWorld

If you didn’t see the 90 minute MacWorld keynote here is a quick summary of the product launches yesterday.  Jobs photo courtesy of Apple.  

• Ad:  Hi I’m a Mac and I’m a PC — New Years ad ran which poked fun at Vista…what are you going to do in ’08…  Then Jobs enters stage.
• Time Capsule:  backup hardware device the same size as the Apple TV product.  Two models both include Airport 802.11N in a 500MB and 1TB configuration.  Priced at $299 and $499 works in conjunction with Time Machine (back up system) which is included in OS X Leopard.
• iPhone: 4M sold in the first 200 days (averaged ~20K/day); currently has 19.5% MSS (more than combining the bottom three companies – Palm (9.8%); Motorola (7.4%); Nokia (1.3%).  Enhancement announced:
  1. Maps w/ locations (joint effort by Google and Skyhook Wireless (drove the US & Canada mapping 23M wi-fi hot spots and allows triangulation on the hot spots.  Google triangulates off cell towers and Apple uses both systems in iPhone for identifying location)
  2. Webclips (clipping links to favorite web sites or sub-site
  3. Custom home screen (up to 9)
  4. SMS multiple people at the same time was only one prior
  5. Chapter search for videos and song lyric’s displayed if available
  6. Free software update for all current owners which include the above enhancements
• iTunes: 4Billion songs sold through iTunes; Christmas day sold 20M songs in one day – highest ever; 125M TV shows sold (more than any other service); 7M movies sold (more than anyone, but didn’t meet expectations).  Enhancements announced:
  1. iTunes Movie Rental (music users have not wanted music rental); Studio’s on board at launch (20^th Century Fox, TouchStone, Miramax, MGM, Lions Gate, New Line Cinema, WB, Disney, Sony, Paramount, Universal – essentially all of the studios; More than 1000 films by February
  2. Films available for rental in the 30 days after DVD release
  3. Watch anywhere (PC, iPod or TV)
  4. iPod Touch added 5 new apps including maps, email, SMS, web clips and chapter search
  5. Didn’t state, but looks like progressive download as the movie starts within seconds of the rental purchase
  6. 30 days to watch the movie and 24 hours watch it once started
  7. Can transfer the movie watching to another device in the middle (start on a PC then xfer to iPod for a flight)
  8. DVD quality, but also providing Hi-Def (100 titles today growing fast) with 5.1 Dolby surround sound
  9. Pricing is DVD library release – $2.99; DVD New Release – $3.99; HD library – $3.99 and HD new release – $4.99
  10. Service started today in the U.S. and goes International later this year
• Apple TV: stated that we’ve all missed (Microsoft, Netflix, Nubu and other logos on screen) how to get the movies to the flat panel in the living room.  Apple TV was designed as an accessory for iTunes & computer, but it’s about Movies, Movies, Movies.  Enhancements announce:
  1. Price dropped from $299 to $229
  2. All new user interface
  3. Leverages the new iTune movie rental service
  4. Rent directly from the Apple TV box – no computer needed now
  5. Photo from Flickr can be streamed or from your dot mac accounts
  6. Will auto sync with your computer if you want
  7. Free software upgrade to all existing users and get the functionality
• 20^th Century Fox: Jim Gianopolos (Chairman & CEO) on stage to discuss movie rental deal.  Talked about biz models being super important, gushed about how great it is to work with Jobs and put a major plug in for Blu-ray winning the format war as the crowd applauded.
• MacBook Air: launched a new ultra-thin MacBook to compliment the notebook line up. Standard model priced at $1799.  Model with the 64GB SSD flash over $3K,.  Compared the “Air” to the Sony TZ series which had previously set the benchmark in this category.  The thickest part of the Air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony for comparisons.  Features:
  1. .76 to .16 thin (no optical device, can get one external if you need)
  2. 13.3 inch LCD back light display
  3. Full size and backlight keyboard
  4. Multi-touch (similar to the iPhone – swipe, pinch etc.) capability on the trackpad
  5. 80GB HDD and optional 64GB SSD (pricey however)
  6. 2GB memory and 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo (C2D) standard or optional 1.8GHz
  7. 802.11N and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
  8. Usage model changing and driving wireless even for software download – now leverage a PC optical drive across the network
  9. Talked about environment: mercury free, arsenic free glass, Bromide Fire Retardant (BFR) and PVC free
  10. 56% less packaging waste
  11. Jobs applauded the joint effort and working with Intel
• Intel: Paul Otellini was invited on stage to evangelize the 30% reduced form factor of the C2D.  Gave Jobs a souvenir of one and gushed about how great it was to work with Apple.  For those of you into little known factual tidbits, it was interesting to note that the video graphic overlay while Paul walked on stage used the old Intel dropped “e” logo.  The graphic/name/title on the projected stage TV was correct.
• Summation: In the first 2 weeks of the New Year Apple launched:
  1. Fastest ever Mac Pro desktop system
  2. Time Capsule
  3. Software updates for iPhone, iPod Touch along with new apps for Touch
  4. iTunes Movie Rental
  5. Apple TV (software upgrade) along with HD video content
  6. MacBook Air – Ultra thin laptop
  7. Last slide stated…And there’s still 50 weeks left….
• Randy Newman: Music artist extraordinaire played a couple songs for the audience.  Newman photo courtesy of YouTube. He starts by telling us about his trip to Europe, where he noticed that “they don’t like us so much.”   And he sang a song he wrote about it…”A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.”

