iPhone – Silverton Consulting

Software defined radio hits the market

Posted on July 11, 2012July 11, 2012 by Ray in Crowdsourcing, Distributed computing, Information economy, Mobile computing, Software Defined Network, Strategic Inflection Points, Visionary leadershp

[Sorry, published this post early, final version below]

A couple of years ago I was at an IEEE technology conference and heard a presentation on software defined radios (SDR). At the time, it was focused on military applications where a number of different radio frequencies were used by different organizations. The military and other services wanted a single piece of hardware with DR, to talk over any frequency band that was currently being used.

Over time I heard nothing more about this technology until today when I read a ARS Technica article on an SDR startup company Per Vices and their Phi SDR. We have recently posted on OpenFlow and its software defined networking this takes that flexibility and applies it to radio.

Looking at the hardware it still primarily for hobbyists and engineers, with a RF daughter card, computer card and the main box. It’s available as a PCIe card or comes in a kit. But it’s a start.

Not to much today but if it can be shrunk and become more widely available, any smartphone could be a multi-network phone right out of the box. Signing up for ATT, Verizon, Sprint and others would be as easy as toggling a setting and letting the SDR do the rest.

More to come

Not only that, but with SDR, that same smartphone could act as an AM/FM/shortwave radio, multi-band walki-talki, even it’s own radio station for any and all frequency bands. Not to mention including a WiFi hot spot, BlueTooth, RFid, and NearField transceiver just as easily the other bands, all in the same mobile phone without any specialized hardware other than the shrunken RF gear.

Currently the iPhone and other smart phones require separate hardware technology and at best only do some of this. But with SDR and appropriate RF gear, all this could be done over the same hardware, all within the smart phone itself and it could be just as easy as changing a setting. I could see a radio station app in my future when SDR is here.

Another possibility

I have often wondered why smart phones don’t form a mesh network with the phones closest to a cell tower offering telcom access and the phones farther away using closer ones as a sort of on/off-ramp. One reason for no mesh support is that it would take more phone processing and energy to do it. Without any compensation who would volunteer their phone to do it. But with SDR, standardized protocols could be developed together with mobile micro payment options which would allow phone users to be compensated for providing mesh services and everyone gains.

Open source radio

Of course the other thing is that with SDR, the radio logic is now open source and could be tweaked to do just about anything an engineer wanted to do. This would really open up the radio spectrum to all sorts of new possibilities.

The FCC and other regulatory agencies might have some concerns about this. But if some spectrum could be set aside for these sorts of experimentation, I am sure the world would be better off for it.

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Per Vices compares themselves to Apple and it’s Apple 1 which was just a computer card with no software for hobbyists to play with. Given where they are today it certainly is an apt description.

They just need to take it to the next step and make the Apple II version of SDR. A complete package, with software and hardware where any person could construct their own radio. Then the next step is to create the Macintosh of radios where everyone could use it for radio services and they could conquer radio.

Comments?

Our long romance with Apple technology

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Ray in System effectiveness, System quality, Visionary leadershp

Lisa 2/5 by MattsMacintosh (cc) (from Flickr)

We all heard last night of the passing of Steve Jobs. But rather than going over his life I would like to here discuss some of the Apple products I have used over my life and how they affected our family.

I don’t know why but I never got an Apple II. In fact the first time I saw one in use was in the early 80’s. But it certainly looked nifty.

But I was struck with love at first sight when I saw the Lisa, a progenitor of the Mac. I was at a computer conference in the area which had a number of products on display but when I saw the Lisa I couldn’t see anything else. It had a 3.5″ floppy drive which was encased in hard plastic, hardly ever considered a floppy anymore. But the real striking aspect was its screen, a white background, bit mapped screen that sported great black and white graphics.

At the time, I was using IBM 3270 terminals which had green lettering on a dark screen and the only graphics were ones made with rows and columns of asterisks. To see the graphics pop to life on the Lisa, different font options, what you see is what you get was just extraordinary at the time. The only downside was its $10K price. Sadly we didn’t buy one of these either.

Mac worship

Then the 1984 commercial came out in the superbowl spot. The one where Apple was going to free the computing world from the oppression of big brother with the introduction of the first Macintosh computer.

We got our hands on one soon after and my wife used it for her small accounting business and just loved it. Over time as she took on partners their office migrated to business applications that were more suited for PCs but she stayed on the Mac long after it was sub-optimal, just because it was easy to use.

Apple Fat Mac by Accretion Disc (cc) (From Flickr)

Ultimately, she moved to a PC taking her Fat Mac home to be used there instead. Over the next decade or so we updated the Mac to a color screen and a desktop configuration but didn’t really do much with it other than home stuff.

Then the iMac’s came out. We latched onto the half basketball one which had a screen protruding out of it. We used this for some video and photo editing and just loved it. Video upload and editing took forever but there was nothing else out there that could even come close.

I ended up using this machine the first few years after I left corporate America but also bought a Mac lap top, encased in aluminum for my business trips. Both these ran PowerPC microprocessor but eventually ran an early generation of Mac OSX.

A couple of years later we moved on to the all-in-one, Intel based, desktop iMac’s and over time updated to bigger screens, faster processing and more storage. We are still on iMac desktops for home and office use today.

iPhone infatuation

In 2008 we moved from a dumb cell phone to a smart iPhone 3G. We wanted to wait until the world phone came out which supported GSM.

But this was another paradigm shift for me. When working in the corporate world I had a blackberry and could use it for contacts, email, and calendar but seldom did anything else on it. And in fact, at the time I used a PalmPilot for a number of business applications, games, and other computing needs.

When the iPhone3G came out, both the PalmPilot and dumb cell phone were retired and we went completely Apple for all our cell phone needs. Today, I probably scan email, tweet, and do a number of other applications on my iPhone almost as often as I do them on the iMac. Over time we moved one or the other of us to the 3Gs and 4 and now the children are starting to get hand me down iPhones and love them just as well.

iPad devotion

Then in May of 2010, we bought an iPad. This was a corporate purchase but everyone used it. I tried to use it to replace my laptop a number of times (see my posts To iPad or Not to iPad parts 1, 2, 3 & 4) and ultimately concluded it wouldn’t work for me. We then went out and got a Mac Airbook and now the iPad is mainly used to check email do some light editing as well as gaiming, media and other light computing activities.

The fact is, sitting on our living room couch, checking email, twitter and taking noteshas made using all these tools that much easier. When we saw the iPad2 we liked what we saw but it took so long for it to become available in the stores that we had lost all gadget lust and are now waiting to see what the next generation looks like when it comes out.

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All in all almost 30 years with Apple products both in the home and at work have made me a lifelong advocate.

I never worked for Apple but have heard that most of these products were driven single-mindly by Steve Jobs. If that was the case, I would have to say that Steve Jobs was a singular technical visionary, that understood what was then possible and took the steps needed to make it happen. In doing that, he changed computing forever and for that I salute him.

Steve Jobs RIP

AT&T personal hotspot on iPhone

Posted on April 15, 2011April 15, 2011 by Ray in Networking, System effectiveness, System quality, WiFi

I have been tied to local WIFI hot spots at most hotels and other venues for quite awhile but a recent trip to Japan where WiFi was less available, got me thinking about getting a Verizon MiFi or other personal internet device. Some of my friends swear by the Verizon MIFI and others swear at it.

But I am sick and tired of paying $10/day for WIFI at a hotel or other venue where I happen to be at. So I decided to go after AT&T’s hotspot for the iPhone.

I have been an iPhone user for a couple of years now and had grandfathered in an “unlimited data plan” which cost $30/month but to get the hotspot option I had to give that up for a 4GB/month which came with the hotspot option (DataPro 4GB for iPhone).

I looked back at some of my recent AT&T bills and I have been using around 250MB/month so thought this wasn’t going to be a problem. But then again, I don’t watch a lot of Netflix or Youtube video on my iPhone (at least not yet).

It turns out the iPhone hotspot has three operating modes:

WiFi – which allows up to 5 users to use your password protected WiFi broadcast from the iPhone. I tried it at home and at a conference center (with lot’s of other networks active and was able to find the network without problem.
BlueTooth – I especially like this mode but you have to have bluetooth on for the phone and the computers you want to connect with. Mac OSX seemed to make the blue tooth connection without problem and it was almost automatic
Tethered – this is where you connect your phone to the computer you are supplying internet access. I found this approach worked great in most situations and as I looked around a recent conference hall there seemed to be a lot of laptops connected to an iPhone probably doing the same thing.

