Marasim -- Knowledge Relationships

Mobile phones with Wi-Fi capabilities

2005-08-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a Motorola person last week (and describing the mobile search system that my company is building) and he pointed out that it will be useful to explore whether the trend of bundling Wi-Fi with mobile phones can be exploited to promote enterprise mobile search systems.

Though I have not been following the evolution of Wi-Fi mobile phones, Wi-Fi phones have been talked about for the last 3-4 years (see this article written in 2002). In fact, Motorola and HP/T-Mobile had launched Motorola CN620 and iPaq 6315, respectively, around the middle of last year. An eWeek article from July 2004 points out:

Motorola Inc.'s CN620 phone supports both voice and data services over wireless LANs and GSM cellular networks. The device automatically selects the least expensive network for calls, a feature that will help businesses cut costs, said Motorola officials in Schaumburg, Ill.

While in the enterprise network, callers are connected via voice over IP. When out of range of the enterprise network, mobile workers can still access enterprise corporate data and applications through a Web connection over the GSM network, officials said.

HP and T-Mobile had launched iPaq 6315 earlier in July 2004:

For data services, HP's iPaq h6315 Pocket PC handheld automatically connects to the fastest-available network or switches networks if a connection is lost. When connectivity changes, users are alerted by an icon on the handheld's display.

Phones with Wi-Fi capabilities will eliminate the time-based and downloaded data-based pricing models used by the mobile operators. Elimination of mobile usage charges will offer an interesting opportunity to enterprise mobile search companies.

3G mobile network speed

2005-08-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

It is well known that the 2G networks don't offer the speed and latency that are needed for building applications that require high-volume data transfer. It is also often assumed that 3G networks will take care of this problem.

Guy Kewney points out that 3G networks might not provide a satisfactory solution either! He quotes a presentation (by Yair Shapira) at UMTS show in London (Oct 2004).

Shapira pointed out, the underlying problem is the huge latency in the network and the number of items that have to be fetched. "The horrible truth is something I've seen in laboratory reports from inside a big European 3G operator," he said. "It is that WAP2 over 3G is not better than WAP1 over GPRS. This big operator invested hugely in 3G in the hope of making WAP [Wireless Application Protocol] go faster; but in the lab, it's not faster."

The problem is that the round-trip time of a 3G message and response is closer to a second than a fraction of a second. Shapira estimates that the typical time lapse between asking a Web server for a data item, such as a logo, and being able to render it on-screen is about 800 milliseconds.

Nobody who's used 3G data would contradict him, although some might say: "Oh, it's not quite that bad!" and then settle for 400 milliseconds.

But a Web page may have a dozen to two dozen items on it. Each is fetched separately by HTML browsers. On broadband, with latencies in the 50 to 100 millisecond range, the cumulative delay isn't crippling. On 3G, a delay of two seconds turns, as if by having a spell cast on it by a wicked fairy, into a half-minute pause.

Mega SIM cards

2005-06-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

Rediff.com carried an article (via Business Standard) regarding "mega SIM cards" that will increase the available memory from 32KB/64KB to 64MB/128MB! Gemplus, one of the suppliers of these mega SIM cards, has started trials of mega SIM cards with some operators globally. It hopes to introduce one GB cards later.

Says Gemplus India managing director Vijay Parthasarathy: "Many of the multi-media applications like gaming and video require Java-enabled phones which are high priced, in the range of Rs 30,000. The SIM card offers a much cheaper alternative as it is already Java enabled. So you can use a normal phone.

Rediff's article mentions that "increased memory will enable users to store high resolution photos and large MP3 files, enable live video streaming and advanced gaming applications, etc. These applications expand the role of mobile phones beyond voice services, making mobile handsets a personalised infotainment hand device."

Does a market for the high memory products exist in India?

With gaming and photophones and video becoming popular, one may develop faster than most people expect. Says Mohit Bhatnagar, head of new products at Bharti Televentures: "If what they are promising can be delivered, it is surely an attractive and cheaper way to grow the market in India. But our concern is whether the SIM cards will work across all handsets to enable these multi media services."

I had not paid attention to this evolving technology so far. More importantly, I had not realized that the new generation of SIM cards will be Java enabled and, therefore, have the potential to make mobile applications available at a much lower cost.

Since I am new to this technology, I don't understand how "normal phones" with Java-enabled mega SIM cards will be different from the current crop of "smartphones". And, why will they be cheaper?

I have started reading about this to understand this better. MobileIN.com provides the following definitions:

A SIM card belongs to the family of "smart cards". Originally, SIM cards were deployed in GSM networks as a security module and provided the facility for challenge/response authentication of the subscribers.

SIM hardware consists of a microprocessor, ROM, persistent EEPROM memory, volatile RAM, and a serial I/O interface. SIM software usually consists of an operating system, file system, and application programs. As with all smart cards, the SIM relies on the card terminal – the GSM handset – for battery and clock.

The corresponding card for CDMA phones is called UIM:

Introduced by the CDMA Development Group and the 3GPP2, the Removable User Identity Module (R-UIM) card represents a smart card for use with CDMA based mobile phones.

Strictly speaking, neither SIM cards not UIM cards are Java enabled. There is another category of cards called "Java cards" that provide embedded JVM:

The Java card sits on top of the smart card OS, allowing application programmers access for deployment of services independent of the hardware and OS of the smart card. Executable code is platform independent, meaning that any card incorporating a Java Card interpreter can run the same application.