 A couple of parting thoughts about Randy Newman.  The song choice was odd.  If Apple signed off on the first song he sang they have some guts.  A little piano ditty that compares the U.S. to Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Europe during the time of the Inquisition.  Now that’s an interesting mix of art meeting commerce.  Highly political and bashed a number of things which will only add to the blog fodder I’m sure.

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HD DVD Takes a Nose Dive

By now you’ve read about Warner Bros. Entertainment announcement to drop HD DVD and focus on Blu-ray, a Sony Corp. backed technology vs. rival Toshiba.  Warner was the last major studio to put out movies in both formats and after May they will exclusively release on Blu-ray. 

The announcement by Warner rattled the industry nerves to the point that the N.A. HD DVD Promotional Group (which included Intel and Microsoft) canceled a major media event.  Who would blame them?   It’s not the kind of exciting news for what’s to come in 2008! 

I predicted Sony would not allow the “Betamax” struggle to repeat and that Blu-ray would prevail (HERE).  No need to bore you with the technology advantages of each format.  Ironically HD DVD has better interactivity today than Blu-ray, but that will evolve with BD Live.  I also observed evidence of a move of desperation during the holiday season when Toshiba HD DVD players flooded the market at $179.99.  Then Sony countered and jumped on the price discounting wagon with their BDP-S300 (entry level player) at Costco for $278.99 after a $100 rebate.  A $100 premium and never mind it didn’t support 7.1 audio. 

So what will Microsoft do now?  Speaking to Reuters, Albert Penello, group marketing manager for Xbox hardware, said in response to a question about Microsoft possibly supporting a Blu-ray accessory if HD DVD failed that they would consider it.  According to Engadget during holiday ’07 consumers purchased 92K HD DVD players for the xBox 360.   I believe Microsoft really wants the market to shift to digital download (aligns with xBox 360 content download service and their xBox 360 IPTV directions) and the format war was likely viewed as a gift which stalled adoption, create consumer confusion while digital download services improve. 

What is really important to most consumers is that the Warner announcement translates to the release of more movies which we want to watch (rent/buy) in stunning hi-def.  Now that the format battle is over I can plan on the Blu-ray release of Lord of the Rings (LOTR).  New Line (parent Time-Warner) will make this happen in ’08. 

And if all this wasn’t enough good news for the week, Sony demoed at CES the “next generation” of portable cinema viewing.  Samples of Blu-ray movies were successfully copied from a PlayStation 3 Blu-ray drive to a PlayStation Portable’s memory stick, as part of Sony’s new web-oriented service/approach to interactivity and play anywhere portability known as BD Live.  Other abilities include ring tone downloading and other media content to a BD Live media player.  One issue is that current Blu-ray players in the market (including the PS3) do not support BD-Live, but Sony confirmed the PS3 firmware update will be rolling out as early as this month to incorporate BD-Live playback into the system.

Now if Universal and Paramount can see that it makes sense (or is that $cents) to move to Blu-ray we’d be all set for a great hi-def year!

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Unlimited Download TV Service

Let’s see, I slept for 7 hours; it’s a new day and an announcement of yet another start up in the internet video space.  This seems like a daily ritual. 

The newest is Sync TV, a spin off from consumer electronics company Pioneer, which launched a beta download service.

The audio and video quality of the TV shows is comparable or superior to the same show on DVD.  SyncTV will provide HD programming across some of the different channels and will also have programming available in discreet 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus, giving you the “home theater” experience.  They allow you a great deal of flexibility in how you play back the TV shows you download. You can play back shows on up to five ‘home’ devices which mean PCs/Macs now and other home entertainment devices in the future (read portable players). 