I was a little worried about AT&T’s signal strength. At home it’s not that great but I found most conferences I attend seem to be just fine. (AT&T is offering me a free microcell for the home all I have to do is supply power and internet…). I suppose in some major cities this can be a problem but most places I sit down to check email and other stuff on my phone AT&T’s signal strength is ok.

What about usage?

It was so easy to turn on and off (see Settings, 3rd line down from top) that I was using it only when I needed to. My usage for the last 30days has been ~350MB received and ~60MB (according to the iPhone) sent so that is something I am going to have to watch a little more but with 4GB I seem to have room to grow. It turns out I was at the conference for 2 nights and 3 days, but WiFi during at the convention center was free so I only used the hotspot at night or when the other WiFi was unavailable (sporadically during the day). So I seem to be using about another5 50MB of bandwidth for each night’s (probably a couple of hours) worth of work. Which seems to say I could do this for the whole month and still have ~2.8X more bandwidth.

Well for the $15 a month extra, it seems a good deal and the best part about it is, I don’t have to haul yet another electronic device (like the MiFi) with yet another power cord/adapter. Its all tied to my iPhone which I carry around anyways.

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All in all, I like the iPhone AT&T personal hotspot option.

Comments?

To iPad or not to iPad – part 4

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Ray in Data, data access, Networking, System effectiveness, Systems, WiFi

I took the iPad to another conference last month. My experience the last time I did this (see To iPad or not to iPad – part 3) made me much more leary, but I was reluctant to lug the laptop for only a 2-day trip.

Since my recent experience, I have become a bit more nuanced and realistic with my expectations for iPad use on such trips. As you may recall, I have an iPad without 3G networking.

When attending a conference and using a laptop, I occasionally take a few notes, do email, twitter, blog and other work related items. With my iPad I often take copius notes – unclear why other than it’s just easier/quicker to get out of my backpack/briefcase and start typing on. When I take fewer notes usually I don’t have a table/desk to use for the iPad and keyboard.

As for the other items email, twitter, and blogging, my iPad can do all of these items just fine with proper WiFi connectivity. Other work stuff can occasionally be done offline but occasionally requires internet access, probably ~50:50.

iPhone and iPad together

I have found that an iPhone and iPad can make a very useable combination in situations with flaky/inadequate WiFi. While the iPad can attempt to use room WiFi, the iPhone can attempt to use 3G data network to access the Internet. Mostly, the iPhone wins in these situations. This works especially well when WiFi is overtaxed at conferences. The other nice thing is that the BlueTooth (BT) keypad can be paired with either the iPad or the iPhone (it does take time, ~2-5 minutes to make the switch, so I don’t change pairing often).

So at the meeting this past month, I was doing most of my note taking and offline work items with the iPad and blogging, tweeting and emailing with the iPhone.

If the iPad WiFi was working well enough, I probably wouldn’t use the iPhone for most of this. However, I find that at many conferences and most US hotels, WiFi is either not available in the hotel room or doesn’t handle conference room demand well enough to depend on. Whereas, ATT’s 3G network seems to work just fine for most of these situations (probably because, no one is downloading YouTube videos to their iPhone).

A couple of minor quibbles

While this combination works well enough, I do have a few suggestions to make this even better to use,

Mouse support – Although, I love the touch screen for most tasks, editing is painful without a mouse. Envision this, you are taking notes, see an error a couple of lines back, and need to fix it. With the iPad/iPhone, one moves your hand from keypad to point to the error on the screen to correct it. Finger pointing is not as quick to re-position cursors as a mouse and until magnification kicks in obscures the error, leading to poor positioning. Using the BT keypad arrow keys are more accurate but not much faster. So, do to bad cursor positioning, I end up deleting and retyping many characters that weren’t needed. As a result, I don’t edit much on the iPad/iPhone. If a BT mouse (Apple’s magic mouse) would pair up with the iPad&iPhone editing would work much better. Alternatively, having some like the old IBM ThinkPad Trackpoint in the middle of a BT keypad would work just fine. Having the arrow keys respond much faster would even be better.
iPad to iPhone file transfer capability – Now that I use the iPad offline with an online iPhone, it would be nice if there was some non-Internet way to move data between the two. Perhaps using the BT’s GOEB capabilities to provide FTP-lite services would work. It wouldn’t need high bandwidth as typical use would be to only move a Pages, Numbers, or Keynote file to the iPhone for email attachment or blog posting . It would be great if this were bi-directional. Another option is supporting a USB port but would require more hardware. A BT file transfer makes more sense to me.
iPad battery power – Another thing I find annoying at long conferences is iPad battery power doesn’t last all day. Possibly having BT as well as WiFi active may be hurting battery life. My iPad often starts running out of power around 3pm at conferences. To conserve energy, I power down the display between note taking and this works well enough it seems. The display comes back alive whenever I hit a key on the BT keypad and often I don’t even have to retype the keystrokes used to restart the display. More battery power would help.

