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May 30, 2007
Foleo - Dare I drool?
Palm has introduced a lightweight laptop called Foleo;they call it an Internet companion appliance or something like that.
Basically, it has a 10 inch wide screen, a full-sized keyboard, weighs in at 2.5 pounds, cell-phone-sized recharger, can do e-mail and web surfing, USB port, SD slot, CompactFlash spot behind the battery, VGA-out, has the ability edit and display Word/Powerpoint/Excel files, can also display PDF and Flash, based on a Linux-derived OS, so in theory, you can port new apps over to it.
Connectivity is via either Bluetooth (and thence to your EVDO-smartphone) or Wi-Fi. No Ethernet.
Booooh. 2.4 GHz is too noisy and burns battery power. But Palm has never been known as a bleeding edge tech company; would have been better if they had shoved in Wireless USB (next year, @#$!).
Your (secure, non-battery-burning) alternative is likely to be to tie up the USB port with a USB to Ethernet frob.
Onboard RAM is 256MB, according to sources, with additional storage via SD or CompactFlash. So I guess you can chip and stash your music and/or a movie or two. Be interesting to see if they have a slimline external DVD option to play movies for those pain-in-the-rear plane flights.
Opening cost is $499, supposedly going to go up to $599 once the intro is over. I want to see one first before I burn that much cash on something that is almost-but-not-quite an Intel-based laptop.
Haven't seen any notes on if it supports external headphones or mic, but in this day and age, I would certainly hope so.
Posted by dmohney at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2007
Not everything online is up-to-date...
I received a flurry of LinkedIn invitations over the weekend. In the process of saying "Yea" or "Nay," I realized I hadn't updated my own LinkedIn profile for at least a year. Goes to show you can't believe everything you see on the Internet, despite the bad habits of many to do so.
Give you another TWO examples of this. Went into two different CompUSA stories, two different states, sought pricing on separate products, and the first (Trained) impulse of the on-floor salespeople is to go to ... the online website to look up pricing.
Neither product was in the online database -- discontinued models that were still on the shelves but not on the website -- so both times the sales droid ended up in a more elaborate search with the text-based (No, I kid you not) local store inventory database linked to the cash registers to dig out a price.
Last week I was shopping for half barrel planters (don't ask). Went to Lowe's website. The local Lowe's didn't have the item I sought in stock, but the web site tells you to call the local store and talk to someone in there to see what is available, since the local store may stock similar items not on Lowe's website.
The moral of this story is, in the words of Ronald Reagan, to "Trust, but Verify" -- and that goes double if you are shopping.
Posted by dmohney at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2007
Before you pick up the phone, what time is it?
Using e-mail over the phone as a means of first contact is strongly recommended if you don't know what time zone someone is in.
Bob Emmerson, VON Magazine's European Editor, once got a call at 2 AM his local time (he lives in the Netherlands) from a PR flack in Southern California calling at the end of the day out there. Since Bob's office is his home, Bob was, shall we say, rather irate over the call; said caller ASSUMING that Bob was in Melville, NY.
After all, the magazine receives mail in Melville. Wouldn't the European editor be in Melville? Despite the fact of having to dial overseas codes to make the call +31
Didn't help that said caller was one of those just-out-of-college green-behind-the ears types who knows nothing and was left to her own devices by her supervisors.
And you wonder why I have no respect for most PR firms.
I've received a number of unsolicited after 5 PM ET calls from Left Coast PR firms that should know better.
Kids, if you're going to pick up the phone to pitch, at least know what time it is on the other end.
Posted by dmohney at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2007
Print is Dead. So were Trade Shows
"Print is dead, print is dead, long live the Internet..." go the naysayers.
"Trade shows are dead, trade shows are dead, long live the Internet," was the party line out of people who should have known better a decade ago.
If print is dead, then why does Rupert Murdoch want to buy the Wall Street Journal? Why have any number of newspaper deals gone down over the last twelve to twenty-four months?
I remember any number of "experts" who were gushing about the wonderful glory about Virtual Trade Shows and, oh, yes, you'd never need to go to a trade show ever again. Instead, you'd do everything on line. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Fast-forward to the real world today, with CES and NAB still pulling mega-crowds to Vegas (and let's not even get to things like the outdoor equipment events)... with the virtual trade show concept DEAD DEAD DEAD. People don't even try to pretend/fake it anymore.
If virtuality were all that wonderful, Jeff Pulver wouldn't be a frequent flyer on multiple airlines, hmmmm?