That’s the good news.  The bad news is yet another DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology for the consumer to try and get their head around.  Sync TV is using an open-standard DRM called Marlin.  Yet another group of top electronics manufacturers joining forces to develop a standard for content management and protection.  Marlin is also referred to as “OMArlin” because it supposedly bridges between the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) DRM v.2.0 and the Marlin DRM standards.  Does anyone care, outside the companies involved?  Not really.  Consumers might agree that content protection is a good idea but, they just want to play their stuff on all their devices. And they want everything to be cheaper, too. 

It’s another set of companies trying to protect what they see as their intellectual property and make money. You could make the claim as the same motive as Microsoft, Apple, RealNetworks and others in the DRM struggle.  The marketing spin tries to convince us that DRM is intended to make it easy for us to buy content and share it, without being encumbered by content protection schemes.   But, adding Marlin to this mix will be yet another failed attempt to create a DRM “standard”.   

What I do find interesting with Sync TV and all the regulatory noise about bundled programming, is the fact that users can subscribe a-la-carte for a variety of programs they want to watch. Each channel costs about $2 each per month, and currently there are four subscription channels available. Showtime is the foundation partner with promise of more.  

The Sync TV launch underscores the two worlds that now exist–the heavily regulated telecoms and broadcasting sectors and the almost entirely unregulated internet channel.  

Where do you think most of the innovation is?

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A Country of Technology – Israel

Many of my RSS feeds and blogs I read there is technology and innovation coming out of Israel in a big way. It’s difficult to keep up with the reports on technologies, acquisitions and new startup companies that seem to happen there weekly. What’s the deal? I did a little research to look behind the scenes and try and understand the incredible start-up success rate in this country.

Here’s a bit of info on technology in Israel:

Motorola’s commercial cell phone was developed in Israel. Motorola has its largest development center in Israel

Intel has four major development centers in Israel.

Israel has one of the highest percentages of computers and cell phones per capita in the world.

Israeli Universities are known worldwide for their extraordinary professionalism in science and engineering fields.

In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 hi-tech companies).

Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.

Microsoft has one of its three “strategic development centers” outside the US in Israel. It is based on several startup companies that Microsoft has acquired in Israel, which are now part of this development center. Most of Windows NT technology was developed in Israel.

SAP AG, the enterprise software leader, has its larger development center outside Germany in Raanana, Israel. This center, called “SAP Labs Israel”, is also based on several startup companies that SAP acquired in Israel.

Checkpoint, the world’s leader in internet security and firewalls is an Israeli company.

Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.

Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship – and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 – in the world.

Voice mail technology was developed in Israel by Comverse.

The AOL Instant Messenger was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

Given Imaging, an Israeli company, developed the first ingestible pill-sized video camera, used for medical diagnostic without the need of an invasive operation.

The Israeli company M-Systems developed the USB-Flash Drives, used for portable storage all over the world. The company was recently bought by SanDisk, an American company, the world’s leader in the flash storage market, established by an Israeli.

IBM, Kodak, Cisco, HP, Google, Novell and many others, also have large scale research and development centers in Israel.

Israel is a major player in the high tech world. The R&D centers and talent have produced some amazing technological achievements…more than any other place in the world with the exception of Silicon Valley.

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Mac OS X vs. Windows

You can find a lots of websites on the Internet that spend their time arguing whether Mac OS X or Windows is superior. Most of these websites offer nothing but heated debate that is based more on personal opinions and biased attitudes than actual facts.

It’s easy to be distracted by all of this “noise” because there’s so much of it on the Internet. I recognize that every user has a different need, and I’m not blogging to create more heated commentaries or Windows rhetoric babbling.

The above “logic puzzle” from HP clearly suggest that consumers using Mac OS X have an easier go of it and the differences of the OS are found in the details.

That can’t be good for Microsoft…

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Escape Work With Mediascapes

Mediascapes are mobile, location–based experiences that incorporate digital media with the sights, sounds, and textures of the world around you. A mediascape blends digital images, video, audio and interactions with the physical landscape.

“mscape” is the code name for a new technology from HP Labs. mscape software and the mscape player let you create and enjoy mediascapes. And mscapers.com is the place for sharing and downloading mediascapes on your GPS–enabled devices.

You can play mediascapes on a GPS–enabled Windows Mobile device. Games, guided walks and tours, and destinations are among the mediascapes created to date. You can download a mediascape onto a portable device, and see how the landscape comes alive as you move through the environment.