OK, so this clarifies some of the technical issues. But, why will the phones with Java-enabled SIM cards be any cheaper than the "smartphones"? They must lack something or must have some restrictions. Smartphones are called "smart" because they enable users to extend their phone's capabilities by downloading new applications. Perhaps, mega-SIM-card phones will not allow users to download new applications? But, no, that doesn't seem to be the case. Sun's site re: "Java Card Technology" clarifies that:

Multiple applications can be deployed on a single card, and new ones can be added to it even after it has been issued to the end user. Applications written in the Java programming language can be executed securely on cards from different vendors.

To cut the long story short: I don't have the answer yet. However, since lower-cost Java-enabled mega-SIM-card phones will be extremely important to cost-conscious Indian consumers, I will continue to investigate and post my findings at a later date.

Steve Jobs: Follow your heart and intuition

2005-06-29T04:31:00.000-07:00

I read the commencement address given by Steve Jobs at the Stanford University recently (June 2005). Steve Jobs narrates three stories to communicate his message. It is a beautiful address that is worth reading.

I have taken some excerpts from his address and have presented them below. However, one must read the whole address to hear his stories and to understand the context.

First excerpt is related to Steve Job's firing from Apple:

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

Second excerpt is related to the use of "death" as the "life change agent":

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Mobile Linux

2005-06-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have written before about the increasing use of Linux OS in mobile devices. A recent article in TheFeature provides some useful details regarding the increasing adoption of Linux.

Motorola has confirmed it will move from its 30+ different operating systems to one proprietary, one on PocketPC and one on MontaVista Linux.

The MontaVista product, Mobilinux, is being pushed to handset vendors on scalability, cost and flexibility. It is not just a question of the Motorola support but its sphere of influence -- Motorola is now pushing partners hard to support Linux.

The Linux-powered Nokia 770 Internet tablet is interesting in that, except for the hardware adaptation layer, certain user interface elements, and third-party software, the device is based entirely on open-source software, which can be downloaded from Maemo.org as a complete filesystem.

Behind much of the interest in mobile Linux lies China. PalmSource claims that the Linux OS from China MobileSoft is already shipping on 30 phone models in China.

Trolltech, an embedded Linux specialist, believes that six design houses in China are building phones based on Trolltech's Qtopia software.

Motorola itself has stated that over 10% of its Chinese sales are comprised of smartphones running Linux.

It is good to see Linux evolving to capture some market share from Symbian and Microsoft. Hopefully, this will help reduce prices and, therefore, the customers will benefit directly from wider adoption of mobile Linux OS.

Startups in India

2005-05-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

I attended a talk by Promod Haque yesterday (organized by TiE, Bangalore). Promod mentioned that a number of Norwest Venture companies (such as Open Silicon, veveo.tv, etc.) are doing substantial amount of development work in Bangalore. Overall it was a good presentation with some interesting data; for example: average ARPU in the US is $40 while that in India and China is $8. In the current economic scenario, consumers/customers are driving the businesses -- therefore, in order to make profits, the companies must ensure that they use their capital and resources effectively. He mentioned that the companies end up getting valuation in $150 - 200 million range; therefore, it was important for the startups to keep the investments below $30 million. (He mentioned that Airspace with $70 million revenue was acquired for $450 million by Cisco recently; therefore, companies seem to get 6x valuation now (w.r.t. revenue).)

However, he mentioned two issues that I think need to be debated.

First, he echoed the "common VC wisdom" regarding startups: he asserted that India will provide the engineering talent while the "customer facing functions" (such as CXO, sales, marketing, etc.) will be based in the US. To substantiate his claim, he mentioned that the annual IT spending in the US is approx. $450 billion (while India and China spend approx. $15 billion and $27 billion, respectively). Since the markets are mostly in the US, he claimed that it was imperative that the top management be close to the customers.

Though I agree with his assertion, I am not sure that he realized that this was fairly a ironic statement to make in front of "entrepreneurs". In essence, he was telling the gathered entrepreneurs that the VC community values Indian engineers (and Indian engineering managers) but not the Indian entrepreneurs! Entrepreneurs are passionate not only about the technology but, more importantly, are driven by the passion to make direct and visible impact (on customers, business scenario, market landscape, society, etc.). Therefore, it is contradictory to claim that the value Norwest provides to Indian entrepreneurs is to "pair them up with CEO and senior management team in the US"!

As I mentioned before, I am not disputing that it is good for the senior management team to be close to the customers. Since US is the largest enterprise software market (close to 60% of revenue is generated in the US), it just means that it does not make sense for the Indian entrepreneurs to build enterprise software companies (for example) out of India.

If so, the next question, obviously, is: what segments/sectors will provide opportunity for building world-class and world-scale product development companies out of India? I had discussed this question with Ranjan Chak (Venture Partner, Oak Investment Partners). He suggested that the industries in which India/Asia has world-class infrastructure will be more appropriate for building world-class companies. What are those industries? Wireless devices (whole of Asia), mobile services (Japan , China, India, etc.) , broadband (Korea, Japan), etc. are some of the areas where Asia is leading the technology wave. Further, India, China, Japan, etc. provide the necessary scale (size of markets) in these areas. Therefore, I claim that Indian entrepreneurs will derive satisfaction, generate wealth, and will be able to make an impact if they were to focus their energies on these segments.

