loose wire blog

The iPhone Dream

Shocking pricing from New Zealand’s vodafone, the first country to launch the iPhone 3G. A $200 iPhone? More like $2,000-$5,000 after charges.

As ReadWriteWeb points out:

Carrier greed worldwide is probably the major reason why the Mobile Web is struggling to take off.

You can’t blame them for trying to make some money while they still can, because that scraping sound is the rats trying to secure stowage on a sinking ship.

Vodafone NZ Charges "Like a Wounded Bull" For iPhone 3G - ReadWriteWeb

If You Know the Answer, Why Ask the Question?

Just downloaded and installed the new beta version of Skype, and am now removing it. Why? Because it’s humongously big, and doesn’t have any option I could find for reducing its footprint. Compare this:

with this:

(and notice the Compact Mode option that I couldn’t find in the 4.0 version.)

What bothers me is that Skype already know this is a problem. Try to download a different version of Skype after the beta, and you’re confronted with a (rather creepy) questionnaire as they try to find out why you’re doing what you’re doing. One of the answers:

Well, d’oh. If you knew that was a problem, then why not make it an option to reduce the screen size? Compare this to something like Google Talk, which couldn’t get any smaller:

or even some of those twitter clients. I know the video is supposed to be great on the new version of Skype, but if you’re not actually running video, what’s the excuse for such a desktop-hogging client? I can’t think of one.

The Predictable Human (and a Privacy Issue)

A study of mobile phone data shows that we are extraordinarily consistent about our movements. Mobile phone data, unsurprisingly, provides rich pickings for researchers since we carry one around with us all the time, and, unlike dollar bills, it’s more likely to stick with one person. But some have questioned the ethics of such a study.

The BBC reports that the study, by Albert-László Barabási and two others, shows we are much more predictable in our movements than we might think:

The whereabouts of more than 100,000 mobile phone users have been tracked in an attempt to build a comprehensive picture of human movements.

The study concludes that humans are creatures of habit, mostly visiting the same few spots time and time again.

Most people also move less than 10km on a regular basis, according to the study published in the journal Nature.

This is fascinating stuff, and perhaps not unexpected. But appended to the Nature news article on the study are two signed comments by readers alleging that the authors of the study didn’t follow correct ethical procedure. Someone calling themselves John McHaffie says

What is particularly disturbing about this study is something that the Nature news article failed to reveal: that Barabasi himself said he did not check with any ethics panel. And this for an action that is, in fact illegal in the United States. Disgusting lack of ethics, I'd say. And the statement from his co-author Hidalgo isn't much better: "We're not trying to do evil things. We're trying to make the world a little better". The old "trust me, I know better" argument. Maybe this two should take a basic graduate-level ethics course.

I’ve not yet confirmed it, but it’s likely to be John G. McHaffie of the University of Wake Forest. Another commenter, Dan Williams, calls for a federal investigation of the school involved in the study.

I don’t have access to the original Nature article, so I can’t explore this further right now. But the Nature news item itself says that “Barabási and his colleagues teamed up with a mobile-phone company (unidentified to protect customers' privacy), who provided them with anonymized data on which transmitter towers had handled the calls and texts for 100,000 individuals over the course of 6 months.”

This is clearly gold. The article suggests that others have long sought to get their hands on mobile phone data. It quotes Dirk Brockmann of Northwestern University in Illinois, as saying that he had not been able to expand a study he did using dollar bills because of privacy issues:

Strict data-protection laws prevented Brockmann from carrying out his own version of the mobile-phone study in Germany, where he was based until recently. Mobile-phone data have the potential to reveal information about where individuals live and work. “I’ve been trying to get my hands on mobile-phone data but it isn't possible,” he says.

Privacy issues aside, the study is fascinating, and could be useful in monitoring disease outbreaks or traffic forecasting. (I wrote about one using Bluetooth a couple of days ago.) And how about riots? Unrest? Shoppers?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Mobile phones expose human habits

Technorati Tags: privacy,barabasi,nature,movement,research,mobile phones,cellphones,tracking

My Technology-free Lunch

At lunch today, it took me some time to realise what was different. It wasn't just that my four lunch partners were all quite a bit older than me--15 years, at least, and I'm not as young as you think I am. It was, I realised, that in more than two hours of eating not one of us had answered a phone--or even received a phone call, or text message, or furtively checked our email. I'm not sure any of us were packing a BlackBerry. Maybe my companions weren't even carrying cellphones. It was extraordinary.

I was going to ask, but I didn't want to ruin the moment. Here were five men sitting around a table talking about stuff for about 120 minutes, and not one single interruption by technology or modern communications. They weren't even in sight: Not one of us had put a phone on the table in the usual custom of staking out one's corner of the table. It felt like a flashback to the early 1990s. And it was great.

A recent survey in the UK highlights how mad we've become:

Our liking for modern technology may be disrupting our sleep - and even our relationships, claims a UK survey.

The poll, by The Sleep Council, found that many people admitted checking texts, surfing the internet, or playing games in bed.

It suggests one in four people now regularly sleeps in a different bed from their partner, and many often go to bed at different times.

God I miss the old days.

(And no, it wasn't a boozy lunch. No alcohol in sight.)

BBC NEWS | Health | Gadgets may cause lonely bedtimes

Technorati Tags: technology free, luddism, cellphones

SMS, Toilets, Bike Theft and Cars

I remember an instructive conversation with a guy who developed services for the mobile phone. I was suggesting some fancy service or other that involved a small app sitting on the phone. He said it wouldn't fly with users. "No downloads, no registration, keep it simple," he said. "Or it won't stick."

Maybe that's why SMS is so powerful and why, still, it's the method of choice for services on the cellphone. Emily over at textually.org has found some more, illustrating how SMS is not just about simplicity, but flexibility.

