patrickWeb
John Patrick's weblog @ patrickWeb focuses on Internet technology trends including WiFi, e-business, digital identity, public policy, and blogging. He also shares stories about travel, music, motorcycles, and other hobbies.
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- South Africa 2008 - MalaMala
The most interesting part of MalaMala is seeing the animals but I was also interested in the aviation aspects of the trip. We headed to MalaMala from Johannesburg aboard a 29 passenger Jetstream 41 regional turboprop airliner which is made by British Aerospace. Their were two pilots, a flight attendant, and six passengers. I don't think South African Airways made much money on the flight. I was impressed with the Jetstream. It has two 1,650 horsepower Honeywell turboprop engines with McCauley five-bladed propellers. The pilots have a digital radio communications system and a fully digital automatic flight control system. The MalaMala Airport is a different story. The "airport" is actually a mile-long paved strip in the middle of the bushveld. There are no buildings and the emergency ground resources consist one fire truck sitting in the weeds. I don't believe there are any navigation aids on the ground. Nevertheless, I am quite confident that the daily flight into and out of MalaMala is as safe as any flights anywhere.
The MalaMala Game Reserve has been in existence since 1927 and claims to be the largest private "Big Five" (lion, leopard, buffalo, rhinoceros and elephant) game reserve in South Africa. MalaMala has 40,000 acres of land with a 12 mile unfenced border with the world-renowned Kruger National Park. There are several different "camps" where one could stay -- we were fortunate to be at Rattray's. Not only does MalaMala provide an exciting wildlife experience but it also is very focused on preserving and protecting the animals and the ecosystem. This became evident from the outset when Rob, our ranger, briefed us on the protocol to be followed while out in the bush. No getting out of or standing in the Land Rover, no waving of arms, and no making of noises to try to attract the animals attention.
Each day started at 5:30 AM with a wake-up call from Rob. After a cup of coffee we headed out in the Land Rover with our new friends, Gerhard and Hiltrud, from Germany. In total we made five trips into the bush. Rob and Culver, our tracker, had an uncanny sense of when various kinds of animals would be in certain places. The reserve has more than 1,000 miles of "roads" and frequently the Land Rover would suddenly pull off into the grass to see one of the big five or other animals. Rob would shut off the engine and we would just sit and watch. The rangers are in constant radio communication with one another to keep each other informed about the location of the game. The animals at MalaMala have grown up with engines as part of the ambient noise of the bush. They were not intimidated or seem to notice us whispering to each other as we were in awe of these great animals. We were typically twenty to fifty feet or so away and sometimes less than ten feet. (see photo gallery).
We got back to camp at 9am for breakfast. In the afternoon we would meet at 4 PM and head out until 7:30 PM and then meet for cocktails and dinner. All three meals each day were prepared by the on-site natively-dressed staff. Our ranger sat with us at each meal and the homemade food was extremely good. On the second night we dined outdoors in the boma by the crackling fire pit. After dinner it was time to return to our khaya (Zulu for ‘home’).
Although the facilities were more than expected, the real attraction was the animals. At departure we received a certificate validating that we had indeed seen the big five. We actually saw many more animals including jackal, hyena, baboons, water buffalo, cheetah, giraffe, zebra plus many different birds and interesting plants and trees. The lioness playing with her four cubs was a special treat. As usual, I have to apologize for my poor photographic skills but the photo gallery is worth more than whatever else I can say, except for one thing that I found truly amazing. A leopard had overtaken and killed an impala. An impala is a fast runner and weighs 150-200 pounds. They can jump a distance of thirty feet. Whatever it's abilities, it was not enough to get away from the leopard. It dragged the impala to the base of a tree and we sat thirty feet away in the Land Rover watching as it planned the next steps to protect the "kill" from being taken by other leopards or by hyenas. After devouring enough of the meat to lighten the weight a bit, the leopard picked up the impala by the neck with it's teeth and raced straight up a fifty foot tree like a rocket ship. I could barely believe it as I saw it. Leopards are said to be able to carry three times their weight up a tree. The leopard placed the impala between two limbs near the top of the tree with head and antlers and two legs hanging over one part and the other two legs hanging over the other. The leopard then parked itself spread-eagled over a lower part of the limb and rested. We went back that night and saw hyena (notice those nasty teeth) laying in the grass hoping the leopard would get sloppy and let the impala fall to the ground. We went back the next day and the leopard was still up in the tree. Too bad I did not have a night vision zoom lens. Hopefully this picture conveys the story.
Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008 - South Africa 2008 - Infrastructure
We met Matimba Mbungela at Moyo's for dinner. It was pleasantly warm at the table outside. It was the first time I had my face painted and the first time I had eaten oxtail. At the end of the evening there was another first. Matimba insisted on picking up the tab. The server came to the table with a wireless credit card reader. After the card was swiped, Matimba's mobile phone received an SMS text message. South Africa has embraced mobile as a key part of their banking infrastructure. After every credit card charge your cell phone receives a message confirming the charge. In fact any debit or credit to your bank account or credit card results in an SMS message. Not everyone in South Africa has an Internet connection but tens of millions have a mobile phone. The security is good because most people don't share their phone. SMS has enormous potential for applications of all kinds. The New York Times, Fox News, and others are using SMS for news and election alerts but when it comes to SMS for data oriented applications, South Africa is well ahead of the United States.Other aspects of infrastructure in South Africa were a mixed bag. Broadband Internet access was available everywhere we visited including the MalaMala bushveld (via satellite). Even Zimbabwe had dial-up access in an Internet lounge. It was $4 for 15 minutes if you paid cash, or $8 if you put it on your hotel bill. According to the Internet World Stats, just over 10% of the population of South Africa had Internet access as of 2006. I suspect the number is much higher now, especially if you consider Internet Cafes. We saw many of these throughout Soweto. iBurst, one of South Africa's largest wireless broadband providers, is planning to roll out 20 000 Internet cafes by 2010.
Availability of electricity in Africa is a challenge -- even in major cities in South Africa. When we checked into our hotel in Johannesburg, there was a letter under the door from the hotel general manager saying that if elevators stopped working, the emergency power generator should kick in within eight minutes. There are rolling power outages throughout the country. People say it is due to poor planning by the government. Rolling blackouts are annoying but the bigger problem is total lack of electricity in many parts of Africa. Without electricity it is hard to move water. Without water it is hard to build an economy and grow food. The big potential is solar, as Africa is very well positioned geographically. The UN and non-profits such as SELF are trying to break down economic and governmental barriers to exploiting solar's potential.
Finally is mobile communications. I took my iPhone because that is where all my calendar and contact details are, but when it comes to phone calls and the mobile Internet, the Apple - AT&T team does not make it easy. Apple locks the iPhone so you can not put a Vodacom South Africa SIM card in it -- Apple wants to be sure to get their commission from AT&T. In South Africa, AT&T charges $2.49 per minute for inbound or outbound calls, fifty cents for a text message, and $20 per megabyte for data service. (Some modest discounts are available if you sign up for a monthly international plan). Some unwary travelers have forgotten to turn off automatic email retrieval in their iPhone and ended up with thousands of dollars in charges from AT&T.
Maxroam is an innovative VoIP company in Ireland. For a little more than $40 they send you a SIM card which you can put into any unlocked GSM phone -- such as the Treo which I held onto after getting the iPhone for use during international travel. Maxroam gives you a U.S. mobile phone number. If someone calls my iPhone while I am out of the country it will automatically forward to the Treo. If I want to make a call I dial from the Treo using whatever local GSM operator is available. The cost for Maxroam varies by country -- in South Africa it is 39 cents per minute for inbound calls and 49 cents per minute for local or outbound calls. The Maxroam proposition was very appealing but unfortunately it did not work. I called and emailed the company with no response. If not Maxroam, someone will figure out how to use VoIP to get around the outrageous international mobile roaming rates. Fortunately, I was able to get a Vodacom prepaid card for the Treo. It worked very well for local and international calls. Most international calls were made from the hotel room with my ThinkPad using Skype at two cents per minute.
Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008 - South Africa 2008 - Johannesburg
The South African Airways flight to Dakar, Senegal on the northwest coast of Africa was approximately 4.000 miles and took about seven and a half hours. It was the half-way point on the journey to Johannesburg. From door to door it took just about 24 hours to get to the D'Oreale Grande at Emperors Palace at Kempton Park in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. South Africa borders the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Visiting this beautiful country is quite a geography lesson.On the arrival night, it was a pleasure to meet Matimba Mbungela, a managing executive at Vodacom South Africa, in person after having exchanged email and phone calls during the prior week. Matimba introduced me to his colleague Chris Ross, the senior sales executive for Vodacom South Africa, who would be host of the conference taking place the next day. Vodacom is a Pan-African cellular communications company providing world class GSM services to more than 30 million customers in South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique. More than 500 Vodacom business partners attended The Future of Technology conference to get an update on the various Vodacom offerings. My keynote at the end of the day offered a view of The Future of the Internet. That evening a delightful gala was held to recognize the sales achievements of the top Vodacom partners and dealers.
Like most conferences, there was an exhibition area where dozens of hardware, software, and services companies showed off their latest offerings. One of the most interesting one was the Firefly, from Grapevine Interactive. The Firefly is a parent-friendly mobile phone for young children. The tiny colorful phone has three prominent buttons on it. One to call Mom, one to call Dad, and one to place an emergency call. The phone can also store twenty parent-approved phone numbers.
Another conference took place later in the week in Midrand at Vodaworld, the company headquarters. The top 200 senior level executives of Vodacom came together as part of their professional development and to network with one another. The first part of the morning focused on The Future of the Internet and the second half we discussed innovation and how to nurture big ideas. The latter session was based on a class I led at MIT in September.
During the second half of the first week we stayed at the Intercontinental in Sandton, just a few blocks from Nelson Mandela Square. The giant statue of the former President of South Africa is impressive as is the life of the man who was first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election in the country. Mandela had led the anti-apartheid movement. We could see Robben Island, where Mandela spent 27 years in prison, from the waterfront the following week in Cape Town. We also visited his former home in Soweto. The respect for Nelson Mandela is universal regardless of ethnicity or political leaning. He will be 90 in July.
Nearby in Soweto is Orlando West stands the Hector Pieterson memorial square. Pieterson was killed at the age of twelve when police opened fire on protesting students in 1976. More than five-hundred were killed in the struggle. Soweto, which stands for townships southwest of Johannesburg, consists of dozens of townships and represents more than a third of the population of the city. The poverty is incredible. Some progress is being made but the results of decades of repression are obvious. The sights are breathtaking and not in a positive way. Hard to imagine that a government rationalized the extreme segmentation and discrimination. After a half day touring Soweto we had lunch in the Dube section of Soweto at Wandies Place. I could not identify most of the food in the buffet but it was very tasty.
Another half-day educational visit was to the Cradle of Humankind. It was well worth the one hour ride north of Johannesburg into the Gauteng province to see the Sterkfontein Caves where the 2.3-million year-old fossil Australopithecus africanus (nicknamed "Mrs. Ples"), an early hominid, was found in 1947. We literally had to crawl on hands and knees to get to the bottom of the enormous limestone cave hundreds of feet below ground. Although there was not much light, we could see huge stalactites and stalagmites and an underground lake that is fed from more than fifty miles away. Excavation at the site continues. In case you did not know it, we all came from Africa. The guide said "welcome back". If you are interested in finding the path taken by your ancestors to get from Africa to whatever part of the world you live in, take a look at the human genographic project.
Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008 - Luggage Back Too
There is much to write about Africa and Internet technology, but I can not resist sharing about our luggage. We waited in line along with many others to provide information about the size and color of the missing bags. The agent entered the information and gave us a printout that was clearly from a decades-old system. We were told to give a call after twenty-four hours. I called after 26 hours and was told there was no update and that it could take up to five days. The reasoning was that there may not be room in the next few flights for "extra" baggage -- the classic case of taking care of the new customers rather than upset them by helping customers who have already been disappointed. After continuing to get "there is no new information" I thought to myself that tracking luggage would be a great application for the web. I wondered if the airline had thought about it.I visited South African Airways (flysaa.com) and at the bottom of the "After your trip" page was a link for "Lost/damaged luggage". Could it be? II entered the file reference number from the printout and voila! Information about each of the four bags was displayed along with the status. As the day went on the status changed from "No information available" to "Arrived at airport" to "Delivery process underway". It took thirty-six hours to get the luggage but I was impressed with how South African Airways had integrated a very old application with a user-friendly web front end. Apparently the people at the airport are not aware of it. The airline could certainly take some anxiety away and offload an extremely busy call center by informing their customers about the web application and including the url on the printout. The ideal solution would be to have the application automatically generate an SMS text message to your mobile phone every hour with the status.