Second, Promod mentioned that if the salaries of IT people in India continue to climb, India will lose it's appeal to the VC community. He explained that the current salary levels allow 3:1 cost arbitrage (as opposed to Israel that offers 2:1 cost advantage) w.r.t. US salary levels. He suggested that VC community will prefer eastern Europe, China, etc. unless they can benefit from the current level of cost arbitrage.

I, however, am not worried about increasing salaries of the India IT community. Higher salaries are good for India; not only for the people who benefit directly but also the rest of the society that benefits from the percolation effect. But even if I were worried about escalating salaries (like Promod and, I am sure, many others), what can we do about it? Isn't this a simple demand/supply problem? Indian IT folks are as responsible for the salary escalation as the software companies who need people and are willing to offer higher salaries. I guess we will have to let market forces and economics settle this issue -- salaries will stagnate when the Indian IT community and IT companies realize that an equilibrium has been reached.

Other concerns raised by Promod were: high churn rate in India and the lack of value associated with stock options.

These issues are close to my heart. I started my own company recently and want to find people who will not quit my company for a 10-15% hike in salary offered by someone else. Further, I have struggled to find good technical people who are willing to share risks (by sharing equity). Since "cash flow is the king" for startups, both of these concerns are extremely important.

However, there are monetary and cultural issues that need to be tackled to bring about this change. First of all, unlike the US, there is a substantial salary difference between college freshers and people with 4-5 years of experience. Starting salaries are Rs. 4-5 lakhs and they double in the next 3-4 years! The only way to get that kind of hike, however, is via job hopping. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is a huge churn of the junior employees. It will be interesting to find out how the attrition rate at mid- and senior-levels compares with other comparable economies.

The other problem -- related to stock options -- is even more difficult to address. Though only stock options can generate "wealth" and help people upgrade their life style, people don't appreciate this. This is partly because Indian engineers have not yet been exposed to wide-scale wealth generation (though Infosys, etc. are supposed to have created many millionaires in Bangalore). The other reason is historical: given the long history of stagnant or slowly growing economy (with highly-manipulated and moribund capital markets), Indian society is (quite naturally) risk averse. People prefer to work in "big, well-known, and established companies" and get cash in hand. This is not very surprising -- this is how the San Francisco area was before it became the "Valley". Of course, it will be helpful if entrepreneurs (and associated organizations such as TiE, NASSCOM, etc.) are able to highlight the success stories (what are they?) and inform people about the benefits of stock options.

In the time being, however, isn't it possible to come up with creative solutions? One example: if employees don't care about stock options, it can help entrepreneur and VC avoid dilution. Higher ownership -- though increases risks -- also increase rewards. Therefore, as far as ROI is concerned, it should be possible to ensure that the deals are managed such that the target ROI are achieved. Further, the need to keep positive cash-flow will end up forcing the startups to explore customer engagement much earlier in the cycle. Though this can cause distraction and slow down the development cycle, it is not always a bad thing. Early customer inputs and validation can help utilize resources more effectively and help build useful products.

Linux and the mobile platform

2005-04-16T02:21:00.000-07:00

I have been following the growth of mobile platform over the last one year (or so). More recently, I started developing some applications for mobile platform. One of the first questions that I had to answer was: what platform should I target? Should I choose the OS (Symbian or Windows Mobile or Linux) or the development environment (Linux or BREW or vendor-specific environment (e.g., Nokia's Series 60 platform))? Have the platforms become robust and efficient enough so that the developers can move higher the stack? Or, is it better to work at the OS-level?

Given the current state of rapid evolution of the mobile platforms, these are not easy questions to answer.

It is easier to choose between J2ME, BREW, and other development environments. J2ME seems to be more popular and more widely adopted by various handset manufacturers. So, unless one is developing a device-specific software (or an application that has stringent performance requirements -- such as the advanced mobile games), it is better to utilize the J2ME platform.

The problem, of course, is that except for the basic J2ME functionality, mobile phones don't support "more advanced" features. However, packages such as JSR 75 (PIM and file connection APIs) are beginning to see better availability. So, these should supercede the lower-level APIs providing similar functionality (such as Nokia's PIM APIs).

That was about the platform. The OS decision, however, is much tougher. The matters are made worse by the fact that the market is fairly "evenly" fragmented. As per a recent article "Linux storms mobile SW industry" (Feb 2005):

Symbian had around 50 percent of the smartphone market in the second half of 2004, with Microsoft and PalmSource each taking 20 percent, according to market research group, Canalys.

In other words, Linux is not yet a popular mobile OS platform. However, the same article mentioned that 20 handset vendors are developing Linux-based handsets. Further, Motorola -- which was the first company to release a Linux-based phone -- seems to be working on 8 to 10 models that are due to be released in 2005.

Linux got a major boost when NEC and Panasonic announced that they would use Linux to develop their 3G phones in November 2004. As per an article in Infoconomy:

Even though another major phone maker Motorola had announced in 2003 that it was abandoning the Symbian operating system in favour of Linux-based handsets, it was only with NEC and Panasonic's decision that they would be making devices for the hugely popular Japanese NTT DoCoMo service that observers concurred that mobile Linux was now likely to reach critical mass.