• A device that allows you to start your car engine by SMS. The Webasto Thermo Top E Parking Heater allows users to send a text message to a car where it is installed, which then kicks it into action, ensuring your car is warm to the touch when you get in.
• If you can't actually find your car, check out a service running at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, where users can find their car by SMS. (It doesn't explain how, exactly, this works, but it makes a lot of sense. Apparently about 50 shoppers each day forget where they parked at the mall.)

Tackling a more urgent problem there is SMS toiletting, where text messages help you relieve yourself. In London, Shanghai, and, via MizPee, anywhere in the U.S., those caught short can SMS for the address of the nearest loo. To guarantee you  have a pleasant experience, some toilets in Finland are locked. Of course, then you can open the door of a locked loo by SMS.

Then there's what I'd call, for want of a better term, conditional SMS: You'll only get your SMS depending on certain factors:

• An SMS service that delivers text messages based on the recipient's location. JotYou  lets you specify a location so your friends get your message only when they arrive at school or the mall. Yeah, I can't quite figure out the use for this yet either, but I'm sure there are some.
• Or a service, yet to be launched, that will ensure the sender knows when his message has been read. More on this anon.

When you marry the SMS with other tools, you can dream up some great services. Like this one from the UK:

• A system that combines a motion detector and SMS is being used to deter and catch bicycle thieves in Portsmouth, England (picture above). When the bicycle owner locks up their bicycle they send a text to a security office to trigger the system to guard it. Then if someone then moves, or tries to move the bicycle, a sensor in the lock emits a silent alarm which triggers a CCTV camera to zoom in and take a picture. Result: bike theft down by 90%.

Bottom line. SMS still has a lot of leg left to it. Why? Because it's simple. Because every phone can do it. Because it's cheap. Because it's tied to the most versatile device we've yet come up with: The mobile phone.

Technorati Tags: sms, theft, cars, location devices, toilets, shanghai, london, cellphones, texting, findability, ubiquitous computing, nfc, near field communications, location aware devices

Bye Bye, Laptop?

The day seems to be getting closer when we can do something that would seem to be pretty obvious: access our pocket-sized smartphone via a bigger screen, keyboard and a mouse. Celio Corp says it's close.

Celio Corp have two products: their Mobile Companion (pictured above), a laptop like thing that includes an 8" display, a full function keyboard, and a touchpad mouse. At 1 x 6 x 9 inches and weighing 2 lbs, the Mobile Companion promises over 8 hours of battery life and boots instantly. After loading a driver on your smartphone you can then access it via a USB cable or Bluetooth. (You can also charge the smartphone via the same USB connection.)

Uses? Well, you can say goodbye to coach cramp, where you're unable to use a normal laptop. You can input data more easily than you might if you just had your smartphone with you. And, of course, you don't need to bring your laptop.

The second product might be even better. The Smartphone Interface System is, from what I can work out, a small Bluetooth device that connects your smartphone, not to the Mobile Companion, but to a desktop computer, public display or a conference room projector  -- these devices connect via a cable to the Interface, like this:

The important bit about both products is that the Redfly software renders the smartphone data so it fits on the new display (this will be quite tricky, and, because it will carried via Bluetooth, would need quite a bit of compression. The maximum size of the output display is VGA, i.e. 800 x 480, so don't expect stunning visuals, but it'll be better than having all your colleagues crowding around your smartphone.)

The bad news? Redfly isn't launched yet, and will for the time being be available only for Windows Mobile Devices. Oh, and according to UberGizmo, it will cost $500. The other thing is that you shouldn't confuse "full function keyboard" with "full size keyboard": this vidcap from PodTech.net gives you an idea of the actual size of the thing:

this is the keyboard size relative to Celio CEO Kirt Bailey's digits:

Until I try the thing out and feel sure that the keyboard doesn't make the same compromises as the Eee PC, I'd rather use my Stowaway keyboard.

For those of you looking for software to view your mobile device on your desktop computer, you might want to check out My Mobiler. It's free software that purports to do exactly that for Windows Mobile users.

Technorati Tags: keyboards, celio corp, redfly, foleo, umpc, ultramobiles, smartphones, bluetooth, windows mobile, microsoft, usb

Pocket Lockets

videocapture from myTreo.net

Here's something that caught my eye from CES: D.A.V.E. from Seagate. Despite its awful name (it stands for Digital Audio Video Experience) it's a great idea. It's basically a small 60 GB external hard drive but it's small (65 x 90 x 16 mm) and light (106 grams) and connects to a smart phone via WiFi or Bluetooth. The devices contain a USB port for uploading data (and presumably can use a wired connection from smartphones too, should the need arise.)

As Tadd Rosenfeld of myTreo.net puts it:

We believe DAVE is a game changer. With the introduction of 1 gigahertz smartphone processors (check back for our interview with Qualcomm about their new high end processors for Windows Mobile devices), and with the introduction of DAVE, smartphones are going to have have virtually all of the processing and storage capabilities of laptop and desktop computers. Smartphones will become simply one more way of accessing everything you have on your computers at work and home.

True, but it seems to be taking a bit longer to come out of the traps than earlier expected. ZDNet wrote a year agao that the devices should be available in May 2007. There's no sign of that, and in fact it sounds as if Seagate is not selling them directly, merely selling the technology. And if weight and size are not too much of an issue, Singapore's EDS Lab Pte Ltd has had a similar sort of product in the market for some time -- the wi-Drive, which connects via WiFi (not Bluetooth) measures 112 x 77 x 22 mm, and weighs 230 grams. (I'm trying to get hold of one of these.)

