...more recent posts
More bad news from the cellular front. These 3G networks are so cool, but the carriers are completely fucking it up by being greedy bastards. I guess I'm the fool for hoping it might go some other way.
In any case, the bad news here is about "Symbian Signed" and the trend to lock down Symbian OS devices so that the end user can only install carrier approved software. Symbian and MIcrosoft are the two big OS makers for smartphones (yes, the Treo has a Palm OS, but they are on the way out.) And we know Microsoft is going to try to screw the consumer (or, more gently, we know Microsoft will do whatever their customers - the cellular companies - want,) so the hope was that Symbian would go the other way. But it looks like there is reason to suspect that won't be the case.
I think the cellular industry learned from the "mistakes" of the PC world. If you give the people control of the computer (in the PC world that meant the desktop; in the new world that means your smartphone,) they won't be interested in using it for what you, the carrier, want them to use it for (buying Britney Spears ringtones at $2 a pop, and useless crap like that.) So you have to severely limit what the user can do with her computer in order to lock them into using just the services you are selling.
Crap.
Earthlink and the Korean giant SK Telecom are teaming up to bring advanced cellular services to the U.S. market.
Think of SK-EarthLink as the wireless carrier for the geek squad. When it launches later this year, it will target what [Earthlink founder Sky] Dayton calls "Internet-savvy early adopters" -- those consumers who will be the first to buy the latest 3G (third-generation) cell phones and will eagerly use data services via cell or Wi-Fi networks. The joint venture will build on EarthLink's well-deserved reputation as a company willing to try new technologies. It was one of the first ISPs to offer voice-over-Internet-protocol service to its 5.5 million customers and was also an early supporter of broadband. SK Telecom has a similar legacy: With 18 million subscribers, it was the world's first CDMA carrier to launch a 3G network, and it's a pioneer in GPS-based location services, as well as video applications for cell phones....This MVNO thing looks like a ray of hope to me. All the big cellular companies appear to be going the walled garden route with their 3G networks. This is going to create a big opportunity. I think there are a lot of people like me who are willing to pay for fast 3G cellular service. But we want to pay for open access to the internet, not for some specialized content created by the cellular industry! (D'uh!) So charge me by the bit, fine, just let me choose what the bits are going to be from the internet at large.
Here's the cool part, from an investor's point of view: SK-EarthLink will try to reach that goal without spending a dime developing its own infrastructure. Instead, the upstart carrier will rely on Sprint and Verizon Wireless to provide the backbone for its wireless offerings. SK-EarthLink will function as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), essentially renting access to each network. It will pay the carriers a per-minute fee each time one of its customers makes a phone call or streams a video broadcast. SK-EarthLink will also integrate Wi-Fi into its devices, drawing on Dayton's experiences at Boingo Wireless, the nation's largest Wi-Fi hotspot aggregator.
Maybe SK-EarthLink, or some other MVNO, will give the people what they want. Sky Daton has done some cool stuff before so I am a tiny bit hopeful.
For my own reference: notes on one click subscriptions for RSS feeds. Atom feeds will be added around here shortly.
Interview with a comment spammer.
New Apple Powerbooks released today. Still G4. Very small bump in processor speed (to 1.5 and 1.67 Ghz.) 512 megs RAM now standard using 1 DIMM, so going to 1 Gig is only $150 more from Apple (probably a little less if you buy yourself.) It's about time they stopped with the 256 meg nonesense. Slightly faster hard drives (5400 RPM.) And slightly bigger video card with the option of adding a 128 meg ATI with dual-link DVI support for driving the 30 inch Cinema Display (I can dream!)
The trackpad now supports scrolling (horizontal and vertical) through an interesting sounding interface - touch the pad with two fingers at once and it then acts as a scroll wheel type surface (drag up and down and the page moves up and down.)
Nothing to get too excited about, but lots of nice little things and the prices drop a bit too.
Looks like Cingular, following in Verizon's footsteps, will also disable the Bluetooth DUN profile on the Treo 650. (DUN stands for 'Dial Up Networking' and is the part of the bluetooth stack that lets a bluetooth equipped computer use a bluetooth cellphone as a modem.) Jerks. Why not just charge by the bit and let us do what we want?
Again, I don't mind paying! But at least offer me what I want to pay for. Do they not like profits? We are talking about telecoms, so judging by their recent performance the answer might actually be yes.
The Motorola E815 looks really nice. Due 2nd quarter 2005. Presumably on Verizon since it's EV-DO. But will they (Verizon) let the bluetooth do file transfer? And what about (even less likely,) acting as a modem? With EV-DO speeds this would be very reasonable. So far Verizon wants you to buy the PC Card version if you want to use EV-DO for your computer's data connection. This is silly. Look, I don't mind paying more, so why not give me the option of using my phone for both? I don't want to pay $x/month for my EV-DO phone plus $100/month for my EV-DO data access, especially when I don't need voice and data at the same time (I barely need voice at all.) Why not offer a single package in the form of a cellphone/modem?
Still, until Cingular rolls out UMTS, Verizon is the only way to go for high speed cellular in the U.S. So I guess they can be jerks if they want.
Jerks.
John Perry Barlow's The Intimate Planet is a funny blog about meeting random people through Skype.
The bottom line is this: they reached at random out into the Datacloud and found a real friend. And I feel like I have been graced with a real friend in both of them. Given the fact that I've been getting interesting messages from distant strangers since 1985, why do I think the big deal? Why is this different? Because these strangers have voices. There's a lot more emotional bandwidth in the human voice. I'm always surprised by the Meatspace version of someone I've only encountered in ASCII. I'm rarely surprised by someone I've only met on the phone. But one doesn't get random phone calls from Viet Nam or China, or at least one never could before.Skype changes all that. Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.His use of the word "intimate" reminds me of Joi Ito's formulation: "full time intimate community". This is the big picture version of why I am interested in all this technology.
The potential of establishing a real emotional connection is exponentially advantaged.....
....Anyway, I feel as if the Global Village became real to me that night, and, indeed, it has become the Global Dinner Party. All at once. The small world has become the intimate world.
I'm beginning to think this Internet thing may turn out to be emotionally important after all.
Google finally has a plan to deal with comment spam! And all the big players are on board. Great. The idea is simple: hyperlinks tagged with rel="nofollow" don't confer any google juice, thus hopefully taking away the reason for the spam in the first place.
I would install this feature here right away except for one thing. We already strip out *all* HTML from anonymous comments. Links are not in any way possible. And we still get comment spam! Still, maybe if everyone does this it will help. Clearly the situation is out of control and it is worth trying something.
Tim Bray is noticing what everyone else who runs a weblog is noticing: A Referrer Spamstorm.