Category: mobile-technology

Russell Beattie and many others have been talking about the mobile phone as a mp3player. To me this is nothing new at all. God since I first saw the Ericsson Mp3 attachment in early 2000, I always wanted one.

And I did end up buying one, I mean two. Now if you can get them on the market, they cost 25 pounds. It used MMC and came with 32 meg and a nasty card reader which would consume the mouse and keyboard ports for power. Thanks goodness for 8 in 1 card readers!

Anyway since the old ericsson days I've progressed onto the Microsoft Smartphone range. I wanted the Ericsson Bluetooth Mp3 Headset but there was no way I was going to get hoodwinked back into using Sony Memory stick, specially the Duo versions. I thought in advance that the SPV with large SD card could play not only music on the go but little movies if needed. And in that lies the issue.

The Bingo which Russell talks about is just that, with enough storage your mobile phone can be a great mp3 player. Maybe even better than the ipod? As Russell identified, why carry all your music with you when you can stream it on demand? Yes I know GPRS and 3G are expensive at the moment, but its getting cheaper plus there nothing stopping you from copying files over beforehand. Obviously there are those who disagree.

I wanted to go one step beyond Russell's argument. Most phones now have Bluetooth, hell some even have wifi now. How long have apple fans been screaming for Bluetooth or wifi in there ipods? Well I'm thinking Bluetooth with something simple like the file transfer stack or even some kind of mDNS (zero-conf) protocol on top of Bluetooth. Could open the door to p2p sharing or listening on the go… How interesting would that be. That regular train ride to work would be that more interesting. Think about toothing someones music collection while waiting for the train to Crystal Palace?

Oh by the way, Mark Eichin, makes a good comment about audioblogging. Don’t worry folks, there's no way I'm going audioblogging anytime soon…

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At the bottom of that page from the Register was a link about the BluePod file swapping. Now I had heard about it but always dismissed it as rubbish talk. Till I sat down and read it today. I had the idea about bluetooth swapping along time ago, but i'm sure many did. But using ZeroConf Lan aka Rendezvous sounds like a excellent idea. I'm actually quite amazed some of the things Simeda are doing in Bucharest, and cant wait to try out there beta webserver. I have to admit I wasnt the biggest fan of Apple for taking ZeroConf Lan and rebranding it as Rendezvous but actually now maybe they might have kept the standard ticking over, as few others are. I might even go as far as installing it on my machines at home now. Also found a client for PocketPC by Apple of all people. And a Hydra type of application which allows you to share media and clippings over Zeroconf/Rendezvous for PC and Mac called Spike. I'm wondering if I can share media to it from other Zeroconf devices not running spike, from example my pocketpc? Will need to try them out tonight for sure.

I have to say Intel got this right. Its all about servers and clients within the Personal area network, a portable webdav server would be ideal, the best I have is my laptop running IIS in webdav mode or using Davenport.

I installed all the above on my ipaq and machines at home, all is well and I'm enjoying zeroconf now. Just need some more apps to take advantage of it.

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People use to call me bluetooth boy, because everything I bought had a bluetooth chip inside of it. My tablet, my ipaq, my phones going back to 1999 with the Ericsson R520m. But I've been a little frustrated by the lame cable replacement type of solutions over the last few years. That was till I saw a couple of things recently.

The first one I heard about a long time ago but its only just come out. And that was in the states and Canada. But it seems Stowaway have sorted out there European resellars. Basicly its a Bluetooth keyboard and it works with everything I have, aka one consistent interface for all my notes, editing, blogs, etc. I could even use it at home if I wanted to. But I douht I will give up my Microsoft Erogonomic keyboard yet. But yes finally I can outline as fast as my laptop on my ipaq. I'm seriously going to buy from the states unless I hear about others soon

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Harry sent me a link to this study on wirless in greater London. Not read it all the way though but it seems very interesting. More wireless than I actually thought there was. I mean if you look at central London its basicly covered. Its hard to believe that BT openzone has 173 different hotspots while surf n sip the next biggest rival has 91, the cloud has 78 at the moment.

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I'm at long last happy, for the best part of a year I've been waiting and waiting for Ministumbler to release a version which is compatable with the new PocketPC 2003 devices which have built in wireless cards. Now I totally understand the author had a terriable time over the last year. So its serioulsy not a beef at him. But I was enlighted today by the fact someone else has took the job forward and created another wifi scanner for the latest ipaqs. This one is http://www.wififofum.org/ and seems a little more daring than ministumbler. The to do list is impressive… It includes a list of the clients connected to a access point, packet sniffer, screen off mode and bluetooth scanner! The last one of course will be awesome for all those london toothers. And honestly a virbration while reading my ebook to let me know theres an open access point isnt a bad idea. Oh by the way ministumbler 4.0 still doesnt work for me. Seems to think theres no access points in my house… While my pocket kensington wifi finder and wififofum see wirelessgarden instantly.

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I'm sitting almost opposite a woman of about 30 with a ipaq 39xx series. I can tell by the huge navigation button on the front. Pretty nice flip open leather case. Shame about the brown bit on the top hinge. Were now stuck in a tunnel on the jubilee line between london bridge and bermondsey. I would take a picture but I would look so suspect – ha did it when the couple (teenagers, black guy and mixed race girl) were not watching.