Another option is the BluOnyx from LSI Corporation. Describing itself as a Mobile Content Server, the BluOnyx connects via Bluetooth, SD card, USB and Wifi and allows several people to access content at the same time. The device comes in lots of different colors, is about the size of a credit card and slightly thicker than a Razr (that would be about 85 x 57 mm x 10 mm). Given that the device was announced more than a year ago, and that the BluOnyx was created by Agere Systems, which was bought by LSI last year, the fate of the BluOnyx isn't clear. Doesn't look like you can buy one yet.

Most of the buzz seems to be around accessing multimedia content -- basically turning your device into a sort of iPod, but with the weight elsewhere. I guess that would be the main usage, though I love the idea of being able to take all my databases with me and then access them from whatever device I want. But I can see why these products don't necessarily fly: who wants an extra piece of hardware to lose in the bottom of a bag? And while extra storage would be nice, anything with Bluetooth in it is bound to be a hassle. And, surely, the day can't be far off when our smartphone has 60GB of storage built in?

Love the idea, can see why the reality isn't in all of our pockets. Yet.

60 GB of Treo Storage - Editorials

Technorati Tags: bluonyx, edslab, wi-drive, bluetooth, ces, smartphones, storage, agere, lsi corp, treo

Jaiku's Presence Absence

I'm nearly always disappointed when news comes out that one of the big four (Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool  Google, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!) buy out a company I like. Nothing is ever the same again; usually the product just disappears into the ether. Is Jaiku, the Twitter-like presence tool bought by Google a few months back, destined for the same scrapheap?

ReadWriteWeb suspects so:

While [Jaiku co-founder Jyri] Engström's blogged response disputes that Jaiku is being neglected, there is no doubt that the service has lost considerable ground to Twitter -- ground it can't afford to lose. According to Compete, Jaiku's traffic peaked in October 2007, around the time of the Google acquisition, but has fallen steadily since (off nearly 30% last month). Twitter, meanwhile, has continued gaining, up over 10% last month. Though Jaiku's traffic is still way up on the year, it is off since the Google purchase and the service still attracts just a tiny fraction of the visitors that Twitter does.

But the usually astute ReadWriteWeb may have missed the point about why Google bought Jaiku:

What really sets Jaiku apart from Twitter, is that it can aggregate and automatically republish stories from your other activity streams: blog posts, del.icio.us links, Flicker photos, even Twitter updates. In this regard, it is a lot like Tumblr (another service that has a huge lead on it traffic-wise). I think this is the part of Jaiku that Google was interested in when it purchased the site -- Jaiku as an activity stream aggregator, not Jaiku as a presence app.

With respect, I don't think so. As I wrote back in October, I think it's Jaiku's mobile development and potential that Google wants. To quote myself (appalling, I know):

The point here is that Jaiku is one of the first of such tools to shift the social web to the mobile social web.

Jonathan  Mulholland puts it well in this November post:

Why Jaiku then? I think the answer lies in mobility, specifically location and mobile integration.

Let’s look at location first. Jaiku is I think unique in combining micro-blogging AND user location awareness. For the uninitiated, when posting status updates Jaiku has the ability to capture and share the location information (neighbourhood, city, country) of the poster in real time. So in addition to a message post Jaiku can provide real time location awareness of users. Hmmm that’s interesting…

And how does Jaiku do this? An integral part of the service is a client application for Symbian S60 platform mobile phones. The client uses location APIs within S60 devices to triangulate the handset (and the users) location based on nearby cellular network towers. The Jaiku client was in fact originally conceived as a ’status aware address book’, and as such integrates into compatible S60 phones to the extent that it also shares the phones (and again the users) status availability ( - General, In Meeting, Outdoor etc).

So in addition to a message post AND location awareness you also have deep mobile integration sufficient to identify the status of a user as well. That makes things really interesting, and its this combination that I think is the clever part. Consider this thought:

Post + Location + Status = Value

In short, Jaiku was built by former Nokia developers frustrated that Nokia didn't get the real power of mobile phones. Presence/Location/Status is powerful because mobile phones are with us all the time. Google ain't dumb: it realises the future is on the mobile phone. So it needs to make sure it dominates that. Jaiku, in theory, gets them there.

In theory, because right now Jaiku is withering on the vine. If Google is interested only in the guys behind Jaiku, that's good, but a smarter move would be to keep building a critical mass of early adopters around Jaiku so that when the time comes for it to enter the mainstream, it's our default presence/location/status tool of choice. Right now nearly all my Jaiku friends have stopped using it, and I can't imagine they're going to be interested in going back.

Besides, Facebook has come along in the meantime and threatens to make Jaiku (and to a certain extent Twitter) meaningless. Facebook has succeeded in attracting the attention, and time, of millions of people for whom social networking was an alien concept. It's going to be easier for Facebook to come along with a Twitter/Jaiku killer and move that prepped audience to the mobile phone (yes, in some ways it's already happening, with the Facebook mobile app) than it is for Twitter and Jaiku to persuade more users to commit to their tools. If I can find all I need to know about what my friends are doing on Facebook Mobile, why do I need Jaiku? 

Google may not understand this particularly well, because it's not been in this kind of business before. Google has not really been in the sticky community building business before (except Orkut, I guess, which has long suffered/thrived on benign neglect). In short, you don't leave something like Jaiku lying around with outages and feature doldrums if you don't want to lose your evangelistic early users. By the time it's ready for Google's attention, there may not be much of a user base left.

What is Google's Plan for Jaiku? - ReadWriteWeb

Technorati Tags: jaiku, twitter, google, nokia, presence, symbian, mobile, cellphones, mobile networking, social networks, facebook

Meet Veronica, Sexy Skype Spammer

Maybe this is commonplace for others, but I've just got my first sex-chat-spam on Skype. It's from someone called Veronica Sexy, whose profile indicates that it's unlikely to be someone I've met and just forgotten about (as if I would):

Just in case you can't read that last bit, it reads:

can't wait to get real nasty and show off :) IM REAL MISS WEB CAM!