The pictures are uploaded to the gallery and the stories will start soon.
- Back From Africa
The trip back from Africa took twenty-nine hours. If you include the half day in Cape Town's wine country before going to the airport plus an evening event back home, the forty-five hours made for a really long "day". We left the hotel in Cape Town at 9am on Friday morning -- it was 2am in New York at the time -- and we got to JFK an hour late at 7:30 am Saturday. After waiting for two hours we were told that all the bags were off the plane. Ours remain somewhere between Cape Town, Johannesburg, and New York. We had hoped to see them the next day but South African Airways said it could take up to five days. In spite of the long trip home and missing luggage, it was a really great two weeks. There is much to share -- in words and pictures -- about the country, the people, the culture, the status of technology, and of course, the animals. The index below will be updated as the stories come to life. - Long Distance
There are quite a few stories here in the blog about "Long Distance". What is long distance? When the grandkids come from the Philadelphia area to Connecticut to visit, they consider that a long distance. When visiting Singapore or New Zealand or other parts of Southeastern Asia, you know you are a long way from New York -- like 10,000 miles or so. When we head to Johannesburg, South Africa from JFK tomorrow, that will be a long distance (approximately 8,000 miles). When it comes to a "telephone" conversation, the words "long distance" don't really mean anything. Many of us remember the phone ringing decades ago at grandma's house at holiday time and the room immediately being urged to "shhhhhh" because the call was "long distance". Hurry, we would say as we waited our turn for a few seconds to say hello to the caller. Long distance was considered a luxury then but now is becoming a merely historical term.
Many of us who have been involved with the Internet have known for a long time that voice over IP, or Internet Telephony, would become ubiquitous. It is just so natural to utilize the global infrastructure of the Internet to send information between any two points. The world is actually a small place when you consider the speed of today's networks. I recall being at an Internet Society meeting in Honolulu in 1994 participating on a panel about the future of the Internet. A fellow panelist, Geoff Huston from Telstra, made a simple but, at the time, very controversial point. Geoff said that "voice" is "just another kind of data". What he meant, of course, was that once you speak into a handset or headset and your voice is converted to a stream of ones and zeroes, the "bits" traveling over the Internet look just like any other bits -- like from web pages, emails, efaxes, audio, video, etc.How will I stay in touch while in South Africa? I will be taking my iPhone because that is where all my calendar and contact details are, but when it comes to phone calls and the mobile Internet, the Apple - AT&T team does not make it easy. Apple locks the iPhone so you can not put a Vodacom South Africa SIM card in it -- Apple wants to be sure to get their commission from AT&T. In South Africa, AT&T charges $2.49 per minute for inbound or outbound calls, fifty cents for a text message, and $20 per megabyte for data service. (Some modest discounts are available if you sign up for a monthly international plan). Some unwarry travelers have forgetten to turn off automatic email retrieval in their iPhone and ended up with thousands of dollars in charges from AT&T.
Maxroam is an innovative VoIP company in Ireland. For a little more than $40 they send you a SIM card which you can put into any unlocked GSM phone -- such as the Treo which I held onto after getting the iPhone. Maxroam also gives you a U.S. mobile phone number. If someone calls my iPhone while I am out of the country it will automatically forward to the Treo. If I want to make a call I dial from the Treo using whatever local GSM operator is available. The cost for Maxroam varies by country -- in South Africa it is 39 cents per minute for inbound calls and 49 cents per minute for local or outbound calls. Most outbound calls will be made from the hotel room with my ThinkPad using Skype at two cents per minute.
