Thursday, April 17, 2003
Mobius Day Three: Bring On The Geeks!
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 02:04 PM
Here's the highly-anticipated next installment of the Mobius Europe Adventures, a rollicking story of a group of geeks in Paris. I was hoping for a TV movie offer after that last installment, but it never came, so I'm publishing the next installment and hoping NBC will call. This is exciting stuff people! :lol: You'll have to excuse the fact that I slip between past and present tense - some of it was written on-time in real time, while other parts of the text were written just before I published it.
I don’t think I’ve ever woken up at 5 AM willingly 8O, but I was unable to get much sleep last night so I figured I’d get up and try to be productive. My body is still on a different time zone apparently. The only English channels on at 5 AM were the BBC News and an infomercial on ‘80s love songs. Come to think of it, that’s all that’s on English TV here at any hour. I watched the 80's love songs infomercial, because cheesy keyboard players with big '80s hair was more uplifting than the nine minute war news loop that the BBC News was stuck in. Plenty of Disney cartoons and shows though – I tried watching the Hercules/Aladdin cartoon in German, but it just wasn’t very entertaining. In fact, it sounded a little menacing…:|
Eventually the hotel began to wake up as it neared a sane hour, so I wandered down to eat some breakfast. Just like at Mobius 2002 Germany, I can't quite figure out the European obsession with cold cut meats for breakfast. They had yogurt, croissant, and orange juice though, so I was all set.
When the conference began, we started off with a brief introduction of everyone at the not-so-round table.
Figure 1: The gathering of the geeks! :-)
Andy Sjostrom – www.businessanyplace.com & www.pocketpcthoughts.com
Kinny Cheng – www.imobile.com.au
Peter Rojas – www.gizmodo.com
Ryan Kairer – www.palminfocenter.com
Mike Wagstaff – www.pocketgamer.org
Michal Jerz – www.my-symbian.com
Torben Vognesen – www.smartphone.dk
Jenneth Orantia – www.jenneth.info
Jorgen Sundgot – www.infosyncworld.com
Nghia Nguyen Dai – www.pdafrance.com
Arne Hess – www.ppcw.net
Patrice Cassard – www.smartphony.org
Shira Silberman – Waggner Edstrom (Microsoft’s PR firm)
Wes Salmon – Microsoft (yes, of ex-PDA Buzz fame)
Paul O’Brien – www.modaco.com
Michael Oryl – www.mobileburn.com
Rafe Blanford – www.allaboutsymbian.com
Luiz Gonzalez – www.clubsonyericsson.com
Howard Chui – www.howardchui.com
Eric Levine – www.clubsmartphone.com
Paul Matt – www.threegmobile.net
Chee Wee Lee – www.ppcsg.com
Justin Reid – www.thefeature.com
Guy Kewney – www.kewney.com
Reggie Suplido – www.cliesource.com
Figure 2: Our host, Jason Gordon, doing his first Mobius event
To get things started Jason Gordon passed around his first mobile phone, and his first PDA – it’s amazing how far we’ve come, but come on, even that old Sharp had a keyboard! :lol: My kingdom for a Pocket PC with an integrated keyboard!
Figure 3: The Motorolla WholeHog®. Ok, that’s not really what it’s called, but looking at the brick, doesn’t the name just fit?
Figure 4: The new Palm OS6 device. I kid, I kid! This is Jason Gordon’s first PDA, an old Sharp device.
Figure 5: A collection of gear that Jason Gordon brought with him. Talk about drool factor! Tablet PC, new Pocket PCs including the Toshiba E755 and iPAQ 5450, Socket Bluetooth GPS, SyChip 802.11b WiFi SD card, Bluetooth SD card, 64 MB XDA Phone Edition, iPAQ 1910, Orange SPV Smartphone, and even an old Newton!
Figure 6: The Socket Bluetooth SD card, and the SyChip WiFi 802.11b card
Figure 7: A close-up of the SyChip WiFi 802.11b card. It amazes me they can cram a chipset in there – the time from PCMCIA WiFi to CompactFlash WiFi was much longer than CompactFlash WiFi to SD WiFi.