Reply to the message and immediately you're asked to share your contact details (a la Skype.) I didn't risk having Veronica spam all my friends (not sure how that would work, but I've got some nice people on my list, and I'd hate for them to be upset.) But I did reply to her message, and her responses were quick, and, dare I say it, felt a trifle automated:

[8:53:55 AM] Veronica sexy says: Hi are U busy?
[9:03:43 AM] Jeremy Wagstaff says: hi
[9:03:50 AM] Veronica sexy says: How are u ?
[9:04:30 AM] Jeremy Wagstaff says: i'm great. who are you?
[9:04:31 AM] Veronica sexy says: I would love to chat with you, come on http://www.SkyperSex.com !!!

[9:04:36 AM] Jeremy Wagstaff says: no thanks
[9:04:37 AM] Veronica sexy says: I would love to chat with you, come on http://www.SkyperSex.com !!!

[9:04:45 AM] Jeremy Wagstaff says: i'm a bit busy. really
[9:04:47 AM] Veronica sexy says: My internet connection  is very bad come on http://www.SkyperSex.com !!!

[9:04:54 AM] Jeremy Wagstaff says: my internet connection is great!

That was the last I head of Veronica, although her scent lingers on.

The web address, by the way, is pretty much what you expect it will be -- lots of alleged clips of ladies cavorting. The administrator of the website is one Alexandrof Tiberiu in Moscow, who also owns www.yourlivecams.com.

I guess what's interesting here is that Skype don't seem to do much policing of this kind of thing. This could be a sex site spam, or it could be something worse.

(If you want to prevent Veronica getting in touch with you, go into Skype options, Privacy settings, and click on the Show Advanced Options button. Make sure the Allow chats from... option is only people in my Contact List:

Chances are Veronica won't come calling. Frankly, your life won't be the poorer for it.

Technorati Tags: skype, spam, sex sites, russia, privacy, security

How to Data Roam on the Cheap

This week's column in the WSJ is about finding cheap data roaming connections on the road. I'll be the first to admit I wasn't very successful, and hope readers may have better luck than I. But here in the meantime are some suggestions:

Free WiFi connections:

• AnchorFree offers free WiFi hotspots via partners, in return for ads. Good idea, but poor website.
• Fon allows members to get free WiFi from other members in returning for sharing their own. Non members can buy WiFi cheaply. More here.

WiFi roaming services

• iPass Not cheap, but you might already have an account if you have a broadband connection. Check out via your ISP's website or by checking out the reseller locator link.
• Boingo offers three packages - Unlimited (North America only; $22 a month), Global ($40 a month) or AsYouGO ($8 within North America, $10 globally.) Once again, you may already have an account if you have a broadband or a mobile broadband account elsewhere.

Alliances

• Wireless Broadband Alliance (site not active at the moment) supposedly offers a wireless broadband roaming to members of more than 25 service providers, but until the site comes back up I can't really confirm this. StarHub says it's a member, and that subscribers to its cellular, broadband or even TV services can use sister WiFi connections for free.
• Conexus is an alliance of seven operators in Asia which promises flat-rate per-day data roaming. This is good news but won't be ready until next year (2008).
• BridgeAlliance an alliance of 11 operators in Asia which offers Bridge DataRoam, a one-flat rate across 11 territories: Airtel (India), AIS (Thailand), CSL (Hong Kong), CTM (Macau), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), SK Telecom (Korea), SingTel Mobile (Singapore), SingTel Optus (Australia), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia). Four more will be added in the next few weeks: Maxis in Malaysia, SK Telecom in Korea, Singtel Optus in Australia and CSL in Hong Kong. Plans are US$30 for 15MB (Bridge DataRoam¹⁵) or US$60 for 40MB (Bridge DataRoam⁴⁰).

Odds and ends

• If you have a UK bank account you could sign up for vodafone's Mobile Broadband service which costs £9.99 per 24 hrs (500 MB limit).

Technorati Tags: data roaming, cellphones, HSDPA, usb modem, travel, mobility

Broadband on a Moving Bus

I don't know if it's anything to do with my recent column  (probably not) about the need for flat data rates("The Price is Wrong," from Nov 2's WSJ.com), but m1 of Singapore is now offering unlimited data for its mobile broadband plans. So now you can get 512 kbps for about $15 a month, 1.8 Mbps for about $25, and 3.6 Mbps for $45.

I use the 512 kbps service and frankly, it's fast enough for me. Of course, with the island state embracing free WiFi this all becomes a bit academic at some point, but I still find it easier to crank up the Huawei modem than log in to the WiFi, and there's something about surfing on a bus that is positively liberating. Not something I ever tried on the moving robbery carts that are buses in Jakarta, I must say.

M1 broadband

Technorati Tags: flatdata, mobile broadband, singapore, m1, modem, HSDPA, mobility

It's Your Mother Calling

A few people have asked for the transcript of yesterday's commentary on the BBC's World Business Daily about getting your  mother's voice to be your ringtone. It follows below, and here's the (still active) link to the actual program from whence it came. Thanks for listening, and to the crew at Business Daily for their excellent impression of my mother's voice. It sounds scarily like her. 

Listen to Wednesday's Edition

Updated at 08:32 GMT on Wednesday

The growing spectre of inflation - as elections approach in Russia, how long can the government hold down rising food prices?

and mobile phone RING TONES - what would really grab your attention - how about the voice of your mother - telling you off?

Ringtones

Ringtones on cellphones have long since graduated from beeps into full fledged polyphonic symphonies. And it’s long driven me nuts.