But, how can Linux succeed in grabbing market share from Symbian, Windows Mobile, and PalmSource? As per the CIOL article mentioned above:

The claim to fame for Linux is that it gives handset makers much greater freedom to tweak the software, because it is not owned by any one company. It is also much cheaper, going below $1 per phone if used in large volumes. Symbian charges $5 per handset if more than 2 million phones are shipped.

If a range of necessary software applications is added to the phone, such as a calendar, email, games and media players, the software bill per phone is $3 to $5 per Linux phone and $10 to $15 for smartphones running on Symbian or Microsoft, Nord said. [Haavard Nord is the CEO of TrollTech. Trolltech and MontaVista Software are the two main players in Linux for mobile devices.]

Will $7 - $10 savings offered by Linux have any impact? It should -- because $25 is considered an important price point by industry experts. If the phone prices were to drop from $40 (being attempted by vendors such as Motorola) to $25, it will help broaden the user base much more. [As per a PC World article, Sunil Mittal (CEO, Bharti Televentures -- promoters of Airtel mobile service in India) has been quoted to have said that $40 phone will get "50 to 100 million more customers". Further, eight operators have undertaken to purchase the $30 phones, including Bharti (India), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis Communications (Malaysia), Orascom Telecom (Egypt) and Singapore Telecom.]

Linux has other reasons in it's favour: mobile operator's desire to uniquely brand their offerings. Windows Mobile and Symbian don't favour customized features and have strict rules that govern interface design. As per the Infoconomy article, once again:

Networks such as DoCoMo have long insisted on customers taking proprietary handsets with customised features. And Linux, by offering access to the platform source code, is one way in which manufacturers are able to meet this need, in both the look and feel and the functionality of their smartphones or other portable devices.
That is not the situation with Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Symbian. As a result, phones running the Microsoft operating system always have to bear the hallmark of Windows, no matter how much an operator might want to customise the interface to reflect a different brand.

Slightly more flexible than Windows, Symbian has two main interface options - known as Nokia Series 60 and UIQ - that allow greater customisation. For example, Vodafone's recently launched 3G handset from SonyEricsson encompasses much more of a Vodafone identity than a Symbian look and feel to it.

It is not that everybody is convinced about Linux's rise as mobile platform. Outside of phones, Linux-based devices have failed to make inroads into the PDA market. Infoconomy article quotes Gartner's mobile computing analyst Ken Delaney:

"You have Microsoft and Palm as PDA platforms, and maybe RIM [the company behind the BlackBerry]. People want to be in one of those communities, because of the software." And without software, neither PDAs or smartphones will thrive.

Though Nokia claims that development on Linux is expensive, I am not yet convinced. Monta Vista's development environment (called DevRocket) is based on Eclipse -- but does not support any specific mobile features (such as a mobile emulator, obfuscator, over-the-air provisioning, etc.). These are, however, provided by the J2ME wireless toolkit itself. Trolltech does provide tools such as Qtopia, which is application and UI framework for mobile phones and PDAs. (Qtopia, unfortunately, requires C++ programming.)

The Infoconomy article lists three other hurdles for the Linux in the mobile space:

The desktop PC and server markets have relatively few hardware platform choices, whereas there are dozens, if not hundreds, in the mobile phone market. This means that developers planning to write software for Linux would have to test their programs on literally thousands of different hardware combinations.
The open nature of Linux - cited as a key advantage in the server space - is not so useful when it comes to devices such as smartphones.
The rapid turnover in handset models, with manufacturers typically releasing new phones every six months, gives operating systems with tightly-defined interface guidelines and a good set of APIs an advantage over looser, albeit more flexible alternatives.

I need to think to about these points and will comments on these at a later time.

In any case, the cost advantage and the ability to allow mobile operators to provide customized features are strongly in favour of the Linux mobile platform. Further, based on the support from Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Sharp (ships Linux-based Zaurus PDA series), and Samsung (targeting Chinese market with Linux phones), we can expect to see substantial increase of the Linux mobile phones over the next few years. As per the CIOL article:

Smartphones are just 4 percent of the total market today, but that is expected to grow to 16 percent in 2009 according to ARC research. Linux is really the only independent standard software alternative that can replace the bulk of proprietary and archaic software currently used in cheaper phones.

Further, consultants at research firm Strategy Analytics expect worldwide sales of Linux smartphones to reach around 1.1 million units worldwide this year (in contrast to the 14 million that use Symbian).

Mobile phones for the "Bottom of the Pyramid"

2005-03-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

Dailg 3G News carried an article from TheStar online that Motorola is introducing US$40 phones in the emerging markets such as India. The article mentions that Motorola was selected by the GSM Association (GSMA) to supply the first budget handset to emerging markets in South East Asia, the Middle East, and Turkey, beating 17 other mobile makers in a competitive tender. The target date for the introduction of these devices is second quarter of 2004. Further, Motorola intends to develop sub-$30 phones in collaboration with the GSMA members.

GSMA chief executive officer Rob Conway said Motorola had a vision and strategy for this market segment that was in tandem with the association’s goals.

“By directly addressing the cost of handset ownership issue, we believe, can provide benefits of communication and trade opportunities to an entirely new set of users,” he said, adding that the budget handset programme was critical to the social and economic development of many emerging markets.
He expects over 100 million budget handsets to be sold to emerging markets by 2007.