Microsoft Speaks on Smartphones
To kick off the morning, Jonas from Microsoft gave a Smartphone presentation. Most of the information wasn’t new to me, but some of the people in the room didn’t have much background in Microsoft products so it was good for them. Jonas talked about Microsoft getting mobile operators in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and other locations. This year will finally be the “Year of the Smartphone” in the US – AT&T, Verizon, and other US-based carriers will be releasing Smartphones into their markets. The cynics among us might not believe it, but 2003 is the year we’ll really see Smartphones in the US. No, really!
Jonas was also quite honest about the shortcomings of the Smartphone OS – the lack of a viewer for Word documents seems to be the biggest request from users, which seems to be a no-brainer, but at the time the Smartphone team didn’t think users would want to open Word docs on their phone.
Figure 8: The Mitac clamshell Smartphone – a nice big screen and spacious key layout, but a bit bigger than T68i-sized phones.
Figure 9: A comparison between the Mitac Smartphone and a new phone coming out from NEC. It’s not a Microsoft-powered Smartphone as far as I know – another one of the Mobius attendees had it.
Over the air configuration was one of the first “stand out” features I remember seeing demoed two years ago, but it hasn’t been widely adopted yet. Essentially, it allows configuration settings to be sent down over SMS, and the phone will execute the SMS much like a script. This allows you to configure the email client in a desktop browser rather than the painful task of punching in configuration settings one the phone. Orange just rolled this feature out on their SPV phones, and apparently the first service offered is for developers for an over the air unlock. Microsoft is hoping to see third-party companies to leverage this technology to configure their applications.
Don't Forget the Pocket PC!
The Pocket PC continues to gain momentum: there are over 5.5 million units sold since launch, with 40%+ unit growth year over year. Market share continues to grow: 31% world wide, 46% in EMEA. There are 31+ licensed Pocket PC hardware partners, with some of the newest partners being Motorola and Samsung. Jonas talked about the forthcoming Hitachi Pocket PC Phone Edition with a keyboard, and the specific improvements in the operating system to enable improved navigation.
Jonas mentioned the magic word “Ozone”, but would only say that he couldn’t say anything about it. About the only thing I can add to that is Ozone is the code-name for the next Pocket PC operating system. NDAs prevent me from saying any more, but I think we all have a hunch about what year we'll see it in. ;-) Jonas also went on record to say that the rumours about Samsung dropping their Smartphone are false. Samsung, as a hardware company, is focused on finding the best hardware for their users, and to that extent, they’re eager to give any OS a try. They have, or will have shortly, devices running Palm, Symbian, Pocket PC, and Smartphone OS flavours.
Smartphone Steve
The next presentation focused on Smartphone demos, given by “Steve” (no one at Microsoft seems to have last names :-D). He showed how a Smartphone home screen theme can be sent via email, and installed directly onto the device. The Xbox theme looked great, but the length of time that the hourglass was spinning on the screen was a little disconcerting – it easily took 10 seconds for the install to complete, and changing the theme took another ten seconds.
Figure 10: The concept design by Intel. Now THIS is a Smartphone that got my heart thumping! XScale based CPU running at 300 Mhz (the Orange SPV is about 133 Mhz I think), built-in camera, light and small, and a great screen (back-lit I think). It also had a very innovative jog-dial in the middle of the phone that is split in two allowing for left and right button pushes.
Figure 11: The Intel design from the side. It was quite thin and small – very much a next-gen Smartphone. I can’t wait to see if someone picks up the design to manufacture it!
Smartphone users will like the new power toy being released soon – they’re porting the Remote Display utility over to Smartphone. The only quirky thing I noticed is that since the Smartphone has no touch-screen interface, you need to use the keyboard on the desktop PC to control the phone. It looks a little awkward!