I was on a bus the other day and the guy in front had his handset volume set so loud that when his phone rang he was so disconcerted he couldn’t turn it off. The mindless ditty he had chosen as his preferred form of alert blasted through the bus as he fumbled with the off switch. At least he bothered fumbling. Some people I notice love their ringtone so much they spend a few contented moments listening to it before picking up. This is a variation on the older theme where people stare at their ringing phone apparently mulling whether it’s worth answering. Songs as ringtones are like someone suddenly turning on a radio full-blast and then just as suddendly turning it off. At best you’re relieved your morning reverie is possible again, at worst you’re annoyed you can’t remember what song the snippet of music belonged to, and are stuck the whole day humming a snatch of a best forgotten ditty.

There has to be a better way for ringtones to be less intrusive and yet audible enough to the user so they actually hear it. My solution is simple. I read somewhere that the US Air Force in the 1950s was experimenting with early versions of synethesized voices delivering cockpit warnings. What they found was that a pilot was much more likely to hear an important instruction if the voice used was the pilot’s mother. You can just imagine a disembodied voice saying “Pull up, you silly boy!” just as she might have said “Pull up your socks, you silly boy!” Who wouldn’t pull up under such conditions?

So this is what I propose. When I buy my phone, I hand it over to my mother and have her call out my name at a reasonable volume. That recording becomes my ringtone. Trust me, I’m always going to recognise her voice, across the room, across town, across continents. Mothers’ voices have that kind of quality.

Why would this work so well on phones? Well I may hear my mother’s voice in the middle of a crowded and noisy rave, but everyone else? Unless they’re called Jeremy, it won’t register. If they are called Jeremy, it’s unlikely the voice is going to have quite the same impact. I will know my phone’s ringing. No one else is disturbed, because people are yelling out other people’s names all the time.

This is easy enough to do, by the way: Most phones let you record something and turn it into a ringtone. There are even websites that let you upload sound files and turn them into ringtones. But even better would be to set up a service that let mothers send recordings of themselves to the phones of their offsprings -- without them knowing. I’d love to see the son’s expression when he hears his mother’s voice calling him from his pocket. I suspect he’d pick up pretty darn quick.

BBC World Service | Business Daily

Technorati Tags: ringtones, cellphones, society, intrusion

The Skype Revolution Wears Thin

What's going on over at Skype? The one thing that I felt was really useful with the service, apart from all the free chats, was their Skype In service, allowing you to have one phone number wherever you were. You could set it up to forward to any phone on the planet, or your Skype account, or to your Skype voicemail, and it worked great. Now it's gone.

Well, not gone, but they've had to change some of their numbers. This is the message I just received from them:

We're very sorry to tell you that we have to change your SkypeIn number. As some of you may know, we get SkypeIn numbers from a variety of telecoms suppliers. Unfortunately, we have to return some of the 0207 SkypeIn numbers to one of our suppliers of London numbers.

This means your number will stop working from December 20th 2007. We realise the inconvenience this will cause you, and sincerely apologise.

That's less than a month away. How on earth can you go around the world telling every Tom, Dick and Auntie Phyllis you've ever given your "lifetime" number to that it's changed in that time? And just before Christmas, to boot!

To soften the blow Skype have given people affected "a new SkypeIn number and voicemail - free for 12 months on us - to thank you for your patience and to help make the changeover as painless as possible for you." 

Nice thought, and would help, except the voucher doesn't work. At least not for me. Just keep getting an "invalid voucher" message. So more pain and delay. 

I still talk about the Skype Revolution, where ordinary Joes can suddenly increase their tech knowledge and stay in touch with people more easily than ever before, but I'm beginning to wonder whether it isn't time for someone smarter, quicker and better organized to take over the revolution.

Update: I've heard from Merje Järv- Griffiths of Skype, who offers this extra information on the dropped numbers:

As you know, Skype obtains SkypeIn numbers from a variety of telecoms suppliers.  The London-based SkypeIn numbers in question came from one of these telecoms suppliers. We spent months in discussions with a telecoms supplier to see if we could keep the SkypeIn numbers we rented from them, confident that the issue could be resolved. Hence the somewhat late notice to our users — we never thought things would get this far, given the time and effort put into resolving the situation.

Unfortunately, we have to return some of our 0207 numbers so we’re asking our SkypeIn users who are affected to change their London-based SkypeIn number.

And if any of you are having the same problems I had in redeeming the voucher, try this.

Technorati Tags: skype, voip, internet telephony, ebay

Snake Recognition

The recent experience of an acquaintance offers a use for camera phones: Her duplex was invaded by a snake, forcing one offspring to yell for it to be killed, another to demand its safe return to the wild, the mother to scream from a safe distance, and the father to frantically Google the snake's appearance to find out if it was poisonous.

How hard would it be to have a sort of "skin recognition" where the scared human takes a picture of the snake's skin, uploads it to a website and receives details of the snake, its threat level and the best way to return to somewhere less intrusive. (My friend lobbed two encyclopedias at it and, while it was devouring that, caught it in a fishing net.)

Does anything like this exist? Could it? How hard would it be?

Technorati Tags: snakes, facial recognition, scanning, camera phones, mobile phones, cellphones

Are Battery Indicators Deliberately Lying?

Amusing post on David Pogue's blog about stuff. This comment from a reader caught me eye. Is it true, I wonder? Must be.

”Like the battery indicator, the signal strength on a cell phone is deliberately weighted toward the high end. I worked on a phone development project several years ago. When the first units went to the carrier for approval, their first request was to toss the perfectly calibrated battery indicator in favor of one that sat at 4 bars for around 75 percent of the charge.”

Readers Answer Some of Pogue’s Imponderables - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog

Technorati Tags: phones, batteries, meters, progress bars

Time to Give the Telephone Back to the Cellphone?