Where does all this lead? If innovation and competition continue -- and I believe they will -- then we will have choices. One choice will be to have a WiFi mobile phone with Skype on it. If Apple continues to thwart that option on the iPhone, others will provide it. If governments and operators cling to the old models, it will take a while but there is no doubt in my mind that we will soon have a wide range of choices of service available on the Internet -- wherever we are and with whatever devices we have.
- Fellows
It has been a privilege over the years to have known a number of fellows of the IEEE and now I am honored to be joining their ranks. I first joined the IEEE in 1967 during my senior year at Lehigh University. With the support of a number of industry colleagues, the senior member status followed in 1994. I had no idea that fellow might be in the future.As far as I know, nobody at Lehigh was thinking about the Internet while I was there, but Paul Baran had been thinking about the concept since 1959 when he began working for the RAND Corporation. The cold war was underway and Paul was focused on developing a communication network that could withstand a nuclear attack. The Internet and the World Wide Web followed as a natural evolution that has now reached it's infancy. I have played a very small role and the tribute should go to Paul Baran, Vint Cert, Tim Berners-Lee and their colleagues.
Knovel Director John Patrick Named IEEE Fellow
Board Member Recognized for Internet Leadership
New York, NY – February 5th, 2008 – Knovel (www.knovel.com) today announced that John R. Patrick, a member of Knovel’s board of directors, has been named an IEEE Fellow in recognition of his leadership in technical and policy development of the World Wide Web. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
Mr. Patrick was a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in 1994 and of the Global Internet Project in 1995. Mr. Patrick was also instrumental in the development of e-commerce at IBM in 1997 as vice president for Internet technology. He is a member of the Internet Society, the Association for Computing Machinery, and The International Honor Society Beta Gamma Sigma. His book, Net Attitude, was published in 2001 and helped guide corporate strategies to leverage the Internet.
Mr. Patrick is a member of the board of directors of Jupitermedia, Knovel, Danbury Hospital and Danbury Health Systems, as well as a member of the Lehigh University Engineering Advisory Board.
“It’s great to have the IEEE validate the reason we recruited John to our board,” said Chris Forbes, CEO of Knovel. “John is a visionary with deep understanding of the role the Internet can and should play in helping people tackle their work efficiently and effectively. His insights meshed perfectly with the deep domain expertise of our board members who were principal executives at Thompson and Oxford University Press.“
About IEEE
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) – the world's largest technical professional society – fosters technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. Through its more than 370,000 members in 160 countries, IEEE is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. The organization also sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 400 international technical conferences each year.
About Knovel
Knovel (www.knovel.com) is an online resource used by applied scientists and practicing engineers around the world to quickly locate relevant and reliable technical information. Knovel’s thousands of customers include 75 of the Fortune 500 companies and 300 leading engineering and science universities worldwide.
Knovel has uniquely optimized content, search capabilities, and interactive tools for specific engineering disciplines. Knovel’s content includes material properties, process and design information, standard procedures, equations, and formulations. Close to 2,000 leading reference works and databases from over 40 international publishers and professional societies are integrated to provide a single source of answers to technical questions.
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- IBM Happenings: January 2008
The month of January was a busy one at IBM. The month was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. I was particularly pleased to see the continued collaboration with the Mayo Clinic. They jointly established an imaging center aimed at advancing medical imaging technologies to improve the quality of patient care.
The list of announcements made by IBM during the month is here. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here. - DEMO in Palm Desert
Demo continues to be my favorite conference -- the semi-annual event took place this past week in Palm Desert, California. There were many new people in attendance but also some friends from many Demos past -- Amy Wohl, Shel Israel, John Landry, and Steve Larsen. While there were many attendees in their mid-twenties, the five of us joked how we had logged 200+ years in technology.Whenever possible I try to start an out of town visit with a hunt for a benchmark or geocache. The nearest benchmark was along a railroad bed across the Interstate several miles away so I decided to look for three geocaches. The first two turned out to be more than challenging and after miles of walking and searching with ten feet of each I had to give up. At least the weather was great and I got some exercise. During a break before dinner the next day I went back out and looked for "Between Rock & a Hard Place". After reaching the latitude/longitude and looking for ten minutes or so I thought I would be zero for three but then as I thought about the comments made in the log at geocaching.com, it suddenly came to me and I found it. It was one of the most cleverly hidden caches I have seen in years.