As excited as I am about finally getting a Smartphone, one of the things I can’t get over is the number of times the hourglass comes up, and the number of times the user is expected to wait. It seems disproportionate to the difference in CPU power between Pocket PCs and Smartphones. In part, it's likely due to the Flash ROM-based hardware on the Smartphone. Even if you remove the battery on your Smartphone and leave it in your desk for a month, everything will be exactly as you had left it. The performance hit is worth a benefit like that – Microsoft made a very smart move. The techie crowd who buys Pocket PCs might be used to having a device hard reset, but the normal people who buy cell phones certainly wouldn't find it very acceptable.
Mobile2Market Explained
Mark Spain came next to present Microsoft’s initiatives as they relate to developers. The presentation focused mostly on their Mobile2Market program, and the Mobile Application Catalog. The catalog has Pocket PC and Smartphone logo-certified applications. One of the primary goals of this catalog is to connect ISVs (developers) with carriers, the enterprise, and end users. The Windows Powered Developer Smartphone Kit is now available to developers, and includes the full Smartphone SDK, but more importantly, a non-SIM locked Smartphone that has open application security (meaning you can install any application onto it). Because Microsoft wants to jumpstart the Smartphone software market, they’re paying for the first 500 application certifications to take place. Once in the Mobile Application Catalog, developers will have greater exposure to buyers.
Finding You in a Haystack the Size of New York
Michael Lightfoot gave a presentation on mobile location-based services (LBS). It was heavily developer-focused, so most of it went over my head, but it seems like Microsoft is a big believer in the future of LBS. Any application that can make an HTTP request can get LBS information, so as rich wireless device proliferate, LBS might finally become a reality. So far my personal experiences with GPS have been fairly neutral, largely from the poor UI I’ve seen in the applications. Michael did a great demo using Action Engine where he was able to select a start location using the contact database, select an airport he wanted to get to, and select the mode of transportation (car). It went up to a LBS server (MapPoint I assume), and came back with a map showing the route. Very cool!
Ex-MVP Representing the Orange SPV
Next up was Craig Peacock giving a presentation from Orange. Craig is an old friend of mine, one of the original five Windows CE MVPs from 1997. Orange had recently completed a series of surveys, and one of the most interesting results was that on average, GPRS phone users connected once every three months. To network providers hoping to make some serious money on GPRS contracts, this is very bad news. In comparisons, Orange SPV phone users connect five times per day on average, which means a higher ARPU (average revenue per user). Over 40,000 applications have been downloaded over the air by SPV customers versus 30,000 applications using PCs. Over the air downloads will certainly become the defacto standard for application distribution for wireless devices.
Gear, Gear, and More Gear
In addition to all the cool gear that Microsoft brought to show us, whenever you get a room full of mobile device geeks together, you know you’re going to see some cool stuff. Beyond the bounty of cool phones and PDAs, Reggie Suplido had a two pieces of gear that I hadn't seen before: a Sony Centrino-based laptop, and a D-Link Bluetooth adaptor.
Figure 12: Reggie's Sony Z1 laptop with Centrino technology. Very slick design (as usual), and a wondrous screen!
Figure 13: The wee D-Link Bluetooth adaptor. Given the cost of Bluetooth chips, I wonder why all laptops don't ship with them as standard? Oh yeah, marketing…
Microsoft always gives Mobius attendees a few goodies to take away from the conference. The big deal for me this time was finally getting a Smartphone! Rather than type of the list of other gear, I snagged the text below from Jenneth's site:
"• Orange SPV, including a clip-on digital camera, 8 MB SD card and an Orange SIM card that we were free to use as long as we were in Paris for unlimited local calls and GPRS
• An Elektex soft fabric keyboard for the SPV - you have to see it to believe it!
• A red, white and black Chrome bag (the kind you wear over one shoulder with the strap across your chest) with a Mobius 2003 insignia. Very cool and even uses a seat belt for the strap!
• A black Victorinox gadget bag with a Mobius brand on it - also extremely cool, particularly the top opening
• A 128 MB Pretec SD card (works just like a normal SD card)
• A 64 MB Kingston SD card, with a bunch of SmartPhone applications loaded onto it
• A Cross Ion pen and Cross business card holder
• A BoxWave miniSync n' charge cable - the ultimate in portability!
