Category: Telephony

to URL or not to URL, that is the question

Since Phil Windley did an interview with Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan of Posterous that was recorded June 8th and posted shortly thereafter, I’ve been playing with Posterous, linking it to my Blogger and Twitter accounts and the simplicity has really dawned on me as to how significant something like Posterous is. Simply: Just email your post to yourself and you have a blog post.

None of this write here or go to this URL “stuff”. None of this WordPress complexity, either. Now granted, for some of us engineering geeks, we like the complexity. But for Mom and Dad, not going to happen. Maybe they can make something like Blogger happen, but then again, maybe all they can handle is email.

Take Twitter for example, pretty simple interface, 140 characters, micro-blogging – call it what you want, but the bottom line – 140 characters and that’s it. Some people are filling their accounts with nonsense, like what kind of coffee they are getting or what kind of weather there is where they are. I admit it, I have done some of the same.

The 140 character limit originally came from SMS, the Short Message Service, the text messaging “thing” that your kids are using on their cell phones. It’s this short because in the original designs, SMS was carried in the control channel. These days, it’s application will eventually head to IP, as all of the carriers figure out how to move the app into the IP world since it will be less expensive to deploy there, especially as the massive SMS apps (which the “reality” shows like Idol caused to happen) continue to have popularity with the masses.

Oh, but “some” have said Twitter can be extended, use SnipUrl and you can put a short link in your twitter feed that will redirect (using the basic HTTP redirect capabilities, that’s all SnipUrl is after all is one big mesh of a database of redirect links). And low and behold that’s how you are supposed to “post a picture” to or using twitter. This would work for any link you can get to on the world wide web. But this adds complexity to something already simple.

Posterous reminded me about the short URL phenom because if you link your Twitter account to your Posterous blog, then they will automatically create a twitter post with a short url linking back to your Posterous post. Pretty cool, because they are making it simple to use.

Simple is what it’s all about.

I had a similar discussion in a slightly different vein with a marketing person for a project I’m working on for her, and I was telling her to be careful on the business case because you can’t count on people typing into the URL bar, which she disagreed with. Well, missy, I say, I have kids, so I have a built in test group right in my house, so I tried my little theory out on these two and I found out that neither of them really know what the URL is or what that thing at the top of the browser window is for. I am pretty sure that both of them have typed something in there at some time in their short “internet” lives, but they really prefer not to do anything with it. They both get links in email or forum posts and they set them as favorites/bookmarks and then they navigate back there using that mechanism.

With the movement of mobile devices from phones to “smart” phones, I would (and to my marketing person) strongly suggest that with limited screen real estate and with the urgency of the mobile tasks, people will just naturally gravitate toward using links or bookmarks or widgets or whatever the new technology is at the time. Manually typing in a URL into an address bar is about to be a thing of the past, especially for a mobile device.

That’s where I think we are going, to the continued use of bookmarks and linking and a bit less of the ” W W W . YOURSITEHERE . com stuff.

Volunteer in your community

On November 13, I made a presentation of a check of $750 from the Verizon Foundation to the Woodside Elementary School PFC as a matching contribution for my volunteer hours as one of the parent volunteers in the traffic line, assisting kids to get safely to school each morning.

The Verizon Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Verizon Communications, is committed to improving literacy and K-12 education; fostering awareness and prevention of domestic violence; and promoting the use of technology in health-care delivery. In 2006, the foundation awarded more than $69 million in grants to nonprofit agencies in the United States and abroad. The foundation also matched charitable donations from Verizon employees and retirees, resulting in $29 million in combined contributions.

Under the foundation’s Verizon Volunteer initiative, one of the nation’s largest employee-volunteer programs, company employees and retirees have also contributed nearly 3 million hours of community service since Verizon’s inception in 2000. In 2006 alone, volunteers contributed 600,000 hours. This latter Verizon Volunteer initiative is the grant program that I applied for. For more information on the foundation, visithttp://www.verizon.com/foundation.

Many corporations have similar programs. Does your employer offer such a program that might “double up” the volunteer hours or contributions you may already be providing to the school, the PFC, or elsewhere in the community? Please check. If you are not already, consider volunteering for one of the many positions of the Woodside PFC or elsewhere in our community.

