Category Telecoms

Nokia's Future.

I just read this article on The Register about Nokia’s view of the future of mobile phones, Web 2.0, mobile internet etc. I generally like Nokia, they’ve managed to overcome their long-established image as a relatively small, insignificant player from Finland and turned themselves into the goliath of mobile phones in less than a decade. […]

eyeBeam on the Mac

A Software Nightmare Many of you may have heard of X-Lite, a very common and arguably the most full-featured softphone around. This is a free application that supports SIP telephony and essentially allows you to register to your SIP provider and place calls to other people over your internet connection. X-Lite is developed by CounterPath […]

Η πραγματική διαφορά μιας τάξης μεγέθους.

Ήταν μέσα του καλοκαιριού του 2004, ένα μήνας προ των Ολυμπιακών της Αθήνας, όταν οι κάτοικοι του Παρισιού άρχισαν να μαθαίνουν — και να αποκτούν — υπηρεσίες ADSL2+. Εκείνη την εποχή η Βρετανία προσπαθούσε να συνειδητοποιήσει πως είχε καταφέρει να παραμείνει πίσω από αρκετές χώρες της δυτικής και βόρειας ευρώπης στο παιχνίδι της ευρυζωνικότητος. Ήταν, […]

The Kindle and the 1970s.

Electronic Paper was invented at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (sic) in the 1970s. In 2007, Amazon, one of the largest online retailers in the world and probably the only corporation capable to even think of trying this given the combination of its vast inventory, business relationships to the publishing industry and technological know-how, made the first large commercially viable attempt at bringing it to the masses. I don't know if the Kindle, as it's called, is going to succeed or not (I can already think of a number of problems with it), but the idea of an electronic book becoming a reality seems fascinating. If only it didn't look like a prop from a 1970's sci-fi TV show... The product and associated service are only available in the U.S. for the time being. Europe is a technically much more difficult market: as the device is using 3G broadband, and more specifically EV-DO, it will need to be modified to use the 3GSM/UMTS variant, HSDPA. Then, Amazon would need an agreement with the cellular network operators in the countries it's planning on launching the product/service before it could become an even remote possibility. And that's not counting the publishing rights on each country etc. My guess is that, if the Kindle comes to Europe by Amazon, it's probably going to be limited to the UK, Germany and France. The other problem, of course, is the lack of WiFi. With mobile internet rapidly becoming the norm, the choice of 3G networking might not prove to be a good one in the long run, no matter what Jeff Bezos thinks.

Gizmo Project Woes Redux

Last month I wrote about my woes with the Gizmo Project, up until then one of my VoIP providers of choice. Days after the post was published I was contacted by one of the company’s engineers/support employee who apologised for the PayPal payment issues the company was facing and wanted to find out more about […]

FakeStevey got it…wrong.

Check this post by Fake Steve Jobs. It's hilarious and not just because it nails what the real Steve Jobs probably thinks of Openness, but also because it highlights what was always wrong with his approach: whenever his companies were weak (NeXT in the late 80s and early 90s, Apple in the late 90s and early 2000s) he touted Openness, standards and formed alliances with other companies. Take Adobe's Display PostScript in NeXTSTEP, Darwin, Display PDF, OpenGL, OpenAL, CUPS, UNIX certification, gcc and a number of other standards, APIs, libraries and applications between 2001 and today in OS X or his 'agreement' with Microsoft in 1997. But just when things do well, he tries to usurp the dominant position, showing complete disregard to their partners, development community, users and sometimes even employees. In my discussions about Android with friends over the past day I compared Google with Microsoft in the 80s. Many have done the same. This comment by 'chickenface' in the linked article is, I believe, representative of how I see Android evolving and eventually dominating the market:
This is 1984, the iphone is the 128K Mac, and GPhone is the PC. Look, there's no actual consortium; there's Google and its customers. Kinda like Apple and AT&T, but they've got so many customers we're calling it a consortium. When're you gonna get this straight: Microsoft were like the Klingons - we made a sort of peace with them and held our nose. Google, they're way worse -- they're the Borg.

Android and the Open Handset Alliance.

Apple may have produced a great, polished and closed device in the iPhone. Revolutionary? Nope, but very impressive nevertheless. As a device, as a user interface and — soon — as a platform. Yet in some years from now, what will probably be the iPhone’s single most significant contribution to the world was the belief […]

iPhone iNsecurities…

When Steve Jobs claimed that there would not be an iPhone SDK in early 2007, citing security as the main reason behind Apple's decision, a considerable part of the IT press, bloggers, and engineers dismissed his claims as ludicrous. After all, this was 2007, and Apple had Mac OS X, a relatively secure OS and had demonstrated a policy of aggressively fixing bugs in its operating system and application software in recent years. Then it became known that the iPhone software was running with superuser privileges on the device, the iPhone was very quickly hacked into and Jobs announced an upcoming SDK for February 2008. With 1.2 million iPhones sold in three months, and about 250,000 of them already 'unlocked', this is starting to look like a security nightmare. One would think that Apple knew better...

Gizmo5, and Gizmo Project's Paypal issues.

Just recently Gizmo Project announced its Gizmo5 beta, a service that allows users of mobile phones to place calls for very low rates through a MIDP Gizmo client. A data connection is required just for setting up the call. In other words, the idea is that you pick a contact (or dial the number you […]

Η Συνέντευξη της Viviane Reding

Στις 11-12 Οκτωβρίου η επίτροπος για τη Κοινωνία της Πληροφορίας και των ΜΜΕ της ΕΕ, κα. Viviane Reding, επισκέφτηκε την Ελλάδα στα πλαίσια της συνάντησης του ERG. Το adslgr.com πήρε μια σύντομη συνέντευξη από την Επίτροπο που παρουσιάζει κάποιο ενδιαφέρον και επιβεβαιώνει κάποιες από τις αρχές και βάσεις της ΕΕ σχετικά με τις κατευθυντήριες σε ό,τι αφορά τη ρύθμιση των τηλεπικοινωνιών. Είναι κρίμα που παρά την υποστήριξη της ΕΕ η απόδοση της ελληνικής Ρυθμιστικής Αρχής, της ΕΕΤΤ, δεν μπορεί σε καμία περίπτωση να συγκριθεί με αυτή πολλών άλλων ρυθμιστικών αρχών στην Ευρώπη.