Ripping mobility from the clutches of telecom
Archive for November, 2005
Linux Phone Standard
Nov 14th
Coverage from Linuxdevices.com today of the Linux Phone Standard (LiPS). Yay! It’s an effort that fits in quite well with the Mobile Linux Initiative from the OSDL. The OSDL effort is a relatively low level push, aiming to make the kernel itself appropriate for use in mobile devices. However the LiPS consortium is aiming to come up with application level interfaces and define an SDK for developing applications targeting Linux phones. I love to see stuff like this. Kinda wish Nokia was involved though. They’re starting to stack up some badass Linux mojo in terms of both the device and on-device software and the impressive structure they’ve given the SDK. Being involved in something like this could really help out both sides.
Internet Neutrality
Nov 11th
The statement that Vint Cerf makes in his letter about “Internet Neutrality” apply equally well to cellular and mobile networks:
The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation. This has led to an explosion of offerings – from VOIP to 802.11x wi-fi to blogging – that might never have evolved had central control of the network been required by design.
In mobile we got gatekeepers. Lots of ‘em. And although everyone says that all walled gardens tend to fall (I’ve even said it and believed it myself), it seems like there are more cases where things are going poorly for the openness of mobile than they are going well. Remember, it’s not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you.
Mobile Monday Tonight
Nov 7th
Just a reminder for the Mobile Monday meeting tonight. The essential details:
- What: November Mobile Monday (Funding and Investment)
- When: November 7th, 2005 7:00pm
- Where: AOL Building 12, 401 Ellis St., Mountain View, CA
- Who: Anyone interested in mobility
- Cost: Nothing!
Hope to see you all there!
Open All The Way
Nov 5th
I’m a bit behind in my news, so I just caught the story about Neuros opening up the firmware to it’s audio player. As for the “Is this a good idea or a mere publicity stunt?” part, it really depends on what people do with it. Folks have been talking about using attention metadata to help find and organize information when it’s too much to consume directly. Audio is one of those places where that attention metadata would really help out, cause it’s harder to “scan” that information manually. Yada yada yada, we in Silicon Valley have been hearing these arguments for a while so I’m not going to rehash them. But the problem was always that getting the tools to support attention information was a prohibitive. Audio players usually consisted of closed applications and proprietary platforms. Well, attention folks, if you’re really serious here’s your chance. Want a social recommendation system instead of a mass pattern matching database? This is how to get the info back out of the endpoint.
Opensource
Nov 3rd
So people keep pointing me to opensource.nokia.com and saying “Hey Mike, you should be into this, look at the Nokia open source stuff”. Lets see, Python points to the Python binary download release, and I think the series 60 browser page might be an advertisement attempting to get licensees to use the Nokia browser because it now uses the Apple webkit core. So yea, nice try. No I’m not interested. Open source is not about taking open source stuff and integrating it into your proprietary offerings. That’s better than top to bottom proprietary. However it kills the feedback loop. You only get 5% of the benefit if you don’t rerelease what you’ve done for others to build on. I don’t have time for halfassed efforts like that. Pathetic. Good idea though, I hope they spin again with this one and do it right. I’m willing to look again when the source code goes up.
