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Intel's COO Paul Otellini gave a keynote speech at 3GSM where he discussed design plans for 3G mobile phone chipsets due in mid 2005:

With the two applications processors working together, you'd have a product that included a 4 megapixel camera, or even two cameras, each with its own "quick capture" port, one of four and one of two megapixels. You'd have full UMTS capability on the Wideband CDMA encoding scheme. You'd have a battery life of "multiple days" - average of about four. You'd have seamless roaming from ordinary GSM to 3G to WiFi. It would be costly, yes; but it would be a device capable of astonishing performance. It would be equally happy as a Symbian, or a Windows Mobile, or a Palm or a Linux platform.

- jim 2-26-2004 5:54 pm [link] [add a comment]

Close on the heels of Yahoo launching their own search engine comes the: Yahoo Keyword Density Analysis Comparison to Google. Interesting.

Here's the (so far uninteresting) /. discussion.
- jim 2-25-2004 5:39 pm [link] [add a comment]

What demographic group spends the most hours per week playing on line video games? The answer might surprise you.
- jim 2-25-2004 2:42 am [
link] [4 comments]

I was thinking about this yesterday: using a cameraphone as a scanner:

NEC and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology have devloped technology which uses movie recordings to produce high quality images, on par with those of a scanner. This technology will be aimed at cellular phones and video cameras.

The technique involves recording a part of the subject to a movie, while moving the camera; the "Mosaicing Technology" analyzes the moving image and estimates the three-dimensional position of the subject, and under the supervision of the "Ultra Resolution Technology," the joining points of the image are deleted, thereby optimizing it so that even low resolution cameras can produce scanner like output. In other words, even cellular phones and video cameras can produce high quality images.
My guess is this is a little way off, but that will be seriously useful. Even if it could just do business cards (with some OCR) it would rule.
- jim 2-24-2004 6:21 pm [link] [9 comments]

If you have a TiVo, you probably want to take this survey. And even if you don't, you might want to check it out to get some ideas about what new features TiVo might be working on. Wow. Seems like it might become a first class citizen on your home network. (You've got a home network, right? Well, soon...) (via PVRblog)
- jim 2-23-2004 10:27 pm [link] [add a comment]

Clever ATM scam.

Personally, I'd like to get a text message any time a financial transaction supposedly involving myself takes place. Is there anything like that (with bank cards and/or credit cards?)
- jim 2-22-2004 10:09 pm [link] [1 comment]

Day two of jury duty. I was selected for a civiil case yesterday, and we heard opening arguments in the late afternoon. Doesn't seem like it will be a real long one. But I doubt it will finish today.

I had my treo in the morning yesterday, which was nice because we were just sitting around. Surfing the web sure beats reading the paper which is what everyone else was doing. Pretty hard to read the paper for four hours. But when I came back from lunch they confiscated it at security because of the camera! I felt like they were taking away my super powers. I guess it doesn't matter so much today since we should be busy for most of it.

Just doing my part.
- jim 2-20-2004 5:40 pm [link] [13 comments]

The SD card in my Treo popped out last week. I'm pretty sure it happened in my apartment (obviously the party had nothing to do with this.) So I figured it would turn up eventually, but now I'm starting to think that won't happen. Bummer. Those things are not cheap.

The result, not counting me losing my mobile mp3 playing ability that I really didn't use too much, is that I can't email my photos to the server. I need the expansion card for that. So the photolog is not getting any love these days.
- jim 2-18-2004 8:28 pm [link] [add a comment]

Excellent. This is what we need. Matsushita is developing a hybrid image sensor chip that combines the best qualities of CCD image sensors (good quality, good low light abilities) with the best qualities of CMOS image sensors (low cost, low power consumption.)

For high-end digital camera and camcorder users, 1.3 and 2MP is a little bit of a disappointment since it will have no immediate impact here. What it does mean is that a whole new wave of higher image quality camera phones, X10 wireless cameras, and other low-power devices should start appearing on the market soon.
Woot! 2MP camera phones with reasonable battery life. I. Cannot. Wait.