• A few Handango free software download cards."
Figure 14: Luis from Club Sony Ericsson took a picture of the gear…the bags are sweet! The cowboy had is his though. :lol:
That was it for the first full day of Mobius - off to dinner on a boat...if we can find it! :lol:
I don’t think I’ve ever woken up at 5 AM willingly 8O, but I was unable to get much sleep last night so I figured I’d get up and try to be productive. My body is still on a different time zone apparently. The only English channels on at 5 AM were the BBC News and an infomercial on ‘80s love songs. Come to think of it, that’s all that’s on English TV here at any hour. I watched the 80's love songs infomercial, because cheesy keyboard players with big '80s hair was more uplifting than the nine minute war news loop that the BBC News was stuck in. Plenty of Disney cartoons and shows though – I tried watching the Hercules/Aladdin cartoon in German, but it just wasn’t very entertaining. In fact, it sounded a little menacing…:| Eventually the hotel began to wake up as it neared a sane hour, so I wandered down to eat some breakfast. Just like at Mobius 2002 Germany, I can't quite figure out the European obsession with cold cut meats for breakfast. They had yogurt, croissant, and orange juice though, so I was all set.
When the conference began, we started off with a brief introduction of everyone at the not-so-round table.
Figure 1: The gathering of the geeks! :-)
Andy Sjostrom – www.businessanyplace.com & www.pocketpcthoughts.com
Kinny Cheng – www.imobile.com.au
Peter Rojas – www.gizmodo.com
Ryan Kairer – www.palminfocenter.com
Mike Wagstaff – www.pocketgamer.org
Michal Jerz – www.my-symbian.com
Torben Vognesen – www.smartphone.dk
Jenneth Orantia – www.jenneth.info
Jorgen Sundgot – www.infosyncworld.com
Nghia Nguyen Dai – www.pdafrance.com
Arne Hess – www.ppcw.net
Patrice Cassard – www.smartphony.org
Shira Silberman – Waggner Edstrom (Microsoft’s PR firm)
Wes Salmon – Microsoft (yes, of ex-PDA Buzz fame)
Paul O’Brien – www.modaco.com
Michael Oryl – www.mobileburn.com
Rafe Blanford – www.allaboutsymbian.com
Luiz Gonzalez – www.clubsonyericsson.com
Howard Chui – www.howardchui.com
Eric Levine – www.clubsmartphone.com
Paul Matt – www.threegmobile.net
Chee Wee Lee – www.ppcsg.com
Justin Reid – www.thefeature.com
Guy Kewney – www.kewney.com
Reggie Suplido – www.cliesource.com
Figure 2: Our host, Jason Gordon, doing his first Mobius event
To get things started Jason Gordon passed around his first mobile phone, and his first PDA – it’s amazing how far we’ve come, but come on, even that old Sharp had a keyboard! :lol: My kingdom for a Pocket PC with an integrated keyboard!
Figure 3: The Motorolla WholeHog®. Ok, that’s not really what it’s called, but looking at the brick, doesn’t the name just fit?
Figure 4: The new Palm OS6 device. I kid, I kid! This is Jason Gordon’s first PDA, an old Sharp device.
Figure 5: A collection of gear that Jason Gordon brought with him. Talk about drool factor! Tablet PC, new Pocket PCs including the Toshiba E755 and iPAQ 5450, Socket Bluetooth GPS, SyChip 802.11b WiFi SD card, Bluetooth SD card, 64 MB XDA Phone Edition, iPAQ 1910, Orange SPV Smartphone, and even an old Newton!
Figure 6: The Socket Bluetooth SD card, and the SyChip WiFi 802.11b card
Figure 7: A close-up of the SyChip WiFi 802.11b card. It amazes me they can cram a chipset in there – the time from PCMCIA WiFi to CompactFlash WiFi was much longer than CompactFlash WiFi to SD WiFi.