As per the estimates of an acknowledged industry expert, $25 -- $30 phones will go a long way towards stimulating much wider demand for wireless phones in countries such as India. In fact, as per the estimates, the numbers of phones at this price range might out-strip the higher-end phones by 2:1. Of course, price points are not the only factor for the growth of a new market. Other factors -- such as social desirability -- also play an important role. For example, I was informed that the Chinese market has shown the inclination for higher-end phones. (I don't know the reason(s) why the Chinese customers seem to prefer higher-end phones.) We will have to wait and see how customers in India and other parts of Asia will react to these new phones.

Mobile search and advertising

2005-03-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

Success of Google, Yahoo! (Overture), etc. has highlighted the effectiveness of using advertisements and paid listings for making money from search engines. The web-focused business model, though, might not work for mobile devices. Why? Because different parameters and constraints rule the mobile world. TheFeature has an article by Carlo Longino that describes the paid search being rolled out by O2 and MotionBridge:

Mobile advertising is still looking to strike a balance between intrusiveness and profitability, and it's much more difficult than on the wired Web, not least because users are typically paying for the ads to be delivered to them. The key is to make advertising that benefits the user in some way. It's increasingly obvious in today's world and media landscape that so-called interruption marketing doesn't work. It's not any different on mobile, in fact, it's even more true. All interrupting a mobile user's experience with a useless, meaningless ad does is destroy the user experience -- doubly so if they're paying for it.

Another article in TheFeature by Mike Masnick points out the diferences between mobile search and "online" (what I call: "web") search:

Too many of the efforts to turn search into mobile search forget the most basic difference between searching online and searching while mobile. When searching online, it's perfectly fine to return a list of links and let the user do the work to find what they're looking for. When mobile, users are usually doing something -- and thus are searching for immediate answers, not pointers on where to continue to research. Simply building a mobile search engine that requires more research is less interesting than one that gives answers immediately. Unfortunately, giving answers immediately would get in the way of plastering search results with paid search advertisements. Alternatively, simply pushing sponsored answers rather than the best answers will make users go elsewhere. The real breakthrough in mobile search is going to be in providing mobile users with results that fit within the framework of what they're doing and what they're searching for. That means, if a user is searching for a local restaurant, give them the information needed for local restaurants, but within that format also offer them the ability to request one-time coupons for that location, or let them know that they'll be able to use their cameraphones to automatically bring up coupons for the restaurant.

Therefore, not only is there a need to build/evolve a mobile search engine specifically for mobile devices but also for evolving an effective business model for supporting mobile search engines. Interesting challenge, isn't it?

Mobile search

2005-02-24T05:14:00.000-08:00

Forbes.com carried an article in Nov 2004 about the then recently introduced SMS-based search support.

UpSnap is just one of many companies seeking to build a business around short message service search. Other names cropping up in the nascent space include Synfonic, a Berkeley, Calif.-based startup, and Smarter.com, a comparison-shopping site with a feature that lets consumers send the part number of a product and get prices from online vendors sent to their phone, giving them a leg up while shopping in retail stores.

Then there's searching based on a mobile phone's location. Many phones, particularly those using the technology behind networks such as Sprint PCS (nyse: FON - news - people ) and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ - news - people ) and Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ), are increasingly likely to support the Global Positioning System and so can communicate their location precisely.

Bell Canada's (nyse: BCE - news - people ) Bell Mobility offers a popular service called MapMe that allows its customers to search for businesses near their location. Need a Chinese restaurant within four blocks? Call up a map on the phone's screen and see your options highlighted. Pointing the cursor to choices on the map turns up directions (from the caller's current location), a phone number and an address. [Developed by WaveMarket, an Emeryville, CA based company.]

A subsequent PC Magazine article has the following quote from the VP of marketing for Synfonic:

"You don't want the whole damned Web on your cell phone, you just want things such as addresses, phone numbers, directions, and traffic updates," says T.J. Morey, VP of marketing for Synfonic.

Now, SMS-based mobile searches are a fairly limited idea -- but can be taken as a step in the right direction. But, does Synfonic really believe in what it is saying? Or, is it just a little biased attempt to promote it's current offerings?

The fact that Synfonic, UpSnap, etc. offer "free" 411 (i.e. directory and yellow pages) search will certainly see some adoption. But, I can't imagine the SMS-based searches becoming big. Why? Imagine searching the web from the PC-based browser and getting the results back in an email. Even if the email is sent back instantaneously, the whole interface is very clumsy. What if the results are not what you were looking for? How often people use Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" option, anyway? What if you will like to refine your search? Isn't this what we do all the time? So, except when you are looking for a very specific thing (such as the address of a restaurant or someone's phone number), SMS-based search is not good enough. Mobile search needs a more interactive interface.

Further, I can't understand why people try to claim that people do not want to search the whole web from their mobile phones? To me it seems obvious that it will be good to provide the web search capability from the mobile phones. Of course, there are constraints (such as the small form factor, latency of mobile networks, restrictions in the mobile browsers, etc.). But, these are technical constraints. Why should they alter the behaviour of the customer? The challenge is to take these constraints into account and build, ground-up (if required), a search engine exclusively for the mobile devices.