Was interviewing a guy intimately involved in the mobile phone industry the other day, and we were comparing the various features of our sophisticated smartphones, when he suddenly leaned over and said, "Off the record, but this is my favorite phone." And he showed me this:

 

 

 

Nokia 1100, photo Mobile Phones UK

The Nokia 1100, according to Wikipedia, is the world's best selling handset, having shifted 200 million units. It seems to cost about $20, often less, and has a battery life of about 400 hours. And, crucially for my friend, sports two important features: It makes and receives calls and SMS. Beyond that, in the words of Bryan Ferry, there's nothing. (Well, actually there's WAP, but who uses that?)

The point about the Nokia 1100 is that it's a phone. It doesn't pretend to be anything else (except a flashlight, if you press and hold the "c" key down (presumably "c" stands for torCh or flasChlight or "come into the light where I can see you, Mildred".) It's designed for conditions in developing countries -- dustproof keyboard, non-slip sides -- but for many of us that could describe an ordinary day in the office (dusty, slippery, in need of illumination).

"For email," he said, "I use this," waving a Nokia BlackBerry clone. "For phoning and SMS, I use my 1100."

Clearly my interviewee friend is not alone. A glance at Mobile Phones UK's page on the model, the phone has a sizeable fanclub, with comments from Romania, Pakistan, Iran, the Philippines, Argentina, UK, Zaire and Tanzania. (Typical comment: "I needed a simple, sharp looking, long life phone. I got it. I love it!") Of course, there are some who aren't happy, but with 200 million units out there, that's not surprising.

I guess my worry is, and has been for a while: As phones get more sophisticated, when do they stop being phones? And if it takes you longer to make or receive a call (or an SMS) than it used to, at what point do we need to split the phone/SMS functionality from our smartphone and give it back to the likes of the 1100?

Technorati Tags: complexity, phone, cellphones, nokia, handsets, design, india, SMS

Google & Jaiku: It's About Mobility

Jaiku, the presence, Twitter-like-but-better tool, has been bought by Google. Great news, I would have thought. But then I thought again. Google? The guys who already know too much about me? With access to all my stream of consciousness? Knowing where I am? So I checked out the Jaiku Privacy Policy. What data would/might Google be interested in? Here's what they would have access to, assuming you're using Jaiku on a phone and a computer:

• the usual cookies
• your mobile number
• your mobile network operator, cell ID, city, country, cell name
• whether you are currently using the phone or whether the phone is idle
• phone's ring profile
• Bluetooth buddy/laptop/desktop count
• the duration and description of current/previous/next calendar event
• an indication of whether a call is currently in progress (3G only)

On top of this Google would have access to any personal information you may have stored with Jaiku in your profile. This could include:

• name and email address
• address
• home town
• birth date
• gender
• biographical information
• instant messaging user names
• personal interests.

Needless to say, there are the usual paragraphs about how your personal information may be shared with a new owner:

In the event Jaiku enters into a joint venture or is acquired by or merged with another business entity, we may disclose your personal Information to our business partners or new owners.

And that things may change, without you being able to do anything about it:

Consequently, we also reserve the right to modify this Privacy Statement at any time in our sole discretion. You agree that such alteration shall be effective upon posting on the Jaiku.com web site and you will be bound to any alterations when you use the Service after such alteration is posted.

Nothing too surprising there. But the thing here is to remember that Jaiku is Google's first real foray into a potentially very lucrative space: Mobile. While there are modest gains to be made from throwing ads at static online (folk accessing Jaiku from their laptop or desktop) the real benefits accrue when users are mobile.

Jaiku's mobile widget fits pretty seamlessly into your address book, enhancing the profiles of fellow Jaiku users with photos, presence messages, their upcoming appointments (I was alerted by a friend that I had inadvertently given permission for Jaiku to access my whole calendar; "have you called your Mum yet?" he asked, cheekily, after seeing that was my next engagement.)

All this information outlined above would be available to Google, to let them fire ads at us. For the first time, as far as I know, an advertising company not only has access to what we're doing (our presence message), they have access to where we're doing it (the cell ID etc), what we're doing next (the calendar), how long we'll be doing it for (the duration of the event), whether we're focused on something else (indication of whether we're on a call), as well as the usual preferences we may have registered in our profile (gender, age, interests, etc.)

The point here is that Jaiku is one of the first of such tools to shift the social web to the mobile social web. (Another is ShoZu, which moves photo uploads, and the communities around them, to mobile.) I love both services and use them a lot. But perhaps now is the time to ponder just how much personal information we either consciously or unconsciously hand over when we use them, and how comfortable we are about it.

It's one thing to feel somewhat stalked at your desk, but another to feel stalked via your mobile.

Technorati Tags: jaiku, presence, microblogging, attention streams, google, advertising, privacy, twitter, shozu

Design: It's All About Alarm Clocks

Business writer and entrepreneur Seth Godin throws out product ideas like other people throw out orange juice cartons:

For twenty cents or so, alarm clock manufacturers can add a chip that not only knows the time (via a radio signal) but knows what day it is too. Which means that they can add a switch that says "weekends." Which means that the 98% of the population that doesn't want to wake up on the same time on weekends as they do on weekdays will be happier (and better rested.)

But he's not touting a new alarm clock, he's making a point: "So why doesn't every alarm clock have this feature?" he asks. "Because most people in that business are busy doing their jobs (distribution, promotion, pricing, etc.), not busy making products that people actually want to buy--and talk about."

Indeed, companies are always far too busy doing what they're doing to think about what they're doing and wonder whether they can do it better. And, as Seth points out, this is because companies are compartmentalized into responsibilities, and brave is the person who tries to straddle departments.