Microsoft Speaks on Smartphones
To kick off the morning, Jonas from Microsoft gave a Smartphone presentation. Most of the information wasn’t new to me, but some of the people in the room didn’t have much background in Microsoft products so it was good for them. Jonas talked about Microsoft getting mobile operators in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and other locations. This year will finally be the “Year of the Smartphone” in the US – AT&T, Verizon, and other US-based carriers will be releasing Smartphones into their markets. The cynics among us might not believe it, but 2003 is the year we’ll really see Smartphones in the US. No, really!
Jonas was also quite honest about the shortcomings of the Smartphone OS – the lack of a viewer for Word documents seems to be the biggest request from users, which seems to be a no-brainer, but at the time the Smartphone team didn’t think users would want to open Word docs on their phone.
Figure 8: The Mitac clamshell Smartphone – a nice big screen and spacious key layout, but a bit bigger than T68i-sized phones.
Figure 9: A comparison between the Mitac Smartphone and a new phone coming out from NEC. It’s not a Microsoft-powered Smartphone as far as I know – another one of the Mobius attendees had it.
Over the air configuration was one of the first “stand out” features I remember seeing demoed two years ago, but it hasn’t been widely adopted yet. Essentially, it allows configuration settings to be sent down over SMS, and the phone will execute the SMS much like a script. This allows you to configure the email client in a desktop browser rather than the painful task of punching in configuration settings one the phone. Orange just rolled this feature out on their SPV phones, and apparently the first service offered is for developers for an over the air unlock. Microsoft is hoping to see third-party companies to leverage this technology to configure their applications.
Don't Forget the Pocket PC!
The Pocket PC continues to gain momentum: there are over 5.5 million units sold since launch, with 40%+ unit growth year over year. Market share continues to grow: 31% world wide, 46% in EMEA. There are 31+ licensed Pocket PC hardware partners, with some of the newest partners being Motorola and Samsung. Jonas talked about the forthcoming Hitachi Pocket PC Phone Edition with a keyboard, and the specific improvements in the operating system to enable improved navigation.
Jonas mentioned the magic word “Ozone”, but would only say that he couldn’t say anything about it. About the only thing I can add to that is Ozone is the code-name for the next Pocket PC operating system. NDAs prevent me from saying any more, but I think we all have a hunch about what year we'll see it in. ;-) Jonas also went on record to say that the rumours about Samsung dropping their Smartphone are false. Samsung, as a hardware company, is focused on finding the best hardware for their users, and to that extent, they’re eager to give any OS a try. They have, or will have shortly, devices running Palm, Symbian, Pocket PC, and Smartphone OS flavours.
Smartphone Steve
The next presentation focused on Smartphone demos, given by “Steve” (no one at Microsoft seems to have last names :-D). He showed how a Smartphone home screen theme can be sent via email, and installed directly onto the device. The Xbox theme looked great, but the length of time that the hourglass was spinning on the screen was a little disconcerting – it easily took 10 seconds for the install to complete, and changing the theme took another ten seconds.
Figure 10: The concept design by Intel. Now THIS is a Smartphone that got my heart thumping! XScale based CPU running at 300 Mhz (the Orange SPV is about 133 Mhz I think), built-in camera, light and small, and a great screen (back-lit I think). It also had a very innovative jog-dial in the middle of the phone that is split in two allowing for left and right button pushes.
Figure 11: The Intel design from the side. It was quite thin and small – very much a next-gen Smartphone. I can’t wait to see if someone picks up the design to manufacture it!
Smartphone users will like the new power toy being released soon – they’re porting the Remote Display utility over to Smartphone. The only quirky thing I noticed is that since the Smartphone has no touch-screen interface, you need to use the keyboard on the desktop PC to control the phone. It looks a little awkward!
As excited as I am about finally getting a Smartphone, one of the things I can’t get over is the number of times the hourglass comes up, and the number of times the user is expected to wait. It seems disproportionate to the difference in CPU power between Pocket PCs and Smartphones. In part, it's likely due to the Flash ROM-based hardware on the Smartphone. Even if you remove the battery on your Smartphone and leave it in your desk for a month, everything will be exactly as you had left it. The performance hit is worth a benefit like that – Microsoft made a very smart move. The techie crowd who buys Pocket PCs might be used to having a device hard reset, but the normal people who buy cell phones certainly wouldn't find it very acceptable.