We need to fund basic science research

As some of you might know, I often write about technology topics in Telecommunications or Electrical Engineering. Today, however, I thought it important to pick a slightly different slant…

This weekend, I was listening to my backlog of podcasts and included in what I listened to were two different podcasts forTechNation where

  • Dr. Moira Gunn (the host) interviews Greg Lucier, the Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen. In the interview, the point that is put across on why society needs to fund basic science research.
  • Science journalist David Ewing Duncan discusses the “The Bio-Issue of the Week” with Dr. Gunn, in which drug spending (R&D) is up, but results in the from approved drugs are down and some drugs are about to come off patents, so revenues for these companies will eventually dry up.

In both cases, as I’m hearing and reading many other articles on diverse topics, it may be because our country doesn’t support the basic science research enough. For example, in the latter podcast, the point was made that there is a mountain of data out of the human genomics project that really needs detailed analysis; e.g. we know what a gene does, what we don’t know is exactly how it does it. Or considered another way, the genes that a human shares with a mouse is really a high percentage, something approaching 98%+, but what makes the difference between the human and the mouse is when and how the gene does it’s job.

Without interested people, without post-doc programs to provide research topics, … well, would you work in a field that is apparently drying up? But, it’s not really drying up, other countries, like Korea, China, and Australia have tremendous programs for this sort of thing. We are giving our best and brightest lost of reasons to leave this country.

The lack of sensible policy at the federal level, the lack of proper funding, in cross-disciplined approaches, to projects that are going to benefit us all, … well, I fear for the future (next couple of decades)…

You might say this isn’t important, but you’d be missing the point. The direct investment that DARPA, NASA, and other agencies had with science and technology research provided some glamour for the space program stuff of the 60’s, but it also lead to communications satellites and other mundane things like cellular telephone networks and devices.

Some like to say that Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise “invented” the cell phone, because of the use of the communicator on each Star Trek episode, but the fact of the matter was that the imagination of a whole generation was sparked, because of the believability of those episodes, and a market demand (for cell phone technology) was later satisfied, not only by companies trying to make money, but by a whole generation of engineering and scientific students that brought a passion to creating not only the mobile phone technologies we take for granted today, but the internet, the progress toward improvements in the cancer situation (many people can live out their lives today in remission, whereas 20 – 30 years ago, cancer was a death sentence) and countless other technologies we so easily take for granted.

We need to continue to improve upon this situation. Can you imagine a world without Diabetes? Did you know, we stand on the brink of figuring out how to accomplish this? This isn’t a would it be nice thing to do, there are huge costs in both medical support and human suffering associated with just this one disease. Make the investment – reap huge benefits; just like we did in mobile phone and internet technologies.

I’d like to ask you today, to write your congressman, tell them this is important to us, as a country, to change this situation. Invest in science. It doesn’t have to be preachy, it doesn’t have to any more than a 1-2 minute phone call or a 1 paragraph email, but do something to be part of the solution to change from an almost anti-science policy to one where, similar to the 60’s, we are on the road to great things.

Sunrocket calls it quits

Just saw (via Reuters) that Sunrocket appears to have closed down.

Recently, I posted about the perils of IP and the US Patent office, and Vonage was still holding on.

Hype has to be balanced with flawless execution, which is certainly a hard thing to do. If you have more money, you can weather some large mistakes. We’ll have to see what the news is as this story develops, certainly at this early stage almost anything could be “blamed” for what has happened to Sunrocket. The Truth will probably take some time to come out.

Siemens brings DECT to US

According to The Business VoIP Report, DECT technology is now shipping from Siemens.

Siemens has begun shipping to the U.S. a variety of cordless phones built around the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephony (DECT) standards. The new Gigaset models include the S450 IP and SX762 WLAN DSL gateway. While DECT phones have been on the European market for over 10 years, the new models represent the first DECT devices Siemens has brought to the U.S. The line includes both IP and non-IP devices, and brings a wide variety of new features and feature-delivery mechanisms to the U.S. market.

Noting other news sources earlier, I had written about this interesting trend (about 8 months ago) in which a European technology innovation was finally getting to our shores after 10 years of maturity. Actually, some early Gigasets where able to be purchased back then, so with a little more fanfare, we have a DECT device offering that is being broadened.

  • Here (where Siemen’s Gigaset was noted as being an example of among the first of the DECT models you could purchase then that is/was coupled with Yahoo! Messenger w/Voice capabilities) and
  • here where more models where announced and expected to be showing up by 3Q2007.

WAMU – Tech Tuesday – Musings on mobile phone technology

I’m a little behind on my podcast listening, but I caught one just this weekend, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, Tech Tuesday, is a technology review radio show, which is recorded and available for the public as a podcast or a web download. Often, his shows depict the social aspects of technology and how society shapes technology.

A typical Tech Tuesday always includes the political or social implications of any new innovation, and explores the unexpected ways in which change creeps (or steam rolls) into our lives.

This particular show, from 5/22, had a few guests on the program, one gentleman from India and his efforts to bring internet to the public in less than metro areas of India, via wireless internet kiosks (not your typical internet access) for the farmer to provide agricultural product pricing, access to government services, for example… A second man talked about his company’s efforts in Cambodia, to bring a higher class of work to people there, via simple data entry jobs, since the work can be outsourced practically anywhere now…

This piece should remind us that our view of the “internet” resource isn’t necessarily the only one. Even mobile phone technology can be deployed differently in the 3rd world and allow different types of “applications” to be deployed. As an example, forget the “near” 100% coverage we have here in the U.S., think instead about coverage that might be “good enough” – and coupled with lower infrastructure costs as technology has improved, and you have a fixed-wireless phone system that doesn’t rely on mobility so much, but does indeed provide basic telephone service to a rural area, since to provide “real” fixed telephone service, with fiber, copper wires, and traditional telco switches is just too costly, indeed it’s unreasonable to consider in this environment.

Myself, I’m reminded about a deployment of SMS related technology I did for my last company. The scene: an African tribal herdsman. The problem: Moving his herd of cattle from one place to another. Why? Because of hoof and mouth disease, all cattle movement is strictly controlled by the government. The herdsman has to go to a government office, fill out some paperwork, come back the next day for his permit to go from point A to point B with his cattle.

These native African herdsmen are fiercely independent, often they’d rather distrust the government, but the hoof and mouth disease problem is endemic in parts of Africa and the situation does need to be improved upon.

The solution? My company worked with one of the local mobile phone companies to deploy an SMS based forms system that interconnected the farmer with the government. The technology was off the shelf web servers, so that “SMS applications” could be deployed with simple HTML tags in the basic web pages of a web app that already existed. What we added was a network based browser that rendered this HTML, on one side, and interfaced to the mobile provider’s SMS gateways. The special HTML tags identified specifically the text that was meaningful in the SMS messages, whereas the remaining text would be worthwhile to the typical computer screen.

So, how did this all work? Like this…

  • The farmer decides he wants to move his herd. He knows where they are currently and he knows where he wants to go…
  • He pulls out his mobile phone (and they do have and use them there) and sends a text msg to a specific number, for the government’s form for cattle movement.
  • In response, he receives a “fill-in the blanks” msg, which he replies to, which allows him to fill-in the info that the government needs: name, number of cattle, that sort of thing. He sends it back, and receives a separate SMS msg, with an authorization code.
  • The tribesman begins moving his herd.
  • He comes to a government checkpoint, shows his SMS authorization code on his phone to the guard at the checkpoint, the guard sends the code number to the app on his own phone, and now the herdsman can proceed to the next checkpoint.
  • Continuing on his journey, the herdsman repeats the checkpoint process with each guard he has to proceed through.
  • Arriving at this destination, the herdsman sends his own authorization code back, just as the guards have been doing at each checkpoint, which closes out the herdsman’s cattle movement

So, the government gets to monitor herd movement within their country, the herdsman didn’t have to go to any government office, he simply used a tool he already had (his mobile phone). Even the guards didn’t have any paperwork to fill-out and submit. Everyone makes out for the better.

The interesting thing is this was deployed about 10 years ago, with existing SMS technology. Today, people might be thinking about web browsers in the phones, and a traditional web app or a mobilized web app, but the point is – for this service, we used an existing web app, modified HTML slightly, and inserted our network server, which

  • rendered the pages, as if it were a user,
  • extracted the special SMS tags and pertinent textual data,
  • pushed this data onto the SMS gateway,
  • upon response from the gateway, the text from the herdsman is formatted
  • the HTML response is sent back to the application

No “special” phones or WAP browsers, just plain ole text msging.