Ah were on the move. Anyway the interesting thing for this blog was she was sitting down the other side of the carriage and actually bizarrely moved up to another seat almost opposite me when she saw I had an ipaq too. Now I don’t at all think its an attraction thing, rather a tech comfort thing. In the same way I feel better about pulling out my ipaq when I see someone else with one. It seems quite human in a way, same as people who look the same kind of attracted to each other?

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Just recently I've noticed alot of the business types sporting a Blackberry. Dont get me wrong I like them but I have a nice ipaq and smartphone setup thank you very much. What I find odd is the fact alot of people with the blackberries also have a mobile phone? The guy on the right even had a medium range ipaq. Bizzare… Dont duplicate is my motto.

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Sarahs American friend Birch keeps me updated on the toothing craze going on in London. Bizarre because I obviously live in London but avoid turning my bluetooth devices onto discoverable due to the blue snaffing flaw. Anyway I'm usually stuck in a ebook with my headphones on most of the time to be thinking about replying to any text messages.

The interesting thing about the last article Birch sent was the commercial aspect of toothing.

Dario Betti, of the British-based consultancy Ovum, said bluejacking had really taken off, helped by the fact the service was free. The element of the unknown, that you are connecting to someone around you that you might not know, it's a novelty factor that is helping it to start, he told Reuters.

I'm already starting to imagine toothing in bars and clubs. Not quite sure how money can be made of toothing quite yet. But maybe there might be something to be made about getting people together. Ah got an idea… What about meetup to get people together of a simular interest but in places like trains and tubes. Then the toothing can take place. For example meetup on the Bromley south to Victoria via Beckenham. Toothers can then move from carrage to carrage looking for others with bluetooth discovery till victoria where the public toilets or bars await. Those who couldnt wait will end up else where…

I'm also thinking about flashmobbing with toothing for slow but emerging crowd flocking. Sure smartmob's Howard Rheingold must have thought about it before.

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Finally a decent picture of the final Sony PSP (playstation portable). And boy oh boy is it a wow product. I just wish it was possible to play full movies on it. Magicgate memory stick is too expensive at higher memory and UMD is not going to be available for general use any time soon. Thanks to nextgen

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Commuters take note — the respectable person sitting next to you on the train fumbling with their cell phone might be a “toother” looking for sex with a stranger.

Think Bluetooth and sex, enough said…

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Read on my feeds a while back, there are some more RSS readers for PocketPC, Smartphone and even the palm.

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Just read on infosync, Skype is coming the PocketPC. And now I'm interested… Just wish Skype used standards like H323 or even SIP.

Skype Technologies, the company behind the increasingly popular Skype P2P Voice over IP (VoIP) application for Windows desktops, today launched a beta version of PocketSkype for the Windows Mobile 2003 platform. Owners of Wi-Fi enabled Pocket PCs with 400 MHz or higher processors can now make free, unlimited and unmetered calls to friends, family and colleagues using Skype on the desktop or similar devices.

PocketSkype retains the same core features of regular Skype software including free Skype to Skype worldwide calling to any Skype user, ability to participate in free Skype conference calling, instant messaging, access to the Global Decentralised Directory, online presence and contact lists. Skype Technologies recommended that a headset be used with the software to achieve the best quality.

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This is the way forward, sitting in a seminar with tons of wireless around me. Looking at my scanner, theres actually 5 just in this area. There was 20 hubs on the way from the registeration part to the seminar. Anyway I some interesting things i heard…

UltraWideBand isnt the same as Wimax, duhh me! Ultrawideband can support 1.2 gigabits download and 480 megbits upload per node. Its 802.15.3 and is currently made up of 3 different types. UWB Wireless Lan, UWB Electric and UWB Cable. The Wireless Lan is obviously your usual Wireless for home and office use. The Electric, is a rival to the Home plug standard. And the Cable is used for home to home and metro area networks. Almost cable rival to 802.16 – WiMAX. On the UWB Electric front, you can get up to 100megabits a second if all the items communicating are using the same electric point. If it goes through the house electric system, it drops down to 20megabits per second.

The talks then went into Wireless Mesh technology from locust. Which is interesting, but I'm more interested in how to do it with free or opensource software, hardware. Some of the Applications of Mesh technology are vast networks, tempory networks and self healing meshes.
The public sector, commercial ISP's and Coop community's are very interested in using them more. Some places which have already done this…
Hayfiled derbyshire, North Norfolk, University of putra,
Fastline internet in louisiana, Vivian Louisiana, British Army Base in germany, Lauris provence in france and Drymen in scotland.

The only other thing of real interest was the white hat wireless hacking was kinda of lame, but the actual guy did know a lot and was well worth talking too.

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This is one of those things which dont translate well to europe. In Apples grand plan to be different, they made the design of the ipod mainly white. Unfortually this is a dead giveaway that your sporting one of the hottest gear of this year. Pefect victim, some would say…
Anyway I've been going on about it for ages, but would anyone listen? No… till now.

In america the fashion seems to be more about showing off your goods, while in europe you do that and your not going to have it much longer. Perfect point to Dave in regards to our talk about where you put your mobile phone. Note the Ericsson P900 is also hot pickings for thieves, luckly they have normal-ish headphones.

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During one of my wonders around the internet, i came across a video which claimed to be a Playstation One emulator for PocketPCs. I kind of dismissed it because I was busy. But I just check out the video and I'm amazed. It doesnt store the Rom on a large CF or SD card, it doesnt even involve remove bits from the orginal rom. No you use Wireless to transfer the rom bits needed. Wow!

Not tried it out yet, but going to try it someday soon…

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