Mobile2Market Explained
Mark Spain came next to present Microsoft’s initiatives as they relate to developers. The presentation focused mostly on their Mobile2Market program, and the Mobile Application Catalog. The catalog has Pocket PC and Smartphone logo-certified applications. One of the primary goals of this catalog is to connect ISVs (developers) with carriers, the enterprise, and end users. The Windows Powered Developer Smartphone Kit is now available to developers, and includes the full Smartphone SDK, but more importantly, a non-SIM locked Smartphone that has open application security (meaning you can install any application onto it). Because Microsoft wants to jumpstart the Smartphone software market, they’re paying for the first 500 application certifications to take place. Once in the Mobile Application Catalog, developers will have greater exposure to buyers.
Finding You in a Haystack the Size of New York
Michael Lightfoot gave a presentation on mobile location-based services (LBS). It was heavily developer-focused, so most of it went over my head, but it seems like Microsoft is a big believer in the future of LBS. Any application that can make an HTTP request can get LBS information, so as rich wireless device proliferate, LBS might finally become a reality. So far my personal experiences with GPS have been fairly neutral, largely from the poor UI I’ve seen in the applications. Michael did a great demo using Action Engine where he was able to select a start location using the contact database, select an airport he wanted to get to, and select the mode of transportation (car). It went up to a LBS server (MapPoint I assume), and came back with a map showing the route. Very cool!
Ex-MVP Representing the Orange SPV
Next up was Craig Peacock giving a presentation from Orange. Craig is an old friend of mine, one of the original five Windows CE MVPs from 1997. Orange had recently completed a series of surveys, and one of the most interesting results was that on average, GPRS phone users connected once every three months. To network providers hoping to make some serious money on GPRS contracts, this is very bad news. In comparisons, Orange SPV phone users connect five times per day on average, which means a higher ARPU (average revenue per user). Over 40,000 applications have been downloaded over the air by SPV customers versus 30,000 applications using PCs. Over the air downloads will certainly become the defacto standard for application distribution for wireless devices.
Gear, Gear, and More Gear
In addition to all the cool gear that Microsoft brought to show us, whenever you get a room full of mobile device geeks together, you know you’re going to see some cool stuff. Beyond the bounty of cool phones and PDAs, Reggie Suplido had a two pieces of gear that I hadn't seen before: a Sony Centrino-based laptop, and a D-Link Bluetooth adaptor.
Figure 12: Reggie's Sony Z1 laptop with Centrino technology. Very slick design (as usual), and a wondrous screen!
Figure 13: The wee D-Link Bluetooth adaptor. Given the cost of Bluetooth chips, I wonder why all laptops don't ship with them as standard? Oh yeah, marketing…
Microsoft always gives Mobius attendees a few goodies to take away from the conference. The big deal for me this time was finally getting a Smartphone! Rather than type of the list of other gear, I snagged the text below from Jenneth's site:
"• Orange SPV, including a clip-on digital camera, 8 MB SD card and an Orange SIM card that we were free to use as long as we were in Paris for unlimited local calls and GPRS
• An Elektex soft fabric keyboard for the SPV - you have to see it to believe it!
• A red, white and black Chrome bag (the kind you wear over one shoulder with the strap across your chest) with a Mobius 2003 insignia. Very cool and even uses a seat belt for the strap!
• A black Victorinox gadget bag with a Mobius brand on it - also extremely cool, particularly the top opening
• A 128 MB Pretec SD card (works just like a normal SD card)
• A 64 MB Kingston SD card, with a bunch of SmartPhone applications loaded onto it
• A Cross Ion pen and Cross business card holder
• A BoxWave miniSync n' charge cable - the ultimate in portability!
• A few Handango free software download cards."
Figure 14: Luis from Club Sony Ericsson took a picture of the gear…the bags are sweet! The cowboy had is his though. :lol:
That was it for the first full day of Mobius - off to dinner on a boat...if we can find it! :lol:
