Is it me? The rant continues. I just don't get the giddy excitement over push-to-talk. People please - these were the walkie-talkies you had as a kid. I understand there are applications that this niche fits - fine - but to supplant normal cell phones? half duplex instead of full duplex? no privacy? this is worse for the user, and worse for the people around him. How many have you have EVER used the 3-way calling feature on your mobile phone?? why don't companies just make THAT feature n-way calling and group services and presence info??

McCarthy said he was recently dismayed to discover someone using the walkie-talkie service while working out at the gym.

"It was absolutely annoying," he said. "I was at the gym the other day and someone was talking on it for about 10 minutes. It beeps every time (a walkie-talkie call comes in) and he had it on speakerphone, and was talking away."

Here's the full story from Wired Wired News: 'Push-to-Talk' Spreading Fast

history 101 - the first thing people do with new technology..is what they have done with the old technology. bet you've heard that a time or two. You know, the TV shows in the 50s (still shown today) that began with a curtain pulled back to reveal the subject (like a play). Newcasts that were more like radio shows. It took decades for TV to find itself. So...mobile games. hmmm...let's take an arcade game and shrink it to a handheld device (gameboy). Just not the same. The first truly mobile game was cleverly called the Nokia game In this game you collaborate with other places using your phone. As it should be. (I always thought that all the new GPS phones should be used for group treasure hunt games.) also in the "smart mob" dept. I think setting up the location database to allow you to access voice messages from fellow freeway drivers on the same freeway going the same direction would be fun. I honestly believe that if you could call the guy next to you it would avoid needless anger. It's simply eaiser to get mad anonomysly.

Remember the game Majestic? It was a role playing game that was mobile, but without phones. You would get calls on landline phones, faxes, etc., all about a fictional story you were dropped into. It was one of those things I thought was a great idea, but before I had a chance to try it it went belly up. It was one of those games that was more like being in a fantasy baseball league - you get out of it what you put into it...and...your fellow players have a big impact on your experience.

On that note, I tried the Sims online and found it was more like a chat room where you don't know anybody. I also tried (as I've written here before) XBOX live and found that:

1. I suck
2. at 42, I'm 20 years older than the average player
3. there are either guys that kick my ass, or, guys that drive backwards.

To demonstrate to a visitor recently I donned the headpiece and plugged everything in (my xbox uses a linksys wireless bridge to connect). I did not notice that the "no volume" key was on and I started talking. "this is strange" said I, "I don't hear any voices" whereupon I pressed the operative button just to hear a bunch of guys that sounded drunk in Mississippi "what other voices do you hear, dude?". I'm still blown away that I can have a motorcycle race with a guy in Mississippi over broadband while sitting in my living room...and talk to the guy too.

TheFeature :: New Devices, Same Games

Ahhh...the never ending "wifi and WAN integration" saga. Made sense to me in 1999 and still makes sense. Not with hot spots, but with IP PBXs and enterprise wide wifi networks.

Look, the attenuation of a wood-frame construction home is around 12-15 dB. While users don't know what a decibell is, they know that in some places they need to walk outside to make a call. Put another way, 12 dB doubles the range from a base station (cell site) in a land mobile enviornment (10**(12/40))=2.0. So, if the range of the cell site was 4 miles, walking inside a house 2 miles from the base station is the same as traveling an extra 2 miles to the cell "edge" of coverage. In the equation above, the number 40 is the loss of signal in a cellular system in a "decade" (10x....or...going from 1 mile to 10 miles). got it? good. now...

a typical office building is more like 25 dB of attenuation - double that of a house - an that's just to walk inside the front door. The combination of metal frame construction and metalized glass windows really blocks signals. That's your US style 40,000 square foot office building too. If you go to NYC, DC, Hong Kong, etc., those metal/concrete/mirrored glass edifices can be up to 35 dB of attenuation just to walk into the lobby! Interior rooms are much worse (hint: if you are waiting for a call and need to go to one of those interior bathrooms and are worried about the extra 10 dB of attenuation, simply take the elevator up 5+ stories...you get back 2 dB/floor). Using our formula, that is 10**(35/40)=7.5, which means that if your building is 1 mile from the cell tower going inside the building is the same as hopping in a taxi and going 6.5 more miles away (and no doubt passing a few more cell sites).