Now don’t ask me about how the herdsman would charge his phone, while I suspect he had a solar charger, I never did find that out for sure.

New “terms” in the telephony business

I can’t remember where I read this, but now that VoIP is a pretty common technology offering and that more and more of the common man is aware of what it is and what it does, it’s fair that new terms are coming to the forefront…

  • “Fuzzing” is essentially a denial-of-service attack against a VoIP system.
  • “Footprinting” is using a search engine to find things like extension listings on the open Internet.
  • “SIP Enumeration” means probing ports on a network to find one that isn’t tightly locked down.

Nothing really new here as far as content, these security issues have been discussed before, what’s new is the “catchy” terms themselves.

Vonage hanging on?

On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in KSR vs. Teleflex, finding that the “combination of two commonly known elements into something obvious” is not patentable. While on it’s surface this is a good thing, eliminating lots of expense in litigating bogus patents or patents that do not really enhance, as might be expected the next piece of news was:

From FierceVOIP: Vonage has seized on the ruling, asking an appellate court to throw out the verdict against it and order a new trial. Verizon, of course, is opposed. Vonage is already appealing its loss at trial; the appellate court has set a June 25 hearing on that appeal. Vonage wants the appeal to be put on hold pending the results of the new trial. If it loses that second trial, Vonage wants the existing appeals process to resume. Even though Vonage was convicted of infringing three patents, the courts are letting the company operate pretty much as normal while the appeals are being heard.

I need a playbook.

Let’s see,

  • I’ve lost,
  • I’m appealing, but
  • I want my appeal on hold and I want a new trial,
  • but if I lose at that trial, I want my appeal to start again

Public Service Msg for the Deaf

At this link is a PR regarding AOL and Sprint supporting Deaf people by extending the Sprint IP Relay to AIM users. I’ve noticed this in the past, since I was working some deaf related issues having to do with supporting TTY in voice mail, but this appears to be another public notice about the availability of this service.

I salute the efforts of both companies to get the word out about this service. I hope each and every deaf person with a computer uses it. Since there are IM clients for mobile phones as well, this just further extends the capabilities…

… Oh, I use Yahoo, I am deaf, I don’t want to use AIM ???? For those people, don’t forget that there are number of IM programs that support multiple IM services. Check out GAIM (small footprint version at here) and Trillian (here). It’s easy to sign up for the extra account on AIM and you won’t miss out on much at Yahoo or MSN, either.

Sprint has more than 15 years of experience in providing relay services to persons who are deaf, hard of hearing or deaf-blind, or who have a speech disability to communicate with hearing persons on the phone. Sprint offers relay services through an intelligent platform in 32 states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, New Zealand and to the federal government.

Broadband Wireless – Now with WiFi!!

This week the NYTimes noted in the technology section that a company by the name of AutoNet had struck a deal with Avis to provide a wifi experience “in your rental car.”

While aimed at the business person renting a car (and perhaps specifically targeted at the person with a wifi laptop but not yet having a broadband wireless access card or tethered phone, the concept is interesting (notwithstanding the safety and legal issues involved). Interesting, because it provides local access to a “router” – this is the wifi part – and wireless “wide area network” access to the Internet.

This isn’t the first time this has been around, Kyocera has marketed a similar device for some time to the public (Link to rfwel website). People on InternetbyCellPhone (groups.yahoo.com) have been talking for quite awhile about how to do this with the basic laptop and Window’s Internet sharing feature.

More players probably means this is starting to get real. Safety issues aside, the more connected we get, the easier it will be to travel with those “connected” kids of ours.

One point… the NYT article notes Autonet as the company involved with Avis. Autonet’s website notes a Skype application of the technology (i.e. travel with your Skype client on the laptop or a Skype standalone wireless phone) make calls all day long on the wireless “data” network… This is something that the wireless carriers TOU spell out as something “not good” – not for technology reasons – really – but rather because the pricing for data plans is all messed up. Today’s plans are designed for the “occasional” data user, not a cable modem user… Perhaps more pricing plans are headed our way?