November 2008 Archives

Having said that - as a person who thinks allowing small companies the ability to come up with great ideas, put them to use and make life better for their investors and consumers, is a good idea - I applaud the fact that a new company has been created with the goal of becoming a patent protection club.

I should mention that if I worked at a large telco, I would be suing everyone who competed with me and infringed my patents. This is common sense and understandable. But until someone appoints me the CEO of Verizon or AT&T (a long shot after HR reads this post) I think any sort of protection a small company can get from a larger company - especially as it equates to patents, is good to have.

So I present to you a new company I just learned about and one that took my idea and ran with it --  the RPX Defensive Patent Aggregation service. It is worth pointing out, I can't necessarily endorse the company as I don't know much about them. What I can endorse is the idea that a bunch of companies looking to make products which consumers and businesses need, now have an insurance plan to protect them from being sued into submission my a cadre of larger companies doing what is in the interest of their own shareholders.

But even today, I still get the childhood sense of wonder as I witness markets evolve.

We are seeing things we never thought we would see - phones with the power to replace computers, speech recognition systems which allow users to search the web with their voice and software which allows a phone to determine what music is playing and that can determine what an album cover or book is, just by taking a photo of the cover.

And it is just getting started. I wish I could transport forward one decade or more to see how the future generations communicate. I won't be surprised to see baby rattles replaced with waterproof baby phones which allow parents to check on the baby via embedded cameras while the infant enjoys soothing sounds and images emanating from the same device.

To help you along the journey towards discovering this brave new world of next generation communications, TMC has partnered with Alcatel-Lucent to provide you with your very own news-rich Global Online Community focused on next generation communications which we hope you will find infinitely useful.

In order to keep up with the wealth of information in the space, the TMC editorial team and the brightest minds at Alcatel-Lucent will be working around the clock and covering the next-gen communications market, giving you the stories you need and want to be aware.

At the moment, there are some very useful feature articles worthy of your consideration. For example, as carriers embrace the transformation to IP, a dedicated article on the topic is a must read. Likewise an article on how Web 2.0 and other technologies will create wealth - as it did in the industrial revolution, is thought provoking.

There is more and the GOC is organized into enterprise and carrier news allowing you to further delve into specific areas of coverage such as education, energy, finance, hospitality and more. In the carrier space you can find information which is technical, strategic or focusing on the user experience.

I would like to personally welcome Alcatel-Lucent to TMCnet and I am confident the content found on this community will be some of the most thought-provoking and useful you will find anywhere. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.

With the advent of the Storm, RIM and Verizon came together to offer what they hope is the equivalent of the iPhone but with the benefit of the Verizon Wireless network.

To determine how good this device is in the real world, I spent a good deal of time in a Verizon store and made camp near the single Blackberry Storm which the company had on display in the corner of the store in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

My wife is due for a new phone and thought for sure she would pick up a Storm. In fact she went into the store ready to buy it. I told her to test it first and after she did, she realized it was confusing to operate and typing on the device is not easy to do. I picked up the device myself and tried it and also found it difficult to type on.

She decided to pass (for now) and may buy a different Blackberry model instead.

I also had the opportunity to interview a number of other people about what they thought about the phone and the result was always the same. Slow, difficult to use and typing didn't work very well. The device even locked up a few times. I didn't see anyone who used the phone actually buy one.

But the phone is not all bad. In fact, what I did like about the screen was its ability to have true tactile feedback - the screen simulates clicking extremely well. It is just many people, including myself could not get the right keys to press - even after repeated attempts. On a positive note, a plus for the device is the back button, which allows you to quickly find the last screen you were on. But the increased number of options you can click on leads to problems. I found this out myself as I repeatedly and seemingly without reason, kept getting the clock to appear.

We all know the real claim to fame of this device is the speed of the network and believe me, Verizon EVDO can be blazingly fast and the HTC Verizon-based XV6800 runs circles around the AT&T-based iPhone in sheer download speed. This is why I was disappointed to see that the Storm is a slow browsing device. I found the iPhone is actually 20-70% faster when pulling up pages on TMCnet and other graphically rich websites. What this tells me is there is a rendering problem in the Storm and perhaps the processor is underpowered.

In addition, the browsing experience on the Storm is not intuitive. Using the device is not as pleasant as an iPhone.

To be fair, the Storm has glitches which could be solved with software upgrades and it goes without saying that software updates may correct some or all of these problems. The iPhone too needed updates and in fact this past Friday the 2.2 iPhone firmware update turned on push email and other features such as a more stable browser and the addition of street view while using Google maps.

If you have to choose between the iPhone and the Storm at this point, the iPhone gets a 9 and the Storm gets a 6.5. The benefits of the faster network and great touch-screen feedback technology are more or less erased by painfully slow rendering and a clunky user-unfriendly interface. Still, due to the network, the Storm will work in perhaps 10-20% more places than the iPhone and it is possible the usability of the device is not as big an issue if you use the gadget daily and get used to it. Then there is the application factor - there are just so many more of them on the iPhone than other devices.

So this version of the Storm is a category one at best and over time it is possible for it to get better. For now though, I just can't recommend this device. I really want to and more importantly I would like to have a solid touch-screen device myself which works on the Verizon Wireless network. Hopefully, over time, the Storm will create real competition and make Apple brace for cover.

From time to time I invest in companies in the industry and as of this writing I am long Apple call options (betting Apple will go higher).

What is interesting is the thought that the Android OS and Google brand may be

strong enough to allow an army of companies to come out with Android phones. The good news here is that competition is good for consumers. The bad news is that each hardware design will require all/many accessories to be redesigned.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. In addition, it is worth pointing out the low

price of this phone, $119, is lower than what many subsidized phones cost and this one is unlocked. It is way too early to predict massive disruption in the smartphone market but having a low-priced phone backed by the Google Android name has the potential to change US cell phone pricing/subsidization models.

Personally, I won't be happy till my phone supports Asterisk. Mark Spencer, are you reading?

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