More technical details are here at EE Times.
- jim 2-18-2004 7:33 pm [link] [add a comment]

Cool concept sketches of a hypothetical PDA / notebook combo with a folding screen. I've thought about something similar before. The tradeoff might be worth it: a much smaller folded size unit in exchange for a very thin seam down the middle of your display.
- jim 2-18-2004 7:00 pm [link] [1 comment]

Texas Instruments is about to make wireless capabilities much easier for manufacturers to add to their products:

This will allow TI to add a cellular radio right into its DSP processors which are used by companies like Nokia and Palm. (Well digital CMOS radios have been around for a while, but it has been very hard to make them commercially thus far.)

This digital CMOS radio would cost an additional 35 cents and will basically do three major things: cut the cost of handsets drastically, reduce the power consumption hugely, and if all goes well basically make bluetooth, Wi-Fi and all future wireless PAN and LAN technologies fairly easy to incorporate into the handsets.

- jim 2-17-2004 9:06 pm [link] [add a comment]

Happy Valentine's Day.
- jim 2-14-2004 5:24 pm [link] [2 comments]

Apparently Nokia is adding Python support to series 60 mobile phones. Being able to script a mobile phone is one of my dreams (yeah, I know, but you take what you can get.) It's something I didn't expect any of these companies to make possible. Is this really going to be open to everybody, or will you have to be some sort of registered developer?

Yet another reason to learn Python.
- jim 2-12-2004 9:57 pm [link] [5 comments]

Comcast has made a surprise $66 billion bid for Disney. That match makes no sense to me.
- jim 2-11-2004 6:58 pm [link] [5 comments]

Anandtech.com is a very old, very popular, and very well respected computer related site ("your source for hardware analysis and news" is the tag line.) Anand Lal Shimpi is the proprietor. He's always been a Windows guy, but he just bought a mac with the intention of using it as his main computer for 1 month and writing about the switch on his weblog.

This is a great test for the mac since he isn't going to pull any punches, but at the same time I trust him to have an open mind and tell the truth. Plus I figure I'll learn tons about XP since that is what he is comparing it to. Not ever having used that makes my fondness for the mac rather ungrounded, so I'm looking forward to following Anand's experiment.
- jim 2-10-2004 11:08 pm [link] [2 comments]

On August 15, 2000 Bruce Schneier wrote:

What amazes me is the dearth of information about the security of this protocol [Bluetooth]. I'm sure someone has thought about it, a team designed some security into Bluetooth, and that those designers believe it to be secure. But has anyone reputable examined the protocol? Is the implementation known to be correct? Are there any programming errors? If Bluetooth is secure, it will be the first time ever that a major protocol has been released without any security flaws. I'm not optimistic.
From ZDNet, February 9, 2004:
Nokia has admitted that some of its Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones are vulnerable to "bluesnarfing", which is where an attacker could read, modify and copy a phone's address book and calendar without leaving any trace of the intrusion.
There is a more detailed look at the vulnerabilities at bluestumbler.org. I stole the Schneier link from a comment in the discussion over at slashdot.
- jim 2-10-2004 10:07 pm [link] [add a comment]

Looks like the Foveon chip will finally hit the consumer market in the $399 Polaroid x530. Here's the Foveon website, and here's the NYTimes story on the Polaroid camera:

This week Foveon will enter the mainstream market with a new camera priced at $399 that will be manufactured in China and marketed as the Polaroid x530 with Foveon technology.

The Foveon sensor chip, called the X3, is made using an industry standard semiconductor manufacturing process and has received good reviews for color fidelity and resolution. The chip is composed of millions of photo-detectors, each capable of capturing red, blue and green light. In contrast, most of today's digital cameras use a chip with individual color filters that correspond to each photoreceptor. Although the Foveon technology is generally thought to have advantages over the three-chip approach in image quality, cost, lower power consumption and adaptability to new photo and video applications, it has not been widely adopted. The challenge has been to compete with an older, more entrenched technology that is falling in cost.
Falling in cost is to put it mildly. I'm thinking the Foveon might be too late, but it will be interesting to see the quality.
- jim 2-10-2004 5:06 pm [link] [2 comments]

From here to VOIP

Here's a product I want: a cordless phone. No, not a cellular phone. Just a cordless phone. And yes, while there are tons of such phones on the market, the one I want is not available. Read on for my first draft of what it looks like.



Read the rest of this post...