The Demo conference allows entrepreneurs to show off new gadgets, software, hardware and business ideas and enables the press, analysts, investors, and technology enthusiasts to assess what they see. The product introductions that take place reveal key technology trends over the coming 12 to 18 months. This year there were 77 companies showing off -- each getting six minutes on stage to tell their story. There were some key trends that emerged from Demo this year. Many companies in some way talked about mobile. Most companies either provide a web service or use web services as their platform. Most companies were media related in some way provided or used social networking. None of these things are new, by any means, but Demo confirmed their strategic importance and significant implementations. I don't think any of them have cracked the code so to speak but there were many that had exciting visions and demos. visited the ones in which I had most interest. Chris Shipley kicked off the conference with insightful comments about the industry. See the Demo blog for more on her thoughts. Chris screens the companies and introduces them to the stage. After the main tent sessions the attendees got to visit with the companies in the "Demo Hall". There isn't time to visit all of them so I tried to be selective. Some of the ones I found interesting follow. They are in no particular order. (Read more)
- Music Sales
Two years ago I was confident that it would happen -- more than $1 Billion in sales of digital music for 2005. This was triple the year before. For 2007, the number rose to $3B and represented 15% of total music sales up from less than 1% in 2003. People are willing to pay for music if it is offered to them in a contemporary way -- i.e. digital. Single track downloads, the most popular digital music format, grew by 53% to 1.7 billion. iTunes is the giant but there are more than 500 legitimate digital music services around the world offering more than 6 million selections. It goes without saying that sales of music CD's continues to fall sharply.In spite of the rapid growth, digital music still represents just 15% of the total music business (compared to 7% for newspapers, 3% for films, and 2% for books). The shift to a predominantly digital music industry is inevitable but there are some impediments. There is a non-trivial amount of piracy through various peer-to-peer services. It will take time to change the habits and attitudes of those who do not respect the legitimate need of musicians to make a living and be compensated for their creations and performances.
The other issue is lack of interoperability between services and devices. Apple and Sony and others offer proprietary and incompatible formats. There are dozens of formats to compress music and make it more efficient to store and distribute over the Internet. MP3 is not the best but it has won the war. VHS wasn't the best format for movies on tape but it dominated. Once a certain critical mass is reached it is hard to reverse. Apple is an exception, so far, and has shown that it can impose a proprietary format and by implementing it in an elegant fashion (iTunes) with devices that are equally elegant (iPods) that it can capture dominant market share. Over time people will demand more compatibility. If we purchase music it is reasonable to assume that we should be able to play that music on any device in our house, in the car, or on a trike.
The industry group that reports the data on music sales and monitors (fights) piracy calls itself the "International Federation of the Phonographic Industry". Does that give us a clue that they are not keeping up with the times?
Other patrickweb stories about music - Patents
The United States granted the first patent to Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont in 1790. Mr. Hopkin's idea had to do with making potash which in turn was used in making glass and in various industrial processes.Two other major patents granted the same year were related to making candles and milling flour. A mere 218 years later the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that for the fifteenth consecutive year, IBM received more patents -- 3,125 -- than any other private sector organization in America. The patents were granted to more than 5,200 of the company's inventors around the world. In keeping with the "green" times, IBM and the World Business Council for sustainable Development, along with Nokia, Pitney Bowes, and Sony, have established the Eco-Patent Commons, committing dozens of innovative, environmentally responsible patents to the public domain. The Eco-Patent Commons is an initiative to create a collection of patents on technology that directly or indirectly protects the environment. The patents will be made available to anyone free of charge.
While IBM creates the most patents, it also gives away the most. Surely IBM will continue to invent things in IBM Research laboratories but in addition they are fostering "collaborative innovation". The idea is to form an industry-wide "patent commons" in which patents are used to spread new ideas more rapidly to both developers and users. Some of the most significant technological advances are based on open standards (in the public eye like open source software) and shared knowledge and experience. Probably the best example of this I can think of is the Internet. IBM's practice of giving away certain patents may lead to important breakthroughs as IBM challenges other companies to follow suit in deploying their intellectual property portfolios for more than just legal or financial self-interest.