So, what about print? Despite having the Internet, I still go to the mailbox every day to see what shows up.
I get better quality junk mail through "snail mail" than I ever have from the Internet. And less volume. Why is that?
Since people have to spend "real money" to send junk mail, they tend to work on the presentation and quality -- and it shows. The barriers for entry -- both in money and legally -- means that the Nigerians who have hundreds of millions of dollars of unclaimed dollars in offshore accounts WON'T BOTHER ME.
And "junk" mail gets at least one good look before it is thrown away; can you say the same with e-mail? SPAM filters at the ISP, mail provider, and locally end up killing a good chunk 'o junk.
So, when something glossy with a bunch of pages AND something I am interested in arrives in my mailbox, I'm more likely to take time to read through it.
Magazines come and go all the time. People bemoan/obsess about the death of a printed InfoWorld, but a lot of computer/IT magazines lost their way over the decades, failing to fine tune both their content and their subscriber base. The death of Boardwatch magazine is a case study in how to take a perfectly good product and running it into the ground.
Print is adjusting, and continues to adjust. If anything, some types of print have exploded. How many "free" newspapers have sprung up over the past three years? The D.C. area has two of them -- one that shows up on my lawn (! Talk about expensive delivery), the other handed out at Metro stops by the Washington Post. I mean with paper and ink and everything.
Posted by dmohney at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2007
MilSPEC VoIP?
So there I was, out at Andrews Air Force Base, at the "Joint Services Open House" -- a mil-speak way of saying "Air Show" and among the first things I wander into is a Ranger standing beside a couple of hard cases stuffed with Cisco routers and switches.
The Rangers deploy anywhere in the world with satellite gear, so they can crank up a full duplex data channel with 768K to 4 Mbps, depending on the satellite and transmitters available.
Part of being in the military is the concept of being able to "Move, shoot, and communicate." Communication is vitally important because you need to tell the guys back at the Pentagon where you are moving to and what you've shot up, while the Generals want to tell you where to go and what the best thing is to shoot at.
Got it?
Anyway, the two box setup can "organically provide up to 4 unclassified and 8 classified phones using VoIP" as well as connect to network servers to set up a class C network.
Depending on location and where they are, they will either bring along the expensive Cisco VoIP phones and some of the cheap RJ-11 corded phones. If the expensive Cisco phones break, it's easy to acquire/scrounge up some more cheap RJ-11 phones.
The Rangers also tote around a Tandberg Video phone/terminal and they had a link back to Fort Bragg. Mr. Ranger (yes, I should have got his name) said that they pretty much exclusively use Tandberg video conferencing gear.
Posted by dmohney at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2007
Euro Political Riots in Second Life - America Next?
First France, now Spain.
Both countries have had political unrest spill over into full-blown riots into Second Life. According to Reuters, supporters of socialist and socialist and conservative parties are trying to burn down each others' party offices, with violence including bombs, fires, and submachine guns.
In January, French factions fought it out in Second Life with missiles, mini-guns and pig grenades, with the violence ultimately "destroying" the far-right Front National (virtual) headquarters.
Pig Grenades. Hmm.
This is giving me a headache to think what will happen when U.S. hotheads collide.
Of course, one might argue blog-o-ticians have been throwing text bombs for any number of years. If nothing else, let's credit the French for showing some style...
Posted by dmohney at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2007
A Little Praise...
About 10 minutes ago, I received a nice warm e-mail from a VP of a testing company (Clue: They wear hunter orange shirts).
He said all sorts of nice things about a piece I did for the May VON Magazine... and his company wasn't even mentioned in the article!
As Quincy of Little Einstein's fame would say "I CAN NOT BELIEVE IT."
Well, actually, I do. It's a little thing that doesn't cost a lot.
Most of the time, I get C-level e-mail that starts a dialogue/impression with "Why didn't you mention our company...."
All too often, it is easy to talk about what is wrong rather than what is right... (which is funny, but not ha-ha funny, because I had planned to do a post about a PR firm that had done The Right Thing on embargo before I got this e-mail).
Done right by anyone today?
(At this right, I'm going to start babbling about "Carry It Forward").
Seriously, if you like what VON Magazine contributors have done, e-mail them and let them know, and CC: me...
Posted by dmohney at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2007
Should I just stop taking embargoed news?
Three times in the past week, I've received "Please say you will accept the Embargo and then I will send you the press release" from PR firms, the latest being.... oh, I'd better not say. Should I say the firms representing Citel, Optimum Lightpath... I forget the third?