The weekend alarm clock won't be made by a big alarm clock company, it'll be designed by someone like Gauri Nanda, who I mentioned a few weeks back as the inventor of Clocky, the alarm clock that goes walkabout. Gauri, needless to say, was working on her own.

Actually what I suspect happens in companies is that they just ignore the user entirely. This is partly because technical products are built (and much of them designed) by programmers and engineers. I hate to generalize, but these people thrive on complexity, not on usability. For them creating and mastering the opaque is an achievement, not a symptom of failure.

What usually happens is that there are two sides to product development: the people in the company who think it's a good idea and the people who have to build it. But in my limited experience there's no one in between who speaks both languages, and, most importantly, can see what the customer might expect and want.

This is the hardest bit: it's called usability and it seems to be the last thing people think about. If you've ever grappled with an alarm clock, to continue Seth's example, you'll know what I mean.

My favorite is the alarm clock that makes a beep every time you press a button: not so useful if you're trying to quietly set the alarm but not wake your loved one. One clock I have, despite being sophisticated enough to tell me the temperature, the time in Lima and how many thous in a furlong, even makes a beep when I hit the backlight button. And no, it can't be switched off without a PhD in molecular biophysics.

I wish I could say that this is confined to alarm clocks, but it's not. Nearly every device or program is dumb in its own way. But there are bright spots. One of the things I love about Web 2.0 is that the people designing the tools really seem to understand usability.

Of course, given the fact that Web 2.0 is one big feedback loop, where new versions pop up like mushroom after rain, it's inevitable. But the result is websites that are easy to navigate and to figure out.

Apple, of course, figured this out long ago, But everyone else seems to be having problems understanding it. I tried out a website the other day which was supposed to help me find the best form of transportation between two places. The search engine was not smart enough to know a building's earlier name, or even to recommend alternatives if I got the name slightly wrong.

The internal calculator was not smart enough to get the distances right (one walk I was asked to make between bus-stops would have taken me into the sea and halfway to the next country); neither was it smart enough to realize that was an error. All should have been spotted by any usability tests. All undermine the whole point of the website, which is to make it easy to figure out a way to get from A to B.

I won't bore you with more examples: You are users, and you come across this stuff all the time. What worries me more is that we're not listened to, at least in a way in that makes sense.

I was sitting in a seminar the other day listening to an employee of a global cellphone operator talking about she and her colleagues have been canvassing opinions about how consumers use cellphones. This is good, and what should be done, but I was surprised by how she went about it: Getting users together and asking them to make collages about how they use technology.

Frankly, I don't think making collages is the right way to go about things. We need to get out on the streets, into the offices, bars and clubs, into the villages and factories, and observe how people actually use technology. Don't expect people to fill in forms or do collages for you: Follow them around. Spy on them. I do.

One of the side-effects of the cellphone revolution is that it's taken technology out of the usual places (office, den) and into every other room in the house (texting in the bath, watching mobile TV in bed) and beyond, into the bus stops, the subways, the village gazebo. Technology is now a seamless part of our lives. Researchers need to get out more.

The sad truth is that we've moved on and the geeks need to catch up. Because, lame as the alarm clock that beeps all the time and doesn't know it's the weekend is, nearly all our devices are no better: They're too smart in the sense of feature density and too stupid in the interface that lets us use those features.

So, companies: Hire a usability consultant to tell you about your products and how they might be better. Or just try your own products: sleep in on a weekend or let your spouse try to find the alarm light button in the middle of the night and see how you like being woken up.

Then rub your eyes, get out of bed and head for the design table.

Seth's Blog: Alarm clocks

del.icio.us Tags: innovation, design, seth godin, alarm clocks, web 2.0, usability

Foleo, Foleo, Where Art Thou?

Caption competition:

"Is this a dagger I see before me?"

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio"

Now you see it, now you don't

Photo from BusinessWire

It has the grim predictability of a company that doesn't seem sure of what it's doing, and what people want. Ever since Ed Colligan unveiled the Foleo -- a Linux-based sub-sub-notebook -- a few months back, folks have been saying it was a mistake. Now it's dead.

I liked the idea, but felt it was the wrong solution: the iPhone and the Nokia N800 seem to prove people now want something that isn't just a workhorse, but another onramp to the social web, whereas the Foleo seemed to be aimed simply at business customers. Such folk have long been used to lugging heavy stuff around, so it made no sense.

Anyway, Ed has done the right thing and knocked the project on the head, taking a $10 million hit (while sparing a moment for the poor third party developers who committed time and resources to software to run on the dang thing). What is most telling, though, are the comments left on his blog post announcing the gadget's demise. They reveal the frustration and supportive passion of Palm users around the world, and to me illustrate what people really want from the once-great company:

• a better interface that isn't so buggy and unreliable.
• better battery life (the Foleo boasted six hours. But remember the IIIx: days and days on a couple of AAAs. How far backwards have we gone?)
• more durable. The IIIx also survived a lot of bashing about.
• a phone that isn't a sop to the phone companies -- in other words, so it can do VoIP, work on WiFi networks as well as cellular ones.
• find a way of getting a bigger screen onto a Treo. How about projection?  
• GPS. Things have moved on, Ed, and nowadays we expect our devices to fit a lot more in.
• Like good cameras. Not just for snapping, but for scanning.
• And 3.5G.
• And probably WiMAX.
• And big storage.
• And decent software that can handle PDFs, flash, browsing and interactive stuff.
• And decent keyboards (get back in bed with the ThinkOutside guys, or whoever bought them.) I still love my Bluetooth keyboard and can't understand why they're considered such an afterthought.
• Voice commands and voice recognition.
• USB connectivity

The bottom line, is that we've been thinking the PDA is dead, whereas we should be thinking the other way around: The smartphone is just a PDA with connectivity. A good PDA does all these things we've been talking about, and while we take calls on it, that's a small part of what it is about. We just want the things we did on our PDA to be connected, that's all.