- iPhone - Update No. 10
According to some people, the most important question about the iPhone is "does it blend?". Although quite amusing, the more important question to me is whether Apple is listening to the feedback of customers. In prior stories I have expressed confidence that there would be continuous improvement in the functionality of the iPhone. For the first six months I would give them a B+. The two big issues remain to be the applications and the network.On the network side, I am still not very happy with AT&T primarily because of poor local coverage. However, I have learned about a new tower about two miles from my house that is scheduled to be turned on in late February. That could potentially make a dramatic difference for many people in my neck of the woods. In a few weeks I'll be in South Africa and will get a chance to see how the International aspects of the AT&T service work. Stay tuned on that.
Webapps are most useful when they are connected to the network, preferably a fast one. The presumption with webapps is that the data -- travel itineraries, frequent flier numbers, healthcare information, personal financial information, etc. -- is on the server. That model only works if you can get to the server. With 16 GB likely on the way for new iPhones, there will be plenty of room for pictures and music and have space for local data. Local data will allow a lot of useful applications even when there is no available network connection.
The bigger question for most people is about applications. The "standalone" applications such as the calculator, calendar, photo gallery, clock, and offline email have not changed. There is still no "notes" application that syncs with anything and allows cut/copy/paste. The "networked" applications, such as stocks, weather, over the air email, and YouTube have not changed. iTunes has been improved and "maps" has had a huge improvement with the addition of a location function that uses radio signals to estimate your current location. Not as accurate as GPS but pretty good. I used it at the Albany airport this past weekend and it provided very good directions to where I was headed. The "Web 2.0" applications, through the Safari browser, are still a disappointment but I am sure there will be many useful webapps soon.The other limitation of webapps is the interface. In theory you can do anything in a web browser but the human interface is not always ideal. That is why millions of people use Quicken instead of quicken.com. This will change over time as web standards evolve but in the short term I believe there is a rational need for local applications. There are many applications that could be local applications with local storage on the iPhone. Both the app and data could be synchronized (backed up) through iTunes. What we are all anxiously waiting for are "third party local applications" on the iPhone as a supplement to Apple's apps and webapps. Apple announced that that they will have a development kit available in the first quarter and many are waiting to see what the SDK will allow and what "approvals" will be necessary and whether AT&T will have any say in "certifying" applications. The clock is ticking and I can hardly wait. Following the political scene is exciting but third party apps for the iPhone will be more exciting.
The most subtle change in the latest iPhone update last week was the ability to move the home screen icons around, and to create up to nine pages on which you can place icons or web address links. The iPhone comes with just seventeen icons. The home row plus nine screens of sixteen each will allow 148 applications. One that I am hoping for is Opera Mini.
- Backup To The Rescue
The ThinkPad T60p had been acting strangely for a few weeks and I had a hunch it was going to crash. Unfortunately, it did. I called Lenovo support at 6PM Monday night and they determined that the problem was the "motherboard" needed replaced. The shipping carton arrived on Tuesday, they received the ThinkPad in Memphis on Wednesday and I received the repaired unit on Thursday morning. Nothing short of remarkable customer service. That is the good news.The bad news is that I continue to learn more about the nuances of backup and "recovery". I should not still be learning after all these years. I suspect I am not alone. There are a number of stories about "backup" here in the blog. I don't claim to be the master of backup but I do take it very seriously. The moral of this story is to take recovery as seriously as backup. This story is a little bit more technical than usual stories but I hope it is helpful. If you are interested, please read on.
- Innovations That Will Change Our Lives
The annual "IBM Next Five in Five" is a list of predicted innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years. The list is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s Labs around the world that could make these innovations possible. Following is a sampling of the five areas.The press is covered with stories about all things "green". IBM believes the technology is actually going to make it easy to be green and save money in the process. A range of "smart energy" technologies will enable us to manage our personal "carbon footprint". As data begins to run through our home electrical system, appliances, air conditioners, lights, and computers, we will become connected to a "smart" electrical grid, making it possible to turn our appliances on and off using a web browser from a PC or cell phone. In addition to alerting you about leaving appliances on when they could be off, we will be able to establish rules to be followed to automatically conserve energy. Reports will show us electrical usage just like we track our cell phone minutes. Intelligent energy grids will also enable utilities to provide you with the option to use only green energy sources such as solar and wind.