Actually, it's worse than that, since two of them used "If you agree to this NDA"... which is just f***ing WRONG. NDAs are formal agreements threatening bad legal things, not temporary e-mail exchanges like air kisses at a bad party. What crap.
Unfortunately, the embargo/NDA abuse seems to be happening more often than less often.
I don't get what the game is, other than to rack up billable hours for PR firms. Either you trust "us" (VON Magazine) to responsibly handle an embargoed press release (Which is NOT an NDA) or you don't. Not this "Well, I sort of trust you, but send me an e-mail, so I can really trust you."
If you don't trust us, why are you contacting us in the first place?
Instead, there's the cutesy, time-wasting exchange of e-mail. Reminds me of the passed notes in grade-school with the multiple choice check boxes.
For the (gasp) first time, I'm going to leave comments open.
Should I stop accepting embargoed press releases? Should I just delete every piece of mail that uses the phrase "embargo" and the abused phrase "NDA" and move along? I've NEVER received an embargoed press release that was as actually important as the pretend-important effort that went into protecting it for 24 hours.
Besides, if I really wanted to burn somebody's rear, I could do it anonymously on a blog and nobody'd be the wiser -- what, going to do a witch hunt on a list of a couple hundred PR people?
Posted by dmohney at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2007
FMC, but not really - Cell Phones and Desk Sets
You'd think that U.S. cellular carriers would have figured out a quick and easy way for subscribers to "cross-load" their most valuable data -- the almighty phone number list, built up over time -- between cell phones and into desktop handsets.
Nope. There's the cellular network and the landline network and the twain shall not touch. Nor will cell carriers offer a quick obvious way to move phone numbers between phones.
Enter the third party. Susteen's DataPilot has all kinds of bells and whistles, but the basic fundamental value for the $74 off-the-shelf software is the ability to copy off a phone list from a cell phone and save it onto a PC. It can then be subsequently copied to a "new" cell phone (well, up to 7 actually, before Susteen tells you to buy another copy or the corporate version... I guess Susteen thinks a large family with multiple teenagers might be a corporate entity, but I digress).
This is a good thing, but I have longed for a consumer off-the-shelf device whereby I could cross-load phone lists from my cell phone into a desktop handset and vice versa, being able to filter out dupes and fine tune caller ID data. Everyone has run into a phone number that is either "unlisted" or simply lists the state and I'd like to, for example, call block a certain Alabama 205 number without having to deal with a company's softswitch.
For that matter, why should a carrier's softswitch be the only line of "defense" for filtering inbound numbers? A device -- cell or desk phone -- should be able to do it without breaking a sweat if caller ID is enabled.
Let's face facts -- the consumer handset people haven't really done squat in putting intelligence into their products. Oooh, I have a list of 50 or 100 phone numbers in caller ID. But I can't do anything with them, other than scroll through them. Gosh, wouldn't having a phone that had enough smarts to tack a "1" onto a long distance phone number for re-dialing purposes be useful?
I'm not even going to speculate as to when (and if) we'll ever be able to do an SMS text service onto the legacy phone system.
Posted by dmohney at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2007
A Place With No Love For Cell Phones
Mobile freaks need to take a trip down to the hospital and watch how fast they'd get dirty looks from the staff in whipping out their cell phones.
A large hospital I wandered through this week had jumbled zones of "No cell phones allowed," "No cell phones within 3 feet of the monitoring equipment," to 4 and 5 bar Sprint reception in the basement cafeteria.
A couple of the wings had the wireless 2.4 GHz SpectraLink VoIP system installed, but there were a few "no go" zones for that equipment as well.
In this environment, the hard-wired phone becomes a necessity, as well as a way to quickly update directories for patients moved from wing to wing. The phones also serve as "punch card" devices for maintenance tasks -- dial a central number, then punch in a code to indicate task completion.
Finding patients on the move from rooms to labs to post-op to rooms can be a challenge for visitors. An ideal solution would be an RFID tag embedded into a patient's wristband and readers stationed around the building to note movement from zone to zone... but there's the bugaboo of RF interference mucking with the equipment again.
It can't be a big problem for hospital management because they always manage to send you the bill, regardless of the outcome.
Posted by dmohney at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2007
One problem - Three X Rays
On Wednesday evening, a man in an outlying county to Washington D.C. has trouble breathing, dizzyness, goes to his local hospital (Calvert), goes to the ER, gets a chest X-ray in the diagnostic process.
Man is diagnosed with severe heart problems, arrangements are made to move him ASAP to MedStar and Washington Hospital Center early on Thursday morning.