It's terrible - but everybody knows that. If you looked at the slashdot thread on Nextel PTT vs. Verizon PTT you would notice a common theme: what people really want is their phone to work everywhere...then bring me features. what good are network-based features if you cannot access the network? No good. which (at last) brings me to my point: if you are going to put a wifi network in your office that provides coverage everywhere, why not link that to your cellular service? You would never miss a call. that beats putting wide-band repeaters in the office everywhere. The article below is discussing this topic (again).

IWS: No epiphanies on mobile, Wi-Fi integration

And speaking of Nextel and the endless push-to-talk discourse, who are these people that prefer suspending their phone mid-air six inches in front of their face and sharing both sides of their conversation with everybody in a 10 foot radius emulating walkie-talkies? Sure I could see doing that in certain, niche applications (like a meeting/speakerphone) or some businesses, but please - routinely as an alternative to using (mobile) phone?? I supposed if it were fully-interoperable we would see the real appeal for this. 3GPP is working on this standard...

Look at the primitive photo-montage above. There is only one person who looks comfortable and natural with their handset - and it is none other than Nextel CEO Tim Donahue himself in this photo from Fortune Magazine and and article about Nextel's niche. Yes - Nextel has low churn and high ARPU, but is that due to Direct-connect, or, their relentless push toward marketing to enterprises? some of Nextel's other accomplishments include a recent blend with RadioFrame to integrate WiFi with iDen for IBM. The Fortune piece mentions an application with Roto-Rooter, but I must have missed all of the Boost Mobile references. hmmm..

Well, Verizon is apparently struggling with PTT as Sprint looks to roll their version out. Rather than the iDen technology that Nextel uses, these firms are using what could be described as an "after market" version. Companies such as Winphoria and Togabi have developed these, as have QUALCOMM's QChat and others. The biggest difference is performance is the long set-up time (latency): 5 seconds instead of half a second..."push-and-wait-to-talk" is more like it.

Is this the best we, and an industry, can do? location-specific apps should have been available by now...that's technology to get excited about.

Well, this is about time. Now you can take it with you - from home no less, as this article describes: Landline Numbers Can Go Mobile. Most of the landline providers are also mobile providers anyway, but I suppose they need something to complain about.

Another good link from our friends at Fierce Wireless on the lackluster response to the launch of 3G services in Europe. In the "shocked but not surprised" dept., they are discounting the 3G service below 2G services to overcome the anemic subscriber growth: Economist.com "the Shunning of 3G"

Toshiba America Restructures to Push Mobile Devices

Interesting shift in approach and focus from Toshiba.

In an unrelated note, I had my VO2 Max measured/calcualted at 7 am today on a treadmill at the Pacific Athletic Club Nothing quite like running on a treadmill to total exahustion to wake you up. I was not real happy at my "score" of 51.8, although I've not really been doing too much speed work. My wimpy 1000 meter speed swim workout right afterward was never so easy though

I'm looking forward to reading Clayton Christensen's new book "The Innovators Solution" Here's a little backgrounder from a the Singapore perspective. If this book has half the influence on business as his prior work, everybody had better read it....

...on a related note, two more professors trying to stimulate thought/formulation are Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff from Yale with their site www.whynot.net I like their approach, which I would describe as "Ben Franklinesque" in that it encourages tangential collaboration in much the manner of Franklin's Junto club that brought together young citizen/businessmen together to talk about success and failure. This interview from their website describes it much better than I could.

In the "jury is still out" category, I STILL cannot understand how a company like Boost Mobile will make real money. I met these guys two years ago at the E3 gaming convention. At that time I thought that their idea to use Nextel as VNO to sell their service seemed upside down and backwards. Nextel is not a low-cost provider...but...the Boost customers were all in the youth demographic. Yea..dude..I understand the analogy with Roxy and Quicksilver. But they slap their brand on cheap clothes and charge a lot more. This is like slapping a "Roxy" label on an already expensive garment from Nordstrom. Also, last time I checked, the only place it says Boost Mobile is on the handset screen! What's the point of paying extra for some "youth brand" when it's hidden in your pocket on the screen? is this like wearing designer underwear? After Nextel invested a ton in them it now appears to be Nextel's attempt to crack the youth market. Need to learn more, read this Business 2.0 article on the subject.