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So great, all this works just fine domestically, but my next business trip is to Japan. To that end, I have been informed that unless I want to spend a small fortune in roaming charges, I should disable iPhone 3G data services while out of country. As such, if I only take my iPad and iPhone, I will have no email/twitter/blog access whenever WiFi is unavailable. If I took a laptop at least it could attach to an Ethernet cable if that were available. However, I have also been told that WiFi is generally more available overseas. Wish me luck.

Anyone know how prevalent WiFi is in Tokyo hotels and airports and how well it works with iPhone/iPad?

Other comments?

To iPad or not to iPad – part 3

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Ray in System effectiveness, System quality

Well I did take the iPad and BlueTooth (BT) keypad to a short conference a couple of weeks ago and it was a disaster unlike what I envisioned in Parts 1 & 2 of this saga. It turns out that some WiFi logins don’t work with the iPad (not sure if this is “Flash” issue or not). In any event, the iPad was rendered WiFi-less during the whole conference which made for an unconnected experience to say the least (recall that I don’t own a 3G version).

The hotel used T-Mobile for their WiFi connection. I must have created my account at least 3 times and tried to log-in afterward at least 5 times (persistance occasionally pays but not this time). Each time the login screen hung and I never got in. The conference had a different WiFi supplier but it had the same problem only this time all I had to do was to sign into the service with a conference supplied SSID&password. No such luck. The hotel gave me two free WiFi card keys for T-Mobile but I can’t use them.

I even tried some of the tricks that are on the web to get around this problem but none worked. Nuts!

The blog post from hell

Of course, I didn’t plan to write a blog post at the conference but I had the time and the muse struck. So I whipped out my trusty iPhone, paired the BT keypad with the iPhone, used Notes and WordPress App (WP, available free) to create a new blog post. I power typed it into the iPhone Notes app and copied and pasted into WP’s new post window.

I was always curious how to add media to posts via the WP app but anything on the iPhone including the photo library and camera photos were accessible as new media to be added to any post. I had used my iPhone to earlier take some pictures from the conference and easily added these to the post. The WordPress app uses the more primitive editing window (not WYSIWYG) but that was ok as I didn’t have a lot of fancy text layout. What’s funny is that saving on the WP app was not the same as uploading it to my blog. And once uploaded you had to change the post status to Published to get it externally visible.

Another option would have been to use the web and update the blog post through WordPress on Safari. I can’t recall but last time when I used Safari & WordPress there were some scrolling incompatibilities (inability to scroll down into the post – flash maybe) and there were other nuisances, so I decided to try the WP app this time.

The only problem with using the iPhone & WP app to enter the post was that it was hard to check spellings and see the whole post to edit it properly. Only really got to see a couple of (short) lines at a time in the iPhone WP app window and the WP app preview was not all that useful.

Needless to say, the post was published with numerous typos, mis-spellings, grammatical faux pas, etc. (so what’s different Ray?). A few readers caught the issues and DMed me on Twitter which I picked up later that night. I tried my best to fix them but it still had problems a day later when I got to my desktop. For some unknown reason, it became my most popular post – go figure.

Using the iPhone at the conference

Of course the iPhone 4 worked fine for emails, twitter, facebook and other social media given its screen and soft keypad limitations during the conference. And I was still able to take notes with the iPad I just couldn’t send them anyplace and would have liked to insert them into the post as an outline but couldn’t be done.