Given the small form factor of the mobile devices, web searches from mobile phones will not include indepth research (such as finding technical papers on user studies related to HCI and mobile search). But, users will like to search for games, ringtones, wallpapers, news articles, video clips, local information, etc. from their mobile devices. And, that's not all. We have to include m-commerce -- searching for and ordering books, music CDs, flowers, medicines, etc. are no-brainers. Mobile search engines of the future must support all these. When we look back a few years from now, we will realize that local searches (such as those being provided currently by Synfonic, UpSnap, Google SMS, Yahoo!, etc.) were only a small subset of the searches done from the mobile devices.

Social networking from mobile devices

2005-02-23T03:16:00.000-08:00

An eWeek article about Demo conference talks about Jambo Networks.

Jambo Networks unveiled its service that leverages Wi-Fi and other wireless networks to set people up in face-to-face meetings. Through short introduction statements, or what Jambo calls "taglines," users broadcast their interests for meeting other people from laptops or other Wi-Fi-enabled devices.

"If you share something in common and are within walking distance, Jambo will introduce you wirelessly," said Charles Ribaudo, a Jambo co-founder.

Now what do you make out of that? Patently bad idea? As if email and SMS spams were not bad enough -- you can start enjoying real-world, physical spam as well!

But, honestly, if social networking and "six-degrees of separation" can outlive it's novelty value, even Jambo can. Social networking from mobile devices itself is better than web-based social networking -- at least it makes the introductions and interactions more spontaneous. Plus, there are many more mobile devices out there in the world (I read somewhere that 800 million mobile devices were sold last year; as opposed to approx. 200 million PCs).

Perhaps Jambo will find it's niche in the social networking world -- possibly in the universities and gatherings (such as conferences) where people with similar background get together to talk about similar things.

Microsoft's Connected Framework Services

2005-02-23T02:47:00.000-08:00

During this week's 3GSM World Congress in Cannes this week, Microsoft introduced Connected Framework Services (CSF). As per PR release by NewsWireless:

To accelerate the creation and deployment of telecommunications services, Microsoft announced the general availability of the Microsoft Connected Services Framework, an integrated software solution that allows operators to deliver converged services across multiple networks and a range of device types.

With the Connected Services Framework in place, wireless and wireline operators have the opportunity to reduce the cost and time of service deployment, more efficiently utilise existing infrastructure and generate additional revenue through value-added communications services.

Leading telecommunications operators BT, Bell Canada and Celcom Malaysia have selected the Microsoft Connected Services Framework to facilitate the delivery of services to their subscribers.

To understand CSF a little more, I looked around and found this article in eWeek by Guy Kewney:

CSF is Biztalk. It's something Microsoft originally designed so that IT people could link their ERP software to the ERP software of their customers. [That is, to link the ERP applications together.]

What CSF does is to create an abstraction layer between the business functions and the new services that the operator wants to deliver. What that means is that you build all your services on top of this [that is, using the CSF APIs], and they can talk to each other: "So you do the integration between back ends and these new services once, then drop new services in very quickly," said Steven. [Andrew Steven, director of solution sales, EMEA, for Microsoft]

Here's a real-world example: Take a ring tone download service; nice simple operator scenario. Suppose your operator says: "I want to drive additional revenue; I want to offer that user the chance to purchase the music track. I can download that 2-meg file pretty quickly over 3G; I'll charge $3 for that. And if they like that, I'll maybe offer them the album for $12, and send that via DSL. By the time they get home, it will be waiting for them."

But it's likely the ring tone provider won't be the same provider who offers the single download—and they certainly won't be the same one that does the album download over DSL. So you would have to understand all three provisioning systems, analyze them, and integrate them and then worry about back-end billing services and links to fixed line.

"A whole bunch of service delivery platform people do typical abstraction layers out there," said Steven. "But nobody has built something that lets you build rich services by combining them."

3G versus Wi-Fi?

2005-02-23T01:02:00.000-08:00

The 3G Portal has an article that mentions that 3G might be edging out Wi-Fi due to it's wider adoption, easier roaming, and lower rates.

Tucker [Wireless Logic, head of indirect sales] argues that in terms of ground cover Wi-Fi is still spread pretty thinly.

‘I feel that in terms of coverage the number of hotspots needs to go up, while the pricing needs to come down substantially. People are paying around £6 per hour, while on 3G they only have to pay for the amount of data they download,’ he says.

Another weakness is the complete lack of roaming between the different Wi-Fi network operators, whereas with GPRS and 3G the whole process is relatively transparent.

Wi-Fi’s chief advantage over 3G is its higher data speeds, yet 3G has a secret weapon in the fight against Wi-Fi: HSDPA. The term stands for High Speed Downlink Packet Access; in a nutshell, HSDPA is to 3G what GPRS is to GSM.

Rs. 5000 (= $100) PC together with mobile internet phones?

2005-02-06T22:29:00.000-08:00

During the recent World Economic Forum, Negroponte's announcement (see this RedHerring article, for example) regarding the $100 PC made a lot of headlines. There are, of course, many others who are working towards this goal -- e.g. Bangalore-based Simputer. There are others who believe that ownership of PCs is not critical -- availability of services at reasonable cost will drive the internet and computing usage up in developing countries like India. Netcore and it's founder Rajesh Jain have been pursuing this line of thought.