That's not just about being able to take calls, it's about SMS, email, browsing, and of being able to meld into our environment -- GPS to know where we are, cameras and HSDPA and GPS to take photos that go straight to Flickr, tools like Jaiku to wrap us into our social network. It's still a digital assistant, it's just a connected digital assistant.

As one commenter put it, it's still a Getting Things Done Device.It's just we do lots of different things these days, so a to do list shouldn't be where you stop.

del.icio.us Tags: palm, foleo, pda, treo, iphone, smartphone, mistakes

Face it: Facebook is all about you

This is my weekly column for Loose Wire Service, a service providing print publications with technology writing designed for the general reader. Email me if you're interested in learning more.

I can hardly make my way to the drinks table at parties these days without someone accosting me, pinning me to the sideboard and impaling me on the question du jour: What is with all this Facebook stuff?

"It's a good question," I usually respond, determined to get something liquid inside me before answering. The truth is that the Internet is changing so fast, and changing us so fast, it's hard to keep up.

Loyal readers of this column (hi, Colin!) will be familiar with my twitterings on social networking tools like Twitter, Jaiku etc, while the rest of you will remain bemused at best, at worst, tossing the paper aside, comfortable in the knowledge that none of this applies to you.

Well, I've got one word for you and it's this: Skype. To understand why Facebook is so hot at the moment, and why those of you who think you can skip reading this column shouldn't, we need to look at Skype, the free or cheap Internet telephone service.

From that we'll see that technology, the Internet, all that stuff affects us all, and surprises us with its ability to change our habits without us really noticing. Or complaining.

Skype, you see, was nothing in 2004. Into 2005 it remained a sideshow. But then people realized it worked. Voices at the other end didn't sound like frogs in a well. Suddenly everyone was using it to make calls, especially those people in parts of the world where phone calls were ridiculously expensive.

Then the Network Effect kicked in: The more people on it, the more people who weren't on it felt they were missing out -- if not financially -- and they signed up.

And signing up didn't just mean saying yes; It meant buying a headset, downloading software, installing it, signing up for Skype, and, if they wanted to make calls to ordinary telephones, buying credits, which meant using a credit card online.

For a lot of my friends, all of these were firsts. It was a delightful shock to behold. And once they had done those things, they were then ready to do the same thing with other services.

This was a big leap, one that is consistently underestimated by nerdy types who do them casually. Sadly, it was also underestimated by Skype and its new owners eBay, both of whom have failed to leverage the Skype revolution into anything more substantial.

When earlier this month Skype was down for a few days, there was only muted complaints from ordinary users -- not because they don't use Skype, but because they haven't yet come to rely on Skype. (For what it's worth, they should, and eBay should ensure that they do, by a) making it super-reliable and b) adding cool features that real people really want.)

Don't be left out

Anyway, back to Facebook. Facebook was until recently -- September 2006 -- a social networking/homepage type tool for college folk in the U.S. Now half of its users -- in other words, more than 17 million people -- are outside college. (These figures are from Shel Israel, a consultant and writer who asked Facebook for stats.)

What's interesting, though, is how most of these users aren't techie types. While I've been trying to get friends of mine (those friends who aren't techie, which means most of my friends) to sign up for these kinds of services for purely selfish reasons (there are only so many Twitter messages like "Restoring my computer to WinXP SP1 just for fun today! Wildness!" you can take) it's only with Facebook that that actually happened.

And it didn't happen because of me. Most of them signed up anyway, and were already there when I arrived. All sorts of people -- friends from different walks of life, different continents, colleagues, ex-colleagues, readers (OK, reader), age groups, denominations and interests, genders, etc., etc.

Even journalists, not usually known for their hunger for the technologically new, are signing up. Facebook has tipped, in the timeworn phrase, in the same way Skype did. But why?

Well, the obvious answer is because everyone else signed up, so no one wanted to be left out. But I think that happened later. What happened first was that Facebook's developers made it pretty easy to get started -- add a photo, list the schools you went to, find a few friends who are also Facebook users.

Then there are compelling reasons to stay or come back -- joining an interest-based group (there are 47,000 of them), loading a third-party application to do silly extra social things (more than 2,000 of them, including maps showing where you've been, your favorite movies, that kind of thing.)

The biggest reason, however, is that you find all sorts of people you hadn't seen for a while, lost touch with, worked with or knew only indirectly; once you're Facebook friends, the ice is broken and you're sharing again, comfortable in a network of mutual friends.

All of this would sound quite so-so were it not for the fact that Facebook is geared towards social interaction. Not necessarily of the direct kind, upon which business networking sites like LinkedIn are built ("Please introduce me to Joe Bloggs in your network as I want to sell him my idea of Flying Underpants") but the indirect kind: "Anyone seen Ratatouille yet?", "I can't believe there's no English soccer on TV", "My wife just left me for a lumberjack."

Such utterances -- posted on your Facebook page, but easily visible to friends in your network -- invite comment and response, but don't intrude in the way a direct message would.

I call it "displaced chat" -- partly because I have pretensions to academia, and partly because I believe it describes a way for people to interact with others without directly approaching them.

Of course, we shouldn't get too excited about this. Something will come along to dethrone Facebook soon enough (I give it six months; once everyone has basically hooked up with everyone they know or want to know, there's not many places to go.)

But, as with Skype, it doesn't matter. The gates have opened. A whole new bunch of people have embraced a technological innovation -- social networking online - and found that it's easier than they thought. And more rewarding.

I have no idea what the next big thing will be. But the biggest thing now is not Facebook: It's that ordinary people are using it.

Technorati Tags: networks, skype, facebook, social networks