Finally, PBS's fine series NOW with Bill Moyers featured an interview with George Soros a week or so ago. George reviewed (with new partner host David Brancaccio..familiar to all PBS listeners) his philosophy on building open societies. In particular, what's going on in Iraq now. If you are an avid Daily Show with Jon Stewart viewer (like me) you saw the great interview between Governor George W. Bush, and, President George W. Bush. the best part of the interview was Gov. Bush's assertion that the U.S. "...should not be in the business of nation building". OK. got it. But then...what' Iraq all about? If that's not nation building I don't know what is (or as they say here in Del Mar - "that house is a 'tear down'"). Soros points out that HE is into nation building, and that Iraq is the last place he would ever try to jump-start with US style democracy. He does not believe they are ready for that yet. He believes that continuing to support this administration in the next election would (I'm paraphrasing) in essence tell the rest of the world that "yes...the U.S. People do support the takeover/liberation/destruction of Iraq as carried out in concert with the new Bush Doctorine". He is now supporting a group that he believes has figured this out and is working to remedy it called America Coming Together.

QUALCOMM developed technology a few years ago that added diversity receive antennas for handsets (rx only). This effectively doubles the forward link capacity. The phenomenon of receive diversity reception is not new, or particularly novel any more and has been standard fare for decades....on the base station side that is. This development is for the handset, more difficult - but now a reality. Here's the WSJ story on it (registration required...but not here)

The photo on the right (courtesy this page from Dan Bricklin's essay on cell phone towers) shows the sets of three antennas that are ubiquitous with cell towers. Two antennas are for diversity receive inputs (RX1/RX2) and the third is the transmit antenna. Nowadays one antenna can serve the same purpose using cross polarization internal to the antenna plastic housing rather than two RX antennas spatially separated by 10+ feet.

LNP - Curse...or...business opportunity for carriers?

I'll never forget the day I was driving for the airport when I got a call from our regulatory group "we are planning on supporting Verizon with their objection to LNP...that OK with you?"

"NO...IT'S NOT OK WITH ME" said I

LNP, Local Number Portability, is of course the ability to take your number with you. that is, the carrier cannot (like your email address, for example) hold you hostage to your phone number. What's the big deal, you say, people change numbers all the time. Yea...sure they do....it's so much fun and so convenient...especially when you are a business! NOT. this is an opportunity to keep the identiy you may have had for years and allow people to still contact you. It is particularly important for business. Sure, it will increase churn...but for whom? Carriers that satisfy their customers? No. According to a recent report, for these folks:

About one-third of wireless subscribers – around 50 million – are likely to switch carriers once the FCC-mandated wireless local number portability takes effect on Nov. 24, according to a study released today by billing and customer care vendor Convergys

Well, the epliogue is that my old company embraced the idea of LNP, then verizon (strigl) did too. The storm is coming near the holiday season to a happy carrier near you!

[rant] why does the WSJ Online require me to call in, and do that whole "VRU/wait on hold/read my credit card/security question/verify email address/verify home address" etc., just to pay them money? Does it really matter if I'm paying the bill or Charlie Manson is paying?? they must not live in the same world as the other vendors who of all calculated that the average customer service call costs them $10+....a typical invoice form would work fine online and save them money too...[/rant]

Q: Why are carriers ga-ga about push to talk?

A: They're not. They're jealous of Nextel's metrics: high ARPU and low churn. In an era of declining ARPU, carriers are grasping at anything that they think will help them in the metric wars. Higher ARPU, Lower Churn, Low acquisition costs. Well, two out of three is not too bad.

Anybody who has signed up with nextel and gone through setting up direct connect knows some pain (yes I know, nothing quite like a call to Sprint PCS customer care, which is has been considered as punishment for white-collar criminals recently...maybe Esrey could work off his tax burden by taking customer care calls for five years)

Here's a rant and rave about push to talk linked from Fierce Wireless. The author points out something that's both funny and on-target in Nextel's Ads:

Oh, sure, they also threw in the obligatory picture of a woman using the walkie-talkie feature. Only her picture is an inset, about one-quarter the size of the guys' pictures.

Plus, from the expression on her face, it doesn't really look like she's into the whole walkie-talkie thing. It almost looks like she's pressing the little button and thinking: God, this is so stupid! Why can't we just use it like any other cell phone?!

Whereas the guys - even the hassled construction worker - look like they're using the walkie-talkie and thinking: This is so cool! It's like when we were kids and played Army guy!

lol

In this Wired article, information on the upcomoing Nokia n-gage (not to be confused with mforma's n-game)and reatled mobile games are reviewed. Nokia's strategy with games, like their Club Nokia initiative, seem desinged to irk their carrier customers that would like to do this themselves, but I suppose Nokia with their strong brand and handset expertise should be able to do a decent job with their games. Also helps them to keep Symbian alive.