An eWeek article (if one can wade through the quaint (in a offensive way) writing style that can easily put one off) presents a suggestion that sounds the technical counterpart of the RISC model developed by Atanu Dey and the PURA concept being promoted by President A P J Abdul Kalam. (Here's a link to Atanu's blog entry with brief history of RISC and one-line "comparison" with PURA.)

Here's a quote from the article:

One machine per home may be a rich boy's dream. One machine per village, however, with mobile-phone peripheral access, is another matter. You can work out a power budget for 100 people with a solar collector or a wind generator and a battery that would keep a mini-ITX system running 24-7 all year, and that would power a micro-cell for mobile phones that would conference all local farmers into a community network.

The article points out that the "total cost of ownership" is more important.

And there are other costs. The $100 price point isn't the point! The things that matter are the installation costs, the running costs and the power budget. As Wenchi Chen said, if you give someone a free PC and then ask them to pay $25 a month for a broadband feed, they won't be able to use it. "It wouldn't be a valuable resource—and also, if they can't afford the power budget, it won't be a valuable resource."

The village server is a concept with a future, especially if it's a wireless village server. But to work, it has to have virtually free access to the Internet, and very cheap access to the phone network.

Actually, we need to throw in the cost of the useful software and relevant content (and the opportunity cost related to the absence of useful software/content).

In any case, this sounds interesting to me. Why not complement the computing services provided by the RISC model with mobile phones with internet connectivity (at a reasonable cost!) and appropriate suite of data services? This will increase the convenience for the users. Further, it will help personalize the services. The shared facilities is still an important concept -- the shared infrastructure (such as printers, for example) can still be used on-demand by the people who need those services.

Managing creative people

2005-02-02T00:27:00.000-08:00

One area that I have often thought about is related to the management of smart, highly-motivated, creative people. Unfortunately, I have seen too many cases where things go horribly wrong. I know there are tons of books on this subject... but perhaps there are none that give a simple-to-understand and prescriptive advice?

In any case, here are my thoughts re: steps that can help create a high-energy and high-output team:

Ensure robust hiring process that hires creative (not just “quick thinking”) people. Most companies that pride themselves with "tough" interview process miss out on this important distinction.

Create an “open market” within the company/group with free availability of information.

Flexible internal transfer process. Provide freedom to people to pick the project of their liking (and, if required, to quickly move to other projects). This is needed to complement the free availability of information.

Ensure managers have strong technical background; eliminate “people managers”.

Create an open (but secret) and free-for-all internal rating system. Almost no company/group that I know of does this. 360-degree reviews are a simplified (but useful!) version of this appraisal process. This is an extremely important requirement because it will help people understand the contributions made by other people and to appreciate how everyone is working together to create a product or to deliver a project.

The single biggest bane of the software industry, though, is the concept of "people managers". However well-intentioned, people managers are unable to fully appreciate the value of contributions being made by different people. Chaos ensues: morale suffers, productivity dips, people quit. But, unfortunately, it is difficult to measure these things and, therefore, the managers thrive.

To circumvent these problems, some of the more innovative internet companies have opted for flatter organizations with either manager's "role" being played by a technical person or manager's being downgraded to first-level managers (with hands-on involvement in low-level design, coding, etc.). Both of these are improvements over earlier systems -- but neither is completely satisfactory. In most software development projects, historical perspective is useful and, therefore, continuity is critical. Further, low-level design, coding, etc. are often not the best use of the experience gathered by senior technical people.

There is a need to rethink the whole technical management structures in software companies.

Context-based Search

2004-07-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

Jon Udell talked about The Google PC Generation in one of his recent articles. It nicely summarizes what I have been thinking about:

On the Google PC, you wouldn’t need third-party add-ons to index and search your local files, e-mail, and instant messages. It would just happen. The voracious spider wouldn’t stop there, though. The next piece of low-hanging fruit would be the Web pages you visit. These too would be stored, indexed, and made searchable. More ambitiously, the spider would record all your screen activity along with the underlying event streams. Even more ambitiously, it would record phone conversations, convert speech to text, and index that text. Although speech-to-text is a notoriously imperfect art, even imperfect results can support useful search. Here are some of the ways the Google PC could exploit this data:

Bayesian categorization: My SpamBayes-enhanced e-mail program learns continuously about what I do and don’t find interesting, and helps me organize messages accordingly. A systemwide agent that’s always building categorized views of all your content would be a great way to burn idle CPU cycles.

Context reassembly: When writing a report, you’re likely to refer to a spreadsheet, visit some Web pages, and engage in an IM chat. Using its indexed and searchable event stream, the system would restore this context when you later read or edited the document. Think browser history on steroids.

Screen pops: When you receive an e-mail, IM, or phone call, the history of your interaction with that person would pop up on your screen. The message itself could be used to automatically refine the query.

With managed metadata, these things are easy to do, and that’s a key motivation for Longhorn’s WinFS storage system. But we don’t have a lot of metadata now, and we won’t have much anytime soon. Instead of idly slacking most of the time, our PCs ought to be indexing, analyzing, correlating, and classifying.

Typically, "context" in "context-based search" is used to refer to content-based context; for example, the text surrounding the keyword that is being searched. Tools such as Blinkx and research projects such as The Remembrance Agent use this definition of context. If the context can be enhanced with user activities as well, the search experience will be undoubtedly made more enriching. The challenge, of course, is to do so in a transparent manner with only an inperceptiple impact on the response time.

