Well, the good technology is, so far, living up to it's name. Unlike the bogus intellisync software, that seemed to duplicate calendar events and contacs randomly, I've no such issues (yet) with the Good Stuff.

Ahh..everybody's favorite smart phone, the Treo.What an odessy that's been. Where to begin...hmmm....



I'm using the Verzion version. When I activated the phone, the CSR told me to "take the battery out". I had to explain to him that the Treo 600's battery does not come off - but I got him the ESN (it's written on the back). I configured Intellisync (it blows...if you read no further, remember that) to work with an exchange server and IMAPing into a linux server that has my other mail boxes. So far so good.

Well, without adding lots of needless prose, here's the track record over the last few months:

- the sync program continues to replicate pseudo-random contacts and calendar events. I've read and posted to various message boards on this issue. everybody seems to have this problem, and while you can elimiante it temporarily, it will return.

- my first bill was $4,300. That's about $4,000 too high (I've got a family plan wth 5 phones, including an EV-DO data card and 2400 MOU) with unlimited service and my total bill is about $300. Well, it turns out that whenever a 1X call is up (almost always) I'm on the clock. I think my first month's MOU total was something like 22,000. They took off $4000 later, and now I've got a unlimited data plan for the Treo too.

- the Treo is big. I'd gladly pay $20/month to have an extra, smaller, phone. I'm using my old LG6000 phone and forwarding the calls when I'm, for instance, on a bike ride. I don't really need the email capability from the treo, and i've used a BREW app from mapblast that has all I need other than basic telephony while on the road.

- 2 hours of talk time comes too fast...well...maybe it's a bit longer than that. I'm guilty of not optimizing the operation for maximum talk time yet. But without a swapable battery...it sucks.

- The phone frequently (>1/week) freezes and requires I reset it.

- The wonderful "freeze" problem happens when there are network problems, and often when there is a call coming in. A call you cannot answer nor stop from riniging (well, you could slide the top "buzz" button on) by hitting the "cancel" key as the screen is also frozen.

I'm hoping that the Good technology helps. Along with Above All software, their's is supposed to be the best.

What a difference a couple years and huge market demand for slightly new products make. WiFi's explosion is the well known example - albeit wireless LANs were sort of taking off rather slowly, until 802.11's breakthrough year of 1999. For example, read this description of one goal of EV-DO (was called HDR in 2000 "High Data Rate") from the gurus at QUALCOMM as described in their 2000 paper

"In fact, one need not necessarily look beyond corporate boundaries; professional employees often spend nearly as much time in company conference rooms as in their own offices, and rarely are such rooms equipped with the number of ports need to connect the majority of participants laptops."

In short, there is a demand for wireless broadband in the office. QC predicted that HDR would fill that market demand, and while EV-DO must be considered a "success" next to WCDMA data, the real success has come from home and enterprise installations of cheap wifi gear.

Predicting market demand is quite an art, but some make it look easy. The QUALCOMM team was prescient in their sense of a gigantic demand for mobile broadband - and why not? As a typical Fortune 1000 company, they had thousands of employees scattered over 20 buildings 20 minutes north of downtown San Diego. What was atypical at QUALCOMM (well, normal for many CA high tech companies, but not normal among most Fortune 1000 companies in the 90s) was the email culture that permeated the organization from CEO Irwin Jacobs on down. What was typical at QUALCOMM was the propensity for too many meetings. So, combine too many meetings (often in other buildings than the employee's office building) with an email culture where 100+ emails/day is normal (pre spam era) and voila! You have a giant demand for mobile broadband. While their argument was correct from a market standpoint, and their design was optimum for a migrating from plain-old IS-95, it was not the quick and dirty technology that 802.11 was from a consumer standpoint. That is, they understood the latent demand perfectly. But EV-DO was a carrier's technology, not an enterprise/home technology. That's were WiFi cam in...the rest is history in the making.



At the same time, the explosion of portable music was occurring. Consumer electronics giant Sony was the leader in rapid prototype and consumer product development. They had shown with the invention of the Walkman, that they had the vision for designing products for latent, but apparently unknown, mobile music market. So, what was their solution? The stick. Using their proprietary "Magic Gate" technology they had quite a product..but good god, using it was a pain...all due to DRM issues. They finally admitted this week that they had failed to capture a market they KNEW existing and left it to Apple to do the job.

Majority Of Teens, Young Adults Have Broadband Access That's not so much of a news flash. What is, is that it increased by 11% in the last quarter. Assuming all college teens have broadband, this is more a reflection of teens at home and the increase in home broadband penetration..good news.

What a wunderbar world. At CES this year there were a number of new and interesting products, not the least of which is the revival of Broadband of Power

The traditional issue of broadband over power as a competitor to wide area networks was the fact that you cannot pass through a transformers..but that's exactly what makes it ideal for in-home distribution. the new standard that will do that over power may some day make a big dent in the wifi market for in-home broadband sharing..or more likely...the new media distribution systems for home.