- jim 2-09-2004 11:11 pm [link] [5 comments]

An Oregon restaurant is replacing wait staff with wireless touch screen ordering devices. I've been thinking about this for some time now. Doesn't seem like all the pieces are in place yet. But what about this idea: very soon (in the next 2 years) you could just let people order through their (wifi, bluetooth, GRPS, CDMA, whatever...) mobile devices. You could even identify repeat customers this way. Walk into a restaurant and todays menu is immediately sent to your handheld. Check what you want and send it back. Plus, you could store user preferences on the restaurant server, like: "I always want my hamburger medium rare."

I guess this is one small piece of my larger feeling that digital identity will be tied to our mobile communications devices.
- jim 2-09-2004 7:50 pm [link] [3 comments]

This is like a mini dream come true for me, at least as far as having fun watching corporate america goes: Jobs blasting Eisner in public.

"The truth is there has been little creative collaboration with Disney for years," Jobs said. "You can compare the creative quality (of Pixar films) with the creative quality of Disney's last three films and judge each company's creative ability yourselves."
And:
"We feel sick about Disney doing sequels," Jobs said. "If you look at the quality of their sequels, such as 'Lion King 11/2' and (the Peter Pan sequel 'Return to Neverland'), it's pretty embarrassing."
If you're not following the story, Steve Jobs is CEO of Apple and of Pixar (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc...) Pixar had a distribution deal with Disney which is now coming to a close, but the two sides were unable to reach an agreement on extending the partnership. So Pixar is going it's own way, apparently with some hard feelings on each side.

Although the real picture is probably a little more complex, from my perspective these two CEOs represent the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their visions for the future of digital media. Jobs wants the technology to empower people - as consumers, sure - but also as creators. Eisner would like to see general purpose computers outlawed so that all we could do is watch the crap his company produces (for example, he was a major supporter of the SSCA.) Both of these guys have *massive* egos, so the battle is fun to watch. To me the idea that someone can diss Eisner is just beautiful.

But it's even juicier than that. While these rumors have been around for a while, they have picked up a lot of steam lately. Could Jobs replace Eisner as the next CEO of disney? What would happen if a major global media company was run by someone who appears to favor the dissemination of technology?

Kind of makes me giddy...
- jim 2-09-2004 6:41 pm [link] [2 comments]

Try to keep up please. 802.20 wireless: "FLASH-OFDM stands for Fast Low-latency Access with Seamless Handoff Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing."

Slashdot article, Reiter's Wireless Data weblog.
- jim 2-07-2004 6:58 pm [link] [add a comment]

Now you tell me! It turns out there is a setting in iTunes that causes the program to automatically fetch CD track information, rip the CD, and then eject it, every time you put a new CD in the drive. It's a small thing, but it would have made my life a little bit easier lately had I known this.
- jim 2-05-2004 5:15 pm [link] [1 ref] [2 comments]

Wow. Credit card sized camera phone from NEC (available soon, but in China!) Really nice looking design I think.
- jim 2-04-2004 8:29 pm [link] [add a comment]

The end of the laptop?

Home servers and smartphones will eventually replace notebook computers for most users.
I basically agree with this trend. Certainly by early 2006 (this is my projection for when CPUs will be small enough to give smartphones the power they need.)
- jim 2-04-2004 7:49 pm [link] [1 comment]

Cool hook for a travel blog service: easily create U.S. and world maps of all the places you have been. Here's my U.S. map, since my world map would look pretty barren (typical lame American!)


create your own visited states map or write about it on the open travel guide

Visited states in red, of course.
- jim 2-04-2004 7:19 pm [link] [11 comments]

So I remember: retractable USB sync / charger cable for the Treo.
- jim 2-04-2004 7:11 pm [link] [2 comments]

Digital music (industry?) blog co-operated by Om Malik and Rafat Ali.
- jim 2-04-2004 7:08 pm [link] [add a comment]

Make your Livejournal into a book. (via kottke) That is interesting. Should that idea be thrown onto the towering pile of projects I will get around to Real Soon Now?
- jim 2-04-2004 7:03 pm [link] [5 comments]

TiVo's recent purchase of a small company called Strangeberry has had the rumor mongers speculating for the past few weeks. While little hard information seems to be available, Om Malik appears to be getting close to the real story.
- jim 2-03-2004 7:55 pm [link] [8 comments]

older posts...