Wired News: New-Generation Phones Got Game

Kids and cell phones

Question: what is a cell phone to a child: luxury, indulgence, dangerous...or important to have. Answer: important to have. The question is: at what age? According to this article in WirelessWeek, 400,000 kids in the UK under the age of 10 (that's got to be a fair %) regularly use mobile phones compared with 80,000 3 years ago. If you feel so inclined you can take this questionnaire from TracFone. It has such loaded questions as:
Do I want the security of knowing the whereabouts of my child at any given time? Now I ask you, who the hell is going to say "no" to that question? "do I want to know where my 9-year-old is? Nah, not really...why do you ask?" please.

Newsweek has a great section on kids and technology in this weeks issue (although for the life of me I cannot find this online).

The first article was on the topic of what I'd call "adaptive personalization"...something that was a helluva lot more interesting before spam killed the internet. A company called ChoiceStream endeavors to do a better job than Amazon or MyBestBets on AOL. An acquaintance of mine, Michael Pazanni - who has made a career of this, explains in this paper how this will work with the mobile web. If there was ever a place to avoid lengthy q&a it's a cell phone.

Other pieces in the Newsweek section included profound observations such as "more kids are playing video games" types of stats, with some clinical test results that indicate that gamers...well.. are better at test that are somewhat game-like - such as a finding a needle in a graphic haystack (or Waldo, or a guy aiming an Uzi at you). It concludes with this dazzling observation: "..kids are getting better at paying attention to several things at once...but there's a cost in that you don't go into any one thing in as much depth". duh.

I'd never heard of the term "screenagers", an old term, but maybe I'm sheltered. I'd never heard of "Metrosexual" either until last month.
I did learn that VCDs are the choice of the third world. I've always wondered, since I learned (and learned to loathe..in fact..the reason I own a Mac now is due to problems suffered with Pinnacle) Pinnacle software who uses that format for storing videos.

finally, Steven Levy has a great "geek bill of rights" which I'll paraphrase here:

1. every kid deserves internet access : agreed. I'd say they all need BROADBAND and a cell phone too

2. Teacher Access via email - YES YES PLEASE - why is this not mandatory? I don't want to wait until the bi-annual "parent teacher" conference for quick questions...or leave a message at the office and hope to get a call back..or any other needlessly lengthy process to get a simple answer from the teacher

3. Freedom from Multimedia..interesting. trending against the propensity for hardware developers (and software of course) to push the latest technology, which aside from games, turns everybody into amateur Spielbergs. Of course, while attending Torrey Pines High School in 1976, I took "TV and the Media" for english credit...our big project was making a TV commercial. I created a product called "no sweat" anti-perspirant and for the first time (making the video) got the attention of the cheerleader - whom I needed for the video...hmmm...that should have stimulated more thought...

4. Freedom from predators - here here..why can't we put those guys that send my 10-year old porno links to jail?

5.Filter the filters - again, agreed. I've tried both AOL 9.0 and MSN 8.0 and I'm here to tell you they are broadband killers when you use the parental controls. As usual, these devices look better than they work. Either it was painfully slow, or my 13 year old was forever asking my permission for simple sites.

Speed Test...

Ever wonder how you can find out if your car really does that max speed it's rated for? (I've secretly wanted to use that as an excuse, but even I have limits). Well this guy, as reported in the erstwhile smokinggun.com, really did it. A rapid 182 mph in a 55 zone. Drunk no less.That's what I call testing all your limits

does anybody like waiting? Waiting for Godot, or Guffman.... Is "waiting" really a verb anyway? I hate waiting, alsmost as much as I hate impatient people. without pervasive broadband connectivity, waiting will continue to exist as that most brain-dead of activities. I keep thinking of the wonderull Dr. Suess book "Oh, the places you'll go" and that part where, in his search for identity, satisfaction or just the endless search of life...our hero finds "a waiting place" so to speak...a room:

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is waiting

Or in the words of Bruce Springsteen in Badlands: "don't waste your time waiting"

Well, I'm still waiting for a 1XRTT connection on Verizon's network that will work with my apple G4. I've looked at some posts form other rant 'n ravers on similar topics. oh the unrequited anger! It looks bleaker nowadays. If somebody knows the answer, please email me!