Personalized Knowledge Management

2004-07-30T10:50:00.000-07:00

Dave Pollard thinks Knowledge Management is headed from content to connectivity and from corporate to personal content management:

From content to connectivity, with social networking applications and expertise-finding and community-building processes taking over in priority from the populating and management of massive, just-in-case, context free repositories of documents, and

From corporate content management to personal content management, with simple, intuitive tools, personalized processes and one-on-one personal effectiveness training taking over in priority from complex, one-size-fits-all intranet tools, portals, 'productivity' software, and undifferentiated training.

Given this, what should a Knowledge Management solution focus on?

Identify and introduce easy-to-use, intuitive personal content management and social networking tools to improve workers' facility in finding the information and the experts they need to do their jobs effectively.

Work one-on-one to understand the problems each worker is having acquiring and processing information, and finding, contacting and working with experts; provide them with personalized training, tools, suggested processes and 'cheat sheets' to address these problems; and, if these problems are endemic to the organization or can't be solved at the individual level, bring them back to management with recommendations for more systematic changes. [this is the only element of this job description that would require any staff -- all the rest is a one-person job].

Identify, and then with executive sponsorship establish standards, procedures, filters and measurements to reduce unnecessary e-mails, information flows, paperwork, meetings and interruptions that prevent and interfere with critical work activities. Track and aim to halve the aggregate amount of 'non value added' time.

Work with Learning leaders to develop voluntary training programs that can enhance time management, information management, work prioritization and oral communication (including story-telling!) skills.

Assess the aggregate cost to the organization of information (buying it, storing it, looking for it, reading it, figuring out what it means, managing it) and also the aggregate cost to the organization of not knowing -- the cost of failures (lost contracts etc.) and errors that demonstrably could have been prevented or mitigated had there been more or better information available. Use these measures to objectively evaluate information adequacy, quality, and overload, and recommend changes to tools, repositories, and processes.

Develop a set of Work Effectiveness Principles customized for the organization that can be used to influence and drive strategy, structure, policy, and behaviour in the organization.

Email Management

2004-06-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

Paul Kedrosky's opinion about the "Future of the Spam (& Email)" [via Emergic.org]:

Go look in your email inbox and check how many read and unread messages there are. My own count varies, depending on how diligent I am being, but there are rarely less than 100 messages in my inbox. Granted, some of those emails are months old, but they are piled up nevertheless.

Why do I keep so many inbox messages? Partly because I use emails to remind me of tasks I have to do, partly because I’m still mulling how and whether to respond to some of these people, and partly because I can’t always be bothered filing emails as they come in. The result: an inbox in extremis.

And I am not alone. One 1996 study by the Association of Computing Machinery found that subjects had, on average, 2,482 messages in their inbox; they had only an average of 858 items filed in folders. In other words, for every message that they had gotten around to filing they had roughly three messages strewn about in their email inbox.
Increasingly, this has consequences. Companies lose sales because leads get lost or accidentally deleted; lawyers lose correspondence in important cases; software vendors worry about vexing emails hiding in dark corners; and technical support people lose track of ongoing discussions with frustrated clients.

It will only get worse. People are increasingly reliant on email, and they will be more so once the spam problem is reduced -- and once Sarbanes-Oxley’s email-retention implications are better understood.

Everyone complains about email, but does no-one do anything about it? Well, trouble means a business opportunity, so various companies are are promising to make email manageable.

Stata Laboratories has a product called “Bloomba” that it is billing as the Google of email. It is, in effect, an email client built around a speedy search tool. Another California company, X1.com, has also received favorable press for its high-speed email (and everything) search product.

A Canadian company is in the mix too. Nelson, British Columbia-based Caelo has a nifty product it bills as an email organizer. While it offers a nice search feature, perhaps Caelo's most compelling attribute is that it auto-files much of your email into intuitively-derived folders for you.

Semantic Web

2004-06-23T03:04:00.000-07:00

Stephen Downes thinks that the Semantic Web initiative is faltering due to the complexity of the W3C standards being defined. He mentions the following guidelines in the Whither the Semantic Web article.

From where I sit, there are two ways of developing a new technology (a new specification, a new language, whatever):
develop a simple core that users can expand if they need to
develop a comprehensive system anticipating the way users would expand it
RSS developed the first way. The RSS language is very easy to learn - it has only a half dozen core elements, expressed in the simplest possible XML. An RSS file can be created by any person with a minimum of technical skill. Examples that they can use as templates abound. RSS has been extended in various ways, and various versions have emerged, and they all work. Just like with HTML, you don't have to be letter perfect to a detailed spec to make it work, you need only create valid XML.

And some gospel:

Here is some gospel: if you can't do it simply, with a simple text-editor,a web server and a standard browser, it's broken.
More gospel: if you can't say what you want to say with it, it's broken.
A Third Gospel: if you can't link, it's broken.
A Fourth Gospel: if you can't find it, it doesn't exist.

Conclusion:

If the system that evolves from the work on the semantic web is one system for Enterprise, and another for the people, then we are creating an information infrastructure that is fundamentally flawed from the outset. The developers of the Semantic Web must, in my opinion, step back from the drawing boards for a bit, and roll out a basic infrastructure that allows people, real people, to communicate real things in a straightforward manner. The potential is there and people are just waiting for it.