Man gets a bumpy uncomfortable ride to MedStar, arrives in the ER -- one of the best in the D.C. area -- along with his stack of medical records from Calvert, and his first chest X-ray.
MedStar shoots a second chest X-ray shortly after arrival, says this one will be in the "computer system" at Washington Hospital Center. Not that there's a scanner to load in the original X-ray film that would be cheaper and quicker just to scan in the first chest X-ray.
Man is moved upstairs to Coronary Care Unit (CCU) at Washington Hospital Center in an hour or so, admitted, poked, prodded. During process, another technician comes in to attempt to take a THIRD chest X-Ray. Something about the second X-ray not being in the system.
They might have taken a third X-ray later in the day; details are blurry at this point.
It's 2007 and hospitals are, at best, islands of data; at worst, they can't even store and move data from one specialist or primary care physician to an ER in the same building.
Ignore the expense for a moment and just think about the TIME and ENERGY it takes to repeat the same tests. If you want to be paranoid, you can fret about the overexposure to radiation, but frankly, I'm not so sure if that's an issue at this stage of the game...
Verizon is offering their employees an "Electronic Personal Health Records tool." Participating employees can use the tool to store health care information on a password-protected web site, which employees and their designated health care providers can access from anywhere in the world.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I hope Verizon beats a lot of people over the head about interoperability, because it would really be annoying if employees keep one set of records and health care providers stuck to their own islands based upon who owns them.
Posted by dmohney at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2007
Last night at the ball park
I spent last night at Camden Yards swapping stories with Glenn Bischoff of Mobile Radio Technology and watching a most excellent ball game.
Between plays, we were shooting the breeze about PR firms and how most of them are Evil and Lazy, as well as the bad things companies do to shoot themselves in the foot. Things like "If you write about us, we'll advertise in your magazine." (Riiight). Or turning down a request for a meeting or an interview because the company is "too busy."
Let's think through Scenario A. I write about Company XYZ. We send over sales rep with a contract the next month. And then they don't buy. Or they say "Well, if you write a little more, we'll buy." And then more... and then more... and 12 months later the verbal promise is worthless.
I know when I put in an interview request with a company I'm alternatively shocked and annoyed when the process gets dragged out for over a week. Remember, Microsoft has a rapid response team ready to go and gave me a 2 hour turnaround time.
Not everyone has the deep pockets of Microsoft, but seriously, if I ask to talk to you, and you don't get back to me in a reasonable fashion... why should I come back the next time I have an opportunity? Might as well call your competitors and see what they have to say.
Posted by dmohney at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2007
I'm an EVDO guy.
I love EVDO broadband service. Maybe you should too.
For me, it's connectivity without having to worry about the availability of Wi-Fi (quirky, limited, even if it's a pay service in a hotel - Thank you very much Imperial Palace) or an overloaded hardwired network. I distinctly remember a VON Fall where the Sheraton's network got a beat down so bad they told people a reasonable alternative was the Wi-Fi in the Starbucks in the lobby(!!!).
Oh yes, I want to haul my PC downstairs at 9 PM at night to "get signal." Pfffpt.
"Free" Wi-Fi is overrated and it makes me mad to hear intelligent people talk crap about how it going to put the phone companies out of business -- that is, until you fire up the microwave oven. Under FCC regulations you HAVE to take interference from other sources, and there's no way around this. 802.11n won't fix this; the legacy b/g networks will end up "dumbing down" N networks to slower speeds.
ANYway, my Sprint EVDO phone, used in a "tethered" fashion (i.e. there's a USB cable connecting it to my laptop) has delivered reliable service in downloading files in hotels and airports across the country. I don't want to drag around a PC card and a phone; why should I? Only drawback from a techie sense is that I wish the phone would recharge while I was using it tethered to a plugged-in laptop.
My only beefs with Sprint have been getting a straight billing plan (sigh) and when they'll deliver a REV A-capable phone. I am ashamed to say that I want and need the additional bursty speed that REV A will (supposedly) deliver. There are a limited number of REV A devices right now, couple laptop cards and the big honking PDAs. I don't want to press my face into a PDA.
I believe I got Jeff Pulver hooked onto EVDO for a while; you don't hear him talk about it much these days, but I remember he called me from his laptop at the airport and he was pretty tickled about it.
Posted by dmohney at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2007
Two Degrees of (Amusing) Blog Separation
I hate to blog about another blog posting, but Verizon's PolicyBlog posting about Jeff Pulver getting FiOS is a hoot.