There is just no way to get data out of an iPad without WiFi or 3G access. Maybe if I could take a screen shot with the iPhone and then use an OCR app to interpret it into a Notes item and then I could get the text into iPhone – but I didn’t have an OCR app at the time. Also, it smacks of a Rube Goldberg contraption.

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I would say the WP app on the iPad looks a lot better than the one on the iPhone but much of that is due to the increased screen space. If everything was working fine I probably wouldn’t have had as many problems using iPad WP app to enter in the post. Of course I would have had to mail the photos from the iPhone to the iPad to enter them into the post but this is standard practice with the iPad…

There’s another conference coming up (it’s conference season here in the US) and I am NOT taking the iPad. Too bad, my back hurts already just thinking about it. I foresee either a 3G iPad or the Mac Air laptop sometime in my near future but for now on it’s lugging laptops.

Just not sure if I shouldn’t take the BT keypad to take notes on the iPhone!?

PS. Saw Rob Peglar and he had a Verizon Dongle that provided a local WiFi for his iPad and 4 other “close” friends. Maybe that’s what I should invest in?

Is M and A the only way to grow?

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Ray in Corporate growth, Strategy, Visionary leadershp

Photograph of Women Working at a Bell System Telephone Switchboard by US National Archives (cc) (from flickr)

Oracle buys Sun, EMC buys Data Domain, Cisco buys Tandberg, it seems like every month another major billion dollar acquisition occurs. Part of this is because of the recent economic troubles, which now values many companies at the lowest they have been for many years and thus, making it cheaper to acquire good (and/or failing) companies. But one has to wonder is this the only way to grow?

I don’t think so.

Corporate growth can be purely internally driven or organic just as well as from acquisition. But it’s definitely harder to do internally. Why?

Companies are focused on current revenue producing products – Revolutionary products rarely make it into development in today’s corporations because they take resources away from other (revenue producing) products.
Companies are focused on their current customer base – Products that serve other customers rarely make out into the market from today’s corporations because such markets are foreign to the companies current marketing channels.
Company personnel understand current customer problems – To be successful, any new product must address it’s customer pain points and offer some sort of a unique, differentiated solution to those issues and because this takes understanding other customer problems, it seldom happens.
New products can sometimes threaten old product revenue streams – It’s a rare new product that doesn’t take market share aware from some old way of doing business. As companies focus on a particular market, any new product development will no doubt focus on those customers as well. Thus, many new internally developed products will often displace (or eat away at) current product revenue. Early on, it’s hard to see how any such product can be justified with respect to current corporate revenue.
New products often take efforts above and beyond current product activities – To develop, market and sell revolutionary products takes enormous, “all-out” efforts to get off the ground. Most corporations are unable to sustain this level of effort for long, as their startup phase was long ago and long forgotten.

We now know how hard it can be but how does Apple do it? The iPod and iPhone were revolutionary products (at least from Apple’s perspective) and yet they both undeniably became great successes and helped to redefine industries in the process. And no one can argue that they haven’t helped Apple to grow significantly in the process. So how can this be done?

It takes strong visionary leadership in the company at the highest level – Such management can make the tough decisions to take resources away from current, revenue producting products and devote time and effort to new ones.
It takes marketing genius – Going after new markets, even if they are adjacent, requires in-depth understanding of new market dynamics and total engagement to be succesful.
It takes development genius – Developing entirely new products, even if based on current technology, takes development expertise above and beyond evolutionary product enhancement.
It takes hard work and a dedicated team – Getting new products off the ground takes a level of effort above and beyond current ongoing product activities.
It takes a willingness to fail – Most new internally developed products and/or startups fail. This fact can be hard to live with and makes justifying future products even harder.

In general, all these items are easier to find in startups rather than an ongoing corporation today. This is why most companies today find it easier and more successful to grow through acquisitions rather than through organic or internal development.

However, it’s not the only way. ATT did it for almost a century in the telecom industry but they owned a monopoly. IBM and HP did it occasionally over the past 60 years or so, but they had strong visionary leadership for much of that time and stumbled miserably, when such leadership was lacking. Apple has done it over the past couple of decades or so but this is mainly due to Steve Jobs. There are others of course, but I would venture to say all had strong leadership at the helm.

But these are the exceptions. Strong visionary leaders usually don’t make it to the top of today’s corporations. Why that’s the case needs to be the subject of a future post…