Browse HERE.

A simple and cool idea…

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The Air in America is Chilly

Bismarck, ND: Current temperature is -5 degrees. You can view updates at the KFYR web cam HERE.

And if that wasn’t chilly enough news…there is the video of Al Franken announcing his intent to run for the Senate seat on YouTube or on his site.

He made this announcement today, his last show, on the Air America radio program. Don’t get me wrong, I like Franken’s work as one of the original writers on Saturday Night Live (1975-1980 and 1985-1995). I even caught some of the banter on Air America via XM Radio for a laugh.

But, Al really helped the Air America network to bankruptcy. The network had financial trouble within days of its launch back in March 2004, when it turned out that its original chairman, Evan Cohen, did not have the backing. A few weeks later, Mr. Kelly, a former owner of Midwest radio and television stations, stepped in to take charge of the board. At the end of 2004, he ceded the chairmanship to a new investor, Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks.

In typical Glaser (ex-Microsoft exec, turned millionaire) bravado he put in place a team that was so top-heavy with management, was challenged at selling ads, unwilling to make program changes that steered away from any liberal message and overstaffed with more than 100 employees when a few dozen would have been enough. They burned through $45 million in funding…much faster than an internet startup.

All the while there was finger pointing and accusations of a nefarious plot with intentional steps taken to put the company into Chapter 11. Glaser resigned from the board along with Mr. Kelly at the time of the Chapter 11 filing. He is the network’s largest creditor with $9.8 million in claims.

Not the smartest financial decision for Glaser, a graduate of Yale University with a BA and an MA degree in Economics!

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OQO’s Ultra-Mobile PC Running Vista

OQO, a self-proclaimed pioneer in ultra-mobile personal computing, launched their second generation ultra-mobile PC, the model 02. The device launched yesterday with integrated Verizon Wireless broadband access high speed data service. First shown at CES the magnesium alloy chassis in black, features either a 1.2GHz or a 1.5GHz VIA C7M ULV processor and integrated graphics chipset together with OQO’s patented sub processor technology on a palm-sized motherboard design, up to 1GB DDR2 SDRAM operating at 533MHz, 60GB hard drive, and EV-DO wireless WAN.

The pocket-sized (5.6” x 3.3” x 1.0” and weighing one pound) device has a sliding 5″ WVGA LCD display, a 58-key thumb keyboard and track stick. The EL backlit keyboard includes numberpad and SmartLock™ keys to enhance usability and functionality. With 18 keyboard shortcuts configured on the model 02, you can quickly launch commonly used applications such as the OQO Wireless Dashboard. The model 02 keyboard also features a track stick mouse pointer for precise cursor movement with your thumb and dedicated zoom keys for quickly changing screen magnification that allow full interactivity while zoomed, and support 1000×600 and 1200×720 interpolated modes. It has flexibility with a full docking station and support for dual external displays at up to 1920 x 1200 pixels through digital (HDMI/DVI) and analog (VGA) video interfaces and OQO DisplaySense technology.

There are 9 antennas in the magnesium alloy chassis to accommodate wireless technologies: EV-DO WWAN, WiFi, and Bluetooth. With EV-DO WWAN, users have wireless high speed data services and network coverage of over 188 million people. Standard on all model 02 configurations is tri-mode WiFi (802.11a/b/g) with diversity antenna selection to improve performance. For personal area network connectivity, it can be paired with other devices such as keyboard, mouse, headset, and stereo headphones via Bluetooth.

Priced from $1499 to $1849 depending on speed of CPU and memory/disk configuration. And it even includes a video out: HDMI port.

Who cares about the funky name…that’s an ultra-mobile PC!

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Sip That Delicious iPhone Haterade…

 

Everyone has chimed in on how the Apple iPhone will fail to translate into sales in the business sector — and even Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, laid into the iPhone during an interview which starts with a laugh reminiscent of the Howard Dean barbaric yawp . Then there’s Ballmer InformationWeek interview:

I don’t think this would be a very interesting announcement if anybody else had announced exactly the same product.

Oh yeah, let’s all continue to sip the haterade until June, at which point we’ll all run out to buy iPhones (Ballmer included). Need more haterade juice? Check out:

– This Engadget article on the iPhone’s profit margins
– This ComputerWorld article on how Steve screwed up
– This InformationWeek report on the iPhone in IT
– and the interview with Steve Ballmer

  So for a little levity just know that the iPhone will and can do it all.

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