What
· Technology
· · Mobile
Mobility Blues ·
These days, I’m gloomier and gloomier about the prospects for the mobile Internet; you know, the one you access through the sexy gizmo in your pocket, not the klunky old general-purpose computer on your desk ...
Android ·
I’m having a little trouble understanding Android; the business side I mean, not the technology ... [12 comments]
Flat Rate Considered Harmful ·
Lots of people, including for example my CEO, say that the hand-held mobile is going to be a crucial, maybe a dominant, way for people to experience the Net; particularly on the other side of what we now call the digital divide. Only there’s an economic problem ... [20 comments]
ssh+iPhone ·
Oooh, check it out; is that cool or what? Up till now I didn’t really want an iPhone, but I’m slipping. Of course Apple will see this as a problem that must be patched, sigh. [4 comments]
Erroneous Ministerial One ·
Herewith my occasional romp through the built-up browser tabs. Item (serious): In The ‘Next’ Java, Joe Gregorio says some Really Smart Things about languages in general and Java in articular. Item (serious): At Business Week, Stephen Baker’s Writing for an audience of one says something genuinely new (hard, these days) about blogging. Item (interesting): My new Samsung is a pretty cool phone, but there are a few irritants. It turns out that someone called RedIpS has fixed them. I just bought a flashing cable on EBay; I wonder if I’m going to be breaking any laws? Item (not serious): SOA Facts. Item (puzzling): Some guy named Tim Bray seems to be in trouble in China; this article provided the title above. I hope Mr. Bray gets out OK. [1 comment]
Samsung, Ringtones, Fair Use ·
My cellphone expired, so I was poking around here and there on the net looking for something unlocked in a GSM flavor; but one of my key criteria is big buttons that I can see without my reading-glasses, and the Web just doesn’t help you there. I ended up at a local grey-market emporium where a friendly Russian sold me a Samsung SGH-D600; it definitely meets the no-reading-glasses criterion and seems like a pretty nice phone. This cute little slidey black goober lets you use any old MP3 as a ringtone. Given that most of us have tons o’ music on our computers, and it’s pretty easy to slice out a sub-ten-second clip and Bluetooth it over to the phone, I guess the ring-tones business is dead. It seems obvious to me that using music I’ve already paid for in this way is Fair Use, but I bet there’s a lawyer somewhere who’d disagree for a fee. So I sat up late one evening cackling fiendishly over the audio software, and my ringtones are: Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme (the classic Ray Anthony version of course), the opening sequences of Burning Spear’s Slavery Days and Deep Purple’s Highway Star (off Made in Japan), and the closing seconds of Runaway Horses from Phil Glass’ wonderful Mishima soundtrack. Now, whenever the phone rings, I smile. [2 comments]
Why SavaJe? ·
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my rather mixed initial experience of the SavaJe Jasper S20. I’m making progress, and I’m going to invest a bit more work in this device, because I think it’s important. In this fragment I explain why I think so, with a bit more hands-on narrative ...
Happy ·
Scoble observed that many blogs are cruddy on cell phones. Curious, I emailed him asking how ongoing does. He wrote back “Your site looks great. One of the best I've seen so far on the phone.” I am absurdly pleased.
Russell Explodes ·
A couple of days ago I ran a piece about my mobility needs. It got quite a bit of reaction: Jeremy Zawodny and Gary Potter both seemed to agree, and Geoff Arnold wants a little more than I do. But then Russell Beattie rose up in righteous wrath and consigned Jeremy and me to the fiery furnace reserved for unbelievers in the coming Golden Age of mobile phones. He’s saying, more or less: “Resistance is irrelevant. You will be assimilated,” but it’s a good piece, read it. The thing is, I have been reading Russell, and he goes on about video and I think OK, and Web browsing, and I think OK, and about mobile games, and I think OK, and about high-bandwidth flat-rate pervasive Internet connectivity and I think “Cowabunga! Get me some of that!” Maybe once I have some of those other capabilities, I’ll get excited. But up till now, I haven’t actually seen anybody doing anything with a cellphone that I particularly want to do, except talk.
My Mobility Needs ·
There’s a lot of action on the mobility front. I know a lot of Blackberry-tethered businesspeople, and Russ Beattie has some red-hot new phone every week, and today there’s the iPodPhoto. Most of this stuff totally doesn’t interest me; this note is to explain why, and what I do want, because I can’t be that far out of the mainstream ...
I work at Sun Microsystems.
The opinions expressed here are my own,
and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily
agrees with them.