(Now if someone would only credit me with turning Jeff on to the power of EVDO, I'd be really happy).
Anyway, the many levels of messages being sent here are amusing--
1) "Look, FiOS is so cool even Mikie, er Jeff Pulver likes it!"
2) "Hi Jeff, we really do pay attention to you. Yes, we are watching you blog. No need to send us an e-mail or a memo, just post it..."
Speaking of blogging, I recently received some feedback through my wife talking to her college roommate, who is in turn married to someone who reads my blog... but no, I can't be simply bought off by a trip to Fenway Park. And I don't hate all PR people; just the 80 percent who can't be bothered to do their homework.
Posted by dmohney at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2007
PR agencies get in the way - really....
Where'd I put the aspirin? If high-tech companies knew of the headaches PR firms ended up causing, they wouldn't be so quick to write a check.
Case #1 today: "Well, if you say you'll honor embargo, I'll send you the release...." Same PR firm, different representative. Homey don't play that. [reaching for the stuffed sock]. Guy sends the same thing twice.
Thanks for wasting my time. Just send me the release and dispense with the stupid games. Either VON Magazine is a trusted source to send press releases under embargo or we aren't. If we aren't, why are we playing the embargo game in the first place?
FYI, I get embargoed releases every week. PR agencies just send them. Most of them don't jerk my chain with the whole "Say you'll honor the embargo and I'll send it." Twice.
Case #2: Trying to set up an interview with QUALCOMM for a different topic.
Request for interview sent on Monday morning, 8:45 AM ET
Responding e-mail from PR firm on Tuesday, 7:45 PM ET says "Maybe Wednesday or Friday." (This is TWO BUSINESS DAYS later!)
E-mail at 1:45 PM ET on Wednesday says "Sorry, QUALCOMM spokesperson too busy today, I can get you person on Friday."
E-mail at 12:45 PM ET today (Thursday) says "Oops, rep handing this request is out of town, has asked me to reschedule, because spokesperson is unavailable on Friday and she is on travel."
How much money do you think QUALCOMM pays their PR agency per month for this type of "service"?
So, allegedly, supposedly, I may speak to someone on Monday. Allegedly.
This reminds me of how I spent over a week getting jerked around by TI's PR agency-of-record before I just said "Forget it, I can go interview someone else, and hey, the folks at BroadCom don't have a problem setting up an interview."
It's times like this that I look at my Dialogic baseball bat and have evil thoughts...
Posted by dmohney at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2007
The second part of the second half of trade show season begins next week
The second part of the second half of the trade show season is winding up...
(The first half of the trade show season running from September through early December, and the second half starting in January and ending up in June...)
Now that we're all clear on where we are...
Next week is The Cable Show in Las Vegas. Interop is May 20-25.
Moving into June, there's the Spring 2007 VON Europe in Stockholm, June 11-14 and then NXTComm following to "close off" the trade show season.
I'm scheduled to go to NXTComm in Chicago. Wish I could go to The Cable Show to see the high-speed cable gear (Over 100 Mbps!) ARRIS is demoing, but I'll have to catch it another time. There's some seriously cool cable technology coming out and in the pipeline that is going to make the fiber optic types sweat and the DSL people cry.
People spend the month of July recovering and on vacation. In August, people should start planning and/or executing for the startup of the next "season" in September.
Posted by dmohney at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2007
IMS and Public Safety
One of my deep-background types (The "Don't quote me, but this is what I think") suggested that IMS might find its way into public safety applications.
IMS, for instance, should/will/does handle roaming between different networks, be they wired or wireless or multi-wireless; such as with dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi phones and forthcoming cellular/WiMAX phones.
Public safety people like to run their own networks for security and cost reasons. For example, the National Capital Region (i.e. DC and the surrounding counties) is implementing a 700 MHz wireless broadband network using EVDO Rev A with some tweaks.
If a police officer is in "hot pursuit" of a suspect up the BW parkway and runs out of 700 MHz coverage, you want/need the capability to fall back/onto an existing 3G network, say Sprint's EVDO Rev A network...THEREFORE, you need something to manage the roaming/switch between the networks.
Throw in different permutations such as WiMAX, muni Wi-Fi networks, cellular and you see how it gets to be a little tricky switching calls around unless you have an IMS component or components overseeing everything.
At least, that's the theory.
My source thought that this might be of interest to carriers, but then again carriers prefer to build and own the networks themselves rather than "play well" with someone else's (public safety) network.
Posted by dmohney at 01:08 PM | Comments (0)