The way we drive will be changing dramatically. In the next five years, IBM says our cars will connected to the roads we drive on and thereby we will be safer and remain out of traffic jams. The technology will keep traffic flowing smoothly, cut pollution, curb accidents, and make it easier and less stressful for us to get where we are going. Intelligent traffic systems will make real-time adjustments to traffic lights and divert traffic to alternate routes while our cars will communicate with each other and with sensors along the road -- allowing them to behave as if they have 'reflexes' so they can take preventive actions under dangerous conditions. When traffic is jammed up alternative routes will be activated.
Since we are what we eat, we should know what we eat. With foods being sourced across international borders, the need to know exactly what we eat has never been more important. According to IBM, in the next five years, new advancements in software and wireless radio sensor technologies will enable us to know the exact source and make-up of the food we buy -- the climate and soil the food was grown in, the pesticides and pollution it was exposed to, the energy consumed to create the product, and the temperature and air quality of the shipping containers it traveled in on the way to our dinner table.
In the next five years, IBM says our cell phones will become our wallets, ticket brokers, concierge, bank, shopping buddy, and tour guide. New technology will allow us to snap a picture of someone wearing an outfit we want and will automatically search the web to find the designer and the nearest shop that has the outfit in stock. We will then see what that outfit would look like on our personal avatar – a 3-D representation of our self on our phone, and ask our friends to check it out online and give their opinion. When we turn on our phone in a city we are visiting, it will automatically provide us with local entertainment options, activities, and dining options that match our preferences -- and then make reservations and purchase tickets for us.
Perhaps the most important area where IBM sees major advances is healthcare. Doctors will get enhanced “super-senses” to better diagnose and treat us. In the next five years, our doctor will be able to see, hear and understand our medical records in entirely new ways. In effect, doctor’s will gain superpowers – technologies will allow them to gain x-ray like vision to view medical images and super sensitive hearing to find the tiniest audio clue in our heart beat. Our avatar will allow doctors to click on a part of our body and then visualize the relevant information for that part of us. The hospital system will then be able to compare those visual and audio clues to thousands of other anonymous patient records and be able to be much more precise in diagnosing us and providing us with a personalized treatment plan.
Some of the innovations IBM is predicting may seem like a stretch but the basics of all of them are already in place. If we were to step back five years it is likely most of us would not have foreseen how we would be doing on the Internet today.
- Christmas 2007
There is much that could be said about the hundreds of miles of driving to see family and then a houseful of family and good times before during and after Christmas. I won't bore readers of the blog about that but there is one thing I would like to share about one special gift I received. It is called Open It! Some will immediately be thinking of Open IT as in "Open Information Technology". For example, Open IT Works is based on a simple concept borrowed from Open Source, and is about sharing of IT solutions, best practices, projects, and product and vendor reviews. The Open It I received for Christmas has nothing to do with any of that. My Open It is to open things that come packaged in blisters, clamshells, boxes DVD cases, and numerous other things unopenables that are packaged with the vendor in mind -- and with no thought about how the consumer might open the package without injuring oneself. The Open It is made from hardened and plated precision alloy steel, has has honed, angled, and offset jaws, and an ergo-comfortable handle. It has a built in retractable utility knife and an interchangeable Phillips & slotted screwdriver. (You can click here to get a complete product data sheet). If you have ever suffered "wrap rage", suffer no more. It really works. The only catch is that the Open It comes in one of those packages that you need an Open It to open it! Hopefully, I will not become the technical support department for this product like I did for the PepperBall.
Holiday time also allowed me to finish a couple of books. Indian Summer was an excellent history of India, Pakistan, Kashmir, and Bangladesh. The Iranian Time Bomb
is a wake up call to what has been going on for thirty years. Good investigative reporting went into this. It was a special pleasure to finish Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Prepare yourself for 944 pages. I learned many things I did not know about the civil war and about Abraham Lincoln. He was quite the political strategist and a superb manager. A very long read but worth it. Several new books in the read queue for January. The quarterly update on favorites is here.
